For many museum-goers, the intersection between technology and art translates into flashing projector screens, computers on pedestals, and a mouse for “interaction.” But New York’s Art in the Anchorage exhibition, organized by nonprofit artists’ collective Creative Time, showcases a spectacular assembly of work by wired artists concerned with aesthetics first and technology second.
Tucked into a dark cathedral-like space below the Brooklyn Bridge, the 10 pieces in the show suggest that the biggest failure of previous digital artwork has been the user interface itself. “I was so pissed off by all the [digital art] I had been seeing,” says artist Jaron Lanier, whose The Associative Painting occupies the whole nave of the Anchorage. “It was brutally ugly … but there is nothing unhip about beauty.”
Lanier’s own work highlights a growing sophistication and sensitivity about the operation of interactive media. A swirling fractal image is projected on a diaphanous scrim, and at three lectern-like rostrums, viewers slide their palms into hand-shaped clay molds. Tiny cameras embedded in the molds read the light response off them to reshape the larger image accordingly. Lanier was forced to tweak the software to make it less sensitive because “New Yorkers were jamming it to the floor.” As artists gain more precise control over the technology, “we’re seeing more sensual and more refined work,” notes Lanier.
Julia Meltzer and Amanda Ramos’ makes one of the most explicit references to computers. It takes viewers into red-lit public bathrooms, “as a metaphor for Internet Relay Chat,” where eerie computerized voices read off transcripts of actual chat conversations and intone phrases like “CrazyJane has left channel sex talk.”
Because so much electronic art remains transfixed by the ethereal online space, artist Michael Naimark’s work aims specifically for “groundedness.” His Be Now Here brings a refreshing international atmosphere to the show. And 3-D panoramic vistas from his trips to four UNESCO World Heritage Endangered cities are projected on the wall while the viewer spins on a central turntable. For Naimark, the ancient plazas in Jerusalem, Timbuktu, Angkor, and Dubrovnik serve as a radical counterpoint to the test-pattern and static of cyberspace.
But these troubled, real-world communities and the culture of cyberspace are not dissimilar he says, making a direct connection between the work of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and UNESCO. “With activism in virtual worlds and endangered sites, ultimately the issues are the same: Who controls place, and how do you respect space?”
The show’s setting, with vaulted 45-foot ceilings and absolutely no natural light, captivates the eye almost as much as the exhibition itself. According to show curator Anne Pasternak, the ironic contrast about the space and the digital artwork is a critical part of the show. “There’s something so compelling about such a massive landmark structure and the media installations which are so intangible and ephemeral,” says Anne Pasternak, who heads up Creative Time. “It’s a kind of monastic experience.”
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
