While digital artists and curators clamor to be validated by major art institutions, Art & Science Collaborations Inc., or ASCI, plans to exhibit the work of the winners of Digital 98 -- the first annual international new-media art competition -- at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows, Queens.
The exhibition at the venerable science museum -- on view from 13 September to 17 October -- will also be the debut of the institution's new computer gallery, said Cynthia Pannucci, founder and director of ASCI, a 10-year-old, 200-member organization dedicated to the support and promotion of creative uses of technology.
While not a traditional venue for the display of art, the museum could prove to be the most appropriate showcase for the Digital 98 winners. "I think it would do the art world well to go to the New York Hall of Science," observed Jeffrey Kastner, senior editor at ARTnews . "There are cool adjacencies between science, philosophy, theology, and creativity for which digital art just might be the tool ... to realize [that] the divisions between these disciplines are breaking down."
Sandy Young was one of the winners in the Digital Image category for her series of intricately layered, dreamlike figurative compositions. "Sure, the increased exposure in the New York area is a great opportunity for me personally as an artist," said Young, who has also earned awards at 1996's Digital Art Expo, as well as an honorable mention at this year's Digital Print Competition. "Plus, exhibitions like this one will help educate the general public about the new medium of digital art."
Finding other exhibition slots -- namely, at art museums -- may prove to be a battle. "We're presenting this show at the New York Hall of Science with the hope that we can get [it] to travel to a major art venue," said Pannucci. She speculated that "this might be difficult, since the Web-based artwork we are showing can't be easily collected. That's why it's not supported by commercial galleries.
"To showcase a particular medium, you need an infrastructure, and most fine art curators just aren't educated in new media," she said.
Kastner pointed out that all new media -- not just digital -- suffers when it first emerges. "Every time a new form of art evolves, there are problem," he said. "Video, the next-youngest art form to digital art, is just being accepted now, although artists have worked with the form for decades. Curators and collectors didn't consider photography to be an art until relatively recently, although it's been around 150 years or so."
However, leading galleries, such as New York's Paula Cooper Gallery, now sell iris prints of established artists, Pannucci noted -- evidence that the art world is finally warming up to showing and selling digital art. She thinks competitions like Digital 98, with its open call for entries by unknown artists and its exhibition in high-traffic, general-audience locales, are necessary.
"Being able to discover new talent and expose new voices in digital art is important," said Pannucci. "After all, we're not going backward in technology, in terms of art media. It gives me a thrill to help future generations of artists for whom computers will be as ubiquitous as a paint palette."
