MUSEUM EXHIBITION
At the stroke of midnight (PST) January 1, 2001, an ambitious and timely online exhibition called 010101: Art in Technological Times clicks into gear. Commissioned by a multidisciplinary curatorial team at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the exhibit (which also includes an offline gallery component, with works by about 35 artists) does nothing less than attempt to tackle the complex and sometimes insidious impact of digital technology on contemporary art.
After a sneak peek at beta sites and a demo with MOMA staffers, it's clear that each of the online exhibit's five works (as well as the accompanying essays and artist interviews) examines questions raised by the existence of cyberspace. And they do so with humor, beauty, playfulness, and, frequently, a devious critical eye. The Webby prize-winning Belgian team of Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn, makers of the cult fave Entropy8Zuper! site, set their 3-D clones loose in an interactive gamelike environment to explore their ambivalent feelings about being showcased in a major museum. Erik Adigard, best known for his print and webzine design work (for Wired, among others), portrays the elasticity of Internet time with a visually dense interface that muses on the time sink of downloading computer files.
The exhibit's most conceptually intriguing projects undermine our browsing habits. Mark Napier, creator of the byte-slicing Web art classic "Shredder," contributes an information-leveling piece called "Feed." The work automatically spider-searches for and consumes Web content, then transforms it into adjustable screens resembling luminous color-field paintings - giving, for example, a Yahoo! page the look of Rothko. The process is a metaphor for the endless search for beauty and spirituality on the Net. A similar impulse drives Thomson & Craighead's incisively witty "e-poltergeist," in which the little-known British duo seemingly slips a mournful ghost into your machine. Launching off a portal search engine, the piece introduces a foreign presence that sporadically takes control of your browser and sends you to Web pages that convey despairing messages. The viewing experience shakes our assumptions about cyberspace by giving it a human face.
The featured artists are well-respected players in Net art circles. But because arts institutions still haven't figured out how to display digital material in a gallery context, their work has little museum recognition. This show proves that the virtual realm is packed with socially relevant artistic possibility.
010101: Art in Technological Times : free. Online show begins January 1; gallery exhibition opens March 3. Gallery show runs through July 8. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: www.sfmoma.org/010101.
STREET CRED
Bomb Squad
Behind the Green Doerr
Roll Call
Diverting the Audio Stream
Sole of a New Machine
On-Line Skating
(Re)Seeing Digital
ReadMe
Music
The Eyes Have It
Lost in the Scramble
Young, Fast, and Genetically Damaged
Just Outta Beta
Megatuneage
Bloggin' On
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