Juror's Statement

In 1962, Ivan Sutherland developed sketchpad, the first interactive computer graphics system, at MIT. Since then, there have been three distinct periods of artistic creation, and artists initially dazzled by the glare of cathode ray tubes are now increasingly functioning in a world that relies on digital technology to forge new styles defining the current epoch and its ideas.

In the mid-sixties, we saw work produced by engineers and computer scientists who had access to highly specialized computers and in the mid-seventies, we witnessed artists' increasing involvement with computer companies. Usually, the artist worked in collaboration with an engineer or programmer. Since the mid-eighties, we have seen increasing numbers of visual artists using computers, as prices of hardware and software dropped and user interface and output technology improved dramatically.

During that period, digital art practice was a fringe activity, and it is only now becoming key to artistic concerns and somehow central to our human predicament as we enter the 21st century. Looking at the submissions for this year's Digital Salon, it became clear that digital artists fall into several categories:

There are the contemporary visual artists who have utilized computers for one specific purpose and whose work leaves no trace of technology. These are artists who have developed their personal, pictorial language and embrace computers to accomplish a specific task.

Then there are the artists who see the computer as a powerful servant of the advertising industry, fabricating fictions that flourish in a culture where "real" experience has been replaced by digital depictions.

Finally, there are the artists who have inherited the Futurists' belief that "one must align oneself with the magnificent radiance of the future." However, the romance with the machine age has been tarnished since the Futurists Balla and Boccioni became heralds of art and technology in the early 20th century. Today, the artists who celebrate the machine no longer emulate the muscle functions of heavy industry but realize that today's technology is all pervasive and utterly intimate, not outside us but inside our minds and underneath our skin.

Many Galleries and Museums are currently showing digital art. Recently, there have been "BitStreams" at the Whitney Museum in New York and "010101 Art in Technological Times" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Both these exhibitions offer a snapshot of current artistic practice. In 2002, the Digital Salon will celebrate its tenth year and travel to the United Kingdom for the first time. It will have been thirty-three years since the seminal exhibition "Cybernetic Serendipity" at the ICA in London. As you look at the work selected for the Ninth Digital Salon, you will see how the Internet is fostering cultural and international diversity and how multimedia is facilitating the free play of imagination that the philosopher Kant deemed vital to the production of art.