Comment On “The Computer As The Artist’s Alter Ego”

asAlexander Scriabin,Thomas Wilfred and Lkzl6 Moholy-Nagy leading the way during the earlyyears of its development. Now after centuries of dreaming about combining motion , sound and spatial elements into a single,homogeneous process, the dream is starting to become reality. Laser light concerts, 3-D video imagery and holographic installations are but a few of the more recent examples of this long-standing tendency to change the features of art by synthetically engaging multiple sensory modalities. Mallary’s eidetic descrip tion of a supermedium is one of the latest and perhaps the most exciting concepts advanced along these lines. Essentially, what he describes is no less than the farthest reaches of a technological evolution that could radically transform the face of art and propel us toward new ways of seeing, thinking and feeling. medium is not only an inspiring procedural model for the future of art and communication, it also servesas a metaphor and prefiguration of a wider evolution: the ongoing struggle of the world of art and the world of technology to shape each other. If Mallary’splan is to succeed and, indeed, if technological art is to realize its full potential, the variousdisciplines involved must find a common conceptual basis or,at the very least, intersecting points that can be mutually exploited. How a more meaningful and productive integration of disciplines can be achieved in the future is at the moment an open question. At times in the past-as in the quattrocento discovery of linear perspectivethe interaction of art and science was important to both artist and scientist. Today, research in science and systems engineering proceeds without much reference to the artist’sconcerns , and thus no real attempts have been made to produce or even contemplate artworkson the scale that Mallary is proposing. now is not a Renaissance man but a Renaissance team-an interdisciplinary groupwhose collaboration is beneficial to both art and technology. Although Mallary believeswe eventually will have the technologyand human resources to be able to produce a supermedium, it seems highly unlikely that this will occur in the near future. At this time, our knowledge is far too splintered and lacking Mallary’s splendid vision of a superPerhaps what is needed most right in the homogeneity needed for the kind o fcomplex undertaking that Mallary has described. Furthermore, there are a number of crucial questions outside the realm of art and technology that are bound to arise during the long and complex process needed to implement Mallary’s proposed project--questions that will involve such matters as management, economics and ethics. For example, (1) Fundin6 who would sponsor the development of a supermedium, and if federal or corporate agencies were to become involved,what kind of artistic and commercial constraints would be imposed on the project? (2) Standardization :would the equipment, technology and programming capabilities of a supermedium be susceptible to unification like the cinema and television , or would it be a unique artistic instrument followingin the tradition of kinetic works by Wilfred, MoholyNagy and other independent media artists? (3)Distn’bution:exactlywhere and to what kind of audience would a supermedium be shown,and how, if at all,would its scale and format relate to traditional exhibition facilities such as galleries, museums and theaters? Notwithstanding these problems and the traditionallyrandom nature of artistic and technological evolution , Mallary has begun to make some serious choices about where projective spatial-synestheticart should go. With his theory of a supermedium, he is helping to define the future roll of the artist by anticipating technical needs and, in general, building a context to digest the creativeideas and scientific information that are developing so fast. Ultimately, Mallary’s aim is to transcend contemporary electronic imaging techniques with their implicitlyculture-bound values and to explore entirely new esthetic discourses.We are in the early stages of a major technological transformation far more sweeping than the present art establishment realizes and much greater than the so-called media (film,video, holography, etc.) revolution would indicate. It may take a decade or more before complex configurations of interlocking factors actuallyconverge to make Mallary’s supermedium a viable possibility,but in the meantime his ethical principles and bold artisticvision will help...