Art As Signal: Inside The Loop

THE LEONARDO GALLERY ART AS SIGNAL: INSIDE THE LOOP In February of 1993, ad319was born from the simultaneous efforts of three artists trained in traditional media, all of whom were attempting to embrace new digital technologies. The idea of working as a collective seemed an effective way to pool our knowledge and an efficient means of addressing the issues we face as contemporary artists and educators. One outgrowth of this collaborative approach has been Art as Signal: Inside the Loop, an international exhibition of electronic art that we are in the process of curating for the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign . The impetus behind the exhibition has been our belief that we are now entering a "second generation " of computer art. This new generation is characterized by artwork that is more mature and authoritative than that which preceded it. Unhindered by indirect access, cost or computer languages too dense for the lay-person, second-generation computer artists are pushing beyond the limits of their predecessors. They are investing their work with a range of content unrelated to the process of its own creation. Much has changed since computer technology became available as a creative tool 30 years ago. Often the content of first-generation computer art was characterized by a self-reflexive analysis of the process itself. Expensive equipment, obscure computer languages and unfriendly interfaces all served to limit the user group to a technocratic few. But personal computers have re-configured the user group. New software, along with more affordable and more powerful hardware, have allowed the individual artist to experiment with techniques and multimedia forms that in the past would have required outside support. Development in software design has engendered interfaces that are more friendly and transparent. These combined features have created a tool that allows artists to get serious. The work on the following pages is presented as exemplary of this evolution. We have purposely selected only two-dimensional work, since it best fits ajournal format. It is not our intent to present an exhaustive survey. One could compare the development of a vocabulary in the digital arts with the universal acquisition of language. First one learns the alphabet, then words, then sentences. Finally, one can utter poetry, or prose, or anything in between. The images that follow are significant for their poetic resonance , not for the fact that they were made with a computer. Works by second-generation computer artists range from rooms full of terror from a child's perspective to models of cyber-organic entities never before encountered that remark on the future of biotechnology, mediated narratives, modern mythology and reconstruction of personal histories. These artists set out to do what artists through the ages have always done, namely to give expression and coherence to the human issues of the day. AD319: KATHLEEN CHMELEWSKI NAN GOGGIN JOSEPH SQUIER Curators 143 Art and Design University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL 61820 U.S.A. E-mail: © 1995 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 85-92, 1995 8 5 ^'»PUj^rf - '' ,^ψ L""**^ Kathleen H. Ruiz, Significance, dye sublimation print, SVi x 11 in, 1991. It is the unseen, interior structures of nature and thought that interest me: the border between incorporeal, subjective space and physical, ob­ jective space, and the duality of ideal/actual. I seek to question issues of restructured reality by monumen­ talizing the invisible or visually insignificant, which often are more powerful than what is evident. In the work Significance, I created a form in Swivel 3D Pro, imported it to MacroMedia 3D for rendering and then to Photoshop, where I processed part of it to create the interior cellular material and then composited the entire image and printed it through a dye sublimation printer. (Kathleen H. Ruiz, 110 Bleecker Street #18F, New York, N.Y. 10012, U.S.A. E-mail: .) 86 The Leonardo Gallery Jeff Murphy, Heart and Ribs, tiled color laser print mounted on canvas, 72 X 52 in (including canvas border), 1994. This work concerns the human body as specimen. I am interested in how the body is broken down and studied as a purely physical entity. The use of the Macintosh interface...