The New York Digital Salon 2000: A Coming of Age

LEONARDO, Vol. 33, No. 5, pp. 345–46, 2000 345 T he Eighth New York Digital Salon will open in New York on November 6, 2000. The significance of this year’s exhibition is that computer art has finally come of age. The New York art community has embraced it by including it in this year’s Whitney Biennial. The large number of computer art exhibitions being held in galleries in Chelsea and Soho is another indicator of the acceptance of this dynamic new medium. This year’s exhibition represents the entire spectrum of art created with the computer. It includes a wide range of digital prints, CD-ROMs, sculpture, interactive installations, digital videos, computer animations, performances, and Web sites. Since this is one of the longest-running computer art exhibitions, the development of this medium can be traced by looking at the work included in the show over the years. The first exhibition only featured prints, and much of the work emulated other media, such as painting or photography . As the years progressed, computer animation, interactive installations, and Web sites became part of the Digital Salon. Several years ago, a special issue of Leonardo became the catalog for the exhibition and provided a forum for essays on digital art and culture . Last year we included performances. One of our projects for the near future is to revive the Web sites from earlier exhibitions and create a comprehensive online archive of digital art. This year we are seeing the continued development of unique work that blends different forms of expression, such as imagery and sound, narrative that is directed by the audience, and sculptures that respond to the viewer’s movements. Responding to the extensive use of audio and music in interactive works, Web sites, and performances (as well as some entries that we didn’t quite know how to categorize), we will be adding a digital audio and music category for the 2001 exhibition. Over the past year, we have refined the philosophy of the Digital Salon. Its purpose is to provide an annual venue for the best international computer art. In the future, we will be actively seeking to include more digital art from around the world. The Seventh New York Digital Salon included over eighty artists from fourteen countries. We are planning to take the exhibition on an international tour to Europe and Asia in 2001. The intense interest in last year’s exhibition was evidenced by the 7000 people who attended the exhibition in Madrid and the 6000 who attended in Valladolid, Spain. There were features on every major television station and newspaper in Spain. The Digital Salon was also presented in lecture form in England, Italy, Hong Kong, and Japan. Total media coverage for the exhibition was estimated to be about 40 million people. In this year’s Salon, we have again adopted an inclusive approach to the creative work. We received over 800 entries for this year’s exhibition. Given the high quality of the works, reaching a decision on which to include proved difficult. We selected a jury of internationally known experts, artists, and critics of computer art to give breadth and a unique personality to the exhibition . As director, I am also actively involved in choosing the work. The charge to the jury is to select the best work based on the traditional criteria of creativity, composition, form, content, execution, and impact. One of my (and many others’) traditional definitions of good art is that after I have experienced the piece, whether it be an image, interactive installation, sculpture, or performance, I walk away transformed in some way. Another way to look at the success of a piece is the dialogue that is created between the artist and the viewer. In addition to the selection process, we feel it is important to promote the growth of computer art on an international level. In order to achieve this goal, we look at the work submitted from Director’s Statement The New York Digital Salon 2000: A Coming of Age BRUCE WANDS© 2000 Bruce Wands another viewpoint: we seek to represent established artists, emerging artists, and student work. If the show were to include...