From: Arts and Lifestyle | Technology | Sunday, March 17, 2002

Digital Collaboration

A new gallery explores the intersection of art and technology

By MICHELLE MEGNA

Madonna will be exposed in an entirely different way next month at bitforms, the city's only gallery devoted exclusively to digital art.

Martin Wattenberg takes digital music files at the gallery, ranging from Madonna to Mozart, and runs them through a computer program he wrote that transforms the music into designs that are sold as prints.

Another digital artist showing work next month, Mark Napier, is offering the chance to become a collaborator. Instead of buying and owning a work of art, you can become part of a 50-person network that shares the piece online, with each participant able to alter the image.

The prints, tentatively titled "The Shape of Song," and Napier's network piece are part of the "Interpreting the Data" exhibit opening April 4 at bitforms, located at 529 W. 20th St. (www.bitforms.com). Steve Sacks, director and founder of the 4-month-old gallery, is devoted to making a home for the emerging field of digital work — and educating the public about this new wave in contemporary art.

Art of Noise

In Wattenberg's work, the mathematical underpinnings of the computer program are not simply tools used to create art — they are at the core of the artwork.

"I got really interested in the structure of music a couple of years ago, how a score would be viewed on screen. So I wrote a program that takes in a MIDI file [a digital music file] and draws an image that uses a sequence of translucent arches to represent repeated passages and motifs," says Wattenberg, who has a Ph.D. in mathematics. Each print is as distinctive as its musical counterpart, reminiscent of geometric drawings made with Spyrograph wheels.

Wattenberg says his motivation is to provide a new perspective. "All of my pieces encourage people to look at nonvisual things in a visual way. There is a deeper structure out there beyond what we perceive on the surface. I want to expose people to that."

Napier, meanwhile, looks at artwork as a network. He is using his project to raise questions about ownership and community. "We can make art with computers. Well, so what? Anything with one attractive component is just a gimmick. The question is: What do these types of creative pieces bring to us as human beings that we didn't have before?"

Napier, a self-taught programmer, said the work is delivered on a CD-ROM and, once installed on a computer with Internet access, allows the user to tweak components of the abstract at will.

"Before canvas, art was embedded in plaster in the walls of churches and state buildings. So paintings, over time, came to be personal, private, came to be art as we know it today. Paintings allowed you to take art home and trade it. But computers give us the ability to connect people together, to vary a piece of artwork at your own pace, to create a community not bound by geography."

Sacks decided that collectors and the public should be able to see this type of work in a gallery, not just in museums like the Whitney, Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim.

His interest in exploring the nexus of art and technology stems from prior work as an Internet pioneer who co-founded Digital Pulp in 1995. With Sacks as creative director, the company earned a reputation as a prominent Web development and graphic design firm.

"I decided to take what I loved best about that job, technology, the creative process, collaboration with programmers, with artists, and do something new. After doing some research, I realized there is a real need to make digitally inspired art understood and legitimized."

The first step in doing so was trying to define genres to organize the multifaceted works and present them in an appropriate way. For instance, "The Art of Code," on display until March 30, examines software art created by Golan Levin and Casey Reas.

Levin is displaying five pieces that are interactive, all using software to create animations. Reas is showing five works as well, including one with a sculptural interface, which means a viewer can control the composition, color, size and radius of the picture by touching a tall, cylinder-shaped object. The picture is projected on the wall like a large painting.

Sacks' passion for this art form is literally built into his gallery — the meeting room walls and literature are interactive. "The perception of being a more progressive space needed to be shown through the architecture and design of the gallery, because you want people to feel comfortable with this immediately."

Sacks uses two digital catalogues displayed on flat, touch-screen monitors. On them, visitors can view pictures of future exhibits, read artist biographies or produce prints of work being shown. The monitors are on a swinging arm that rotates 180 degrees and swings into another space, to create a private meeting room where Sacks meets with collectors.

There are no cables snaking around the installations, and computer processors and similar equipment are hidden. Sacks says that is a key element in presenting the work. "I try to hide the technology in most of the work. It's about the art, it's about the concept — not the fact that it's wired. Once you touch it, it's about viewing the work."

But even though the gallery itself is a statement, all the artists interviewed for this story say it is Sacks' discerning eye that will make the gallery successful. That, they hope, will bring respect to the genre.

"Interactive art has been around for 80 years. In general, two things happened, both negative to a degree. One thing is the public saying, 'Oh, it's electronic art, so it must be wonderful. This uncritical acceptance unfortunately means there's a lot of stuff that's not at all creative that's acting as a representative," says Levin.

"The other thing is the art world having the opposite reaction — thinking that anything technological isn't art. Perhaps out of fear, or misunderstanding, or simply lack of exposure to it."

Levin says that bitforms represents a positive change, since the gallery is showing some of the best artists in the world, who in some cases have been completely overlooked. "Here's a gallery smack dab in the center of the New York art scene," he says, "and people are taking notice."