ANNUAL LECTURE SERIES AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
EXPLORES ARTISTS' PIONEERING USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Technology in the 1990s
April 12, 19, and 26 at 6:30 p.m.
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

Technology in the 1990s, a lecture and presentation series organized by
the Department of Film and Video, returns to The Museum of Modern Art in
April. This annual program, now in its sixth year, invites leading
artists working in new art forms powered by the computer to display and
discuss the use of interactive technologies in their work. This year's
forum, which takes place on three consecutive Mondays beginning April
12, features multimedia artist Lynn Hershman, who presents two recent
telerobotic Internet pieces; film/videomaker and media theoretician
Peter Weibel, discussing visual perception in the computer age; and
Asymptote Architecture [Rashid + Couture] exhibiting the "virtual
trading pit" the firm has designed for the New York Stock Exchange.

"As the decade draws to a close, the reach of new technologies into
almost every aspect of art and life becomes ever more pronounced," notes
Barbara London, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Video, The
Museum of Modern Art, who co-organized the program with Sally Berger,
Assistant Curator. "Technology in the 1990s explores the ways in which
technological developments have expanded the possibilities of existing
disciplines, such as filmmaking and architecture, and sparked the
creation of new fields of work such as virtual reality environments."

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Monday, April 12 at 6:30. Technology in the 1990s. Lynn Hershman, Double
Helix/Double Bind: Seductive Interactions and Virtual Telerobotics. For
the past thirty-five years, Lynn Hershman has been working in a range of
media to explore the politics of identity, surveillance, and alienation,
issues especially pertinent in our electronic age. In this presentation,
she will show recent works that depend upon collaborative interactions
between people in both the physical and the virtual worlds. Included
will be examples of two recent multi-user, telerobotic Internet pieces,
Tillie the Telerobotic Doll, which turns users into virtual cyborgs, and
The Difference Engine #3, which uses Identity Avatars to explore the
boundaries of shared identities. She will also show a CD-ROM excerpt of
the virtual set processes used in her recent feature film, Conceiving
Ada.

Monday, April 19 at 6:30. Technology in the 1990s. Peter Weibel, From
Expanded Cinema to Neuro-Cinema. Artist and media theoretician Peter
Weibel explores the transformation of visual perception in the computer
age. He will discuss his views on how the electronic image has turned
into a model world, autonomous and yet responsive to its environment.
"The animated image constitutes the most radical challenge to our
classical visual notions of image and representation."

Monday, April 26 at 6:30. Technology in the 1990s. Asymptote [Rashid +
Couture], Convergences. Asymptote Architecture, a collaborative
practice based in New York City, was initiated by Lise Anne Couture and
Hani Rashid in 1989. Their work ranges from experimental installations
and computer-generated environments to building and urban design. Most
recently Rashid and Couture designed a large-scale, computer-generated
environment for the New York Stock Exchange and an accompanying "first
reality" theater of operations presently in construction on the trading
floor of the Stock Exchange. Asymptote was also selected by the Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum to design and implement the Guggenheim Virtual
Museum. Asymptote's built work includes a large theater, the dimensions
of which can be altered to accommodate different uses, constructed in
1997 in Denmark; presently the team is designing a Museum of Digital Art
in Seoul, Korea, and a Multimedia Research Facility in Kyoto, Japan. In
1995 Rizzoli International published the first monograph on Asymptote,
entitled Architecture at the Interval. The lecture will discuss the
firm's practice and work, most recently involving datascapes,
three-dimensional virtual architectures, and "first reality" interfaces.