"Demo This! Boston Cyberarts Festival"
It's no secret that Massachusetts is a high-tech hotbed for education
and research, the home of artist Karl Simms and MIT's Media Lab. But
Boston…a new media arts center? Boston, who's latest rage – as it's
been for the last century or so – is French Impressionism?
The first annual Boston Cyberarts Festival ended yesterday, concluding
an ambitious attempt to bring a "European-style" arts festival to the
relatively staid cultural landscape of New England.
Two and half years of planning, 75 volunteers, and more than 40 venues
produced the 15 day event which organizer George Fifield called "One of
the most successful collaborations ever of Arts organizations in the
State."
The goal, according to the program: "A uniting of artists and
high-technology professionals in New England and throughout the world."
I was only able to make it to two venues on this closing day, but my
impression is that I may have hit both the worst and the best of the
festival.
The first was a bizarre hodge-podge of "technology-inspired art by local
artists" at the Museum of Science – a lesson of what the festival
should avoid in the future.
Befitting its educational setting, the exhibit felt more like a school
science fair than anything else. Once you entered the field of folding
tables covered in blue tablecloths, you were greeted by presenters who
were just a bit too eager to give you a demo.
My first encounter was "The Axe," where a young "high technology
professional" wiggled in front of a video screen, creating video
game-quality electronic music. Wow! Like many of the tables, it was a
demonstration for a commercial product. Two of the more interesting
works were a CD-ROM of "interactive paintings" by Tiffany Holmes and a
cluster of beautiful freestanding steel and digital-print sculptures by
Andy Zimmermann. Zimmermann agreed that the presentation and quality of
the exhibit were questionable, but insisted that he was happy to be
included in the show nonetheless.
Fifield, the festival organizer, suggested that I head to the DeCordova
Museum (where he is Curator for Media Arts) for a taste of something
more akin to…a European arts festival. While I no longer expected
something on par with Ars Electronica, the DeCordova exhibit was truly a
pleasant surprise.
Located in pastoral Lincoln Massachusetts, a fifteen-minute drive from
downtown Boston, the DeCordova is a small oasis of outdoor sculptures,
galleries, and stunning nature. "Make Your Move: Interactive Art," set
in a luxurious new exhibition space, features three large installations
by Karl Simms, Chris Dodge, and Jen Hall – all Boston-based artists.
Each of the three works features a series of twelve objects: video
monitors in the case of Dodge and Simms, and hanging plastic domes in
the case of Hall. And each of the works claim, according to the
program, common themes of "creation, life, death and personal
responsibility."
Jen Hall's work, a collaboration with Marc Locascio, is titled
"Acupuncture for Temporal Fruit." In each of the hanging domes sits a
ripe tomato, flanked on two sides by motorized acupuncture needles.
When a visitor triggers a sonar sensor, a needle lances the tomato.
Move your hand, lance the tomato. Repeat. But the lances always fire
in the same place. Locked into static equilibrium all day, only two
small holes violate each fruit. The result is a beautiful and
perplexing presentation, but not a whole lot of visceral engagement.
The technology seems oddly inadequate and the user powerless.
Nearby is Chris Dodge's wonderful "What Remains of These," an arc of
linked video monitors. Four small video cameras capture images of the
visitors and then fracture the pixels into a sea of swirling, oozing
light particles which flow from monitor to monitor. Recalling at once
oil in water, swarms of ants, satellite weather patterns – perhaps even
a touch of Jackson Pollock – Dodge's work eerily breathes life into the
technology and bewildered most of visitors (and their children).
The apex of the show, however, is Karl Simms' ground-breaking
"Galapagos." Even after heavy exposure in magazines ranging from
ArtByte to Wired, "Galapagos" retains a freshness and depth which is
nearly unparalleled in the field. Simms uses genetic algorithms and
real-time computer graphics to breed a series of writhing digital
creatures, one creature per monitor, like microscopic organisms under a
row of telescopes. The user picks a creature from the series and the
computer "breeds" it, filling the other monitors with slight variations
of its parent. After a few minutes of fanciful work, I was the proud
father of pulsating blue blobs with colorful spotted feathers on one
end. The next user reset the system and arrived at entirely different
results: tentacled, fractal beasts so heavy they could barely move.
A video retrospective downstairs helped contextualize Simms' work,
placing him squarely at the intersection of science and art. From his
early research on particle systems animation (see "Particle Dreams,"
1988) to recent work with artificial life ("Evolved Virtual Creatures,"
1994), Simms comes across as an ebullient scientist who works within the
language and tradition of art practice.
No doubt, the work at both the DeCordova and the Science Museum are,
perhaps to a fault, accessible. But how did these compare to work at
the thirty or so galleries around town? (Please post if you were
there!)
Boston Cyberarts will return in two years, and my greatest hope is that
the work will be more accessible in the physical sense (not requiring
visitors to drive all over town so much) and less accessible (more
controversial and challenging) in the artistic sense. I'd hope to see a
bit more Ars and a lot less Siggraph, if you know what I mean, though it
might take a while before electronic music flanks the Charles River and
a midnight train ride sets sail…
But hell, for a city with so little public arts funding and contemporary
art practice, the festival is a welcome addition. Sure beats another
Monet retrospective!
["Make Your Move: Interactive Art" is open until May 31 at the DeCordova
Museum. Check out www.bostoncyberarts.org for further details.]
