DIGGING DIGITAL: "Computer art promises the moon, and there is probably a segment of the public for whom that promise is more interesting than any work of art, computer-generated or otherwise, that they have ever seen." But what is it, exactly? The New Republic 04/09/01

DIGITAL CREDIBILITY: "Despite uncertainty surrounding what it means to own, exhibit, create, or simply view works, computer-aided art is gaining credibility from collectors and institutions, who are not only buying it but commissioning it too." ArtNews 04/01

DEVOTED TO DIGITAL: When he steps down as Harvard’s president in June, Neil Rudenstine plans to devote his time to a project to create a mammoth digital collection of images of art, architecture, and design. "The aim was to create a kind of ‘public utility’ for art that would present high quality images, catalog them and link them to scholarly information." New York Times 4/05/01 (one-times registration required)

VIRTUAL LANDSCAPES: "Yesterday representatives from [Mexico, the United States and Canada] launched an online art show called Panoramas: The North American Landscape in Art. This show doesn't really exist anywhere except in cyberspace. It brings together more than 300 works of landscape art from galleries in [the three countries]." CBC 04/04/01

DIGITAL GOES MAINSTREAM: It wasn't many months ago that art critics were turning up their noses at digital art. Some suggested there really wasn't yet such a thing. Now digital art is hot. "Digital artists are about to break down another boundary: the one between them and the art world's upper echelons. The Whitney's 'BitStreams' exhibition, which opens March 22, is the first show devoted to such work at a major New York museum." New York Magazine 03/19/01

COMING SOON - CELL PHONE ART! The explosion of new technologies over the last decade has meant an ever-increasing range of options for artists looking to explore new mediums. The "digital age" is starting to crystallize into a definable movement, but there is still plenty of room for expansion. New York Times 03/18/01 (one-time registration required for access)

HOW TO COLLECT? Digital art seems to be gathering a critical mass with museums. "The commitment of these museums to new media has prompted debates on the issues of collecting and conserving digital media, even though there is currently little commercial support for the creation and production of net art. Without a real market for collecting on-line projects, some seminal works have changed hands for as little as $100 but also an indication of the economic uncertainty net artists face." The Art Newspaper 04/02/01

THE END OF DIGITAL ART? Digital art has hit the big time in terms of recognition now that major museums are showcasing it. But "just as dot.com was always a fatuous category, lumping together media, corporate services, and infrastructure companies into one 'industry,' digital art is a category of convenience that should be retired." Feed 03/27/01

LAUGHING ONLINE: "Cartoonists who find it difficult to get picked up and distributed by a syndicate are going straight to the masses via the Web, where word of mouth can turn an unknown artist into a sensation in matter of days, if not hours." San Francisco Chronicle 04/02/01

CANADA ONLINE: Canada's Minister of Culture launches a new Virtual Museum of Canada. "It contains an art gallery with more than 200,000 images, including paintings from the Group of Seven, Inuit sculpture and photographs." CBC 03/25/01

MUSEUM AUDIENCE GROWS WHILE MUSEUM CLOSED: In the month before it closed for a five-year renovation, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art attracted 54,000 visitors. A year later - in the same month - the museum received almost 60,000 visitors online to see its artwork. "Online visitors can see a lot more than what used to hang on the walls. For example, the museum could display fewer than 1,000 photos, paintings, sculptures and other artifacts. During the renovation, online visitors can download 16 virtual exhibits and 4,000 objects at any time." New Jersey Online 03/04/01

RETHINKING THE MUSEUM: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Director David Ross is largely responsible for SFMOMA’s new computer generated-art show, "010101: Art in Technological Times." He’s also a vocal proponent of incorporating new technologies into museums. "The contemporary museum's role today is no longer purely as a vehicle for showcasing art, but also as a space to discuss the contrast of values and ideas." Wired 3/01/01

BINARY ART: San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art has opened "010101," an exhibit of virtual reality pieces, sculptures of robotic forms, and computer-animated video screen-based "paintings." But the museum insists that this is technology in the service of art, not the other way around. Wired 02/28/01

TECHNO-ART HAS A HISTORY: Although advances in computer power have expanded the range of palettes available to artists, technology-based art is nothing new. Futuristic exhibits were quite common even back in the 1950s. Wired 02/28/01

SFMOMA'S DIGITAL INITIATIVE: Digital art represents a challenge to museums used to caring for objects they can hold in their hands. "For museums, which are collections of objects, the intangibility of digits raises some interesting questions. How do you register a work when it has no physical presence? How do you preserve an online piece that the artist continues to update?" New York Times 01/08/01 (one-time registration required for access)

THE ART OF DIGITAL: There are those critics (and you know who you are) who believe there is no such thing as digital art. Why? "Digital media are not easily written about as art. It is another leap that has to be taken. Until digital works are seen in an art context they will not be assessed properly - that's the biggest challenge. And no one knows how [or why] digital technology is art."  Los Angeles Times, 01/03/2001

AN ANIMATED FUTURE: At the Venice Biennale, US architects present the future. "The emerging generation of architects represented here uses animation software to study the effects of natural forces on different forms, and film- and Web software to produce virtual environments and atmospheric effects. Moreover, they say, they are among the first architects to respond to the way that digital technologies have altered people's aesthetics, even their very sense of space." Chronicle of Higher Education 08/02/00

ART OF THE WEB: A symposium on art in digital media concluded Saturday with a roundtable of critics, historians and artists at the Berkeley Art Museum. While the internet may have buzz, here - just miles from the i-epicenter of Silicon Valley - the symposium's 15 panelists almost threatened to outnumber their audience. And though David Ross, director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, likened the artistic impact of the internet to that of the advent of photography, the panel could hardly even agree on how to define internet art. San Francisco Chronicle 02/21/00

WEBBY ART: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art teams up with the Webbys to offer $50,000 prize to digital artist with the most impressive work. Wired 02/18/00

BETTING ON TECHNOLOGY: Youngstown, Ohio's Beecher Center, long a friend to American painting, takes a plunge on technology with a new wing to celebrate the digital artistic side. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 01/26/00 

DIGITAL BIENNIAL: For the first time, the Whitney Museum plans to include digital artists in its Biennial, scheduled for next year. New York Times 11/25/99 (one time registration required)

 

 

HOME