Situated among the 14,000 watercolors, fine-glass, woodwork, and other decorative wall-art and baubles for sale at the 45th Sausalito Art Festival this weekend, it seems odd to find a 6-foot-by-8-foot LED projection system blasting computer animations and a tent venue debuting footage from this fall's biggest special-effects movies.
But, just down Highway 101 from George Lucas' ILM compound in Marin County California, touristy Sausalito makes a logical choice to host the first large-scale computer arts presentation in a major regional arts fair. And the Computer Arts Pavilion, which also includes a display of graphic work by 10 digital artists, hopes to erase the conceptual distance between the two as well.
"We want to enlighten the public as to the current reality of computer art," says San Francisco Siggraph educational activities director Frank Agnello, who organized the exhibition. "The computer is a tool to facilitate artistic ability."
The Sausalito festival began including digital art as one of its juried categories last year, but in order to increase the volume and scope of contributions they approached ILM - "the most obvious target for their idea of computer art," says Agnello. When ILM was unable to participate, the task fell to the local Siggraph chapter and Agnello, who organized the "educational" exhibits from local effects houses and graphic artists. These include unseen effects footage from Starship Troopers by Tippet Studio, an "anatomy of a shot" presentation of Matte World's Titanic effects, SGI images from Max Sims' upcoming nanotechnology documentary, Technolution, and Nick Philip's interactive Radical Beauty CD.
Additionally - and more in keeping with the traditional flavor of the proceedings - Oakland-based computer artist David Sherwin is curating a show of purchasable computer-produced flat art, mostly large-format Iris and Cibacrome prints and light-boxes. In contrast to the less tangible presentations of the educational venue, "we picked the most traditional way of exhibiting," says Sherwin. Sherwin and Agnello have an agreement to run the pavilion for the next five years, and in the future, Sherwin plans to facilitate more multimedia ways of displaying and selling the art. In the meantime, he says, "the only way to sell anything is with hard-copy prints."
Sherwin has included artists of varying styles and techniques. The range of material itself is part of the pavilion's educational mission. "Most people don't know what computer art is," despairs Sherman, who won the Prix Ars Electronica in 1992 for his own art, which is computer-derived from keyed-in beginning to digitally-printed output. "They have this idea of manipulated photos."
Instead, the work ranges here from Kees van Prooijen's procedural pieces to Photoshopped images, to works by '60s poster artist Stanley Mouse - which qualify merely because they are printed digitally. Mouse's inclusion is partly due to his name-appeal, admits Sherwin, but it also shows how barriers are breaking down as traditional art becomes more digital, and vice versa. And a show of this scope, he hopes, demonstrates that "computer art is finally starting to make inroads into the fine art community."
But is labeling and selling prints as computer art pushing the medium forward, or just making a buck for its dealers? "I'm most interested in the interactive dimension that computers bring to art," says digital artist and Arts Wire editor Judy Malloy, "but interactivity can be very broadly defined."
Although artists tend to have strong opinions on what is and isn't fine art, "maybe the presence of a computer art booth at the Sausalito fair will engender some passers-by and artists," Malloy says.
