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Past
Exhibitions
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Bytes
of Art
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Computer
researchers seeking new ways for people and computers to communicate more
naturally are reaching beyond their technical realm to the arts and humanities
for creative vision. The "BYTES OF ART" project from Digital Equipment
Corporation features three interactive, geographically separated art/technology
cells where the adventurous become artists and performers, using movement
and technology in a three-dimensional space to create new art forms. The
Bytes of Art cells are large, wedged-shaped chambers that accommodate a
half-dozen people or more.
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 Individual
cells representing an artistic discipline - sound/music, visual media
or literature - are on exhibit during April and May at three prominent
Bay Area galleries: ART-TECH - The Silicon Valley Institute of Art and
Technology in San Jose, the Center for Visual Art in Oakland, and Vorpal
Gallery in San Francisco.
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Central
to the exhibition are hundreds of original contributions of music, literature
and videos donated by Web artists, stored in an online palette. In the visual
cell, for example, budding artists select from a palette of more than 100
still graphics or videos, and, by stepping on sensors, interact with the
art. They can change the mood of the picture via hue, color, saturation
and brightness, and see their images transposed on the new art forms. The
cells are networked. A physical presence in one cell creates a virtual presence
in the other two, causing surprising and unpredictable results. The interaction
among people, virtual people and the interconnected cells is highly thought
provoking, and will be used by Digital to research ways in which people
interact with computers in the future.
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 The
Digital Bytes of Art project was developed at Digital Equipment Corporation's
Western Research Laboratory (WRL) in Palo Alto. According to Robert M.
Supnik, vice president of Research and Advanced Development, this unconventional
approach to research is the first phase of Digital's "Artist-in-residence"
program, dedicated to expanding research horizons and challenging traditional
research methods through collaboration with artists, musicians and writers.
Within this program, Digital's Bytes of Art project is just another example
of Digital' exploration of human-computer interaction. "In future experiments,
we expect to involve other non-technical communicators - anthropologists
and philosophers - who can add further dimension to this open-ended effort,"
he said.
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Barbara
Lee, WRL's first artist-in-residence and creator of Digital's BYTES OF ART
project, said the exhibition gives form to the formlessness of the Internet,
and that the cells act as digital envelopes between the hardware and software
connections in which people are free to perform. "The digital artwork submissions
form the interactive, malleable, mutable raw material for the performance
aspect of each cell. Because the cells are networked, participants can view
or be viewed while they affect and are affected by what goes on within the
cells," she said. Evolving Communication Forms "Within each cell," Lee continued,
"are tactile embellishments reflecting the man/machine evolution from primitive
to binary, from real people to real people, virtual people to real people,
virtual people to virtual people and cell to cell to cell. Physical artifacts
and form express these shifts in temporality.
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For
example, the egg-shaped sound dome in the sound cell speaks to the observable
world of the ancient Greeks; the mechanism of a hand-turned, oil-filled
kaleidoscope in the literature cell speaks to the "pace" of the Victorian
Age; and surveillance cameras in the visual cell speak to the changing pace
of our Modern Age," Lee added. In addition to floor sensors and cameras,
communication in the cells is enabled through keypads and video files. In
the literature cell, participants select from adventure and romance short
stories or poems cleverly displayed on framed screens that resemble artwork.
The cell is bathed in a kaleidoscope of colorful patterns. Visitors change
the story via font, shading and kerning of words by stepping on any or all
of the nine sensors. Traversing floor sensors empowers the participants
with direct imprinting ability. In the sound cell, visitors can select a
music category or artist and change tempo, volume, flange and reverberation
by their own heartbeat via a heart monitor, and by walking on floor sensors.
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In addition, because the cells are networked, when floor sensors are being
activated in one cell, this changes the order of the sensors in the other
cells. There are a minimum of 9 and maximum of 27 variations possible per
cell. Each cell is powered by a Digital Personal Workstation 600au, with
four GB of disk space, 24-plane PowerStorm graphics card, and Digital UNIX.
WRL researchers wrote special application software to power online interaction
for the entire exhibition. |
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Bytes
of Art is a project developed at Digital
Equipment Corporation's Western Research Laboratory (WRL) in Palo Alto.
Artist Barbara Lee is the creator of Digital's "BYTES
OF ART" and WRL's first artist-in-residence.
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