In "COLLISIONeleven , " an exhibition of artworks using new technologies at MIT's Stata Center, there's a machine that produces abstract drawings in response to your heartbeat. You grasp a cylindrical sensor in your hands, and with each beat of your pulse, more and more scribbly colored lines appear on a computer screen until it is eventually filled by a densely layered field of lines. According to the machine's creator, Sinae Kim , the color and character of the lines will vary with the user's mood. So in effect, the old Abstract Expressionist dream of expressing authentic emotion directly and spontaneously through the body is achieved through the wonders of new technology.
Back to the future
New technologies meet old ideals at the Boston Cyberarts Festival
That convergence of the old and the new turns out to be the most fascinating dimension of the Boston Cyberarts Festival, of which "COLLISIONeleven" is one of many exhibitions and events. While I was expecting to see lots of newfangled electronic novelties, what surprised and intrigued me was how much of what I saw revolved around some of the oldest and most traditional ideas and aspirations in the history of art.
Consider, for example, "BigProtoChoice ," a light-and-sound installation by Jonathan Bachrach at Cloud Place. In a darkened gallery, the artist has suspended a network of 90 transparent tubes, each containing a set of little red LED lights attached to a computer circuit board. When it is running, sparks of light appear to travel rapidly and randomly overhead through the tubular network, making low buzzing and whistling sounds as they go. It's like a swarm of fireflies on a summer evening.
As Bachrach explained to me at the opening of his exhibition, the routes that the sparks travel are not predetermined. In some way that I am not equipped to understand, they choose whether to go this way or that whenever they come to a branch in the network. So in effect, they are acting like a population of living beings. In this sense, Bachrach's sculpture harks back to one of the oldest of artistic fantasies: the idea of crafting an artwork that has a life of its own. It's a high-tech update of the Pygmalion myth.
When it comes to thinking of Bachrach's work as fully achieved art, however, I find myself hesitating. It's absorbing, entertaining, and meditative to experience, but it is not so impressive aesthetically or so metaphorically imaginative as to make it clearly something more than a kind of science-fair demonstration.
Advertisement
Advertisement