I came to the conclusion that, in the minds of the people who organized this event, no such thing as an "ordinary member of the public" even exists. Instead, the planners could only have had a cyber audience in mind.
What is cyberart?
You too, huh? Well, I had my ideas. But I thought the best place to find out for sure might be CyberArtCentral, the festival's headquarters on Boylston Street, near Fenway Park. So I made it my first stop on the opening day of the festival.
Arriving a little before noon, I found the place in a state of congenial disarray. My fault: It wasn't due to open until noon. And yet, to be frank, dear reader, none of the artworks advertised looked even remotely close to being set up.
And true enough, on this, the festival's opening day, I was welcomed warmly and told: "Come back tomorrow, and we might have this thing up and running." Thus, one possible definition of "cyberart": Art that needs armies of tech-heads to set up, and still may not function or be ready on time.
There are amazing things in this year's Cyberarts Festival - among them a virtual re-creation of a section of the Berlin Wall that you can "virtually" circumambulate, and an interactive animated landscape where the weather changes according to the fluctuations of that day's stock market and news headlines. (More on both in a moment.)
But almost none of them engendered anything like a grown-up emotion or chewable idea. Most gave off an air of being tremendously impressed by their own technical cleverness, and insouciantly pleased that someone in the world had seen fit to make that cleverness available (or almost available) to the public. Wearyingly long wall texts ruled the day. The art itself was thin.
Of course, after three days, there were still dozens of things I missed, so it could be that I was just unlucky. But I can tell you that the Berlin Wall piece, called "Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall," was the only work I would consider returning to see.
