The visuals on the day of my visit seemed pretty relentlessly bad (heavy rain, smoking ruins, people walking about like zombies), so I asked one of the artists if things were likely ever to get better. He generously fiddled with the programming, and - voila! - we saw a break in the clouds and some rays of sunshine.
Like I said: impressive. But can someone tell me the point of it all? Isn't it all a little, dare I say it, geeky?
The best curated group show I saw as part of the festival was "Syntax" at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University ( reviewed in the Globe by Mark Feeney, April 3). The worst was probably "Nourishment" at the Art Institute of Boston ( reviewed in the Globe's Galleries column by Cate McQuaid, April 22), which features the artists Jeff Warmouth and Ellen Wetmore.
A couple of shows can be seen at the MIT Museum, including one called "Loops: Digitally Enhanced Performance" that is part of an ongoing project relating to a digital portrait of Merce Cunningham. Its manifestation here is disappointingly slight, and, even with the help of wall texts, almost impossible to comprehend. But if you see it on one of the days when it is accompanied by a dance performance, it might make more sense.
Is the solution to this year's Boston Cyberarts Festival to stay at home and navigate it all online? I have been trying that out, in between banging out these deflating paragraphs, and am sorry to say that I can't recommend it. There is no doubt that new technologies will transform art in the future, just as they have in the past. But there are qualities that make a work "art," and worthy of an audience, rather than just a curious, self-involved experiment. Many practitioners of cyberart, I fear, have yet to work out what those qualities are.
Sebastian Smee can be reached at ssmee@globe.com