Do you have a mouse in the house? Personal reflections on art for the new millennium (08/08/99)

Do you have a mouse in the house? Personal reflections on art for the new millennium

by Anya Antonovych

CHICAGO - Every day Lialia Kuchma feeds Kenneth Rinaldo's "Siamese Fighting Fish." No, she isn't pet sitting; she's maintaining a museum piece. The fish is temporarily housed in an untraditional fishbowl that looks like a miniature spaceship perched on the tip of a tall conical tower at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago. Like a tightrope in a circus, a wire is stretched across the tip of this cone from wall to wall.

This interactive work was designed to allow the fish to determine the direction that it moves along the wire, so that it can explore its environment, beyond the limits of the tank. "The Beta determines the direction by crossing one of two break-beams which activate the motor to move the tank in the direction which the fish looks to the outside world." (Rinaldo).

The work, titled "Delicate Balance," was part of an exhibit titled "Second Nature - A Show of New Media for the New Millennium" curated by Paul Hertz. The exhibit, which ran from May 9 through June 27, was part of Project Millennium, this year being the first of the City of Chicago's three-year millennium celebration.

The programs are organized around six themes: Origins, Environment, Shaping Community, New Directions, Transitions and Discovery, and Technology. The theme presented at the Ukrainian Art Institute is technology. While we understand technology to be "the application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives," one saw in this exhibit the merging of the artist and the scientist in an attempt to explore the ever-expanding visual frontiers through their creations.

I personally am biased against technology. At 18, I'm sure that I am one of the last few who have managed to avoid its onslaught. As a second-year student at McGill University considering a future in the world of art, I am overwhelmed by the possibilities offered by technology. It seems that traditional art, which is my love, will become obsolete, and that there will be no place in this world for me and my watercolors.

No doubt the exhibit is intriguing. The artists - Stephen Boyer, Paul Catanese, Shawn Decker, Margaret Dolinsky, Jim Ferolo, Paul Hertz, Silvia Malagrino, Kenneth Rinaldo and Miroslaw Rogala - are pioneers challenged by the creative adventures science has to offer. Surely the next century's artists will use even more sophisticated technological tools as vehicles for expression.

The art of the future, it seems to me, will truly be for everybody. Since technology will be omnipresent, everyone will have greater access to these works, if only because of their familiarity with the media. It is now, at the dawn of this artistic revolution, that people like me might have trouble appreciating these pieces as works of art.

I fear that perhaps new technological tools may force pencils and paper into extinction.

However, Michael Griffin, coordinator of the show with Ms. Kuchma, reassured me: "The 21st century will not be without painting, sculpture and art forms we have come to know. They will still prove very satisfying, edifying and enlightening to our intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities. They will still be produced, but without the revolutionary moments we have associated with the linear progression, conventionally called the history of art. It will be a century of new materials and forms we are only yet becoming acquainted with, materials and forms which will profoundly shape our vision of the world, our place in it, and our time in the cosmos."

Although I admire the featured artists' skills, they seem to me to be more the skills of engineers and mathematicians. For example, Mr. Boyer in commenting on his piece "Untitled," noted that: "This medium involves a precise control of electrical power at a microscopic level with time measured in microseconds and space in microns." This sounds like something from NASA, and indeed, the piece looks like something off a dashboard on a spaceship. Dozens of little blinking red lights chase each other, constantly changing direction and forming new patterns. The lights are mesmerizing, they are hypnotic, I look at them because it is so hard to look away. The display was captivating and fun, but I still hesitate to call it art. Perhaps what was lacking was an emotional response on my part. Somehow, the piece seemed only like a game.

The overwhelming impression was one of feeling lost amid electrodes in a state of empty hypnosis.

I question the ontology of art and the place of these pieces within that category. I can say only that many of these works lack a soulfulness that I expect from a creative work. Can you really have an emotional interaction with a machine? People have strong relationships with their automobiles, and I believe that photography, resulting from chemical and mechanical processes, is an art form. However, I still am reluctant to allow a machine to invade the realm of art.

I was very impressed with Paul Hertz's tapestry "Criadero" - until I realized that it wasn't a tapestry. It was a computer print of algorithmically generated tiling patterns. But it looked so tactile! Why was I simultaneously delighted and disappointed when I realized it wasn't hand-woven? I was amazed that I was so easily duped; disappointed because somehow I wanted the artist's own sweat to be woven into the piece; I wanted some physical evidence of the artist's presence.

The series, "Recordatori," is a powerful one, but somehow the mathematics of it scares me.

Some of the pieces on exhibit required physical interaction. One such piece was Silvia A. Malagrino's shadow display. The piece, "Untitled," involved a video screen that allowed you to view yourself from the back, and a light on the wall for you to see your shadow. I had the most fun with this piece. Thankfully, the gallery was empty when I was playing with this set-up. It's amazing how intrigued I was with my own shadow, or a view of myself from the back. I felt like I was checking out my reflection in a shop window. Perhaps there is a hidden need in people to find some kind of personal relationship to any piece of art in order to respond to it. And then I wondered about the business side of technological art. Would people really pay for shadows? Yes, I suppose they would.

However, I was a bit more skeptical about Jim Ferolo's "Sleights" - a CD ROM interactive experience about the afterlife of Harry Houdini. The system was down when I was at the gallery, which made me think this stuff was too high maintenance for a museum. I didn't play, so I don't really know, but I wondered: What distinguishes this from a computer game? Are computer games art? Would "Sleights" still be art even if it was mass-produced? Would the original be worth more? Could there be a limited edition, as if it were a print?

What is clear is that most of these pieces can't be accurately represented in a catalogue; they require interaction. Their value comes from the viewer's physical experience of the art, mostly because the pieces are not purely visual works, but also involve movement, light and sound. Especially with Malagrino's piece - without the viewer there is nothing. However, the same may be said about any traditional work of art.

This poses another problem for me: I feel that art should have some sort of permanence. We can still appreciate ancient Greek sculpture; will people 2,000 years from now still be able to experience Malagrino's shadows?

Alexander Oleksyn, an art student, has observed the following with regard to the question of the permanence of art: "Everything comes back to the question: What is Art? Art has no boundaries - the sky is the limit. You do whatever you have to do to express yourself, and that's art."

It is unjust to dismiss these pieces as art simply because they lack permanence. Drama and performance art have status as art; there's no reason these pieces should be discounted simply because the viewer is the performer.

In another gallery at the Art Institute one entered a dark room. The viewer, facing a very large screen and wearing 3-D glasses, as presented with one of several programs - products of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory. Without moving, one could cross Lake Michigan and see a spectacular sunset on Poverty Island - a virtual environment presented by Dan Sandin. To produce such electronic art demands a collaborative effort.

"Such projects are formidably expensive in labor and machinery," says Michael Griffin. "It can be done alone with a computer and a simple program, albeit most of the current major developments demand sponsors from universities, private corporations and individual contributors. Artists are interminably resourceful and will find a means to create."

Such creativity could be found in Margaret Dolinsky's virtual environments. With a mouse in hand, you chose the regions you wish to explore on the images projected on the large screen. Dolinsky feels that "Art will become revolutionary in the medium of virtual environments when spectators abandon the act of mere viewing, transcend simple narrative participation and become actively engaged."

For me, virtual reality as art bears a strange link to the past. The goal of Renaissance art was to provide a window to reality, to present the viewer with as real an image as possible. The surrealists, most notably Dali and Magritte, sought to represent the alternate world of dreams, creating stunningly life-like images under bizarre circumstances. Virtual reality seems like the next logical step. The technology allows you to enter into the work itself, to escape from reality to enter an alternate one: a second nature. Perhaps with the new millennium, we complete the circle. This new out-of-body experience might remind one of the beginnings of art. The cave artist worked in trance, entering into a new dimension. The alternate universe achieved by the cave artist shaman is now available through virtual reality.

In Ms. Dolinsky's "Cave Virtual Environment," a colorful being holds a large gold key, perhaps to "open doorways to an inner sanctum where the delicate inner self is guarded" (as the artist suggests) or to open doors to the endless possibilities of the future.

Virtual reality is extremely seductive, but are we prepared for it? Might we get trapped in it, like the "Siamese Fighting Fish," under the illusion that we are controlling our destinies?

Perhaps we will turn to virtual art in the future to escape our busy lives, so filled with technology and yet so empty. Perhaps we will explore new worlds, linked to reality - whatever that may be - only by an electronic umbilical chord. Humans must learn to perceive, to think in new ways and, as progress continues, humans must define their role in a world in which computers may be able to think, a world in which reality may be only virtual. Humans must continue to create as soulful beings in order to safeguard the only thing that a computer will never have.

Chicago-born Anya Antonovych is a student at McGill University in Montreal, where she is majoring in literature and art history. She has traveled widely, taking along her camera and sketch pad everywhere she goes. This summer she is in France doing volunteer work with the disabled.

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