GRETCHEN BENDER

What do artists express with computers that we cannot express otherwise?

An artform not to perfect or control a sense of reality, but to research unexpressed visual terrain - a sense of fluid realities.

Could there be new frontiers psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, to discover through computers?

Can computers assist us in conceptual apprehensions of social and political complexities difficult earlier to illustrate, or are the reconfiguring webs of power shifting out of sight again, aided greatly by computers?

Can we aspire to more humane humaness through our use of computer technology?

There are many investigative missions for artists working with computers. Artists can transmit more acute, felt consciousness within a contemporary 'telecommunications' culture.

BARBARA LONDON

Now that image, sound, and text can be easily combined and electronically disseminated, discussions about "new" media proliferate. Video, audio, and the computer processes have merged and are readily accessible in the form of CD-ROM publications or video games in which a user can explore in a non-linear fashion, following many different pathways. Talented individuals are pushing the artistic potentials of these evolving technologies, and their work can be seen in museums and galleries, and at festivals around the world, often as three-dimensional, room-sized, installation projects.

Artists can stay abreast of the rapidly changing, non- standardized multimedia field by reading the business pages of their local newspapers and by attending gatherings and professional conferences where they share technical experiences and discoveries. Dogma and conclusive literature do not exist, and all applications of the formative tools and regarded "legitimate."With computers in he hands of artists working with many different kinds of output, we are seeking more work that is content-rather than equipment driven. We are inspired by the personal work of our visionaries, whose innovation can be evocative and subtle, as evidenced by this exhibition.

MARK WILSON

Ten or twenty years ago if you were a computer artist, you were considered a bit strange. The fine art world instantly dismissed anyone or anything with even a whiff of computer about them. Computer meant bad art and silly art, or bad silly art. This aesthetic limbo, or perhaps a worse place, was indeed well deserved in some cases. In those days, it was best to keep your mouth shut when somebody asked you how you made thos incredibly complex and precise drawings. In the early eighties, my one successful application to the National Endowment carefully avoided any mention of computers.

Things have changed somewhat. Computers have risen up the ladder of visual respectibility. The term may even have some cache, considering the national precoccupations with the infobahn and cyberspace. Thus, our lot as computer artists has improved moderately.

GRAHAME WEINBREN

fungible Law. adj. 1. (esp. of goods)being of such a nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable for another like nature or kind.

I am interested in a cinema that the viewer acts on and explores-an environment of images and sounds flowing in time where an active response to the stream causes its transformation. This has come to be called interactivity. I have (portentously) called my general project Òthe development of a grammar of an interactive cinema.Ó There could be a better name. After all, the viewer is (slightly) active in front of the screen, while the computer system passively responds to his or her small actions according to previously encoded instructions. The machine and the viewer are active in very different ways. The word interactive makes us think that machines and humans are engaged similarly. This, then, announces the establishment of a fungible cinema!