This spring, from April 20 to May 6, the Boston Cyberarts Festival will once again take over our city with a network of new media art, music and dance performances, speakers, panels and exhibitions. The festival, a biennial occasion that started in 1999, is a celebration of what has become something of a taboo in avant-garde art: digital art. Digital art, or new media art, combines advancements in technology with the creativity and ingenuity of artists, creating a hybrid that is both refreshing and challenging to the art world. From video installations to interactive digital projections, new media art is something everyone can enjoy.
Technology: friend or foe of the art world?
Some critics dispute new media pieces as simply toys or novelties, not serious or high-minded enough for respect. George Fifield, the director of the Boston Cyberarts Festival, disputes this by pointing out that it is not only present-day artists that make use of contemporary technology. As early as the Italian Renaissance, Fifield highlights artists like Masaccio who employed the new science of perspective to give viewers more involvement in their works. The genesis of photography also walked a fine line between science and art. Innovators like Eadweard Muybridge took series of stop motion photographs depicting normal processes such as the human gait. These photographs served a dual purpose: art and documentation, creativity and scientific research. Just as photography did, digital art continues to take its place among the fine arts.
Currently, however, digital art has a difficult time making it into major museums and galleries. It seems that though this art may be more accessible to the general population, it has not yet been fully appreciated in the canon of contemporary art. This is one purpose of the festival: to provide a place and a support network for all digital artists. Any gallery from Boston to Rhode Island can submit a proposal to participate and the festival's Web site provides independent artists a chance to speak directly to galleries and festival staff to find a place to show their work.
Attendance and contribution continue to expand
The Boston Cyberarts Festival attracts a growing amount of interest each year, though Fifield does maintain a strong filter to keep the size of the Festival manageable and the quality high. "We've gotten a lot more attention ... we've been seeing our out-of-state audiences growing," Fifield said. "Last festival we had an artist from Beijing." He also said that the last Cyberarts Festival drew 21,000 people to the Boston area.
The Festival began with Fifield's interest in the connections between technology and art: in the past, he wrote a column in the magazine Art New England specifically on the subject. When he joined some friends to plan the first Boston Cyberarts Festival, he thought it would be a small affair.
Once they started asking around for potential partners, galleries and schools, they found this was not quite the case. "The first festival included 60 different organizations," Fifield said. Today, in addition to being a luminary of the digital art movement, Fifield teaches classes on new media as a faculty member of the Rhode Island School of Design, one of the country's premiere art institutions.
Boston's collegiate and cultural atmosphere is a perfect fit
But why Boston for an event of such artistic importance? Fifield points out that all the ingredients necessary for a unique scene of digital art exist within the city: high profile technology developers like Kodak in the past and MIT today, art schools like MassArt and SMFA, and a strong community of young, fresh artists that are open to new ideas. Expenses for living in and around the city have also remained low enough to be affordable for these young artists. During the festival, the art scene gives back to the city with a bloom of public art projects and gallery shows that demonstrate just how strong the art community in Boston is.
The Boston Cyberarts Festival brings together colleges, galleries, museums and theaters, creating not just one short-lived event, but rather a network of shows extending over two weeks. One gallery in Boston, Art Interactive in Cambridge, hosts digital art not only during the festival, but year-round. Participating artist Brian Knep, creator of the organic projection "Drift Wall" now shown at UMass Lowell, cites the gallery as one of the biggest assets for Boston's digital artists. "Boston has become a Mecca for this type of work, with galleries such as Axiom and Art Interactive focusing on it [and] the Cyberarts festival highlighting it," he said.
Utterback's work has positive projected outcomes
This year, Art Interactive is hosting a show of three pieces by new media artist Camille Utterback, a high-profile artist working at the nexus of technology and traditional painting.
Utterback's show consists of pieces that are projected onto screens behind large empty spaces that draw audiences in. Once viewers enter the space of the projection, their positions are mapped by tracking software running with the projector. Utterback's project description reads, "As a person moves through the space, a colored line maps his or her trajectory across the projection. When a person leaves the installation, their trajectory line is transformed by an overlay of tiny organic marks."
The result is a painting that looks like a mixture of abstract expressionism and action painting, yet every mark has been determined and laid out by technology. One of the questions her work seeks to ask is whether or not this lack of a personal artistic hand devalues the piece's artistic integrity. One look at a "painting" in progress will tell you that this is not the case; the works-in-progress are always vibrant and full of movement. They are that much more accessible to the viewer because of the possibilities of interaction. The work is intuitive and engaging. Fifield describes the accessibility: "There is no interface; there is just their own body." This fluidity is part of what makes new media art so special.
The festival's Web site also highlights works by specific artists in its online gallery, HyperArtSpace. Currently, the work on view is "Eisenstein's Monster" by the artist Babel. It is a viewer-created collage of sorts; viewers are encouraged to choose from silhouettes, eyes, noses and mouths to piece together a gruesome face reminiscent of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein monster.
Babel also appreciates the opportunities the Festival gives to independent artists such as himself. "The organizers and curators have an incredible appreciation of the range and depth of current electronic art practices, from mobile and net-based art to interactive installations and virtual realities," the artist said.
Cyberarts certain to provide a unique range of entertainment
New media art places an emphasis on a wide range of accessibility, supported by such online distributions as HyperArtSpace as well as the myriad spaces provided by the city of Boston.
The MIT Stata Center is hosting the Cambridge Science Festival from April 21 to 29, home to panels on new technology, science-related activities and pieces from artists like Christopher Janney. Not only limited to the visual arts, venues such as Green Street Studios in Cambridge will be hosting shows of contemporary dance and music. The list goes on and on.
Anyone who would like to participate in this massive outpouring of creativity from the Boston area is encouraged to check out the Boston Cyberarts festival's event page, a searchable index of every event going on.
The festival has been a landmark for the Boston arts scene since 1999, and such a coordinated, comprehensive effort should not go unnoticed. Events run from April 20 to May 6, and needless to say there is something for every taste: explosions of color, music, art and excitement.
