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Decordova exhibit plugs in to interactive computer art
By Patti Hartigan, Globe Staff, 03/26/99
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The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park is at 51 Sandy Pond Rd.; 781-259-8355; www.decordova.org
The wizard of virtual evolution
LINCOLN -- If you remember only one thing about Karl Sims and his
installation ''Galapagos,'' he would prefer that it be this simple fact: He
didn't create the images of mutating virtual creatures; he simply created the
process that makes them morph. He's the wizard behind the screen, but his work
isn't actually realized until the visitor enters the gallery where it is being
exhibited as part of ''Make Your Move: Interactive Computer Art'' at DeCordova
Museum and Sculpture Park. The exhibit opens tomorrow and runs through May 31.
''Computers are lousy at aesthetics,'' Sims says, ''but they're great at
math.''
Indeed. Sims used those mechanical mathematicians to write the software for
''Galapagos,'' a project about Darwinian evolution that won him a $235,000
MacArthur Foundation ''genius'' grant last year. The program mimics genetic
code, creating three-dimensional graphics of creatures on 12 large monitors.
Each monitor is hooked up to a footpad, which the viewer steps on to
''select'' the image he or she likes best. The other 11 images disappear and
then ''mate'' with the selected creature to form a series of newly evolved
images.
It makes sense that Sims has degrees in biology and visual studies from
MIT. ''I'm more interested in using computers to make pictures than looking at
bacteria in petri dishes,'' he says. He also runs Genetic Arts, a Cambridge
software firm whose products have been used to make such films as ''Titanic,''
''Godzilla,'' and ''Air Force One.''
But ''Galapagos'' is his personal blockbuster. ''It's a nice way to gain a
sense of what evolution can do,'' he says. ''With real evolution, you can't
rewind the tape and start again. You can't go back 4 million years. But you
can start over with 'Galapagos.' It's easier to experiment.''
It wasn't that easy to install, however. The DeCordova crew laid 12,000
feet of cable and built a room for more than two dozen computers that run the
three works featured in ''Make Your Move.'' And the computers don't come
cheap: Sims estimates it would cost $80,000 to buy the 12 systems that drive
''Galapagos.'' The museum rented the machines.
''Galapagos'' is on permanent display at the Intercommunication Center in
Tokyo. Visitors have been known to linger at the installation, becoming
virtual creators as they make the images twist, dance, change color, and grow
appendages of different shapes and sizes. The name, of course, comes from the
Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin developed his theory on the origin of
species. Sims has created a virtual version of that tropical place, but he's
never been to the real thing off the coast of Ecuador. ''You have to be part
of a tour,'' he says. ''I understand the restrictions, but it's just not my
kind of vacation.''
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LINCOLN - Our mission today is to heed the advice of new-media artist
Jennifer Hall. That means we have to shut down our computer, turn off our
modem. We have to stop, breathe, think. Sip a cup of coffee, the real stuff,
not the virtual kind.
Now, you might expect someone like Hall to take a certain smug pleasure in
the current technology craze or even enjoy a little ''I told you so'' glee as
she observes a society racing to keep pace with the Information Age. She is,
after all, a local guru of art and new media, with a master's in visual
studies from MIT and 15 years of experience as the visionary leader of the Do
While Studio, a sort of high-tech atelier on South Street. Her work, once
marginalized in the outre, out-there category, is being featured at the
DeCordova Museum in ''Make Your Move: Interactive Computer Art,'' an
exhibition of three computer-assisted works that opens tomorrow. The show is
in conjunction with the Boston Cyberarts Festival in May.
You would think all this would make Hall a happy preacher who has seen her
cause move from the fringes to the masses. You would think it was payback
time. Think again. ''In the '70s, we were the people on the edge, the
intellects and the wackos,'' she says. ''In some ways I should be thrilled.
Our mission came true. More artists are into new media. But we're all on this
treadmill. We're all running around looking for the next new gizmo without
stopping to ask, 'Why?' This culture doesn't ask those questions. We just
upgrade to the next level.''
We upgrade. We download. We plug in. We freak out. And even though Hall
has been championing technology for two decades, she's worried about the
consequences of our mad dash to get wired. She even questions the terminology,
as new phrases are coined to capitalize on the fad of the moment. Take the
word ''cyberart.''
''That's a term that cropped up so quickly, but we've been doing it for
quite a while,'' Hall says. ''People put a label on it to give it identity,
clarity, and perhaps style and glamour. Everyone is grabbing onto it hook,
line, and sinker because it's suddenly prestigious and glorious and glamorous.
I worry about that.''
She worries about a world in which everyone is racing to beat the next guy
at the best way to simulate reality in cyberspace. Nobody is interested in a
pure experience anymore: We want a simulation of a simulation, brought to us
''live'' on the Internet. Hall suspected there was something odd about
''virtual reality'' a long time ago. Her mother was a producer for early
television and Hall performed in commercials for products like Crest. One day,
she accompanied her mother to the set of a commercial for Cascade, a
dishwashing soap. ''One of the talents said, 'It's virtually spotless,' and
I said, 'Mom, what does virtually spotless mean?' She said, 'Sshhh, it means
it has spots!' They couldn't say it was spotless because of the liability, so
the lawyers came in and said to use the word 'virtual.' That makes it
meaningless. That's amusing to me.''
In the early days of television, the medium had the potential to bring
information to the masses in a positive way, but as anyone with a remote
control knows, the medium is all about money and commercial, prepackaged
pablum. Hall worries that the new technology is destined to lose its potential
as well. ''There's still time, though,'' she says. ''What happens if we all
stop, breathe, have a cup of coffee? What happens if we take a moment to stop
and ask, 'Why?' ''
The artists are the ones who ought to be asking those questions, and the
exhibit aims to do just that. In addition to Hall's work, the show features
Chris Dodge's ''What Will Remain of These?,'' an installation that records
human activity on a vast data network in the DeCordova gallery. It also
showcases Karl Sims's ''Galapagos,'' an interactive installation that mimics
Darwinian evolution. (See related story.) Hall's work is the ''$12.99
special'' of the show, an ''odd science-fair-type project'' called
''Acupuncture for Temporal Fruit,'' created with engineer Marc LoCascio.
It's a series of 12 domes equipped with robotic devices that operate
acupuncture needles. As visitors move through the gallery, the needles are
activated to punch holes in tomatoes inside the dome. OK. Let's take a moment
and ask, ''Why?''
''A lot of pieces converge: the health industry, Western medicine and
Eastern medicine, the organic form surrounded by technology,'' Hall says.
''The technology pokes holes in this thing, and every time you poke at it, the
biological form disintegrates.''
When Hall was building the piece at the Do While Studio, other artists at
the center followed its progression with rapt attention. ''Some people called
it cruel and I find that interesting. It's such an intense word for a tomato.
When we see technology up against an organic form, it blows our mind. It
either terrifies us or thrills us, but it's something we have to think
about.''
There's a certain cachet now for art that brushes up against technology.
But for Hall, there's nothing new in that at all. ''Science and art were
together for most of humankind: Think about the development of pigment, of
casting techniques. The technologies of the day were first scribed by artists.
It's only in this bizarre, postmodern goo that we have made artists separate
from technology. What's happening now is a re-fusion.''
And that's a good thing. Or is it? ''The immersion in technology can be a
very bad thing for artists,'' says Hall. ''You have to figure it out, but you
have to be both inside of it and outside of it.'' She spends half her time
running Do While and teaching new media at Massachusetts College of Art. The
rest of the time, she lives in a technology-free cabin in the woods in New
Hampshire. (It has electricity and a phone, but no computers.)
She's been plugging away all these years, but now that everyone else is
plugged in, she's urging folks to plug out -- at least for a cup of coffee.
''We're in danger of becoming a feudalistic society,'' she says. ''There is
a chasm between the knowing and the not-knowing. Everyone feels behind.
Everyone feels like they're not as smart as the next guy. The train is out of
control and there ain't nobody at the wheel. How can we slow the train? We
can't see the scenery. And if the journey is what we're here to do, why are we
going so fast?''
SIDEBAR
The wizard of virtual evolution
LINCOLN -- If you remember only one thing about Karl Sims and his
installation ''Galapagos,'' he would prefer that it be this simple fact: He
didn't create the images of mutating virtual creatures; he simply created the
process that makes them morph. He's the wizard behind the screen, but his work
isn't actually realized until the visitor enters the gallery where it is being
exhibited as part of ''Make Your Move: Interactive Computer Art'' at DeCordova
Museum and Sculpture Park. The exhibit opens tomorrow and runs through May 31.
''Computers are lousy at aesthetics,'' Sims says, ''but they're great at
math.''
Indeed. Sims used those mechanical mathematicians to write the software for
''Galapagos,'' a project about Darwinian evolution that won him a $235,000
MacArthur Foundation ''genius'' grant last year. The program mimics genetic
code, creating three-dimensional graphics of creatures on 12 large monitors.
Each monitor is hooked up to a footpad, which the viewer steps on to
''select'' the image he or she likes best. The other 11 images disappear and
then ''mate'' with the selected creature to form a series of newly evolved
images.
It makes sense that Sims has degrees in biology and visual studies from
MIT. ''I'm more interested in using computers to make pictures than looking at
bacteria in petri dishes,'' he says. He also runs Genetic Arts, a Cambridge
software firm whose products have been used to make such films as ''Titanic,''
''Godzilla,'' and ''Air Force One.''
But ''Galapagos'' is his personal blockbuster. ''It's a nice way to gain a
sense of what evolution can do,'' he says. ''With real evolution, you can't
rewind the tape and start again. You can't go back 4 million years. But you
can start over with 'Galapagos.' It's easier to experiment.''
It wasn't that easy to install, however. The DeCordova crew laid 12,000
feet of cable and built a room for more than two dozen computers that run the
three works featured in ''Make Your Move.'' And the computers don't come
cheap: Sims estimates it would cost $80,000 to buy the 12 systems that drive
''Galapagos.'' The museum rented the machines.
''Galapagos'' is on permanent display at the Intercommunication Center in
Tokyo. Visitors have been known to linger at the installation, becoming
virtual creators as they make the images twist, dance, change color, and grow
appendages of different shapes and sizes. The name, of course, comes from the
Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin developed his theory on the origin of
species. Sims has created a virtual version of that tropical place, but he's
never been to the real thing off the coast of Ecuador. ''You have to be part
of a tour,'' he says. ''I understand the restrictions, but it's just not my
kind of vacation.''
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