The Multiple Universes show confronted the challenges surfacing in digital art and photographic media. Looking back, looking forward and sideways. New terms were entering the language of description of what the viewers see or think they see.

Multiple Universes -- Beyond Definitions

Three Essays About The Poway Show, October 2006


Art and technology: More than meets the eye
by Joseph Nalven

“Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine, wouldn't you?” Andy Warhol, 1963

If Andy Warhol had been interviewed today—some forty years later, he might have worded his sentiments differently. Perhaps something like: “The things I want to show are digital. Digital media are more forgiving. I’d like to be a computer, wouldn’t you?” The Reconstituted Andy Warhol, 2006

The forty-plus years mark an important transformation in our aesthetic. We know that technology changes; the metaphors for artists change in kind. Artists do not avoid new technology. They engage with it. Ideas and media interact with each other, sometimes in sly and sometimes in bold ways.

Andy Warhol also liked to take Polaroid pictures; today he would be shooting digital images. These are not the same sort of image making. Ask anyone who has made a Polaroid transfer versus capturing low light images with a digital camera. Moreover, the language of description and portrayal of the world around him – and around us – has changed as well.

When it hit the scene, many critics viewed Pop Art as simplistic rather than simple. Warhol may mistakenly be seen just pushing the button in his own time and, in this sense, there is less of an anachronism in transposing Warhol's 1963 statement, "Painting is too hard . . ." into a digital context. When that sentiment is placed into a more modern context, it spotlights the false notion that digital art is simplistic rather than simple, and the medium itself simple to use. For most, mastery of digital media entails far more than pushing a button to create simple art.
    
One puzzlement in traditional versus digital composition concerns the substance that makes the art. Painters have often used pigment on canvas to represent light, while digital artists have used light on computer monitors to represent pigment. (JD Jarvis, Exhibition Catalogue to the International Digital Fine Art Exhibition 2006, SDAI Museum of the Living Artist.)  Both approaches are simply different ways of creating the appearance of light, although with quite distinct technologies. Photography, like digital art, captures radiant energy with the possibility of either placing the image on a material surface or as radiant energy on the TV, computer or movie screen. As media, these are all substrates to carry an image.

But something else is going on. A different sensibility has emerged and we can’t quite put our finger on it.  Now, you might ask, what is this different sensibility?

Two pivotal illustrations will help begin this conversation.

Imagine a photo of a catwalk at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It seems to be a black and white photo except for the tones of color on the shirts of the persons high above. You might think the photo was photoshopped because of the color tones in the shirts. In fact, the photo was a color photo, but given the monochromatic environment, the catwalk appeared to be black and white. The trick was not in the photo, but in the way people now distrust what they see; they look for photoshopping even if the photo is straight. The argument may be teased out even further since the image was shot in digital RAW and converted into an RGB color space in Photoshop. So, indeed, Photoshop was used, but with the intent of following a photographer’s photo-realistic work flow; so, there is yet ambiguity in where the seeming hues were introduced.

We would add that there is no such thing today as straight photography if there ever was; every photograph has a different point of view, sometimes with film and at other times with digital media, perhaps processed in a chemical darkroom, perhaps in a digital darkroom, sometimes harking back in time to traditional processes, sometimes playing with alternative processes. The list goes on. There always has been experimentation in photography. Pinpointing traditional thus becomes somewhat arbitrary. (Find the platinum-paladium print in this show, using a process that is more than a century old, and see if you can tell that a digital inter-negative was substituted for a film negative.)

                                            Catwalk, SFMOMA 2006 by Peter Gorwin

Now imagine the dialogue continuing in another direction. A photo from the lobby of the same museum takes on the appearance of a woodcut print. Here, the photo is heavily photoshopped ― so much so that it is transformed into a look that would normally be associated with a different, and non-photographic medium.

                                                           Staircase, SFMOMA by Joe Nalven
    
The language of digital art is complex and evolving; it has re-opened Pandora’s light box in ways never anticipated. Indeed, the conversation can be drawn out even further since many artists using digital media paint or create algorithmic art rather use photography.

To underscore the complex and overlapping language of digital and photographic art, as reflected in this exhibit, we have selected a variety of images to begin your excusion through this show. Several of these images are abstracts ― one an algorithmic/fractal visual; one drawn from macro-photography; an abstract digital painting; and another from a scanned image that was re-imagined by photoshopping. Others look photographic but with an edgy experimentalism — alternative or Photoshop, film or digital? And perhaps a faux painting of a person? And what about the rock formation punctuated and surrounded by light?  

This wall of images forms an energy pool out of which radiates the re-imagined worlds of photography and digital media that intersect, overlap and sometimes stand apart from the other. It is a veritable springboard to the other walls in this exhibit. These other walls are loosely recognizable as perhaps a people-wall, or an urban-architecture wall, or a horizon-perspective wall, or a flora and fauna wall or a spirituality-religion wall. More important than these prosaic groupings — these loosely defined subject matter — are the same energy pools that one can find in this starting point, where the viewer can bathe and experience the frenzy of the visual arts as they have been developing over the past several decades.
  

 
Upper row, left to right: Julia Gill, 42 Variations, Green; Abigail Migala, Eye, For One;  Michael Sussna, Corn on the Cob; Howard Ganz, Come Through, Dancing;
Lower row, left to right: Lee Zasloff, Swing Time; Amanda Dahlgren, Sensory Perception; Diana Jeon, Untitled 2; Will Gibson, Seams.

Walking through the exhibit

Other walls within the exhibit raise questions about contemporary photographic and digital media.

If one considers perspective and horizon throughout the ages, this orientation is initially absent, becomes defined realistically, and then multi-perspectival. Now there is choice and opportunity to consider simple and multiple ways to structure the picture’s geometry.

Another wall features people images and one immediate observation is how dark glasses is used in portraiture. Compare the triple-exposure self-portrait ― eyes masked with dark glasses ― with the single exposure, but off-centered self-portrait, also with a compelling set of dark glasses; both these self-portraits may be contrasted with the single exposure, doubled person flowing from a different process.  

Our attention shifts again to find a running figure, also with glasses, escaping graffiti-gargoyles. Dynamic movement versus static energy. Then, there is the artist exhaling flowers; next, a stuttering deconstruction of an icon . . . .

These people images invite a dialogue about re-visioning ourselves with extremely powerful imaging technology. The word derivative adds little to the enjoyment of these images.

                                       Interior views. The Artists' Reception.

Wandering upstairs, the viewer will encounter a spirituality wall off to the right. We find playfulness in how spiritual beings inhabit the imagination. There is also historical irony in the juxtapositioning of the images of two sacred places. The first place is one of divine wisdom – the Haghia Sofia. Once Constantinople, now Istanbul. This is set against a Santa Fe church.

             The images wrapped around the balcony wall in a dizzying montage.

All of which leads us beyond the definitions of technology to  the vision of each artist.

Observations on Flora and Fauna
 by Peter Gorwin

As artists, we often follow the convention of creating landscape images with no human presence. This form of human self-negation deserves a closer look. Many photographers, for example, insist that no power lines, planes, nor trashcans intrude into their esthetic. Nonetheless, it has often been said that the artist is always in his/her own image. It is inescapable. The camera lies, the paintbrush lies, the computer lies, and the artist as a storyteller rarely tells us the truth.

The artist, instead shows us what they want us to see, and, as such, makes his or her presence felt. (By the way, this reality doesn't just exist for the nature artists who create images of nature. Photojournalists also make decisions about what to shoot, and therefore also editorialize by virtue of that which they decide not to shoot, that which they omit.) The artist is selective in making choices, consciously or subconsciously. It should also be noted that the exclusion or inclusion of certain elements say much about the artist's own sensibilities. 

Regarding such sensibilities, rarely do artists resort to simplicity in recording the majesty of nature. Given numerous choices, an artist may decide to do too much rather than keeping it simple. Numerous images that were entered in this show at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts followed this pattern of nature in the absence of humans. Whether generated by the camera, the computer, or an image manipulated in concert, numerous florals and landscapes were devoid of a single soul; however, by virtue of often obvious and sometimes overt manipulation in the creation of the image, artists sometimes made their human presence deeply apparent. Once again, the presence of this gesture, to a lesser or greater degree, places artists squarely in the middle of their own image. Artists should always be aware of how they will appear in such an image.

To pay homage to a famous book by Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message, if the medium is indeed the message, then the artist is therefore the creator of the message. As such, a given tool, whether a camera, computer, or a paintbrush, should be used with great care in imparting a message to the audience. On the other hand, many of the images here show a sense of pure playfulness. Rather than designing the image to send a particularly profound message, the artist was just having fun. Most of us enjoy looking at such images.  Who can argue with a digitally manipulated image that creates such ambiguity we are unsure whether we are looking at a pinwheel or a flower? However, it should be noted that the computer is a new tool with exceptional powers to mold an image to our liking. Such power should be wielded with great sense and sensibility.

But let’s not run away from the computer either just because it is powerful and may create undesirable effects in the hands of artists that are not sure yet what they are doing with it. It is a machine, and many do not think it is a particularly organic way of working. But is there really any such thing as a completely natural tool for the purpose of mirroring our vision of nature? If the medium holds the message, and the artist is the messenger, then the way that an image is constructed depends little on the choice of tools, but more on the artist’s understanding of reaching a desired result through the process.  All new tools are greeted with suspicion when they arrive on the scene. In its day, for example, the paintbrush may have created quite a stir. But as it was passed down from artist to artist its ubiquitous presence became a universal standard for creation. Time proved that there was no stopping the momentum of that technology. Its introduction may have even been met with resistance, but it too prevailed as tool for artists.

From stillness to motion: Images of the city
by Lawrence A. Herzog

City:     

    vortex of machine-made straight lines and swirling forms,
    grid of soaring, tightly packed buildings,      
    loud, frenetic, insistent,
    laser light of dusk transforms a street corner into a haiku poem,
    storm of social contradictions,    
    where technology and art collide.
    
Cities have always been at the center of the modern art movement.  It is no small accident that early Cubists—Picasso, Braque—drew inspirations on the streets of Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon.  How else to make sense of gritty industrialism and urban overcrowding then to deconstruct the new chaos into layers (cubes)?

Photographers, painters have often been led toward opposing urban form—stillness vs. motion.  Cubism embodies this “yin and yang” of urban imagery.  “Synthetic cubism” froze time in the form of “still-lifes.”  “Analytical cubism” constructed overlapping layers to record the idea of motion.

Artists memorialized speed—subways, streetcars, fast moving taxis like yellow blips flying through the grid.  Turn of the century futurists, in Italy or Russia, spoke of the synthesis of labor, light and movement, objects disintegrating into light.  Russian cubo-futurists were mesmerized by the power of cities and technology, which they saw as a fourth dimension.  Marcel Duchamps Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) was reportedly inspired by movement and the art of cinema.

While the velocity of the machine age was intoxicating, it also led artists to escape into the slowness of silent portraits of urban place.  Piet Mondrian, the Dutch painter who came to New York City in the 1940’s called one of his best known compositions Broadway Boogie-Woogie. Yet his work was a meditation in spiritual austerity—the city reduced to pure form:  straight lines and quiet rectangles rendered in primary colors.

Stillness is a pervasive theme in abstract expressionism.  Mid-century color field painters — Rothko, Newman, Hoffman — sought order out of chaos.  Stillness is surely one of the inspirations for the 1960s minimalist movement.  The loneliness of cities has a theatrical quietness on the canvases of one of America’s great 20th century painters ― Edward Hopper.  

The art form most suited to slowing down the chaotic rhythm of cities was, of course, photography.  Early pictorialists thought photographs should have the appearance of paintings; later, the precisionists recognized that silver gelatin photographs could freeze visual beauty simply by capturing every poetic detail. Ansel Adams showed this in his iconic natural landscapes; Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott and others made street photography an international art form.

In Europe, the flow of energy along city streets inspired a search for visual serendipity amidst chaos — what French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson called the decisive moment. But back on the streets of New York City, pounding street life and social protest led graffiti artists to demand a place for fast flowing street art in galleries and museums.  

Modern art’s signature has always been to challenge tradition, to blur distinctions, to negate our tendency to put things into categories. The dividing line between photography and painting faded after the 1960’s, as more work ― Chuck Close, Andy Warhol or David Hockney — fell between the cracks. The term mixed media captured the sense of overlap in sculpture, painting, photography, collage, montage.  

Digital imaging is the ultimate mixed-media form. The computer questions, probes, redefines our notions of image, form, lighting, tone, contrast, line, shadow.  The digital image becomes a metaphor for the global city in the 21st century — ever more complicated, ever more perplexing.

Motion or stillness? Computer renderings or black and white silent landscapes? The collision of art and technology continues.

The Artists

Fifty-nine artists are represented in this exhibition at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts.  We wish to thank all of them for making this show happen – with pluck, verve and yes, stunning imagery:


Miriam Agron           Howard Ganz            Kat Larsen             Bob Snell
Olaina Anderson     Don Garrett, Jr.         Mark Leeds           Melanie Snowhite
Teresa Bailey         Sharon George         James Loiselle       Renata Spiazzi
Ray Balbes             Will Gibson                Eileen Mandell       Helga E. Stark
Patricia Bean          Julia Gill                    Judy Mandolf          Michael Sussna
Ron Belanger         Steve Gould              Daniel Marz            Eric Swenson
Josh Bodinet           David Hamilton          Kaz Maslanka        Walt Thomas
Beth Bruton            Joe Hamilton              Joyce Mayer          Nicole Toesca
Sabina Buzaljko      Phil Herwegh             Abigail Migala        Gabriela Valdepeña
Amanda Dahlgren   Larry Herzog             Gordon Moat         John Valois
Betsy Domanski      Kim Hirsch                 Carolyn Nespolo    Patty Waite
Joan Everds            Diana Jeon                Wilson North         Mary Waring
Philip Filia               Gordon Kane            Jim Respess          Bill Woosey
Patricia Frischer      David Kater              Jennifer Saracino   Lee Zasloff
I. Frométa Grillo      Vladimir Konečni       Paul Sewell    


Co-curators:
Joe Nalven  
Peter Gorwin


Background notes

The Poway Center for the Performing Arts was delighted with the Digital Art Guild’s last art exhibit at its venue in 2005 and invited it back this year. But most members in DAG wanted to share the opportunity with a sister organization — the PhotoArts Group. Both groups were focal points for energetic visual artists in the San Diego region and, when considered together, working in the overlap of digital and photographic media.

The question became one of how to hang such a collaborative show. Should the show identify digital artists in one area, photographers in another? Perhaps some historical scheme that captured the flow of emerging technology driving digital media and re-energizing photographic media?

Both of these approaches appeared muted when contrasted against the multi-pronged and frenetic ways in which the visual arts have been developing over the past several decades. With this in mind, we decided to mix all of the artist submissions into one large pot and hang the show with a different sensibility. Here is where the discussion became even more interesting as the selections were hung on the walls.

The Promo Card

 Lee Zasloff should be credited with the card design.