Artists Use Technology To Subvert It

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October 26, 1998 (3:50 PM EST)

By Malcolm Maclachlan,

SAN FRANCISCO -- In this age of rapidly expanding digital technology, art can still play a subversive role, according to the New Minds panelists who met here Wednesday.

"Usually technology is created first, then co-opted by artists," said artist Paul Mlyniec.

The advent of computers has had diverse effects on artists, Mlyneic said. It has let many people create work faster, but the technology itself has become so complicated that few artists are involved in its actual creation.

Mlyniec has been trying to close that gap for 20 years. In the process, he developed SmartScene, art software that lets the artist manipulate colors and objects in a 3-D computer space with a pair of virtual-reality gloves. Mlyniec's software also has an appeal outside of art: lately, he's been negotiating with golf-course developers to finance further development of the program.

Another artist who creates her own tools is Bean, a musician who combines wood, rubber, and electronics to make electronic instruments. To Bean, every artistic use of computer technology amounts to subversion of its intended use.

"Everything we do emulated at one time from the military," she said. "We're all challenged by stretching the mentality of the tools."

Subversion has become a full-time job for Larry Harvey, creator of Burning Man, an annual arts festival that draws thousands of people to the northern Nevada desert each year. Though not a technologist himself, Harvey said word of his festival quickly spread on the Internet, drawing in numerous people who work with digital technology.

"There is a whole generation of people who got into sciences because of a vision, but ended up making a lot of money," Harvey said. "They're giving us the money they would have given to the opera before."

Many technologists have begun creating works of art based on computers and other technology. In a central exhibit of next year's Burning Man festival, various 20-century technologies will be put on trial; those deemed evil will be physically destroyed with blowtorches and chain saws.

Science itself can be art, according to Natalie Jeremijenko, a Yale instructor and former artist in residence at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Jeremijenko is working on a project called One Tree. Her plan is to take 100 genetically identical trees, clones developed from a California black oak and English walnut hybrid, and plant them at different areas around the San Francisco Bay Area. She is hoping to show how unique aspects of each tree are a function of environmental conditions like pollution.

People who use technology for something besides its original purpose, Jeremijenko said, are helping address a long-time debate about the goals of technology.

"They begin to demonstrate how things could be different," she said.