The Computer in the Studio

exhibition The Computer in Studio addresses two general social perspectives on relationship between computer and artistic practice. One is conventional wisdom that computers threaten and debase individual creativity in visual arts. second perspective is that proliferation of computing technologies is radically changing definition of what constitutes skilled work and creativity for many fields, including visual arts. How will artistic practices and art institutions shape and be shaped by these technologies? What is to be gained by thinking about these changes in terms of artist's and computer? The Computer and Studio proposes that artists have capacity to direct computer technologies toward socially progressive ends. This position opposes a technological determinism that continues to inform much artistic discourse around computing (the idea that computer is antithetical to creativity). Yet priority placed upon artistic production in The Computer in Studio leaves largely unexamined ways computer technologies shape reception of works of art and how issues of both production and reception are influenced by status of computers as consumer objects. institutional organization of The Computer in Studio is noteworthy: exhibit was product of a collaboration between DeCordova Museum, which exhibits contemporary New England artists, and Computer Museum, which exhibits material on history and uses of computing.(1) Co-curators Nicholas Capasso of DeCordova Museum and Brian Wallace of Computer Museum together with George Fifeld, curator of VideoSpace at DeCordova, selected work of 34 artists, artist teams and groups for concurrent display in two museums. press release from DeCordova noted growing use of computers by regional contemporary artists; press release from Computer Museum noted provocative and unexpected ways artists use computers. In his catalog essay Capasso explains that exhibition's focus on New England artists is not intended to imply that region's history of high-level scientific research has supported more advanced artistic work. Instead, these artists represent local expression of a national phenomenon. For Capasso, computers entered studio when they became consumer products, a change he evaluates as one of access rather than a change in technology. catalog essays, Who's Got Box? and What's in Box?, by Capasso and Wallace respectively, examine computer as a tool for artistic production. While pairing of essay titles imply that they are about same box, differences between them suggest how definitions of computers as artistic can be informed by varying definitions of computing. Capasso addresses fears that computers will threaten artistic production by describing how artists have used them as for personal expression in what he describes as art. His thesis is that computer-assisted art is most recent stage in a historical process in which artistic developments and technological progress work in tandem, from oil painting to virtual reality and Internet. What Capasso characterizes as the aesthetic climate of pluralism that has prevailed since early 1970s, supports recent artistic work within this technology. He emphasizes access as integral to computer-assisted art by tracing development of powerful and increasingly affordable computer technologies, and describing development of service bureaus, school computer labs, and what he describes as ateliers to make this equipment more available to artists. If Capasso's linear narrative of artists' appropriation of tools of their time seems at points overly sanguine, he makes his case that computer-assisted art is less about computers than about artists by citing work displayed in exhibition. …