Abstract

In the earlier days of ISEA there were those who looked ahead and saw an epoch where art goes ‘digital’ wholesale; it would become disembodied from its physical shell, like the medieval soul breaking free from the corrupted flesh. ‘Traditional’ art forms were scheduled to mutate at the millennium. Exhibitions were announced as ‘the art of the future’. Images and installations were unashamedly sci-fi-eerie robotics staged in dark rooms.

Twenty years later, ten years after that millennium that now seems insignificant in comparison with 9/11, we look back on those predictions as symptoms of the time, when words like ‘hyper’, ‘cyber’, ‘wired’ had a neon aura.

• James Faure Walker (UK) was born in London 1948. ‘Golden Plotter’, Computerkunst, Gladbeck, 1998. Exhibited, ISEA from 1990; DAM Gallery, Berlin; Siggraph 1995 – 2007. 11 works in Victoria and Albert Museum. Editor, Artscribe 1976. Book, ‘Painting the Digital River’, Prentice Hall 2006. Commissioned artist, FIFA 2010 World Cup.                                            dam.org/artists/phase-two/james-faure-walker

Full text (PDF) p.  305-307