[ISEA98] Curator Statement: Dooley Le Cappellaine — Technophobia

Curator Statement

Energetic and refreshingly rough edged, Technophobia is an exhibit of a dozen or so mostly interactive computer mediated contemporary art works. Light years away from the hermetic super realism and fractual abstractions of the Siggraph trade show variety, the work on this disk – from the disorienting subterranean space of Alan Koninger’s “Megalopolis” to the mega-corporate magic realism of Guillaume Wolf and Genevieve Gauckler’s “KGBforce” – displays a raw, confrontational energy … Drawing on underground film, performance and pop culture, this work is spontaneous and disruptive in a way that feels low tech even at its most synthetic…
_Frank Lanz, ID magazine, November 1996.

“Technophobia” is a collection of original multimedia art made as an interactive exhibition. In addition to the original multimedia artwork on the CD its also possible to access a studio visit with each artist. The artists on the CD are:

  1. Judith Ahern,
  2. Bill Albertini,
  3. Huma Bhabha,
  4. Joseph Ferrari,
  5. Alan Koninger,
  6. Tim Maul,
  7. Christian Perez,
  8. Troy Innocent,
  9. Guillaume Wolf & Genevieve Glaucker,
  10. Jody Zellen,
  11. Lynne Sanderson
  12. Dooley Le Cappellaine.

The CD also features electronic and ambient music by:

  1. David Barnes & Charles Cohen,
  2. Moniek Darge,
  3. Joshua Fried,
  4. The Happy Jacks,
  5. Fugitive Pope,
  6. Phil Niblock,
  7. Mike Hovanscek with Pointless Orchestra
  8. John Hajeski with Post Prandials.

There are previews of the musician’s works also on the Website.

I think that this new technology offers the most exciting perhaps the only serious area of innovation occurring in contemporary art today. I’m using the technology to transcend the limitations of physics inherent in other methods previously available to artists. From the creative point of view, working in a new medium is both exacting and liberating. On this CD I worked with other artists who ranged the whole gamut of artists from those with no computer experience at all to those who had training in specialized tertiary institutions. I’ve felt for a long time that art has to go outside itself 5 that reconstruction has worked itself out as a modus operandi, For me working with digital technology provides the freedom to create something almost indefinable but which reflects the obsessions of my generation; cinema, popular culture, cutting edge art and electronic culture. “Technophobia” has been acquired for the collection of ZKM/Center for Art and Media Technology, Karlsruhe, DE.

  • Dooley Le Cappellaine, US, is an artist and curator focused on the cutting edge of art and technology. She curated and produced “Technophobia” an interactive exhibition of original multimedia works on CD Rom. As the director of Dooley Le Cappellaine Gallery in New York she curated many well known, ground-breaking exhibitions of cutting-edge art. Current projects include curating the second CD Rom exhibition and a program of art works for the Web. She teaches Interactive Media at the Pratt Institute, New York.
    Her most recent work is titled “Accidents Have No Holidays” (CD ROM, and photographs).
    In this work I’m examining the roots of human awareness where our perceptions and motivations come from. I’m interested in the concept of “tropisms” as proposed by Nathalie Sarraute; those oddities of behaviour that reveal what is really happening behind appearances. It’s based on two mutually linked and antagonistic propositions: The idea that we are unique, the center of our universe and in control of our destinies, and the idea that we are insignificant and not at all in control of what may happen to us at any moment. For me ideas of “the accident” and the pathalogical sense of extra-sensory control are the basis for this body of work.