1990s – Art & Electronic Media

The Rainbow Machine

The Rainbow Machine (1998) is a large steel structure that is suspended 9 feet off the ground and sprays a wall of water creating a full spectrum rainbow anytime the sun is shining [1]. Rebecca Cummins, the artist, created this structure with the intent of being able to recreate a natural occurrence in nature. The […]

Skinonskinonskin

This work of net.art consists of a digital art gallery of two lovers' correspondence from the 1990s. The twenty-five letters feature interesting interactive graphics, cryptic messages, and unique voyeuristic opportunities to view intimate messages sent between the two artists Entropy8 and Zuper!. The viewer can usually interact with the simulated object, environment, or representation. Doing so reveals love notes, messages, and other meanings. There are often personal representations of the two artists, either in the form of a rendered avatar of sorts, or actual images and pictures taken of their bodies.

Modell 5

[video src=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATWljMbvVTg]In Modell 5 by Granular Synthesis (Kurt Hentschläger and Ulf Langheinrich) performer Akemi Takeya tells the story of her life. The four-channel video premiered at the ICA in London in 1994, where four projections revealed Takeya's expressions moving rapidly in different directions, with her voice also synchopated algorithmically, using a technique known as "granular synthesis" by the artists. The work has been described as "one of the most beautiful experiments in bringing digital video to a theatrical setting." Audiences are amazed by how the installation animates the subject's story is simultaneously jarring and visually arresting.

Wave UFO

[video src= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8QbcyKwWNo align: left height: 200] Combining her love of sci-fi and her penchant for installations, artist Mariko Mori created a unique, encapsulating experience that literally transports the viewers to another world in Wave UFO. Mariko's goal is to make the audience experience what it would be like to go to another planet. Inside of the pod, visitors are given "a set of electrodes that gather brainwave data" [1] that feed to a video monitor inside of the pod. This is played alongside a second video screen, and those two coupled together represent both sides of the brain's psychology and functions. Viewers recline in padded seats placed around the pod, in which they watch the two screens. After the seven minutes of footage end, visitors disembark via the staircase.

The Tunnel under the Atlantic

[video src=http://youtu.be/gQ2Ti6nB9mg align: right height: 220] The Tunnel under the Atlantic, by Maurice Benayoun is an interesting stimulatory system that connects visitors of the Pompidou Centre in Paris to the visitors of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal through a simulated “digging” through skewed virtual medium. By using televirtuality, people in each museum can dig to meet each other, and then interact with each other in this virtual channel. They are brought together through communication as they survey their virtual surroundings that reveal geological strata as iconographic strata, bringing both shape and recognizable textures.

Cory’s Yellow Chair

Cory’s Yellow Chair is a kinetic sculpture by Arthur Ganson that assembles, disassembles, and reconstructs a small, four-and-a-half-inch tall yellow chair indefinitely. Ganson says he got inspiration for this piece when his “son’s little yellow chair explode with infinite speed, travel to the far reaches of the universe and slowly come to complete stillness. Then, […]

Text Rain

Text rain is an interactive piece of art that allows viewers to manipulate the motion of letters that emulate rain falling from the sky. Users have their image displayed on a screen in front of them as the letters begin to fall down the screen. Once the letters reach a certain darkness threshold, they stop […]

Epigenesis: The Growth of Form

“Epigenesis: The Growth of Form” by artist Roman Verostko is an installation at the Frey Science and Engineering Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. [1] The work was installed in 1997, after a year of work, in the newly opened building. The installation, often referred to as a mural, is made up of eleven individual sheets […]

SEE BANFF!

SEE BANFF! is an interactive stereoscopic installation. It bears a strong – and intentional – resemblance to an Edison kinetoscope, which made its public debut in 1894, a century before contemporary artist Naimark revisited it using late 20th century technologies. The kinetoscope achieved instant popularity, but was short-lived. One and a half years later, in […]

Liquid Architectures

This article is a STUB please make edits and adjustments as suggested on Wikipedia to make it more robust. Thanks! Marcos Novak defines liquid architectures: “”What is liquid architecture? A liquid architecture is an architecture whose form is contingent on the interests of the beholder; it is an architecture that opens to welcome […]

TechnoSphere

According to artist Jane Prophet, TechnoSphere is an “evolution simulator that enabled people to create their own creatures and communicate with them as they grow, evolve and die in a virtual three-dimensional environment.” In the screen-grab from the website, users first choose to make an Herbivore or Carnivore, then are presented with a choice of […]

Well of Lights

This article is a STUB please make edits and adjustments as suggested on Wikipedia to make it more robust. Thanks! Toshio Iwai is a Japanese interactive media and installation artist who has also created a number of commercial video games. In addition he has worked in television, music performance, museum design and digital musical […]

The Giver of Names

David Rokeby’s ongoing work The Giver of Names, found on page 79 of Art and Electronic Media, examines our language and the subconscious associations our brain makes when identifying an object. The computer captures an image of an object that has been placed on a pedestal in the gallery space by a visitor. The computer then […]

Every Icon John F. Simon

Every Icon, created by John F. Simon Jr. in 1997 incorporates duration in a way that, while “resolved conceptually, it is unresolvable in practice” [2]. Every Icon is a “personalized Java applet, available for purchase from Amazon.com for $20” that consists of a 32 x 32 grid of varying black and white elements [1]. The grid’s […]

Rearming the Spineless Opuntia

Amy Youngs offers a critique of the way we treat our natural resources with her piece Rearming the Spineless Opuntia found on page 39 in Art and Electronic Media [2]. In this piece, while critiquing the careless genetic alteration of the naturally occuring environment, she attempts to create a solution for it as well. She says […]

The Invisible Shape of Things Past

After reading chapter two of Manovich’s Software Takes Command, the difference between multimedia and hybrid media revealed various facets within themselves that I never even knew existed. It struck interest in many ways, but one most of all which was the further study into Joachim Sauter’s Invisible Shape of Things Past. Honestly, at first it […]

Signature

Experiments In Touching Color

Jim Campbell Site

On Traslation

King’s Cross Phone-In

The King’s Cross Phone-In was a co-ordinated effort by British artist Heath Bunting to disrupt the everyday routine of King’s Cross railway station. Bunting utilized various newsgroups and emails lists to distribute instructions for the event staged on August 5th, 1994.

Kidnap

[video src=http://vimeo.com/4259538]

Timetable

PSI Girls

Susan Hiller: “PSI Girls”

5 Screen Video Installation, dimensions variable

Tower of the Nameless

Rebecca Horn

Tower of the Nameless

1994

Ladders, violins, motors, electronic components

Private Collection, Vienna, Austria

Transforming Mirrors

The linked .pdf file is a printer-friendly version of the complete text of Rokeby's essay, "Transforming Mirrors: Subjectivity and Control in Interactive Media". It is derived from the HTML version on the artist's website: http://www.davidrokeby.com/mirrorsart.html Originally published in Simon Penny, ed. Critical Issues in Interactive Media. SUNY Press, 1995.