| Digital Art Exchange |
| Imagine what it would be like to be able to electronically link the creative energies of artists and have them simultaneously collaborate on the creation of a single artistic masterpiece. Artists from Africa, South America, Europe, Australia and North America could combine their talents to create new images flavored by their distinct cultural, social and political world views. No longer isolated in their individual studios, artists worldwide would participate in an electronic studio forum. The result of such an endeavor could very well revolutionize contemporary art as we know it today. |
| "The reality of such an artistic network is not as far-fetched as most people think, "' says Bruce Breland, professor of intermedia and video arts at Carnegie Mellon's College of Fine Arts. Breland is a strong advocate of "interactive arts", an alternative form of expression whereby the artist becomes an equal partner in collective authorship. |
| "For years", notes Breland, "many artists like myself have expressed a keen interest in creating a network for the artistic community. We envision a publicly accessible network where one could utilize existing technology to create art and to facilitate the exchange of ideas and images. We fundamentally want a new way to share ideas expressed through art with other artists". |
Breland's desire to bring these plans to fruition led to the formation in 1982 of Carnegie Mellon's Digital Art Exchange Group (DAX). Since its inception, DAX has become one of the world's leading pioneers in the merging of electronic communications with the arts. Its staff, under the direction of Breland, is comprised of three engineers (Gregg Podnar, Eugene Hastings and Michael Chepponis), four artists (Jim Kocher, Matt Wrbican, Robert Dunn and Phillip Rostek), one archivist (Henry Pisciotta) and one project director (Bess Adam). |
| Housed on the fourth floor of the College of Fine Arts, DAX has access to video equipment, teleconverters, slowscan television (SSTV), computer terminals, radios, telephones and telefacsimile (FAX) - all the equipment they need to transmit to their peers over existing networks (IPSA, Bitnet, Arpanet, EARN) electronic images and mail. Although there are other alternative resources that one could use to transmit images with much higher resolution (e.g., satellites, computer workstations, etc.), DAX prefers using universally available equipment and refining it for their own purposes. Points out Breland, "lt is far more economical and practical for us to concentrate on developing innovative and compatible software rather than developing a new hardware system that may not be readily accessible to the public". |
| For Breland, the excitement of electronic art exchange is attributable to what he describes as the dematerialization of the art: "When we send an image from one node to another through the network, the image becomes dematerialized and no longer exists in the process of transmission. We are relinquishing the object in an electronic exchange in order that it can become modified by the responses of other artists in an ongoing process. Artists can simultaneously interact with the art, critique it, store it in the computer's memory, change its color or content and, in a manner of about 12 seconds, transmit the new image to any number of people. |
| With the dematerialization of art, were now left with how we as artists relate to each other and to our art: artist to artifact; artist to beholder; beholder to artifact. What was once the traditional space of graphics, painting and sculpture has now been transformed by a dynamic new order of relationships". |
| Carnegie Mellon's DAX group presently has only one regularly active U.S. counterpart: Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. DAX, however, is considered by all network participants to be the largest, most integrated and most interdisciplinary electronic art exchange group in existence today. (To date, there are approximately 25 groups of artists located in 20 cities throughout the world.) |
| For the past five years, DAX has been actively involved in improving access to the artist network, along with furthering electronic image research activities. The group has attained professional credibility on an international scale through its participation by Invitation in over 15 major electronic image/text exhibitions. Some of their recent activity highlights include. |
| * participating in the 42nd La Biennale de Venezia. DAX transmitted important news events in the form of images, text and drawings to Venice, Italy, via SSTV, FAX and IPSATEXT; |
| * orchestrating the first tri-city interactive image/sound exchange. While at the University of Richmond in Virginia, Breland exchanged images with his DAX associates in Pittsburgh and with the art exchange group at Massachusetts College of Arts in Boston; |
| * establishing and organizing network interaction among groups of artists in Sardinia, Africa, Amsterdam, France and the United States. The artists produced in a text format their interpretation of "II Serpent di Pietra" a performance piece based on the symbolic metaphor of a serpent; and |
| * coordinating an international teleconference text exchange. Teleconference participants included: Banff Centre For The Performing Arts (Banff, Alberta, Canada), Massachusetts College of Art (Boston, Massachusetts), Galerie Jacques Donguy (Paris, France). Cafe New York (Kassel, Germany); and Carnegie Mellon. |
| Through DAX, according to Breland Carnegie Mellon has become a citizen of the global community; the university has immediate and constant access to the completed pieces and works in progress of all the other participants in the network. But the practical implications of such a network are not limited to artists, he adds. Biophysicists poets teachers, individuals of all professions now have another means by which they can interact with one another to freely express and share their ideal and talents. "When we're talking about the electronic exchange of ideas and the sharing of images", states Breland, "what were really talking about is education on a global scale". |
| Where does the future lead DAX? "We dream of having Pittsburgh become the major database for the arts on an international scale", says Breland. "We could not only store images of original works, but also the variations of such works resulting from other professional artists who interact with the images. And, at the rate things are going right now, we expect to have museums, libraries and galleries hooked up to our computer network within the next five years. |
Adds Breland, "DAX is not a break from art or from traditional art forms. Our underlying philosophy is artistic collaboration. We simply want to have a network for artists worldwide in which we can freely interact with one another to exchange information and images. We are here to provide the artist with a fundamentally new way to share his or her ideas with other artists. We are amplifying the possibilities of art as it relates to culture". |
| Trudy Ludwig |
| Accent on Research 1987 |
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