Crystal for-
mation as
seen via
digital
microscopy
streaming
video.
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To glimpse at the ways in which science and technology open new avenues for artistic expression, look no farther than Professor Brixey's "Epicycle" project. The installation, designed for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, works something like this: 24 digital video cameras, placed around the globe, capture and transmit live images of the sky just above the horizon from each of the earth's time zones. The continuous video images are transmitted over the Internet and displayed on a sequence of 24 large, high-resolution screens, which form a 360-degree panoramic ring that encircles the exhibit's viewers and shows them the earth's 24-hour horizon. Brixey describes the viewing experience as being "simultaneously telepresent in all cultures and time zones, at the center of a digital earth. . . gazing out at a seamless horizon of light and dark, earth and sky -- a landscape that is never entirely night or day, but perpetually becoming both."
Brixey's academic background laid the groundwork for his synthesis of art and science. A Midwesterner, he earned a degree in sculptural and experimental media at the Kansas City Art Institute, then a master's in advanced visual studies from the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1998 after four years as professor and chair of the Art and Technology Program at the University of Washington.
UC Berkeley's Department of Art Practice recruited Brixey from Seattle to develop its Digital Media Program and attendant research facility, the Center for Digital Art and New Media Research. He describes the program and the lab as "dedicated to the pioneering of alternative tools, methods, and thought processes involved in the creation of new and experimental technology-based art genres."
"The emergence of these technology-based art forms radically challenges many of our most basic notions about art and culture."
Shawn Brixey
He also is Berkeley's principal faculty participant in the new UC Digital Arts Research Network, and through that role is leading efforts to develop digital media arts initiatives throughout the UC system.
The time is right for such forward-thinking programs, Brixey says, because technology is moving society toward an ever more visual culture that is dramatically altering the landscape in which artists work. "The emergence of these technology-based art forms radically challenges many of our most basic notions about art and culture -- what it means as practicing artists to be cultural producers; what constitutes a cultural object or aesthetic experience; and what skill sets and conceptual strategies are required for the artist, critic, and audience to understand and integrate the importance of this new work," he notes. "We're poised to inherit an arena of creative expression that outstrips many of the artistic tools we've been trained with."
The Center for Digital Art and New Media Research is housed on campus in Kroeber Hall. The large, remodeled classroom is now a high-tech arts studio with state-of-the-art computer hardware and accompanying software graphics programs. The computers are attached to a sophisticated array of digital gadgetry, including digital video camcorders, non-linear editing systems, audio effects processors, and lasers and optics for holographic imaging. It is a place where Brixey encourages students to question the nature of art, personalize the impact of technology, and invent new forms of artistic expression.
Brixey accomplishes precisely that and more through his own artwork, much of which involves experiments with "telepresence." Telepresence, he explains, involves the use of technology to create a feeling of being present in a real, physical location that is remote from a person's actual location. The "Epicycle" project described above, for example, allows a viewer at the installation in Australia to be simultaneously telepresent in every one of the earth's time zones.
He also specializes in creating art that is able to grow and change -- art that in a sense takes on a life of its own. Whereas most artists use an additive or reductive process to create an art object, Brixey instead uses materials and the natural laws of science to build an environment in which the art can literally create itself.
A prime example is his "Alchymeia" installation, which Brixey designed for the 1998 Winter Olympics Ice Art Festival in Japan. Through Internet technology, viewers all over the world were able to witness unique, psychedelic splashes of color that were produced while genetically engineered ice crystals formed and mutated. The experiment was broadcast live through a continuous "streaming webcast" on the Internet using a digital video-microscopy system.
For Brixey, it's exciting and rewarding to develop these digital arts initiatives at Berkeley, because the creative process unites divergent forces on campus to explore new territory together. "Digital artists are helping to invent entirely new methodologies and establish new venues," he says. "We're bringing together diverse communities -- including cultural organizations, industry representatives, and academic researchers from a broad range of disciplines. . . . By linking these diverse domains of knowledge, the digital arts hold the potential to help bridge long-held and often unproductive disciplinary divides."