James K-M, curator of the Ethno-Techno exhibition of last October in which I participated, sent a note today that the installation photos of that show are now up on the Digitalis site. Please have a look. If you are new to my blog, you may wish to read my earlier post about this exhibition.

The site also includes a thoughtful article (pdf) written by Dave Watson in the Georgia Straight newspaper Nov.18.2004 about the use of technology by artists, such as in this exhibition. He writes:

the breadth of artistic expression using technology was really underscored for me by the New Forms Festival, held here in October with the theme of ‘Technography: Experiments With Technology to Explore Our World’. Artists are taking to the digital realm and using it to do grandly ambitious things that consistently surprise and amaze me.

Watson interviews James K-M:

As a curator, K-M established the annual Digitalis exhibition of digital print, which was presented this year in collaboration with New Forms. He focuses on work whose digital component isn’t blatantly obvious once the computers are removed. The printout (or other output method) stands on its own, framed and mounted. Perhaps because K-M’s background, precomputer, was as a painter, his interests lie more with the message of a given work than with the electronic gear that created it. He wants art that says something about human consciousness and that isn’t just a means to decorate a wall. When we’re looking at sculpture, painting, or digital art, he says, the important question is, What are the ideas? You can look at the technique afterwards. With Digitalis, he aims to present works that couldn’t have been created without computers yet that don’t necessarily look like they were. With this work the technology disappears, because the artists are pretty good at using the software. It’s a medium just like any other. When you’re pushing paint on canvas it’s no different than on a computer, where you’re pushing the medium within its structural limitations.
(Hyperlinks added by me.)