American Cinematographer - March 1995 - 61

Digital Artists:
Reinventing Electronic Media
MIT Media Lab

symposium looks

to the future of entertainment

and

expression.

by Frank Beacham
A

major challenge facing creative
using interactive digital
technology is to break down tra¬
artists

ditional information structures 2

and create new works that rede- '■%
fine the relationship between per- ^
formers and their auciience.
This and other opinions >.
about interactive media came f
from a wide range of creative and y
technical leaders assembled for a 1
O-

day-long symposium (Oct. 20) on
"Digital Expression" at the Media
Laboratory at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA.

2
£
hf* i

£

**

|
|

Tod Machover, a com¬
poser and associate professor
the Opera of the Future Group

at
the Media Lab, said, "To make
this revolution in

digital expres¬
sion, we need to bring together a
much larger group of people than
has

ever

get the feeling that

about human

Director Peter

huge parts of human experience
are going undocumented and
unrecognized," said Sellars.

experience.

mirthful bon mot

"Aristotle wrote about the at¬

many, many
voices that we
don't hear to¬

"You

in

been connected before.
"We finally have tech¬

nology that is cheap enough to

tempts to touch the totality of an
experience. As human beings, we
are
complex, divided and multi¬
layered. Therefore, what satisfies

"The whole point about
virtual reality is that it is

everybody and
technology
is

easy
enough to use
so
that one
does not need
to be an expert
as an

artist

virtually real, not really real.
Technology cannot replace
the seeing, the hearing and
the experiencing of art."

or

member of the

-

Jane Alexander, Chairman, NEA

public to ex¬
plore or make things," said
Machover. "That's

day at all. The
CBS Evening
News

be available to

that

"We are aware
that there are

a

fundamental

change."
Peter Sellars, a director of
theater, opera and film, said art¬

sents

voice," the di¬
rector said.

Perfor¬
mance

media] structures that show how
we

really feel?"

artist

Laurie Ander¬
son

said it is

important that

a

about the benefits
of future technol¬
ogy, to the delight
of his fellow

panelists at the MIT
symposium:
performance artist
Laurie Anderson,

ABC News

correspondent and
panel moderator
John Hockenberry,
performer/
composer Peter
Gabriel and

composer/Media
Lab associate

professor Tod
Machover.

creators for the
new

is

complex, multilayered and
has all these built-in conflicts just
as we do. How do we set up [new
us

repre¬
one

only

Sellars offers

media don't make the mis¬

take of

accepting the same ratings
and income standards as today's
mass media. "We don't have to
use the same model as media,"
she said. "Don't

begin to think
people who like it, the

ists "must break out of the official
information structure" to find

Current mass media,
said Sellars, reflects only a single

better it is.'" She said CD-ROM

important
subjects that mainstream media

voice and "a very narrow group

producers are inventing a special

of

and intimate

refuses to address.

sane

new

ways to express

creating this in¬
gridlock" on information

people

March 1995

are

'the

more

relationship with

their audiences.

American

Cinematographer

59
American Cinematographer - March 1995

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