Cyberarts Festival Hits Boston in May
Written by Eric Aron | Posted by: Anonymous
Boston, a city renowned for both its art and technology, will merge the two worlds for the first two weeks in May. Two and a half years in the making, the Boston CyberArts Festival will highlight the very latest in digital art, music, and performance. Participants will be treated to a wide variety of lectures/symposia, exhibitions, and shows throughout New England.
The Boston CyberArts Festival is a collaborative effort, with participation from area museums, galleries, and arts institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Cambridge Arts Council, Harvard art museums, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, among others. The Computer Museum will serve as the Festival’s central headquarters, where visitors will be able to do everything from obtaining information about area events to buying T-shirts. Specific exhibitions at the Computer Museum will include "Mind Into Matter: New Digital Sculpture," "Faces of Tomorrow," and a computer animation show. A large-scale digital installation, "Faces of Tomorrow" is a continually changing portrait of faces that visitors will be able to see both at the museum and online (www.cyberfaces.org).
The nonprofit VisionSpace, Inc., Emerson College, and the Massachusetts Interactive Media Council (MIMC) chiefly lead the festival’s organizing efforts. George Fifield is the director of VisionSpace, an organization established in 1997 to support creative venues for digital art. The concept for the festival grew out of VisionSpace. When asked why Boston should host such an event, Fifield said that "Boston is blessed with having such great public digital art, it’s been the center of the universe for it for years." Fifield defines digital art as "art made by and for computers." The festival, therefore, is a natural extension of the region’s previous innovations in both technology and the arts.
Festival public relations director Janet Bailey hopes that visitors who come to Boston for the festival will appreciate the artistic and technological tradition that has always been part of the city. In addition, Bailey stressed the fact that the festival will encompass not just Boston, but the "entire metro area." There will be exhibits displayed in locations across the region, from Attleboro to Framingham to Williamstown.
For more information about the festival and specific events, check the Boston CyberArts Festival Web Site at www.bostoncyberarts.org.
