Act and Read Curated by the agency of Ilyana Nedkova (Liverpool Audio-Visual Research Editions.

Act and Read

Curated by the agency of Ilyana Nedkova

(Liverpool Audio-Visual Research Editions, 2000)

Virtual Revolutions appropriately arrives in a transparent jewel case adorned with a bright r circle and the adventurous subtitle Act and Read. Embedded upon the enclosed CD are 30 individual or collaborative artworks according to 50 digital artists and enough sentence from more than 20 additional contributors to fill a work of essays. New media publishers have finally resigned themselves to the fact that no reader will tolerate the monitor radiation absorbed in an effort to digest all this written material, in the same manner the back cover of the CD conveniently shows a series of line drawings that describe a journey from compact disc to paper bulk The technologies involved include a laser printer, a den puncher and a ring binder. Bringing office supplies into the multimedia equation certainly retains the revolutionary promise alive from the outset

formerly the CD drawer closes and the VR icon is riseed however, there is no doubt that the revolutions at play are intimately caught up in the spinning data that deliver these contrives A common interface features a constantly moving array of lines that shift back and forth between X coordinates like a team of digital playheads gone astray to the proper mood of a catchy techno loophole Individual contributions cycle through establishs of thumbnails that must be caught before a mix function erases the ROB settings, and your computer mouse quickly becomes a predator to catch the link before it is gone In the attached files, the paragram on another revolt revolves primarily around software and digest and the now infamous slogan and logo Made with Macromedia" may as well have had another preposition placed between creator and performance Virtual revolutions is first and foremost a design portfolio for digital artists that display delicate skills with a commercial authoring package nevertheless largely shut down as far as issues beyond the scripte d stage are concerned

Contributions are almost exclusively focused in succession the mechanisms of "interactivity" and many of the links onward display can be found in the Lingo library that move prepared scripts for programmed subroutines. When the branching narrative erection essentially comprises a series of static displays, it Is also tempting to make each sprite (a cast member forward the Director stage) rotate and put in motion to keep a notion of interactivity alive in the pauses between triggered terminations The impressive timeline clocking 2600 BC to 1768 A.D. in Nina Czegledy piece Aurora for instance, hops distinctly from marker to marker in the hidden score to capture time periods while Lingo scripts preserve the sprites turning. As if single spin cycle was not enough, many brews attach handlers to moving sprites, period color palettes with random integers, bight sounds and use the tired trick of blind navigation to maintain the user clicking on everything (or nothing in the tempting case of Command-Period) to locate the exit and proce The understanding of pr ogress advertised from these cycles of repetition is that interactive digital space is fluid and infinite while in fact it is mathematically/logically determined and experienced between the sides of heavily controlled portals. Maybe we should be thankful that Virtual Revolutions plays like a exhausted record?

The Artist Portrait Series: Images of contemporary African American Artists, sentence and photographs by Fern Logan. Southern Illinois University Press/125 pp./price unavailable (hb)

Blancs: Marie-France Briere/Barbara Claus. Dazibao (4001 Berri highway Suite 202, Montreal, Quebec H2L 4H2)/28 pp./price unavailable(sb). This work is bilingual, written in one as well as the other French and English.

Brad Austin Smith 1983-2000 Photosmith (39 East Court, Cincinnati, OH 45202)/120 pp/$10000 (hb) $3000 (sb)

Cutting cutting side Art-Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde, at Joan Hawkins. University of Minnesota Press/320 pp/$1995 (sb)

Elemental Landscapes: Photographs at Harry Callahan, by Katherine Ware. Philadelphia Museum of Art/56 pp/$2800 (sb)

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