Art on the move

The first problem is what to call it.

Digital art? That's the popular name for art made with computers, but it falls short of describing the full range of possibilities, from works viewed on computer screens to light projections that tell stories, explore scientific concepts or fill entire rooms with kinetic images.

Consider Jeremy Blake's seductive mixed-media digital animations -- or, as he calls them, time-based paintings. Visitors who wander into his show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art sit on benches in a large, darkened gallery and watch a three-screen projection based on the bizarre gothic mansion in San Jose known as the Winchester Mystery House. Images of the rambling residence, built over four decades by the heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune, blend with fluid abstractions and shots of movie palaces, cartoons and cowboys in a dreamlike collage of sights and sounds.

Another current exhibition, "AIM VI: Technological Pervasions" at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, explores the impact of surveillance in daily life. Part of USC's annual festival of time-based media, the show encompasses Internet projects, wireless technology, hardware design, digital video and interactive installations.

Labeling all these works "digital art" is like calling painting "oil art" or sculpture "stone art," said Benjamin Weil, a former curator at SFMOMA who organized Blake's exhibition and is now curatorial chair at the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology in New York. "Pretty much everything is digital now."

What's more, said artist Victoria Vesna, who heads UCLA's department of design/media arts, the notion of digital art is way too 20th century. And way too limited. For adventurous artists in this field of hybrid art forms, digital technology is more than a tool, she said. It's a medium or subject matter.

Those who work the territory tend to avoid labels or invent their own. When pressed, they suggest one of three catchall terms: "new media," "media arts" or just "media."

But basic as it is, the name thing is merely an indicator of the confusion swirling around a field that refuses to sit still. Art of the Digital Age may be changing ideas about what art can be, but most of the art world isn't ready for it.