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In our current time, we have become accustomed to having our small handheld devices help us control our lives, while the super computers in Alan Turing’s time was the size of a house. We have certainly come a long way, where technology advancements have allowed us easier access to the state of the art inventions. Art has also been closely responding to what has become available, as exemplified by the early video artists, who were all very conscious of this new medium’s meanings and capabilities. Many of their pioneering thoughts have also predicted what we have now, including the ‘information superhighway’ coined by Nam June Paik. In the 1980s and 1990s, artists also experimented with net art, and graphic designer and computer scientist John Maeda’s codes became part of the Museum of Modern Art’s collection, many of them interactive. Artists’ curiosity and innovation in testing the conceptual limits of technology have brought us some of the humorous and provocative pieces of art that we have seen thus far. In today’s conversation, two artists who are both educators and from two different generations will share their encounters with these mediums, how their work and understanding have evolved, and where we might be going from here.
