Artists can become seduced by the “bedazzlements” of computer technology, leading them to create images with more flash than feeling. “It needs to be handled with care, or else we’ll get carried away with it.”
Predictor: Gelernter, David
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, reporter Jeffrey Young covers a digital art exhibit and records comments made by David Gelernter. Young writes: ”The Art Gallery on the University of Maryland campus is filled with the bluish glow of computer images … They make up ‘Digital Village,’ a multimedia exhibition that explores how computer art can establish connections among people and among communities … In the first lecture, last month, gallery officials sought to demonstrate the relationship between art and computer science by inviting David Gelernter, a computer-science professor at Yale University, to give the keynote address. Mr. Gelernter is well know for his work on artificial intelligence and in parallel processing, in which a problem is fragmented so that computers can work on portions of it simultaneously. He is also known for having survived a 1993 mail-bombing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has traced to the Unabomber. He told an audience of several dozen people that art and technology always have been close partners … But Mr. Gelernter angered some artists in the audience by broadly criticizing current works of computer art for lacking the passion and imagination of great paintings. He warned that artists can become seduced by the ‘bedazzlements’ of computer technology, leading them to create images with more flash than feeling. ‘It needs to be handled with care, or else we’ll get carried away with it,’ he said.”
Biography:David Gelernter, a Yale University scientist, was the author of “Mirror Worlds,” “1939: The Lost World of the Fair” and “The Muse in the Machine.” (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: December 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Medical/Professional
Name of publication: The Chronicle of Higher Education
Title, headline, chapter name: ‘Digital Village’ Connects People Via Online Art
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?Did=000000009080567&Fmt=3&Deli=1&Mtd=1&Idx=
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Falcone, Peter P.