Thu Oct 09, 2008 00:00 - Thu Oct 09, 2008

United States of America

This exhibition takes a look at the changes and developments computer technology has made to the Visual Arts and will attempt to address the following questions:

How have artists integrated the computer into their chosen mediums/disciplines?
In what ways does the computer help artists make works that are not possible without such technology?
What new uses for computers have artists discovered?
How has computer technology affected art made today?
How has computer technology affected our assumptions about art?

The artists selected for this exhibition were chosen from across the United States and beyond, in keeping with these questions and looking at how artists have embraced the use of the computer. A wide net was cast over the disciplines of visual art in order to see how ubiquitous the use of the computer is. Another consideration was to go in a different direction other than what is overtly apparent as digital art. The works included in this exhibition suggest how using the computer may be helping artists to reinvent traditional modes of working and thinking about what they are creating. The title for the exhibition (a play on words which comes from the “merge visible” option in the layer palette of Photoshop)and is meant to be associated with the idea of merging the computer and other art making tools, both analog and digital, old and new.

A unique aspect of MERGE VISUAL explores the merging of the computer and moving images, i.e. film and video. For this part of the exhibition, artists were asked to create works specifically for the Planetarium, an immersive environment that references the concepts of simulation, Virtual Reality, spectacle, the history of “light shows”, synaesthesia, and lumia. Many of these artists admitted that they were in “uncharted territory” but the spirit of crossing boundaries can be seen here in the merging of art and invention to create something new.

MERGE VISUAL, an exhibit exploring this relationship between art and digital technology, opened at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Macon, Georgia on Friday, Sept. 12 and will continue until Nov. 2.

With the work of over 40 artists from 14 states and two countries, MERGE VISUAL shows technology’s nationwide and international impact on art. The exhibit and planetarium program showcase art from as close as Macon, Ga. and as far away as Ireland.

Craig Coleman, associate professor of art at Mercer University, is the guest curator for MERGE VISUAL. He is also an accomplished artist who has exhibited his work nationally and in Ireland. He is represented by Paul Sharpe Contemporary Art in New York, NY and Andenken Gallery in Denver, CO.

The Museum, located at 4182 Forsyth Road in Macon, Ga., is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m., and the last Friday of the month from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
For more information call 478-477-3232 or go to www.masmacon.com.