Below is a provocative review on the digital cultural festival put on by Sheffield based company LoveBytes. Among other things, it included an interactive art installation where users can paint on a virtual canvas, called ‘Body Paint’ by Mehmet Akten. The review has been written by Ruth Wilde…

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Call me old fashioned, but I felt a slight case of Technophobia this month as I witnessed the latest of our heritage to be upgraded at the relentless hands (or wires) of technology. It appears that cyberspace has now digitised the artworld at the Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery in its latest show Lovebytes present Code:Craft, an interactive display of computer generated craft.

Stepping into the exhibition I thought for a second that I had accidentally arrived at the curious juvenile’s science dreamland, with excitable children jumping all around the room. Now I may seem a killjoy to the smaller people’s uninhibited joy, but despite my protests, I found it quite uplifting to see some natural ­if barbaric enthusiasm in the normally library-quiet gallery. My uneasiness was caused however through the fact that this technicoloured chaos of glaring special effects and the suspiciously DNA resembling models were attached with so called label of it being art. Amongst the sophisticated show of machine created thrill, it was easy to brush aside our more savage traditions like that dusty old skill of carving like we did Stonehenge, lumps of old rock into antiquated ‘sculpture’ along with that queer invention where people actually used to sit for hours on end, marking colours onto a flat surface, I forget the name…Oh yes, Painting.

The Sheffield based company Lovebytes set out to show how any novice with computer access can use ‘open source’ software to recreate and ‘draw parallels’ between traditional arts such as Chinese watercolours. The exhibition no doubt recreates these traditions in more garish and as my old art teacher would say more ‘nasty’ colours than the originals, as in Mehmet Akten’s ‘Body Paint’, the interactive projection, that I daresay was inspired by Abstract Expressionism. In spite of all these impressive simulations I am unpersuaded in thinking what could be better than the real thing? The fact that these modern creations compromise of simply bits and bytes creatively coded appears flawed as ‘Body Paint’ is simultaneously being projected over 150 miles away at the V&A in London so there is no original. With a hacker using his own craft you could probably have ‘Body Paint’ projected in comfort onto the walls of your living room.

My own love/hate relationship with creative technology is reflected currently with societies struggle to safely place this ever consuming beast whose latest prey is the millions of dear cherished books that face disappearing into techno smog. There are currently two television programmes which reflect the conflicting views, on the plugged in side we have the BBC’s ‘The Virtual Revolution’ a programme which untangles the internet’s rise to power and in the switched off I-don’t-even-own-a-T.V. corner we have ‘Mastercrafts’ attempting to rekindle of our love for the once hand crafted, mass produced objects we daily take for granted. These two programmes highlight numerous advantages and disadvantages of technology, allowing the viewer to make their own personal opinions.

Along with the numerous outstanding benefits given to us by technology, I am not opposed to all things digital when it comes to creativity. The rapid increase of art on the web means people can experience a new form of art set in the right context; to be watched on their computer. The Heavy Industries website, www.yhchang.com is the best example of free for all art, where I could not imagine it in a better context than on the web. The benefits of online art are also not discounting valuable websites such as artybuzz.com, which enable potential art buyers to view a vast range of diverse styles to suit their own requirements and taste, all at a few clicks of a button, whilst allowing the handmade efforts of the artists to remain in the technology which allows for such open access. Nevertheless, when it comes to the gallery, the white walled space these days is used to provide an escape from the devices of fast paced life, to reflect in only our human bodies preferably surrounded by solid concrete substance. I can only hope that this is not the beginning of the arts institution being absorbed by the robots.

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Give us your thoughts and opinions on digital artwork…is it a step in the right direction for the future of art? or an invasive force that will not stand the test of time?