Michael Wright aka Mrags Writer is exhibiting work as part of “Digital Art.LA International New Media Expo”

Michael Wright is exhibiting work as part of “Digital Art.LA International New Media Expo” at the Los Angeles Center For Digital Art in Downtown Los Angeles. Digital Art L.A. is a multi-site international digital art expo in the Gallery Row area of Downtown Los Angeles The centerpiece will be an international new media exhibit of juried submissions hosted by Los Angeles Center For Digital Art selected by Howard Fox, curator of contemporary art, L.A. County Museum of Art.

This exhibit will run through September 6 at LACDA. Los Angeles Center for Digital Art Opening Reception: Thursday August 14, 7-9pm 107 West Fifth Street Los Angeles, CA 90013

Juror's Statement from Howard N. Fox,

Digital technology was initially invented for computing and data storage; later it was developed for use in audio and video equipment; and after that was adapted to all manner of communication and imaging, from cell phones to body scans. But all such applications are rooted in the apprehension, storage, transmission, and display of information - that is, of facts, of data, of any useful worldly intelligence - in the form of binary code. At least until the artists got to it.

It is hardly surprising, given the roots of modern art in notions of a revolutionary avant-garde, that progressive artists in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries devoured new materials, new technologies, and new art forms with a prodigious and omnivorous appetite. Digital technologies are no exception, and whether artists today use digital tools to aid in generating traditional art forms (for example by making virtual sketches toward paintings or sculpture) or as the basis of experimental new art forms that are generated by and/or displayed via binary code, many artists around the world have indeed gone digital.

In selecting the works for DigitalArt.LA, no aesthetic parameters or requirements were set. Artists were free to submit work of any artistic persuasion - and they did, with copious entries that ranged from moving images to interactive installations to still images. Yet it seems that certain aesthetic predilections may have been at work. The works that asserted themselves most strongly tended to be those that integrally and overtly engage digital technology in the final form of the work. Thus, while some very compelling "straight" photography made with digital cameras and print methods is deservedly represented, the preponderance of works here tend to manipulate the factuality of the real world or to invent worlds that exist only in a realm of digital generation and display. The exhibition is characterized less by faithful reportage than by invention, transfiguration, and wonderment.

So while the "ancient" history of digital technology may have its DNA in strictly practical, informational tasking, the interests and imaginations of the artists who have appropriated those technologies in recent years have evolved them into agents of human psyche that, like much art throughout human history, has only a passing focus on things as they are and much more engagement with our dreams, our fears, our desires.

Howard N. Fox Juror, DigitalArt.LA
http://digitalart.la/index.html

Michael Wright is a painter who began to explore Digital Media in the mid 1980s on an Amiga computer. He exhibited his first Digital Prints in 1989. He has exhibited digital and traditional works on a national & international level over the past 38 years. He is currently exploring art and art education in virtual reality. Wright is also currently exhibiting work in “Omage: The Artists, Designers, and Writers of Otis College of Art and Design” at Track 16 Gallery, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica thru Saturday August 30. Wright is featured in a one person exhibition on the LearningTimes Squirrel Island in the virtual world Second Life opening Aug 1 2008. The exhibit which will remain up for several months consists of real life works that have been upload to the virtual environment and displayed in two different galleries on the island. Dome West 15,166,22 and Tail Gallery. http://www.track16.com

Wright's digital work is represented in “The Art of the Digital Age” my Bruce Wands, “Going Digital” by Joseph Nalven and JD Jarvis, "Computer Graphics World" '25 year Retrospective of Digital Art" in its January 2002 issue and in the magazine’s "Portfolio" section of the November, 2001, issue. The article was called "Pixel Perfect: Michael Wright". Wright is profiled in "Computer Graphics Companion" edited by Jeffrey McConnell Anthony Ralston and Edwin Reilly. His work also appears in "The Computer in the Visual Arts" by Anne Morgan Spalter of Brown University, published by Addison Wesley and is also published in Linda Jacob's seminal book, "CyberArts: Exploring Art & Technology". He and his work have been featured in Wired, Micro Publishing News, Computer Graphics & Applications and Agent X, Television Tokyo. Wright's digital prints are in the collection of the State Museum in Novorsibirsk, Russia and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London UK, the repository for British art book & print collections. Wright is a professor in the Digital Media and Liberal Studies Programs at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He is a member of SIGGRAPH, Ylem, ASCI, ACM and the Los Angeles Printmaking Society. He is the recipient of the Otis Award of Excellence in Arts Education and served as Art Gallery Chair for ACM SIGGRAPH 2003 in San Diego California. He was a guest artist at the SIGGRAPH 2004 & 2005 conferences in Los Angeles where he created the “Portrait Virus” at the SIGGRAPH Guerilla Studio. Wright was one of six resident artists invited to SIGGRAPH’S first Artists in Residence Program at SIGGRAPH 2007, in San Diego. Wright as also curated into the SIGGRAPH international exhibition “Global Eyes”.