ATC @ UCB: Formula Art : Computers as One Dimensional Translators November 10, 2003

Tracing his work through the last 15 years, Campbell considers recurring themes in computer mediated art. Starting with "Interactivity" and ending with "Data Aestheticization", Campbell argues that computer art is in danger of becoming formulaic.

The media of Campbell's work has gone through a progression from film to video to interactive installation to electronic sculpture. Thematically his work has been about human memory and its relationship to time and movement from both psychological and scientific perspectives. His earlier interactive works were often in the structure of a psychological mirror, where the viewer's response to a
work became part of the work itself, as in a feedback system. More recently he has been exploring perception at the threshold of recognition of moving images looking for what kinds of meaning can be expressed with extremely small amounts of information?

Having spent the last 3 years thinking about the "pixel" as the atomic structure of a digital representation, Campbell will discuss his conclusion that the pixel as a visual element exists only as a media and art-based contrivance to give us something to grasp onto (or to see) as "digital". Campbell will also argue that prevalent "Art by Number" methods evolved naturally out of the inherent structure of the
computer.