The Virtual Studio (Work in Progress)

"Symposia like ISEA97 are increasingly important as we see the world of electronic imagery expand exponentially, its intimate interaction with humans increasing every day. At ISEA we have the opportunity to meet and speculate on quite what that electronic embrace means, how we control it, how it affects and changes us and on the role of new technologies as part of our artistic worlds and spiritual lives.

Creative minds and powerful imaginations help us address these questions, maybe even offer hints of answers, show the most innovative ways to manipulate and enhance extant and emerging technologies and, in the studio-laboratories of places like this, to invent a picture of the future in these new "chambers of the imagination."
Tony Jones, President of the School of the Art, Chicago. September 1997

The symposium’s theme of “Content” endeavoured to diminish the emphasis on new media tools themselves, in favour of the actual artistic product – what was significant and important about the work, how ideas formed by electronic means interacted and merged with those from traditional media and art making, and other issues related to why we use technology, rather than how.

In the exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, this version of The Virtual Studio (Work in Progress) presented an immersive drawn greyscale representation of a space that appeared alive and inhabited in opposition to the clean, shiny plastic perfection so typical of 90's virtual space. Virtual pets, ants and flies moved randomly through the studio, driven by programming that gave them an apparent artificial intelligence. There was dirt and things were broken, bringing some apparent reality to the virtual. It was possible for the viewer to immerse themself in the world at human scale or to view the world as a pet, a fly or an ant.

• Organisation