MOMA PRESENTS ‘AUTOMATIC UPDATE’

AVV 8-3 #708262

NEW YORK CITY — The Museum of Modern Art presents the exhibition “Automatic Update” at The Yoshiko and Akio Morita Gallery, second floor, to September 3.

The dotcom era infused media art with a heady energy. Hackers, programmers and tinkerer-revisionists from North America, Europe and Asia developed a vision of art drawn from the technology of recent decades. Robotic pets, PDAs and the virtual worlds on the Internet provoked artists to make works with user-activated components and lo-res, Game Boy screens.

Now that “new media” excitement has waned, an exhibition that illuminates the period is timely. “Automatic Update” is the first reassessment of its kind, reflecting the artists’ ambivalence to art, revealed through the ludicrous, comical and absurd use of the latest technologies.

Barbara London, associate curator, department of media, The Museum of Modern Art, organized the exhibit.

The Museum of Modern Art is at 11 West 53rd Street. For information, www.moma.org or 212-708-9400.