Digital Millenium: The Museum of Computer Art

When you think of art, you probably imagine paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other hand-crafted works.  You might stretch your definition to include performance and found-art pieces, but likely any piece you consider to be art is the result of physical creation.  But what about non-physical art:  works that were created by someone but do not exist in the real world.  Are those art?  Certainly they are, according to the Museum of Computer Art, which aims to collect and display this kind of virtual art.

At this museum, art is categorized by its genesis.  You can view art that was created by manipulating pixels, by 3D rendering, or by algorithms and fractals, among other genres.  You can also search by artist or by the year the art was created.  For each artwork you can view larger images and interpretation by the artist, although it can be hard to get this information.  For some images, you have to click on a thumbnail of each piece just to see its title, and then click again to view any other interpretation.

The museum has also gathered several essays and other pieces of criticism about digital art on its website, which is helpful for the novice visitor.  Some of these are a little stuffy, but for the most part they're written to be at least somewhat helpful in understanding this new form of art.

The only thing I found really off-putting about this museum is the ads, which are incredibly distracting.  They're everywhere - on top of the pages, to the sides, even mixed in with text.  The homepage is such a cluttery mess that it's hard to tell what is and isn't part of the museum.  This is especially disappointing because the Museum of Computer Art tries hard to present itself as a formal museum, but this is greatly undermined by ads asking me to subscribe to People and check out Eastern European dating sites.

If you can get past this commercialization, though, this museum is worth checking out to learn about new forms of art.  There's a lot of art to browse, and enough supporting materials to help you understand why it matters.  If the Museum of Computer Art could only present a more professional image, it might earn its place as a virtual counterpoint to the world's physical art museums.


The Museum of Computer Art
Mission:  To promote digital art in its various forms and manifestations, including such categories as 3-D, fractals, photo-based, mixed technique, computer-drawn, surreal, video, etc.
Website:  moca.virtual.museum