Digital Dialogues

The Cincinnati Arts Association and the Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts present: Digital Dialogues, an exhibition that brings together four artists, Rich Bitting, Kim Burleigh, Jim Campbell, and Alan Rath, who embrace new technology in the creation of their artwork. Through the use of computers and digital technology, each artist has actively engaged their individual interests in sound, video, photography, and sculpture reflecting the ever advancing technological changes that continue to affect our society. 

Rich Bitting, a Cincinnati artist and composer, presents a sound installation in the upper level of the gallery utilizing sounds recorded from the various mechanical components of the Aronoff Center. Systems such as the HVAC, boiler room pumps, hydraulic elevator pumps, as well as water and gas pumps, were pre-recorded and synthesized into an interactive computerized score projected off a suspended satellite dish invoking the sonic metaworld of the building. 

Kim Burleigh, director of Graduate Studies in Fine Arts at the University of Cincinnati, uses computer programs to scan industrial and everyday objects, digitally composing them into synthetic photograms resulting in beautiful Iris prints. 

Jim Campbell, a Chicago native and MIT graduate with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, creates interactive video installations that collage past and present elements of time through the use of stored memory programs. 

Alan Rath, a Cincinnati native now living in Oakland, California, and also a graduate of MIT in electrical engineering, creates technological sculptural assemblages fusing interactive movement and sound with projected images of eyes, noses, mouths, and tongues in exposed cathode ray tubes, that effectively humanize these precisely engineered wonders.