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Crash? Restart. Cyberart!
The electric aesthetic of new media curator George Fifield
by Sasha Costanza-Chock
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 For today's artists, computers are potentially useful tools in each step of the creative process. This is true both for those who have long histories of work in other media and those who have never worked outside the domain of digital technology. Visionary and new media curator George Fifield foresaw the expanding role of computers: into the studios of photographers, painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers and artists who cross all boundaries. But he wasn't content to just sit back and watch it all unfold.
George began to sketch out the contours of an idea that would eventually morph into the 1999 Boston Cyberarts Festival: a tour-de-force that brought together over 100 exhibitions of visual arts, music, dance, theatrical performances, film and video presentations, and symposia at sixty arts and educational organizations throughout Massachusetts. The Festival was an incredible success, and nothing like it had ever been attempted in Boston -- or anywhere in the world.
As George built the festival, hundreds of people got involved, most volunteering their time and effort. "A lot of what I did was just sort of watch over that process and keep everybody talking, keep the plates spinning in the air," George says. Still, it's clear that he planted the seeds that finally sprouted last May, when the first Boston Cyberarts Festival finally flowered -- with roots deeper, branches spread wider, and fruit more wondrous than even George had imagined.
But the Cyberarts Festival was far from his first foray into the role of mediator between the worlds of art and technology. George also founded VideoSpace, a collective of media artists who have organized and presented exhibitions of video art around New England for the last decade. His program at the DeCordova Museum, Media Space, is the only institutional space devoted solely to the media arts in New England. In short, George has always forged ahead of the front lines of new media, gathering resources and sharing them with as many artists as possible.
ZineZone interviewed George at his home and office in Jamaica Plain, amidst the aftermath of the 1999 Cyberarts Festival. Press releases, fliers, photos, reviews, and media clippings were stacked in piles everywhere; strewn across the desk were three-inch human figures that George explained were demo sculptures made for the Festival by scanning, scaling, and printing a grown man with a 3D scanner and printer. After our interview, George swept them away to begin planning the Cyberarts Festival 2001.
Next page | Telepathic technologies
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Meet Cyberarts Festival founder George Fifield in this video clip.
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George Fifield
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