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New Genre opened Thursday, with exhibitions at Living Arts, Liggett Studio and Tulsa Artists' Coalition Gallery. I talked about the Liggett Studio exhibition here, and it's worth reading again. Everything I thought/felt when I first saw the exhibit was there the second time 'round. You'll want to see that for yourself.

My only complaint about the New Genre opening was that I felt kind of rushed, hurrying to each gallery in order to have time to hear the artists speak. With only 30 minutes between artists' talks, exhibit goers weren't left with much time in between the talks to really absorb each exhibit. Luckily, the exhibits up at Liggett and Living Arts will hang until March 26, so you still have some time to get out and see them. And I highly suggest you do.

The exhibit at Living Arts is [::ART.net::] and is curated by local video artist, middle school teacher and rockabilly musician David McPherson. From releases: "Internet art (often called net art) is art that uses the Internet as its primary platform. Rather than simply online documentation of artworks, these pieces were created specifically for the Internet and take advantage of one or more of its technological characteristics."

In his artist's talk, McPherson made the point that technology and art have always sort of "bumped up against" one another. Whenever new technology has emerged, McPherson asserted, artists have always latched onto it to see what they can do with it, how they can use it to their gain, whether that new technology has been a sable brush or the Internet.

Living Arts right now sort of resembles a computer lab, with 17 artists' works displayed throughout the gallery, four on large projection screens (featured artistts) and 13 on tabletop PCs and Macs.

Featured artists
Mathwrath: Mathwrath's work draws mainly work draws mainly from the aesthetics and ideas of old technology and vaporware to deal with information "pollution" and the digital footprints we leave behind. One element of Mathwrath's site is a real-time Web performance of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman over forums of bot-created Web sites for pyramid schemes.

Gregory Chatonsky: Chatonsky's body of work includes interactive installations, networked urban devices, photographs and sculptures and attempts to create new forms of fiction. The work on display at Living Arts is "Etat du Monde (World State)" and shows a woman reacting to headlines pulled from the AP wire as though they are the narrative of her life.

Antoine Schmitt: In "Time Slip," Schmitt analyzes RSS news feeds, changing their tense from past to future, "provoking the motive energy of unpredictability and risk."
Patrick Cunningham: TelePorch is a cross-city artwork, projected live from Chicago. Via Skype, exhibit goers can sit and talk with Cunningham in real time. Inspiration for the exhibit comes from the Amish communities and their ability to improve the bonds of a community.

Other artists
Martijn Hendricks: His "12 Glowing Men" is an enhanced fragment of Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men.

Britney Cluster: (Can't find the link. Will post later.) Artists Bob Paris, Deven Langston and Brian Glass compare Google hits for "cluster bombs" to Google hits for "Britney Spears" and then analyze public psychic toxivity.

Mrs. Cory Arcangel: (Can't find the link. Will post later.) Scarlet Electric's Web site devoted to renowned digital media media artist Cory Arcangel is part fansite, part cultural critique and part exercise in stalking.

Wave: (Can't find the link. Will post later.) James Schaeffer's site is a combination of generic HTML marquee code and memories of the family at the beach.

A is for Apple: David Clark's site is a complicated archive of links between network interconnectivity and the cultural, religious, cryptographic and agricultural purposes of apples.

Appended: Artist Edmond Salsali has created an interactive, digital exploration of the junction between figuration and abstraction.

Playdamage: Curt Cloninger has created a massive, dischordant, ongoing multimedia journal, with 70+ screens and growing.

World of Female Avatars: Evelin Stermitz's site is a survey project for expanded understanding of women and their relation to their bodies.

Spamology: Irad Lee's site is a live, rich audiovisual representation of word frequencies in spam e-mail messages.

Smoke, Mirrors: Chris Collins' "billowing" site is a display of regenerative clouds of smoke generated by HTML code.

One of the things McPherson pointed out about the works in this exhibit is that they are free and available to the public at any time. You don't have to pay admission (although entrance to Living Arts is free) or visit a gallery to see them. You can just open up your laptop and have a look whenever you like. And, you can get out there and search the Web for even more artists and works utilizing the Internet as their medium.