Computer art - an oxymoron? Views from the mainstream

Hello. My name is Dorothy Spencer, and this is a special session entitled Computer Art - An Oxymoron? Views from the Mainstream.Before I introduce the panel members I want to tell you two things briefly about the session. First I'm going to tell you what the session does not focus on, and to do that I'm going to read from the SIGGRAPH 89 Show daily that came out this morning. So, for any of you that read it and came here expecting to hear museum curators, gallery owners and artists discuss the evolution of computer art as a means for artistic expression, you can go away now; we're not going to do it.What we are going to do is talk about the fact that computer generated imagery --- although it's been around for several decades, the mainstream art world has been slow to acknowledge it as a viable medium for the creation of fine art. There have been few computer art exhibitions and even fewer reviews. Like photography, is computer art going to take three-quarters of a century before it's accepted into the mainstream?Is it partially the fault of the artist? Are artists too wrapped up in the technological processes to be concerned with the aesthetic results?Does the majority of the artists using the computer not participate in regular juried shows because they feel their work is not understood?Does the technology need to be understood before the work can be judge aesthetically?These are just a few of the questions that we hope to discuss this morning and hopefully we'll have answers for. After each panelist has made his or her presentation, we'll let the panelists respond to each other's remarks before we let you people loose with questions and answers.My first panelist is Harry Rand. He's curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. He'll be followed by Kathy Huffman, She's the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Followed by Philip Pearlstein, internationally-known artist and former professor of painting at Brooklyn College; Bob Riley, curator of media art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Will Stapp, curator of photography of the National Portrait Gallery; and Vivian Rainer, art critic for the New York Times. We hope you enjoy the session. Thank you.