Content area
Full Text
TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEUR AND ART COLLECTOR PETER Hirshberg is at home in his SoHo loft, talking about his contemporary art collection.
Besides postmodern French cinema posters, photographs by Robert Longo and a sketch by Javacheff Christo, there's something else that's pretty au courant. He touches a screen hanging on a wall and it immediately jumps to life with colorful swirls and gliding geometric shapes. Stereo speakers emit low blowing and swirling sounds as the shapes move across the screen.
This is an interactive digital art piece by New York City artist Mark Napier titled Waiting Room, which up to 50 owners share from a central server via the Internet. As Mr. Hirshberg sketches his finger over the screen's surface, adding a series of squares, another owner invisibly sketches in blue circles from across town, and the software melds the two additions into a sfumato compositional whole.
"This is such an exciting and dynamic new medium," Mr. Hirshberg says, as he leans over the screen. "It is artistic and emotional, and people are blown away by it."
Digital art is gaining momentum as a recognized art form. Equal parts hardware, software and old-fashioned artistic expression, it has captured the imagination of dealers and collectors at all levels. Bigname collectors are buying it; so, too, are little collectors like Mr. Hirshberg.
A growing number of public commissions are available, and a few galleries have sprung up that are exclusively devoted to the genre. A...