Rodney Chang, better known as the Internet's Pygoya, Cyberartist, was the first digital artist to exhibit in Honolulu, back in 1985. Since then he has exhibited around the world, including Paris, New York City, Russia, Germany, England, India, and Japan. His 1988 solo show at Shangahi Art Museum was China's historic first computer art exhibition. In 2002 Dr. Chang curated and organized East Hawaii Cultural Center's first International Cyberart Exhibition and World Tour. Through the 1980s-90s the artist completed his first major project of computer art (over 150 large painted canvases), "PaintOuts" (as in "printouts") or "Cyberpaintings", before dedicating his creative works solely to digital online display , as content for his virtual 3D museum, The Pygoya Webmuseum, established in 1997. His latest major contribution to the visual arts of the Web is "100 Cyberbabies" (as in new art born on the Internet) exhibition.
Currently the artist is curator and director for his online virtual reality Truly Virtual Web Art Museum, webmaster for Las Vegas Art Musuem Web site (until 2002) and the East Hawaii Cultural Center Pygoya made history in organizing and traveling to Calcutta for India's first ever international digital art exhibition (1999). In early 2002 Truly Virtual Web Art Museum proudly greeted its 1 millionth visitor.

The computer serves as assistant in discovering new art visions for Pygoya. The artist, over the years' parade of changing personal computer systems, always attempts to reinvent his developed "style" on the computer, as much his own input as the evolving technical tools. Then, instead of a hard copy printout that other computer artists exhibit and sell, an intermediary actual painting on canvas is produced to "dedigitize" the work This is done in order to remove a purely technical feeling of computer graphics, which some consider a bit "sterile". Then the working painting is photographed, "redigitalized" and modified through editing refinements by the artist. The "final" work of art are either Giclée or Epson archival inkjet prints or such derived digital cyberart is placed online for exhibition in Internet cyberspace virtual reality galleries, such as the 3DPygoya Webmuseum . Most recently, purely digital images are garnered from 3D software and posted as art created for the Internet to contribute to the global visual arts online cyberculture. As such Pygoya's 100 Cyberbabies in 2002 were inspired by the online life of the artist.

We Cyberartists have tunnel vision. Through our art, best fitted to the digital network that the spidery Web is, we pipeline our "cyber"-works for "cyber"-culture's sake that is globally prevalent. When I first established a presence on line with my "Truly Virtual Web Art Museum" in 1997, I had difficulty finding good digital art online to fill the virtual gallery spaces with international computer art. It was pretty much a vast e-wasteland. Cultural experience back then was more about taking up residency in free "home"-pages such as Geocities, and flirting in then novel online "chatrooms." ... [ read entire article ]

digital > cyberart
Rodney Chang : the creative process
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Rodney Chang
www.lastplace.com
submission date: November 21, 2002