It rated only a small headline when the news broke in December, but the more you look at the international symposium on electronic art coming to San Jose in 2006, the bigger it gets.
For one thing, this biennial gathering of the technology world's top artists, organized by the Netherlands-based Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA), meets only in cities with serious cultural and electronics chops -- Helsinki, Paris, Sydney, Montreal, Chicago, Manchester and Nagoya in past years. For another, San Jose's landing of this plum is planned as a catalyst for Silicon Valley's own biennial arts/technology festival that'll open here simultaneously and continue long after 2006 is history.
For all of this, credit public relations maven Andrea Cunningham, who had been organizing interactive media festivals in Los Angeles, and Beau Takahara, former manager of individual giving at the Tech Museum of Innovation. They formed an organization known as Ground Zero in 2000 (the name was changed to ZeroOne after the Sept. 11 attacks, for obvious reasons) to create a festival in Silicon Valley where artists and technologists could interact.
This is going to be big,'' promises Dietz, who's now on board as director of ZeroOne. ``We'll be announcing two major corporate sponsorships on May 22. We've hired a producer for our festival, Wanda Webb, who is a veteran of the digital art scene globally. Our first resident artists arrive Thursday,'' and will be housed at Montalvo Center for the Arts in Saratoga. ``And during the festival, in addition to all the exhibits at the convention center, the Tech and the King Library, galleries throughout the city and valley -- Works, ICA, the Palo Alto Cultural Center, 40 in all -- will have related exhibits by more than 100 more artists.
``This is just such a natural for the area,'' says Dan Keegan, executive director of the San Jose Museum of Art. The old main library, planned to be the museum's new site for electronic art, won't be ready in time, unfortunately (that should happen in 2007, Keegan notes), ``but it'll be perfect for the future, the 2008 biennial.'' As for 2006, ``There presently is no major festival of this sort in North America. It should be here. It's a no-brainer.''