The recent show at Refusalon titled High Touch/High Tech was a group exhibition consisting mostly of conceptual art. Using technology's media "Gutenbergian to digital," the work had been assembled in an apparent attempt to support the noble admonition of show participant John Gilleland: "We must select the technologies of the future We cannot afford to let them select themselves."

John Hoppin, Untitled, at Refusalon, San Francisco. (Photo: Vegar Abelshes.)

The logic of that dog-chasing-its-tail comment aside, this show said less about the art/technologv dynamic than about the state of conceptual art. Over the past few years, conceptual art has become tedious, trite and annoying. Too dependent on surreptitious self-reference. Too dependent on text and verbal explanations to give access to meaning. Too dependent on "the idea" as the aesthetic, and less concerned with technique, craft and skill in handling the media of choice. Others go further, promoting the thesis that conceptual art is, if not dead, at least mining its last synaptic gap twitches of life.

But, just as painting has survived "it is dead" preachings, so too will conceptual art, given the more forgiving perspective of history. Conceptual art now is in the separation stage heading for divorce. It occupies a Black Hole moment between the firmament of "I pronounce you and the free-fall of irreconcilable differences. With its marriage to Duchamp-a century long mélange of inspiration, rich imitation and false sightings-no longer passionate, it negotiates, awkward and erratic, the unfamiliar world called post-relastionship dating. Its once-upon-a-time virility and fecundity imporent in the here and now. Its future in need of creative viagra as it pursues, and not for thefirsttime, its current object of affection, science/technology.

Of the show's seventeen works on view, X-ray Gods by Shu-Min Lin was the most accomplished example of the techno-art premise. The interactive piece consisted of a series of five X-ray plates of contemporary cultural icons that the artist had beatified - St. Pokemon, St. Barbie, St. Viagra, St. Buzz Light Year and St. Minnie Mouse - which illuminated when the viewer passed before a motion detector placed just above them. Most of the other work in High Touch/High Tech, unfortunately, came off as little more than library reports, science fair projects and social studies papers on designer steroids.

Heather Sparks, Tom's Twister, plastic laminate, at Refusalon, San Francisco. (Photos: Vegar Abelshes.)

Pam Davis, Fly Cycle-The Meeting (laptop computer screen and digital print): four graphs choreographed to measure the brain activity of fruit flies related only as dysfunctional spasms. Desiree Holman, Mariab Carey (Plexiglas and graphic design): its 'celebrity defined as spread sheet analysis" was only a song this market finessed singer's lemmings would appreciate. Sonya Rapoport, Make Me A Jewish Man (computer, mouse, software): though point and click interactive and somewhat humorous (gentle smirk to benign amusement), its attempt to "codify gender by interweaving the Morphology of the olive tree with the Talmudic concept of the Ideal Man" made no connection beyond slick reportage. Ted Purves, Water Project (paper, plastic, graphics, water, CD): this "collaboration with others" was aesthetically generic and, with the exception of various sounds of water and ship engines, emotionally vacant.

In the middle ground of possibilities, and tending toward successful, were the works of John Hoppin and Heather Sparks. Hoppin's Untitled was a white TV with vertical bands of color scrolling slowly, left to right, then back again. The vast spectrum of colors-each band about an inch wide-were apparently those found in the show's curator, Larry Rinder's eyes. The intent of the piece was mesmerizing-you didn't want to stop watching until the spectrum bar code scrolled to completion-and therefore hypnotic in result.

Mari Andrews, Penduluous Tremulous, plastic laminate, wire, stones, at Refusalon, San Francisco. (Photos: Vegar Abelshes.)

Sparks's Tom's Twister was a four-foot high laminate sheet with enlarged and digitally imprinted scans of her hair and skin samples. The laminate curled, spiral and natural, allowing the material to dictate its own form. The translucent scans, genetic references horizontally striated in vertical bands, referenced certain individual characteristics which cumulatively rcvealcd a digitizcd self-portrait of the artist. The best kudos went to Mari Andrews's Pendulous Tremulous, despite the piece being the one furthest from the show's techno-art promise. It was a Calderesque wall sculpture of sunflower petals encapsulated in plastic laminate attached to the ends of wires with small stones. The wires, each bent in a gentle ellipsis, exuded kinetic potential; the antagonistic play of physics between gravity and the tensile strength of the weighted wire. The piece was utterly simple: line drawing as sculpture. It was rhythmical, organically lyrical, and most of all, beautiful, a condition that eluded all of the others.

—Sandy Thompson

High Touch/High Tech closed in April at Refusalon, San Francisco. Other artists included in the exhibition were Margaret Crane and Jon Winet, Herman de Vries, Chris Drury, Ken Goldberg, Naftali and Christdbal Perez.

Sandy Thompson is a freelance writer based in Northern Catitornia.