“Intelligent Design Project III”

Jim Zanzi and Ellen Sandor, (art)n, The Other Window: Distortion ‘06, 2006.

If we ever transcend our biological bodies, maybe we’ll realize that tech-genius/inventor Ray Kurzweil was right when he wrote that humans and computers would eventually become one. While we have our bods intact, we can peruse this revelatory exhibition that features the Kurzweil-inspired collective (art)n and a bevy of artists who value intelligent design and want to playfully re-create the history of mankind.

More than 20 pieces of art are connected by red tape, each signifying some historical event. Early on, a biblical reference to Daniel’s first vision—a lion with eagle wings—is supposedly reinterpreted through two digital portraits: one of a smiling African-American woman and another of a white man wearing a silver cross. Job/identity titles ranging from “mass murderer” to “CEO” flash at the bottom of these pictures, and as we watch, we prejudge these two anonymous people according to the text. Though this piece is conceptually strong, it doesn’t connect to the heavy-handed reference. Catherine Forster’s prepackaged Box Set 2007, a careful video preservation of each Earth season, is more subtly evocative—and it will come in handy if Al Gore’s environmental predictions come true. The true stand-outs of this show are (art)n’s PHSColograms, otherwise known as “daguerreotypes of Virtual Reality.” These large-scale, holographlike light boxes house otherworldly, virtual realities. In three-dimensional Townhouse Distorted, swooping vortexes encompass a group of nude sculptural male and female figures while virtual children seem to “play outside” on a dimensional plane.

Even if Kurzweil’s predictions don’t happen, the art in this exhibition makes viewers wonder what lies ahead.