http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/sacks_pr.html
The King of Digital Art
His New York gallery is turning high tech into a hot commodity. Now
he wants to bring new-media masterpieces to the masses.
By Tom Vanderbilt
In a conference room at Handsome, one of the largest fashion
companies in South Korea, Steven Sacks, wearing an Etro suit and a
Burberry tie - trademark furls of blond hair spilling from either
side of his head - is trying to explain the nuances of the art
business to Chung Jae-Bong, the president. "I will call up some key
collectors before an art fair happens and say, 'You should buy this,'
and without even seeing the piece, they'll buy it," Sacks says.
"Twice it's happened with this one collector - and he nearly doubled
his money in three days."
Mr. Chung, as he is always addressed, listens carefully, his eyes
focused intensely on Sacks. This is the first time they've met, so
it's a feeling-out, a getting-to-know-your-business-model sit-down.
Sacks is the founder of bitforms, a New York-based gallery devoted
exclusively to what has been variously termed new media art, digital
art, interactive art, and software art. He came to Seoul at the
behest of Mr. Chung, who took a small garment manufacturing company
and turned it into a fashion design, retail, and real estate empire.
Now among Korea's wealthiest businessmen, Mr. Chung wants Sacks to
open a branch of bitforms inside Mue, his upscale clothing boutique
in Seoul. "I need to understand the viability of having a gallery in
your space," Sacks says. "Just like you, I've built a brand, and I
want to make sure it stays at a high level."
Bitforms first caught Mr. Chung's attention last year, when Sacks
sold an ensemble of artwork to the W Seoul Walkerhill Hotel. The
centerpiece of that collection is a 6- by 12-foot mural version of
New York artist Daniel Rozin's Wooden Mirror, a work that uses a
hidden camera and custom software to carefully tilt 1,500 wooden
"pixels" to reflect the viewer's image.
"When something happens in Korea, Mr. Chung has to be the first one
through the door," says Grace Jung Yeon Yang, a Handsome consultant
serving as translator, as we depart in Mr. Chung's Mercedes SK 500
after the meeting. When the W opened, she explains, he was impressed
by its novel use of digital artwork. Mr. Chung had been casting about
for a gallery to house within Mue, she says, and when he saw the
works displayed in the W, he saw a match. "It was something he
thought was fresh."
The W deal epitomizes Sacks' ambition to bring new kinds of art to
new kinds of people in new kinds of places. He's an evangelist of
electronic art, forever touting his stable of artists, riffing on
"interactive screen-based experiences," and brimming with plans for
new ways to exhibit digital art. He's also changing how art is sold.
In August, for example, Sacks launched his "software art space" Web
site. For around $100, customers can purchase unlimited-edition
software artwork by artists he represents. Sacks plans to start with
eight to ten titles. Each work will come in a specially designed CD-
ROM package.
Later in the day, Mr. Chung takes Sacks to tour the Mue store, in the
modish neighborhood of Cheongdam-dong. Inside, the racks are
minimally adorned with pricey clothing by designers like Balenciaga
and Viktor & Rolf. Sacks walks the perimeter of the vacant third
floor, which is larger than his gallery in Chelsea, and because he
has already studied the blueprints beforehand, he seems more familiar
with the space than Mr. Chung, who owns more real estate than he can
remember. Mr. Chung takes him to the roof, which Sacks instantly sees
as perfect for art openings - and more. "You could do projection work
onto these other buildings," Sacks says. "You'd need permission, of
course. Unless you own them." Mr. Chung smiles.
"What does he want?" Sacks asks Yang later. "Does he want it to be a
support for Mue, something that's connected to that environment? Or
is he looking for it be a business? The business side of it is not
volume, like fashion. I just want to articulate to Mr. Chung in a way
that he'll understand."
"This is how he explained it to me," Yang responds. "We were in his
office and he said, 'Do you think I would like to have a brand in a
department store, or would I like to own the department store?' I
said, 'Mr. Chung, you'd like to own the department store. Rather than
commissioning [a piece of digital art], why don't we do bitforms
Seoul?'"
"He's not owning," Sacks interjects.
"Of course," demurs Yang.
Bitforms Seoul, Sacks' only gallery outside Manhattan, will open in
September. It's remarkable for a New York art shop to have such a far-
flung outpost - even more so for a young gallery selling
nontraditional art. "Since there is not much of a market for digital
art, there are very few galleries," says Christiane Paul, adjunct
curator of new media at the Whitney Museum in New York. "There is
really nothing comparable to bitforms in its emphasis on software art."
What little market there may be, Sacks hopes to explode open. Just
before his trip to Seoul, he attended the ARCO, an annual art fair in
Madrid. "It was a huge success; we sold a lot of work," he says,
sitting in his gallery, next to an occasionally chirping sculpture by
German artist Peter Vogel made from old transistors. "I brought Danny
Rozin's Wooden Mirror - it was like the Mona Lisa. I had to hire a
person to manage the crowd. To me, there was just this huge
evolutionary moment in the way people were looking at art." Sacks
sold editions of the mirror to a Spanish museum and a Spanish
foundation (Sprint and RadioShack have also purchased versions). The
price: $120,000 and rising. Last year, bitforms topped $1 million in
revenue from reselling and consignment.
Monumental digital art is becoming a popular choice for public
places. Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain was an instant crowd favorite
when it opened last year in Chicago's Millennium Park. The San Jose
airport recently announced a public art competition that will include
"newer forms of visual, digital and information media (digital print,
software art, robotics, interactive installations, multiuser
installations, etc.)." Meanwhile, in cities like Seoul and Berlin,
LED panels and screens are being wrapped around buildings, sometimes
to form entire exteriors.
Digital art is an umbrella term covering a variety of forms, like
software code, cell phone-based works, Internet sites, and physical
sculpture. What loosely unifies this diverse field is that somewhere
along the line, digital technology or software code itself is used in
its creation or display. Standards and Double Standards, a work by
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, consists of 50 buckled belts suspended at waist
level. Controlled by a computerized tracking system, the belts rotate
to follow people in the gallery. As more people walk near the
exhibit, the belts move in a chaotic pattern, evoking invisible
surveillance. Another piece by Lozano-Hemmer, Vectorial Elevation,
takes advantage of pervasive networks. Visitors to www.alzado.net
could change the configurations of light projected above the main
square in Mexico City, and then receive an email showing the result
(the installation moved to Dublin last year). Sacks calls Lozano-
Hemmer "the next Christo," with potential for a much bigger audience.
"With Christo, you had to get on a plane and fly to New York," he
says, referring to The Gates project in Central Park earlier this year.
The world has changed a lot even since Sacks opened his gallery.
Cofounder of the online advertising and branding firm Digital Pulp,
Sacks, a self-described "dotcom burnout," resigned in 1999, he says,
"without really knowing what I was going to do." He was impressed by
two major shows that year featuring digital art: the Whitney's
BitStreams, and 010101.org at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
He saw a market opportunity; there weren't any galleries exclusively
devoted to new media. Sacks, whose father auctioned art and antiques,
thought his background could help him connect with the new crop of
artists. "I understood how they were creating their work, what their
intentions were, and why technology was used as a way of evolving
their process, their ideas."
Still, opening a gallery two months after September 11 was hardly a
propitious move. "I was getting into a business that sold luxury
items," he says, "and into a part of the business that was already
challenging because I had to educate people." Novelty is only half of
it. There are also, as Sacks points out, "issues about archivability,
longevity, just the definition of what it is. Is it an art form? Is
software a medium?"
One of Sacks' first collectors was Peter Hirshberg, a Silicon Valley
entrepreneur and exec (Apple, Gloss.com, Elemental Software) who
displays Mark Napier's Waiting Room and other software artwork on a
dedicated industrial monitor on the wall of his SoHo loft (the
computer running it sits beneath an Alberto Giacometti sculpture).
Hirshberg is one of 50 collectors who own a "share" of Waiting Room.
The networked piece features abstract, swirling shapes and sounds
that can be collectively manipulated via touchscreen. "One night, at
2 am - someone in LA must have come home and started partying - there
was this incredible racket," he says. "I'm listening to this sound -
it isn't the television, it isn't a truck. I thought, 'Oh, I left the
art on.' I turned it off and went to sleep."
Sacks' goal is to move beyond an initial coterie of wealthy geek
aesthetes and into a more mainstream world where affordable plasmas
powered by Mac minis are showing art on the wall of a Wicker Park
loft - or in the home theaters of suburban McMansions. "For under
$1,000, you can set up a dedicated system for software art in your
home," he says. "You can use a wireless mouse to interact, you can do
touchscreen. It's going to allow the proliferation of the art form."
Having a gallery in Korea, Sacks hopes, will help him to build
relationships with big manufacturers like Samsung and LG. "Software
art needs a screen," he says. The flatscreens made in Korea hang on
walls like artwork once did. "My guess is that within five to seven
years, we'll be rolling out a screen on our walls, like a huge canvas."
Still, the shock of the new can be a hard sell - photography took a
century to gain acceptance as an art form. Whether Americans are
ready to hang screens on their wall that don't get HBO remains to be
seen, while some software art seems little more than high-concept
screensaver. The Whitney's Paul agrees that the market for digital
art is expanding, but she acknowledges there might be cultural
resistance to screen-based art. "Technological environments can scare
people," she says. "Or, 'I stare at a screen all day in the office -
why on earth would I want to look at art on the screen?'" Screens,
she says, are also primarily associated with entertainment. "This is
how people often approach software art. They look at it and say, 'Oh,
where are the special effects?'"
All of the promise - and problems - of digital art are on display at
the W in Seoul, a striking edifice of blue glass that clings to a
hillside along the Han River on the outskirts of the city. As Sacks
enters one afternoon, bright sun sweeps across its vast, white lobby.
There are a few guests milling about, but the smatterings of podlike
chairs are empty. Sade's "Cherish the Day" drifts through the space.
It is the first time Sacks has visited since helping to oversee
installation of the artwork a year ago, and he's like a parent
returning home to find the kids have left the place in disarray. For
one thing, Wooden Mirror seems slightly askew, a few tiles out of
place. "I guess it's working," he says. "They're supposed to have an
explanatory device. It looks like the camera's slightly off. Someone
rebooted and didn't reset something right. A couple of pixels
probably need to be replaced." Sacks implores the hotel manager: "Any
art that has a kinetic quality needs to have maintenance every couple
of months. You spend a couple hundred bucks every three months. The
piece, by the way, is gaining value."
Nearby, one of the touchscreens that hosts Napier's Waiting Room has
a sign that reads: Whoops. Who did that … Our apologies. Will be
fixed shortly. At the bar, where other screens host the same work,
the situation is scarcely better. As we touch the screens, Sacks
looks agitated. "It's funny, they're all working a bit differently. I
don't think they're networked. The interactivity's not working. I'm
shocked."
Things improve upstairs, where there is another set of pieces by
Rozin: wall-mounted screens that digitally scramble the viewer's
image. After I check myself in the pixelated fun house mirror, we
come to one of the W's media rooms, guest quarters containing large
plasma screens that people can presumably use to interact with
artworks, courtesy of a bedside swivel touchscreen. It's the very
definition of new forms of art in new places - except that neither
Sacks nor the manager can get this one to work, and there is no
manual. "If they were walking into this room, no one in a million
years would know that there's software art here," Sacks says to the
manager, who apologizes profusely. "Again, it's easily resolved,"
says Sacks. "I'll talk to somebody."
That evening, we return to the W. The bar's manager assured us the
place would be hopping, but it is not. What is remarkable, however,
is that none of the few guests who file past Wooden Mirror can resist
stopping to admire it and discern their reflections. With no ambient
daylight, the piece looks sharper, its honeyed glow rippling and
weaving more precisely to match its subject. Two young Japanese
women, giggling and seemingly tipsy, reach out to touch a few of the
pixels. Sacks stops them. "This is art," he scolds. They take a
photo. Later, as we sit in pods on the far side of the room, Sacks
points toward the mirror, where a lone man stands carefully in front
of it, his reflection perfectly outlined. "He gets it," Sacks
exclaims. "He totally gets it. It's beautiful." It seems that the
future of art has finally arrived, and, in this sublime moment, there
is no need to call tech support.
Tom Vanderbilt ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote about home automation
systems in issue 13.01.
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