Making Modern Art Seem Ancient

Is so-called "new media" really so new? Not if you ask Steven Sacks, owner and director of techie New York City art gallery bitforms. According to him, it's been alive and well for more than half a century.

Bitforms' latest exhibit, which is on display at its Chelsea space until Jan. 16, pays homage to Sacks' assertion. Titled Scratch Code, in reference to artist Manfred Mohr's 1970s computer-aided art portfolio of the same name, the collection of works by various artists shows new media has been hopping since at least the 1950s.

"My gallery is devoted to new media art forms and what I wanted to do was show people there was a history doing code-based works 30, 40, 50 years ago," Sacks said.

Up for sale and perusal are beeping, blinking sculptures, prints made from computer code, a childlike example of early computer animation and more, all at least 20 years old.

Many pieces were made on now-obsolete, enormous computers -- with access gained by artists' connections to engineers, grants or academia, Sacks said.

Putting this exhibit together was a challenge, Sacks said, as involved artists live all over the world, and one -- Ben Laposky -- died in 2000. But Mohr, one of Sacks' artists, aided in collecting the art, Sacks said, and already about half the pieces on display have sold. Bitforms is also considering putting together a similar show in Germany in 2005.

This is a fortuitous time for Scratch Code, Sacks said, since a lot of artists are tapping into the type of raw, low-tech aesthetic it exudes.

They're intrigued by the exhibited works, Sacks said. "They find it difficult to believe some of these pieces were done 30 years ago," he said.

Visitors might feel the same way.