Review of Museum of Computer Art (MOCA)

Technical Information

Name of site:
Museum of Computer Art (MOCA)
URL:
http://www.dorsai.org/~moca/ 
Developer:
Museum of Computer Art (MOCA)
Contact:
bob.dodson@chemek.com or arch@dorsai.org
Date site last updated:
12/15/95
Keywords:
Art
Computer art
Computer graphics
Museum of Computer Art (MOCA)


Review

The Museum of Computer Art affords artists the possibility of displaying their works in a public forum. There does not appear to be a physical (real life) equivalent. The opening screen alludes to a jurying process, but that process is not spelled out anywhere on the site. This is a nice site with interesting images. The organization of the site is not extraordinary, but not terrible either. The site passes the three clicks rule by providing substantive information in less than three clicks of a mouse.

The site provides a biography about each artist, and commentary about their art. These articles are homey and give the impression that the artists are actual humans rather than business commodities.

Most of the images at this site are ray traced or fractal art. A couple of the artists have drawn art displayed also. All of the art was created using a computer. The majority of the exhibits have one image, but a few have multiple images. The images, commentary and biography are combined to make up the exhibit.

Robert Mickelsen's art was reminiscent of Wayne Thiebaud. I found some of the imagery in Truman Brown's exhibit and Mike Miller's exhibit to be a bit disturbing, but the imagery should not pose any problems for viewers concerned about censorship problems. Some of the HTML coding on the last few exhibits appeared to be faulty, thus rendering the images on those pages unviewable.

Notes:

The site provides no information as to when the last updates were made. There is also no posted schedule on when the exhibits change.

The large number of images means that most pages at this site take some time to load. The full screen images (high resolution at 640x480 pixels) took over a minute to load using a 28.8 connection. Images are shown a lower resolutions initially; the viewer, then, has the option of clicking on the image to display a larger version in a higher resolution.

The links provided make sense and allow for easy navigation of this site. Additionally, all of the links worked.

References:

Donald Archer Fractal Art
donUs graphics page


Link to Museum of Computer Art (MOCA)
Reviewed by Jaye A. H. Lapachet, Avery & Associates on Jaunary 10, 1996.
jaye@infoarch.com