…In the new Hearst Building at Eighth Avenue, I got a special pass from the guards to go up the escalator, past the glorious Richard Long mud mural, to a mezzanine where the digital artist Lincoln Schatz is working on a special multimedia commission from Esquire Magazine billed as a “Portrait of the 21st Century” (due to be unveiled in September).
Schatz has each sitter — George Clooney, Danger Mouse, Jeff Bezos — come up with some kind of performance to do within his set, a translucent cube studded with video cameras. Clooney, for instance, danced with a series of women. The images are automatically mixed and overlaid by a special computer program, and sent to a set of eight LCD screens, where they are randomly displayed. Schatz devised the program — which gives an almost old-fashioned painterly effect to the digital images — but otherwise stays clear.
Schatz has previously done public and corporate commissions in Dallas, San Diego and Chicago. Here in New York he works with Bitforms gallery, and the work can also be seen online at www.https://www.lincolnschatz.com
By Walter Robinson
Artnet Magazine | July 18, 2008
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