BLACKSBURG, VA.- The Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech explores the enormous and sometimes overwhelming amount of information that permeates the world with “DATAFORM,” an exhibition suite featuring three artists who incorporate technology-based media in their work, transforming data into three-dimensional form.

Daniel Canogar (Madrid), Yorgo Alexopoulos (Los Angeles), and Jim Campbell (San Francisco) incorporate various technologies such as electronics, LEDs (light emitting diodes), computer-generated algorithms, video, and real-time online data to deliver intriguing sculptural works steeped in color, light, movement, and a range of significant ideas.

Each artist is represented with a selection of significant works in a gallery of their own resulting in three independent but inter-related one-person art exhibitions.

“DATAFORM” opens with a distinguished artist talk by Canogar at 6 p.m. in the Moss Arts Center’s Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre, located in the Street and Davis Performance Hall at 190 Alumni Mall. The talk will be followed by a reception on Thursday, August 29, from 6:30-8 p.m. in the center’s Grand Lobby.

Daniel Canogar
This exhibition also marks the unveiling of “Surge,” the center’s third major public art commission for its Grand Lobby. Canogar has created a sequence of dynamic, data-fed sculptural forms specifically for the Moss Arts Center’s space and was in residence for 10 days to oversee the installation of the work.

“Surge” encompasses thousands of flickering LED lights in moving, ever-changing, computer-generated abstract images that glide across four sinuous, ribbon-like sculptural elements. Responding in real time to incoming data—ranging from environmental phenomena such as regional weather patterns, including wind speeds and temperatures, to water and pollution data—the generative visuals of “Surge” flow continuously across four walls.

In addition to the mural in the Grand Lobby, a collection of Canogar’s work will be on display in the center’s Ruth C. Horton Gallery. Radiant and suffused with the energy of ever-evolving data points and imbued with rich, luminescent color and flowing abstractions, Canogar’s art engages with light, color, movement, and the dynamics of the data-sphere. Activated by real-time online data, the fluid and ever-changing imagery transmitted through and across Canogar’s sculptures is generated from different environmental and socio-political phenomena occurring around the globe, such as active volcanoes, atmospheric conditions, pollution, and stock market fluctuations.

Jim Campbell
Featured in the Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery, Jim Campbell’s work is luminescent yet nebulous, continuous but fleeting—visual impressions that explore the thresholds of time, memory, and perception. With degrees from MIT in both electrical engineering and mathematics, Campbell is an established and renowned pioneer and innovator in using technology to create works of art, working with custom electronics, video, film, LEDs, and computers to produce his work. He is known for his evocative low-resolution works that merge and transform video footage of moving images into data points of light.

Yorgo Alexopoulos
On view in the Sherwood Payne Quillen '71 Reception Gallery, Yorgo Alexopoulos’ work is a hybrid fusion of digital animation, sound, and sculpture, featuring synchronized vistas, color fields, and shifting geometric shapes that evolve, unfold, and intersect in continuous motion across high-definition LCD (liquid crystal display) screens mounted in atypical configurations.

With “Conjugated Gradients: Split (2018),” a 14-foot-long work included in this exhibition, Alexopoulos takes video data—landscape footage of land, sea, and sky panoramas—then edits and recombines it with digitally composed and animated sequences of geometric form and swaths of rich color.

Curated by Margo Ann Crutchfield, the Moss Arts Center’s curator-at-large, “DATAFORM” will be on view until November 9.