From a different conceptual perspective, El Arte o el Mundo por Segunda Vez (Art or the World a Second Time), an interactive web page designed by Horacio Zabala, integrates the "navigator" into the thinking in regard to the history of art and esthetics as developed through the course of dozens of centuries of culture. Another branch of digital production has been the creation of universes not based on experience, or far enough removed from it as to no longer retain its usual meaning.

In these cases, the personal characteristics of the creators are usually accentuated. The work of Fabio Kacero is paradigmatic in this regard. His small compositions, created by superimposing small-scale geometric patterns, induce a sense of strangeness and disorientation while offering a harsh revision of traditional plastic art of abstract and concrete origin.

In the series Original Perdido (Lost Original), Anahí Cáceres begins with a graphic pattern that passes through different mediums, assimilating characteristics typical of each one and abandoning those of the previous passage. Original Perdido 6, the video version, places an object in movement in the audiovisual space. There are vague references to a physical reality derived from the many passages of the original pattern through different mediums.

A third aspect of digital production transcends the formal qualities of binary representations to invite reflection on the culture they produce. Critical investigation of the bases and results of the spread of digital technologies invites a reconsideration of the political consequences and the relationship of power that underlies the technological contract. At the same time, in exploring the interface between man and the products of this technology, it becomes more urgent to attend to the unknowns in regard to identity and the borders between the natural and the artificial, which place the body and its systems at one of the turning points between nature and technique.

In Tenis (Tennis), Margarita Paksa applies the binary structure of digital systems to that of western capitalist societies with their ideas of profit and loss, and that of scientific thought-based on the axiom of exclusion of the third. The fragmentation intrinsic to today's media arises as a consequence of thought that is deeply rooted in western society and has not changed much other than becoming more intense in recent years.

With Mi Deseo es Tu Deseo (My Desire is Your Desire), Gustavo Romano perfoms a double manipulation of reality: on one hand he creates two digital faces of various non-existent people; on the other, he promotes a series of relationships among these beings and the eventual "navigators" of the Internet in search of virtual contacts. The fantasies of the navigators, turned into e-mails addressed to these unlikely beings, complete the circuit of relationships of a depersonalized and unreal universe, which nevertheless harbors the same human needs.

FROM VIDEO TO MULTIMEDIA

Although the technologies of video and that of digital support mechanisms are not similar or even complementary, some artists travel between them frequently. Carlos Trilnick, a videographer with wide-ranging experience, is the author of a cd-rom on the life of Juan Moreira. Jorge La Ferla, another video pioneer, produced a book on theory on cd-rom, El Medio es el Diseño (The Medium is the Design), and a web page with the memories of a fictional person, a role that he himself interprets. Camilo Ameijeiras, together with Diego Margarit, created one of the first works of art on cd-rom, Buenos Aires Interactivo (Interactive Buenos Aires), a virtual tour of our city with a fluid and wide-ranging narrative.

Gustavo Romano has traveled the same road but in a more continuous manner. Romano has never stopped immersing himself in the universe of electronic and digital images since his first video installations. His work is aimed at the heart of the functions of information media, appropriating their operative logic or surreptitiously entering the circuit that accompanies the communicational flow of the networks. With simple technical solutions, the artist is able to efficiently formulate his questions about the current state of human relations, technology's penetration into our lives, and the consequences of a world where communication has been replaced with the flow of information. His work also alludes to contemporary man's relationship with the image in a universe of instant transmissions, virtual contacts, shallow relationships, surface effects, and cyber-spatiality.

In Fin del Mundo (End of the World), Romano puts together a pioneering Internet site made up of works of local artists created especially for the net. Among the participants are Carlos Trilnick, Sabrina Farji, Mariana Bellotto, Diego Lascano, Belén Gache, and Jorge Haro. From disciplines ranging from music to literature, from dance to video, the site brings together a body of heterogeneous experiences that expand, by means of diverse aesthetic propositions, the encyclopedic, chaotic, and monotonous character of this computer community that is interconnected in real time.