This exhibit is being planned during an extremely ironic moment in American history. Various new technologies make it possible for us to express ourselves across unbelievable distances, using an extremely wide palette of forms, and yet the United States, a country that is supposedly among the most productive and advanced on earth, is somehow becoming increasingly isolated from the larger world. In particular, its artists, who must either compete viciously with one another for minimal resources or create things that can compete as products in an open market, are losing touch with the larger community of artists.

When I was first exposed to AV-Arkki artists (at the Venice Biennale in 2002,) I was struck by some uncanny esthetic and topical similarities between work being produced by the group and work by experimental film and video artists from the Boston area. Since this initial exposure, I've programmed AV-Arkki film/video works in New England twice, but was always left with a desire to do something that would create a stronger, more visceral connection between Boston and Helsinki artists. This exhibit is a direct result of that urge.

Each of the pieces included here uses art to explore the notion of interface-a notion that I see as a crucial at this point in history. We are seeing the world, and each other, through screens much of the time now, and need to be reminded occasionally that even if we are meeting across long distances, we can still find routes to one another that are more evocative of personhood than either the keyboard or the remote control. These works, while speaking directly to a Finnish tradition of experimentation with new technologies, also address more universally Western questions. The artists explore how any person might reach beyond the prescribed virtualities towards ones that seem a closer fit, a more accurate expression of the self for engaging with an unknown other. As a user of each of these pieces, you are drawn further into the experience of the artist-other than you would be if you were to interact with any of them using more traditional interfaces, including more traditional art-mediums. Ideally, you are left with a curiosity about how to develop an interface that more accurately reflects your own subtle coordinates in the world. At the very least, you might want to find out more about these particular artists and the environment that shaped their work.

Heather Kapplow is a Boston-based independent curator, artist, and project manager of the WGBH Forum Network. Though very resistant to academic language, she holds a BA in Discourse Studies from UMASS Boston; an MA in Symbolic Anthropology from the University of Chicago; and is A.B.D. at the doctoral program for New Media Studies in the philosophy division of The European Graduate School. She does not teach or write.

New Media Art from Finland is a collaborative presentation of the Boston Cyberarts Festival and the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Sponsors of this project include AV-Arkki, the LEF Foundation, the FRAME Fund for Finnish Cultural Exchange, Do While Studio, Avanti Media, and Tech Superpowers, Inc.