Among the events was a presentation by Westaf who is putting together the first digital jury system. The have a half dozen shows signed up already (including Cherry Creek) and will propose hosting a server with digital files sent in by exhibitors. Applications will get filled out on line (no last minute trips to the post office) and they will host a server of submitted image files for each artist. At this stage, they are not planning to get involved in scanning but will provide the file requirements and you will submit your own images. What they're proposing is a series of high definition units called the Roku HD1000 connected to a series of digital projectors. The images will be fed from CompactFlash cards and will synchronize so they project all images of each artist simultaneously, just like the current jury with a series of Kodak Carousel projectors which are scheduled to be discontinued. The image quality is excellent as we saw in a single unit demonstration. The web site to read about the Roku is: http://www.rokulabs.com It's not worth really discussing anymore as it's still in the planning stages and hardware might change. Westaf's web site is: http://www.westaf.org but I don't think that there is anything about the digital jury yet.

I did have an opportunity to sit with Paul Fisher who had developed the Smithsonian jury system which was similar to the one I created on my http://ArtShowJury.com web site.

Another event that was well worth attending was an open discussion with five art show directors including Arts, Beats & Eats, Cherry Creek, Columbus and Des Moines. I specifically tried to pin them down about defining digital art, especially Cherry Creek as the only digital artist accepted was a photographer.

The highlight was a mock slide jury with about 55 sets of jury slides that attendees had brought and a room with about 80 artists discussing them. The jury consisted of four artists and Terry Adams, Cherry Creek director. During the presentation, each set of slides was scored by the jurors and we will be getting the scores in the mail in a week or so. There was also a 45 second discussion of each set of slides by all the artists in the room. Of particular interest was the fact that people commented on the cohesiveness of the presentation, mats showing on 2D images and what should or shouldn't be included in the booth slide as to how many panels and bins and whether the booth behind or next to it shows up in the image, etc. What was also evident is that tape masked slides don't look as good as digitally masked slides as the black isn't as clean.