Photo: Cassia Kite demonstrates how her painting interacts with a tablet device using the Aurasma app.

Art Center Sarasota embarks on new digital frontier with the show #postdigital. A three-room exhibition, the intersection between technology and art comes to a head with interactive multimedia work from 28 local artists, designers from the Faulhaber Fab Lab and students and faculty members from Ringling College of Art and Design, New College of Florida, Pine View School and IMG Academy.

Art Center Sarasota Director Lisa Berger and Exhibition Curator Dustin Juengel wanted to showcase how high-tech innovations like 3D printers and laser cutters impact the art world. A visual artist in his own right, Juengel used his connections to the local art scene to track down artists working in non-traditional digital mediums. He also enlisted the Faulhaber Fab Lab, which contributed pieces to the exhibition that blur the line between science and art. Lending a hand, Best Buy, Microsoft and Apple provided the devices necessary to display the art. Thus #postdigital became a reality.

Venturing into the digital realm is a first for Art Center Sarasota. “We’re used to hanging up paintings, and now we’re hanging up iPads and [using] drones,” said Berger. Though most of the works in the exhibition are purely digital, a few pieces integrate technology to transcend their more traditional form. For example, Cassia Kite, a local visual artist and educator at IMG Academy, turns her paintings into readable QR codes using the Aurasma app. Hold a mobile device in front of the painting—the app “targets” the piece and plays a video.

“You can’t draw a distinct line,” says Juengel of the division between art and technology. “Every piece in the exhibition here seems to share something: a certain passion for making. A certain playfulness. The different technologies are just materials.”

#postdigital at Art Center Sarasota, May 19–June 25

Photo: Cassia Kite demonstrates how her painting interacts with a tablet device using the Aurasma app.

Art Center Sarasota, 707 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, 941-365-2032