The international assortment of talents who've created digital paintings, traditional and digital photography, video, custom self-running games, and sculpture for USF Contemporary Art Museum's new exhibit, Audience & Avatar, delve into the ways that videogames, game culture, technology and psychology influence viewer participation and representation in art. Among the participants are UK-based artist John Paul Bichard, whose recent explorations looked at the relationship between "real" and "game" space; Italy's Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG), Net.artists who've gain renown over the past few years by mining the 3D virtual world of Second Life for inspiration with avatar portraits and "Synthetic Performances," which feature avatars in Second Life and other synthetic games engaging in reenactments of historical performances; and San Francisco-by-way-of-Tel Aviv artist Eddo Stern, whose work ranges from video game modifications, to cinema created via video game sequences. Also on display is Brody Condon: Modifications, a project that has the New York artist using game technology to re-imagine late medieval religious paintings as self-running games. Artist lectures are held from 7 to 8 p.m. in the USF Music Recital Hall (FAH101) while the opening reception takes place at USF-CAM from 7 to 10 p.m. Fri., Oct. 24. Presented through Dec. 13, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri., 1-4 p.m. Sat., 4202 E. Fowler Ave., CAM 101, Tampa, 813-974-4133.
