“End days at the edge of the 20th century.”
Most recently this image has come to be associated closely with the exhibition called DNA: Fourth of Four • https://www.dnafestivalsm.com/events/dna-4th-of-4 It was displayed as a physical print in this exhibition which ran from June 22-July 21, 2024. The show was mounted at the Barrett Gallery, Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center - Music Building, 1310 11th St, Santa Monica, CA 90401
This noteworthy retrospective covering a 45-year span of digital art kicked off the first DNA: Digital Art Festival in Santa Monica, CA which will run its event schedule into November 2024. With Acevedo’s blessings, the curators Michael J. Masucci and Joan Collins selected ‘Millennium Epicenter’ and David Em’s classic 1979 computer art piece called ‘Escher’ to represent the exhibition in its online branding and elsewhere.
Millennium Epicenter was created sometime during the month of November 1999. Acevedo has said, “This image was named after the show title I came up for the second installment of the Cynthia Show which took place on December 1, 1999 at the club called Baktun located at 418 West 14th Street in the meat-packing district in New York City. The show was a multi-media performance starring Cynthia De Moss.”
She is the woman pictured in the image. The source photo of Ms. De Moss was taken by Acevedo, himself. It was combined with a 3D computer model of a “strut and sphere/ovoid node network” which was then solarized and spherized using Adobe Photoshop filters.”
Victor: “The title also spoke to the malaise in the air when large groups of humans were worried with the fear of change, the unknown, and the Y2K conspiracy. At the same time other groups of humans welcomed the new; perceived it as an omni universe-scaled click-stop into future promise, if you will. Being a native West Coaster from Los Angeles it was a natural for me to conjure an earthquake vibe, hence the use of the term ‘epicenter’.”
Millennium Epicenter was first shown as a digital print in a gallery setting in New York City in April 2000. This was at the Spectra Digital Arts Gallery on La Guardia Place, in Manhattan.
In 2002, It was reproduced on page 8 of the YLEM Journal No. 2 Vol. 22 January/February. This issue served as the catalog for the YLEM 20th Anniversary Exhibition. https://archive.org/details/ylem-journal-v22i02/page/n7/mode/2up YLEM: Artists Using Science and Technology, was a nonprofit group in the San Francisco Bay Area, was active from 1981 to 2009, publishing the YLEM Newsletter (later, the YLEM Journal).
Later in 2002, Millennium Epicenter was included in the traveling UK exhibition called ArCade-III in various cities in Russia. This was an international exhibition of 'computer generated prints' which ran from July 18 - 31, 2002.
HW: Mac G3. Silicon Graphics IRIS workstation SW: Softimage 3D, Adobe Photoshop Digital image: PNG file format, 3284 x 2160 pixels