Computerized Tour of Nash Show

The local debut of photographs by Graham Nash at Santa Monica’s G. Ray Hawkins Gallery is promising visitors more than a quiet collection of still works. Instead, they will be confronted with aggressive new technologies that challenge contemporary photographic presentation.

As Nash recently said proudly himself: “I use only the highest tech stuff.”

The collection of 36-by-48-inch prints were created with a nontoxic printmaking process, utilizing vegetable dyes rather than silver-based chemistry. But beyond the Iris 3047 printer he has championed with Nash Editions, generating interest from such renowned artists as David Hockney and Robert Frank, gallery visitors are to be greeted by an interactive computer that serves as a kind of multimedia guide to the exhibition.

The computer, an Apple Mac IIfx placed in a convenient corner with a mouse rather than a keyboard, will have 14 Nash images programmed into it, any of which can be called up, accompanied by narration, various special effects and an a cappella rendition of Nash’s “Wind on the Water.” Later versions of the program, which could one day be marketed as a CD ROM for home computers, will contain more images.

“It was designed to give people a way of exploring his photography collection, his eye, his comments, to see it in a different format,” said Rand Wetherwax, 32, a computer programmer who worked with Nash on the presentation. “It’s a beautiful way to look at his photography. After seeing it straight, you can go hear his voice narration. It adds a little more personal thing to it.”

The technology is new but not unique. Similar interactive computer programs have been used in major museums in Japan, New York and elsewhere, Wetherwax said. But it is rare at the gallery level, in part because of the costs required. For example, the computer expert said that adding the photographs, narration and special effects for the show represented about three weeks of work, not including the creation of the program itself.

“We try to keep it as simple and non-technoid as possible,” he said. “It is still photography, so theoretically you could call up a picture and just leave it there like it was hung on a wall.”

The computer has already been part of Nash shows in New York, Tokyo, Seattle and Dallas, and has received a variety of responses, although Wetherwax said he had expected more resentment to the machine. “Some feel like they have to click every button and every picture. Others just dabble through it. Half of them walk away thinking how they’re going to do something like that.”