A show about the intersection of art and technology might seem like an odd fit for Fraser Gallery, Bethesda's self-proclaimed standard-bearer for "contemporary realism."

Stranger still are the retro electronics that "Interface" offers: David Page�s Hopscotch, for example, looks like a prop from Fritz Lang�s Metropolis. For Page�s opening-night performance, the machine moved two live human bodies through space by means of motors, a vacuum pump, and two hand-sewn straitjackets resembling fantastic 1930s flight suits. This meditation on instruments of control and protection took an excruciating 30 minutes�hardly the speed of the information age.

Claire Watkins, too, seems fixed on low-tech forces; in her work, magnets effect small changes in the behaviors of needles and iron filings. The transformation of simple materials in Flock of Needles is astonishing: Needles strain against various lengths of red thread, quivering and turning as they follow the slow rotation of a suspended magnet.

The clear winner here, though, is Kathryn Cornelius. Her video/performance, Retreat, is a short video loop shot during the artist�s return flight from Iceland. In it, the dim glowing reflection of an electronic solitaire game is superimposed over images of softly shifting indigo and blue-green clouds, accompanied by the continuous low rush of white noise. It�s a disarmingly austere, haunting little piece about both contemplation and killing time.

"Interface" is on view from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, to Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2006 at Fraser Gallery Bethesda, 7700 Wisconsin Ave., Suite E, Bethesda. Free. (301) 718-9651. (Jeffry Cudlin)

Jeffry Cudlin

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