"We are not selling anything, just trying to get them excited about all the extraordinary things technology can do for them," Young says.They like to get a "hey, wow" response from the managing directors of client companies - from Virgin to British Steel - who wander about playing with the new Internet phones, with their dinky pull-out keyboards, or trying out the state-of-the-art presentation screens (the very same ones which display art on the walls of Bill Gates' Seattle mansion). "We're showing them how fun technology can be," says Leake.Surprisingly, art itself plays a low-key role. "Sometimes it is inappropriate for clients to know we are artists," Young says. "But other times account managers like us to wear our artist hats, and the clients want to talk about the work on the walls and what it means."There is, they say, a growing interest in the digital arts.
Both artists, as well as working with sculpture and photography, also work on online projects. "But it's taken people a long time to get interested in art which uses new technology," says Young. "In New York and Europe, there's been a much faster acceptance. But it's difficult, especially on the art market, because digital art has no inherent value.""A few years ago art on the Internet was pretty mediocre," says Young. "But there's a lot of good work out there now."They show clients who express an interest some of the better work coming out of the digital art community, like Web Stalker - a browser that functions like any other but is intended as a thought-provoking art piece.Created by a group of London artists, it maps hyperlinks as you travel through the Web, so if you come to a particularly busy site, with thousands of people linked up to it, it becomes "a ball of light", Young explains. "It makes people think about how the Internet is, in essence, a mass of links, something quite magical and organic.""For us, it's an incredible thing to meet high-level people who think a lot about technology and the future," says Young.
"I'd never meet them in the pub, and I'm always coming across computer concepts and language which spark off ideas."It also means they get to use cutting-edge technology long before anyone else. "There's a constant cross-fertilisation between my work here and what I do in the studio," agrees Leake. "One is food for the other."The computing world is slowly emerging as one of the main sponsors of digital, technology-related art. Sun Microsystems recently signed a deal with the Institute of Contemporary Arts to fund a new media art centre, and Cap Gemini is sponsoring a new pounds 10,000 digital art prize this year, Imaginaria.But while the business world is happy to show off a philanthropic streak, and companies like Cap Gemini keen to incorporate art into their everyday environment, Leake and Young say it is artists who are often the ones dragging their heels, reluctant to be involved in joint ventures."When I meet artists wearing my suit, in the pub or at private viewings, and tell them what I do, there is always the same knee-jerk reaction," Leake says. "People assume because you work for a big computer company you must have sold out, and they're quite blunt in telling you so But we like to think we are the radical ones.. BRITISH aspirations to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians went up in flames last night when a furious Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cancelled a working dinner with the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook.
