NEW YORK.- Digital Play is organized around the theme of action in its different uses and interpretations. Fifteen digital animations and "software toys" from independent makers are playable at a set of workstations. Music-, dance-, and movement-oriented video games originating in Japan constitute a shift from traditional, often violent game scenarios. Classic arcade games from the 1980s are paired with current home-based games to contrast their approaches to such action-related topics as driving and waging battle on land and in space. Though the graphics have changed significantly, patterns of play remain similar.

In the last twenty years, video games and digital art have moved from the arcade into the home, and from the home onto the Internet, where they have become the work and play of an international network of artists and designers. This exhibition presents selections from each arena: the digital art that originates in the virtual studios of animators, designers, and programmers; the innovative video and computer games that have transformed the home entertainment center; and the classic video games of the 1980s that wield a continuing thematic and aesthetic influence over their digital heirs.

The expansion of possibilities in digital gaming has led to more imaginative and technically sophisticated interfaces, and richer, and more whimsical, interactive animated environments. The games, animation, and art in this exhibition offer a real-time experience in which the work is generated while it is being watched.

Paradoxically, upbeat music-and-dance games—which seem to allow a new level of participation by responding to the movements of the whole body—reward conformity, while more traditional games reviled for their controversial, violent content allow for more creativity and independence on the part of the player. These games provide an escape and a challenge, but also a way of keeping up with and experiencing firsthand a rapidly evolving technology.