Images: Splicing art, tech, and film

Are they artists, computer programmers, or filmmakers? In some cases, those presenting multimedia installations in the Sundance Film Festival's New Frontier on Main venue are all those things--and more.

A sort of media center 2.0, New Frontier on Main is geared toward filmmaking and art from the cutting edge of cinematic culture. In addition to art installations, it hosts panel discussions on topics like Hollywood adapting to the Web and the latest in filmmaking tools, as well as workshops on how to use such gear.

Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer Shari Frilot said the 15 installations were chosen in an effort to "physically engage the audience in a manner very different from the more passive experience of sitting in a darkened theater."

Shown here is one such installation, The Cause Collective's "Along the Way," which the group describes as a 20-minute "video mosaic." The piece has been commissioned to the port authority in Oakland, Calif., for display at a new Oakland International Airport terminal.

"Along the Way" is comprised of 1,152 separate video portraits of the people and places of Oakland and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area. Each portrait is a 30-second clip taken using digital cameras. The video slowly zooms into individual portraits, then cycles back into another mosaic, according to the group's Web site. At its core, the installation "is about the journeys a diverse community like Oakland bestows upon its people," the site reads.

Caption text by Michelle Meyers, CNET News.com