In the shadows of the Pioneers of Abstraction, these Pixelscapes begin to approach a true abstract visual language in Digital Art. The compositions cease to function as a reflection of reality through image magnification and pixel configuration. It is hoped that they are capable of evoking a spiritual experience and in keeping with similar beliefs of the early Pioneers. These Pioneers practiced Art as a metaphysical quest for higher truth, and these Pixelscapes possibly move in a similar quest or direction as it relates to placement, juxtaposition and color-field excitation. In favor of felt experience, these Pixelscapes, begin to transcend the Digital Art genre by making use of themselves and within, or in other words, this quest for higher truth is Minimalist in its approach, and because of the magnification, a revelation of sorts exists through seen pixels.

And this Minimalist approach, in its extreme economy of means and reduced to the essentials of geometric Abstraction, is characterized by: precise, hard-edged, unitary geometric forms; rigid planes of color; mathematically regular compositions, often based on a grid; the reduction to pure self-referential form, emptied of all external references; and an anonymous surface appearance, without any gestural inflection. What is important is the phenomenological basis of the viewer's experience, how he or she perceives the internal relationships among the parts of the work and of the parts to the whole.

Attention is focused on the object as an object, reducing its historical and expressive content to the bare minimum or utmost simplicity, and what's interesting with these Pixelscapes is that this is done through simple magnification or Deconstruction to break apart an image into its basic units, pixels in this case, to reveal the essentials of geometric Abstraction (mentioned previously). Not only do these Pixelscapes have this quality, but they also rival laborious attempts made within the Minimalist Art world.

Tom R. Chambers is a documentary photographer and visual artist with over forty "real" world exhibitions in the United States, England, Australia, Russia, Zimbabwe, South Korea, Philippines and Brazil and several "virtual" world exhibitions. He is self-taught with numerous photo/visual arts workshops and arts public programming to his credit. He founded and directed a photography gallery, Viewpoint, which catered to nationally-known photographers and was mentioned in American Photo Magazine. Many of his projects are now a part of various archives around the world, and he's currently working with digital manipulation and generation as an art form and Pixelscapes under the namesake of New Directions. He's heavily involved on the Internet, having initiated and coordinated two hyperlinked photo exhibitions for PhotoForum and under the auspices of the Rochester Institute of Technology, and currently managing Focus Gallery, an online gallery for those individuals who are using digital manipulation and generation as an art form. He's also teaching documentary photography at various Web sites.

Extract from a review by JD Jarvis, Artist and Art Critic:

"The genre of Minimalism makes a good verbal foundation for the work Chambers is exploring. This new generation of work is challenging even those distinctions. In terms of 'minimalism' these works seem almost 'elaborate', with strong patterns emerging from the basic structure that is the single pixel. Taken to the next extreme would be a sculptural arrangement of individual squares (pixels) of a single color. As if pixels have liberated themselves, through magnification, from any other context and are now present as individual entities in 'non-virtual' space. The potential for a huge installation referenced as a unit (pattern) from a great distance or seen as individual bits up close has implications for an individual's life within a global community, as well as, commenting on digital communication/art."

Pixelscapes: Next Generation Exhibitions:

• Pixelscapes: Next Generation (solo show), Global Art Internet Gallery, 2002.
• ArCade-III in Russia (Pixelscapes: Next Generation) (group show) (an international exhibition of computer generated prints), Novosibirsk, Russia (curated by Sue Gollifer, University of Brighton and the London Institute, UK and by Andrey Martynov, LeVall Art Gallery, Novosibirsk, Russia), July 18 - 31, 2002.
• Pixelscapes: Next Generation (solo show), LeVall Art Gallery, Novosibirsk, Russia, April 4-17, 2002.

Pixelscapes Exhibitions:

• Pixelscapes (solo show), VzualNet Gallery, 2002.
• Pixelscapes (Celebration, Passion, Go Green, Lift, Skyline I and Redistrict) (solo show), DigiZine.com, 2002.
• Pixelscapes (Celebration, Lemon-Lime, Contact, Overseas, Passion, Go Green, Red Sweep, Runway, Lift, Skyline II, Sunrise and Yellow Field) (solo show), It's Art, Baby! Art!, 2002.
• Pixelscapes (Celebration, Lemon-Lime, Contact, Overseas, Passion, Go Green, Red Sweep, Runway, Lift, Skyline II, Sunrise and Yellow Field) (solo show), K Blue Square Gallery, 2001.
• Pixelscapes (Celebration, Passion, Lift, Skyline I, Sunrise and Redistrict) (solo show), Digital Salon Gallery, 2001.
• Pixelscapes (group show), 2nd Interpoetry Exhibition - The Hypermedia Poetics, Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Education, Presbyterian University Mackenzie, S"o Paulo, Brazil, 2001.
• Pixelscapes (group show), Digital Media Festival 2001, College of Fine Arts, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines, 2001.
• Pixelscapes (Medic, Overseas and Passion) (solo show), Museum of Computer Art (MOCA), 2001.
• Pixelscapes (Skyline I and Skyline II) (group show), Information Visualization Symposium 2001, The Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, England, 2001.

Pixeltone: Scan Series Exhibitions:

• 6th International Information Visualization Conference, DART (Pixeltones: Scan Series) (group show), University of London, London, England, July 10-12, 2002.
• Glass Membrane: Scanner to Screen (Pixeltones: Scan Series and Toe Totem) (group show), Digital Studio, UCR/California Museum of Photography, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A., March 23, 2002 - May 12, 2002 (Curated by Ted Fisher).
• Pixeltones (solo show), VzualNet Gallery, 2002.

Pixeltone Gradients: Shift Series Exhibitions:

• Digital Showcase 15 (Pixeltone Gradients: Shift Series) (group show), Austin Museum of Digital Art (AMODA), Austin, Texas, May 28, 2002.