Rodney Chang, better known as the Internet's Pygoya, Webist, was the first digital artist to exhibit in Honolulu, back in 1985. He has exhibited around the world, including Paris, New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas, the U.S.S.R., England, Vienna, Budapest, Frankfurt, Australia, Seoul, Japan, China and India. His 1988 solo show at Shangahi Art Museum was China's historic first computer art exhibition.

He organized India's first ever international digital art exhibition (1999). In the 1980s and 1990s he promoted his concept of Pixelism, or the conversion of pixels into paint, by hand and on canvas, to mirror (as art history) the digital quality of crude early low resolution monitor imaging. He also co-founded Webism, the art movement to create and exhibit art online for the sake of the global cyber-culture and audience.

In the 1980's Dr. Rodney Chang gained national notoriety as NBC's Real People Show's "Disco Doc" - filmed dancing in his Honolulu dental clinic's discotheque reception area, complete with staff DJ. He danced on syndicated TV (NBC "Real People Show") around the world.

The artist is also recognized in Who's Who in America and Ripley's Believe It or Not! for earning 10 college degrees, including 5 masters and 2 doctorates. The artist studied mostly in Chicago and holds a Masters in Painting/Studio Arts and a Ph.D in Aesthetic Psychology.

He has completed a art-horror-visionary novel in 2006 and working on his second book at this time.



The Creative Process

The computer serves as assistant in discovering new art visions for Pygoya. The artist, over the years' parade of changing personal computer systems, always attempts to reinvent his developed "style" on the computer, as much his own input as the evolving technical tools. Then, instead of a hard copy printout that other computer artists exhibit and sell, an intermediary actual painting on canvas is produced to "dedigitize" the work. This is done in order to remove a purely technical feeling of computer graphics, which some consider a bit "sterile".

Then the working painting is photographed, "redigitalized" and modified through editing refinements by the artist. The "final" work of art is either the Giclée prints available here or such a derived digital file is placed online for exhibition in Internet "cyberspace" virtual reality galleries, such as at Pygoya Webmuseum of Cyberart.

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