Selected emails

Manetas, starting from 1995, has produced oil paintings of wires, cables and computer hardware, created short looped fragments of video games such as “Tomb Raider,” and exhibited computer-generated vibracolour prints among other things. But he was impatient with critics and curators who had yet to come up with a really good “-ism” for this new generation of creativity. After securing financial assistance from a nonprofit called the Art Production Fund, Manetas went out and hired Lexicon Branding, a California firm responsible for creating such product names as Powerbook, Pentium, Zima, Swiffer and Dasani. Lexicon’s assignment was to create a name for this new movement.

In May 2000, during a packed press conference at the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan – and a panel of people like Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker ready to provide analysis of the term — Manetas unveiled a new word for an art movement. Actually, it was the squeaky, synthetic voice of a Sony Vaio that made the announcement. The word was “NEEN.”