hese days art exhibitions are a fair indicator of just how much technologies have transformed not only the way we work, but how we think, interact, learn and create. This emerging trend, a joint practice of art and technology, is altering traditional forms of art both in terms of their audiences and their use.

The current Art Chowk Gallery show, `From the Personal and the Political`, curated by Aziz Sohail and featuring works by Nasir Ansari and Arsalan Nasir, is yet another exhibition that boasts of new media technology as an art language. For viewers weaned on traditional art interest develops when there is engagement and inquiry with the new vocabulary.

Conceptually the exhibition references the surrounding chaos and uncertainty. The political and the personal are an easy mix in a country where multiple destructive forces are at play and the writ of the state has all but disappeared.

Socio-political turmoil, now an ongoing phenomenon, has fuelled a volley of agitated art but what initially appeared original and forceful now fre-quently regresses into the formulaic and clichéd.

It is the woes of the common man a disrupted daily lif`e that inspire Nasir Ansari to create works like `Water shortage`, `Protest results` and`Provinces`, etc.

Nasir Ansari evokes the loss of innocence by revisiting his childhood to extract innocuous imagery that he aligns with the current ruin and damage to pose stark disparities. Both artists have valid concerns but they do not break new ground where issues are concerned. On first impact it is the drawings and configurations in their medium of light boxes and tablets that pique viewers` interest.

Nasir Ansari creates his imagery within electronically lighted cubes created by co-joining acrylic sheets. Minute holes are drilled into the rear end of the cube through which thin glass rods are inserted. It is a clever play up with these rods that enable Ansari to create figurative forms visible as dotted imagery from the open end of the cube. The small Plexiglas boxes glowing with white incandescent light are peppered with dotted figurations of the human form.

The mask image speaks of human duplicity and the one with darkened lips refers to snuffled voices of the provinces. The public is depicted as a skeleton of the human skull. Water shortage is enacted as a scene where human figures are hand1ing empty pails. Though vastly different in appearance the minute, finely crafted and electronically powered cubes mimic the sensibility of the miniature mannerism regarding intricacy and precision.

Arsalan Nasir toys with drawing and photographs on lighted tablets. The fun element emerges when the imagery on his tablets changes the minute they are lifted slightly. A barren tree which is photo print suddenly sprouts hand drawn apples, a quite cityscape comes alive with childish renderings of kites, clouds and blazing sun, and a decrepit building exterior is worked over into a fairytale `Home sweet home` collage.

These twists and tricks point to an engineered artwork where imagination and emotions collide with logic and reality to produce a tech-art combination.

Unlike barbed, hard hitting critiques of sociopolitical disputes this show veers towards a soft image focus on prevalent contentious issues.

There is an amusing creativity at work in the clever use of light boxes which remind one of the iPad and e-Reader and the luminous cubes substitute paintings as art objects to view and ponder over. E