RIT has a reputation for being digital-centric, and now the college has gone and manifested that in an art exhibition. The student-run Gallery R has organized a show of technology-aided work, the result of an open competition for RIT students and professors who work in digital media. Categories include collage, photography, illustration, and graphic design. A decent range of styles and genres of art, as well as purposes for the art, are represented. With the help of digital media, artists can create and alter reality, to say something about that which is, explore what isn't but seems to be, and project what might come to pass.

Brad Lutjens' designs employ sharp contrast, patterning, and the odd arrangement of familiar shapes, to create amazing images of prophets and bohemians lost in post-modernity. In "Eureka," a turban-wearing figure crouches on the gray ground, bearing on his back a harp/bagpipe hybrid, which emits an explosion of garden motifs. The figure holds what might be a book, from which bursts forth a nature scene projected onto the blank landscape in which he sits. "Bedlam" is a portrait of a winged child strapped down with the trappings of war. Tanks crawl up and down his legs, which at first glance seem to form cargo pockets on his trousers.

Susan Lanier's photos appeal both to my love of nostalgia and the concept of identifying with our kin. Each of her three offerings comes with the statement explaining that the image is part of a collection in which she has placed herself "within old family snapshots, in order to recreate a new image that takes place in the present." In "Leo Randolf," the artist's face peers seamlessly from the head of her dapper relative, who stands at wood's edge. "Millie Anne" is posed near a lamppost, with blurred people in background, as if hazily manifested memories. Here, Lanier's unfocused eyes have the dreamy expression of a person off in the elusive land of reverie.

Kaitlin Wilson-Bryant's delicate, songs-of-nature photos seem out of place, but for the fact that they are digital pics. "The Smallest Ship" captures what looks to be a scrap of bark caught against grass poking through the surface of barely perceptible water. From this angle, the bark forms the curve of the boat's hull, and the different heights of grass suggest several skeletal masts.

Tim Brackbill's "Lighter than Water" is a photo of a water skipper caught in its balancing act. Most of the image is taken up by a diagonal repetition of lines from a slight wave - a rolling muscle of movement is captured just below the firm skin of the water's surface. The star-shaped sprawl of the insect's legs ends with neat little dents on the unyielding surface tension of the liquid.

All of Pavel Romaniko's photos are untitled, and they all contain a subtle tension built from the arrangement of a few everyday items. Each scene has the inexplicable feeling of an aftermath - though nothing is overtly wrong, the details are unsettling. Without anywhere to hide secrets in the uncluttered, bereft-of-personality rooms, we find symbols of repression and unrest out in the open. In two of the images, the upper left corner crops a photo on a wall, teasingly leaving the identity just out of view. On a delicately wrinkled white table cloth lays a disconnected phone wire and no phone. In one image a teacup and saucer sit at the table's edge, about to topple. In another photo, it's a lush red apple perched on the corner of table. The most haunting image is the wallpapered-over frame.

The most highly conceptual of the artists is Aspasia Tsoutsoura, whose topical multimedia installation "Ice Melt" deals with the current stress of global warming. The provided artist statement mentions 2050, the projected year of the disappearance of the North Pole ice-cap. Tsoutsoura placed a bare mattress in a darkened room with ethereal, New Age-y music (which I could've done without - the effect was a bit spacey and unnecessary). Arctic scenes of the melting ice are projected from above, the floes drift, break, and splash across the mattress. Each layer of padding and material has been cut away to resemble shrinkage. The result is pretty effective: the exposed springs and ruined surface of an object built for comfort scream that we can no longer rest easy about this.

The benefit of ever-advancing technology in art is that we get a wide range of styles and uses, with little or no mess involved. From digital photography to digitally drawing and painting, there is a movement away from chemicals and pigment to that which is compact and sleek, like everything else in this here newfangled techie age. Will art fully evolve into a dialogue between brain and screen? I'd miss the characteristic grit and disorder of the studio.

Arttech

Through September 6

Gallery R

775 Park Ave

Thursday-Friday 2-6 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 1-5 p.m.

242-9470, galleryr.org