SEEMS LIKE everyone in town is participating in 01SJ, and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art is no exception. Starting Friday (May 30), the gallery presents two related tech-arts shows. "Crater Bay Area" (pictured in its New York incarnation) by Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese places a scale model of the moon in the gallery and invites viewers to sketch their take on our nearest celestial neighbor. The drawings will be displayed, both literally and virtually, in Second Life. At the end of the exhibit, judges will pick a winner, who will receive the deed to a plot of land on the moon (now worth more than a depressed house in the valley).

Concurrently, Brendan Lott shows his process piece "Memories I'll Never Have." Lott surfed social-networking websites looking for informal snapshots. He then emailed JPEGs to China, where factory artists hand-painted the photos on canvas with oil paints. These were rolled up and shipped back for display at the gallery. The paintings, their unstretched canvas edges visible in box frames, are given portentous titles— "I Just Want to Run Out of Here Screaming" or "And They Shall Eat the Flesh in That Night." The paintings depict intensely personal, even intimate, moments in the lives of anonymous folks (mostly teenagers, who have less sense of reticence), who mug, pose and even expose themselves to the camera. The result is more than bit disquieting at several levels: Who "owns" these paintings of photographs? Did the subjects really intend for them to be appropriated this way? Is this the future of art outsourcing?

CRATER BAY AREA and MEMORIES I'LL NEVER HAVE run May 30–Aug. 2 at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, 560 S. First St., San Jose. The shows celebrate their official openings on June 6, 6–11pm, as part of the 01SJ Street Fair.

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