UNFINISHED WORK.

A major exhibition at New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art leads me to the not entirely surprising conclusion that digital art is finally coming of age. The show, which closes June 10, also forcefully suggests something more unexpected: At this stage, anyway, computer art is at its best when it is least interactive. Just when video games, the Internet, and the new economy have thoroughly assimilated interactivity into our culture, BitStreams, the better part of the Whitney show, bucks the trend and succeeds brilliantly.

In BitStreams, computers themselves aren't much ...