Art and technology are becoming increasingly intertwined, andwomen like UC Davis art professor Lynn Hershman are at theforefront of the melding of the two disciplines. Hershmanwill be one of the key presenters Saturday, Nov. 1, at ChikTek 97 (http://cadre.sjsu.edu/chik_tek/), a showcase of womenusing interactive technologies for artistic pursuits.The weekend event, sponsored by San Jose State University andthe San Jose Museum of Art, will be held at the museum.Hershman recently applied a new technique she patented--usingreal people filmed with backgrounds scanned from photographs--to tell the story of Ada Byron King, daughter of the poetLord Byron, who developed a method of calculation consideredto be the first computer program."Conceiving Ada" -- which Hershman wrote, directed andproduced -- made its debut Sept. 12 at the TorontoInternational Film Festival. It will also open the SanFrancisco International Film Festival in the spring.Using her extensive background in video art, the artprofessor developed a "virtual set" technique that promisesto open doors for independent filmmakers on limited budgets.Assisting her were students at UC Davis, especially thoseinvolved in the IDEA (the Inter-Disciplinary Electronic Arts)lab that she created in 1995. The IDEA lab(http://idea.ucdavis.edu/) is devoted to technologicaldevelopments in the arts, such as photography andvideography, and applications to the World Wide Web.