Even the most fashion-forward Texan will admit that our state isn't exactly the first place people think of when they think about technology and innovation. But here in Austin, the high-tech boom and the rise of big computer corporations like Dell has brought a new group of faces here - techies. Changing the face of a city better known for college students and hippies, they are even changing the way Austin is entertained.

One Tuesday night a month at Texture nightclub on 5th street downtown, volunteers hang giant white sheets from the ceiling and set up a smattering of LCD projectors, VCRs, and laptops. On the other side of the dancefloor, they create the "DJ booth" out of some tables, and the musicians set up their equipment. Visible on the tables are laptops, sequencers, keyboards, turntables, and boxes containing computer programs.

This is the setup for the Austin Museum of Digital Art's monthly showcase, a techie heaven that has started to attract more than just techies. Those who simply want to take part in an entertainment experience more common in big cities like New York and Chicago come out each month to view a collection of digital art and hear the accompanying music.

What exactly is this "digital art?" AMODA's official definition is quite dense, but Digital Showcase Director Todd Simmons, a 26-year-old whose day job is creating music for video games, sums it up nicely. "Basically, digital art can be anything that has digital stuff at any point in either the process of creating it, or the idea behind it, or the way it's presented," he says. "Even if someone makes a painting and they never use a computer to make it, but the painting is about computers, than that could be digital. Or if somebody makes a piece that's all about nature and plants, but they conceive of it on a computer, then that could be digital." This broad definition opens the door for a variety of artistic styles, including homemade video games, color projections, and digital video. For example, the May 28 showcase featured a series of color abstractions called "Pixeltone Gradients" from a South Korean artist, as well as a pre-recorded video stream from the Remote Lounge in New York City, where patrons film each other on any of the bar's fifty small video cameras.

The artistic variety also allows for easy improvisation. When Febuary's headlining artist cancelled at the last minute, Todd brought in his PlayStation and projected video games. "Under the ideal circumstances, we would have actually talked to the people who made the game and gotten their permission to show it," explains Todd, a bit embarrassed about their lack of a main artist that night. "We would have shown it as one part of a whole bunch of other games so it would have some sort of conceptual basis behind it besides, 'Hey look at this cool thing.'"

While the art at AMODA is always unique and interesting, what really brings people out to the showcases is the music. It is electronic, the audio equivalent of the digital visual art. Most of the music is generated from computer programs, but every musician uses different additions. "There is no totally typical setup. Everybody has different stuff," says Todd. "Some people have Mac, some people have PC. Some people just have a computer - a laptop or a desktop. Some people have bunches of keyboards and external gear like sequencers and effects pedals and racks and mixers. It really varies from one person to the next. Everybody has their own favorite devices and programs."

The result is a unique brand of electronic music, not necessarily the kind that the typical music fan might be familiar with. This is no rave. "The stuff at the showcases is usually less dance-y (than rave music)," says Todd. "The beats are kind of weird, and it's not always a consistent beat that you can dance to."

This genre is sometimes referred to as IDM, or "intelligent dance music," but Todd says he tries to avoid the term because it can be viewed as a stigma. "It is sort of crappy that the name implies that other music isn't intelligent," he says. "On the fliers it says that we feature electronic music that is abstract and has abstract beats and ambiances, instead of saying 'intelligent dance music.'"

The challenge for AMODA, says Todd, is to bring this music, often more conducive to enjoying on a personal level, to a more social situation. "I think a lot of the people who come to the showcases would typically listen to that music at home by themselves," he says. "And so the chance to go out and hear it in a situation where oftentimes the focus isn't really on just listening to music, but is also on socializing and taking in the general atmosphere is an interesting thing because it's giving them exactly what they're not getting at home."

AMODA's staff has also taken it upon themselves to introduce Austinites to a world of electronic music. Past showcases have featured such artists as Joseph Nothing (Japan), members of Mum (Iceland), I-Sound (NYC), and Lesser (CA), in addition to locals such as Inkblot, Self-Contained Unit, and the Buddy System.

But the goals of AMODA don't stop with monthly showcases of international artists. A non-profit organization with its own board of directors, AMODA's website states lofty goals: "Ultimately, AMODA is envisioned as a permanent venue for digital art -- a world class art museum in downtown Austin, open to the public. The vision of the museum is to become a cornerstone of culture and education in the Austin community, and to become the world's foremost institution for digital art." Recently, Austin got a glimpse into what could be the future of AMODA, when the organization celebrated its first anniversary with an inaugural exhibition at the Jones Center for Contemporary Art downtown. The exhibit featured interactive Flash and Shockwave-based art for the web. "When the exhibition was originally conceived of months and months ago, they wanted to focus on interactive, computer-based art because we felt that it would be the most realistic thing for us to do," says Todd.

Todd looks forward to the future possibilities for AMODA's art and music. "Right now we have to set up all the art in basically three hours. If we had weeks to set up the art, we could have some crazy huge installation that people had to crawl through or something," he says.

He also envisions AMODA events that will take a more serious direction. "In the near future, we're going to try to have some performances where people will go in and sit down in a more of a seated-concert type of setting and hear more experimental music," he says. "It will be interesting to see how that works because it won't have that good social element that our showcases normally have, but it will have something that they don't have - it will give more quiet, subtle music a chance to be heard in a way that you couldn't hear it at a showcase."

AMODA's showcases end around 1:15am, as patrons return home to prepare for another 9-5 day and the volunteers leisurely return Texture to its former state. The next day when the club kids arrive, no one will be able to tell that the night before, a group of young people, techies, and music fans experienced the more leisurely side of Austin's digital revolution.