Lounge Act.

NEW-MEDIA HOUNDS, start lining up for popcorn. This fall at the New Museum of Contemporary Art's Media Z Lounge, "Cin-o-matic: Memory and Cinematic Perception" will take a fresh look at the moving picture, featuring works that reconfigure the cinematic experience through new technologies.

Media Z, which opened last November as New York's only space exclusively devoted to the presentation of new-media art, comprises a gallery, five computer stations, and a viewing lounge and boasts state-of-the-art equipment, most notably who wall-mounted plasma screens. It was designed by LOT/EK, the architectural team of Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, creators of such technological wonders as a multimedia viewing apparatus made from a concrete mixer.

So far, the space has hosted about ten shows, among them this summer's "Trompe L'oeil: Fictitious Internet Sites," an exhibition of websites that usurp familiar design and information architectures (banner ads, disclaimers, and the like) as cleverly as those mock TV commercials on old episodes of Saturday Night Live. "Cin-o-matic" (Oct. 19-Dec. 30) promises to be even more ambitions. High-lights will include Adrift, 2001, a collaborative Net performance project that takes place in multiple locations (actual and virtual) and combines projections, narrative text, and sound streaming in real time. The technology belongs to today, but the presentation--on a panoramic semicircular screen based on the projection space built for the 1900 World Exposition in France--recalls film's infancy. Unlike the usual cinematic experience, though, there's no need to buy tickets here: Media Z is located on the New Museum's store level, which means it's free.