He considers Schindler's List a part of this process, and as much a successful film. "I think it conveys the idea and it does it in a manner that can be appreciated by the masses," he says, measuring his words. "It was a magnificent idea to gather us in Jerusalem at the end. It was a very emotional experience."

Horowitz and his parents survived their detention in various concentration camps reestablished their life in Krakow after the war, He displayed early creactive gifts, studied arts at the High School of Fine Arts and majored in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. "I was growing up with people who later became famous film directors and writers and painters," he says, referring to such friends as Roman Polanski and Jerzy Kosinski. "After Stalin's death in the 1950's, Poland became a center for everything new and exciting in the arts. We were drawn by the forbidden and the unknown. And we were learning by reviewing scrap material-bits and pieces."

Early on Horowitz began to synthesize varied media and disciplines: "I had a group of fabulous art teachers, and I spent a lot of time studying old masters, learning about the interconnection beween history and art, seeing the whole development in a much larger sense."

At age 20, he earned a scholarship to study at Pratt Institute and immigrated to New York, beginning a period of exposure to Greenwich Village jazz clubs as well as an alienating artistic mileau. "New York was the center of abstract expressionism at the time, and there was nothing more alien to me," he say. "I was taught that, yes, you express yourself, but you do it later in life--you don't just start with abstraction."

This a point he often makes when lecturing stuends today. "My opinion of the order in which you do things has not changed, and this is true about computers or photography or anything: First you master your technique. You don't start at the end. And the computer is the end tool. All you have to know is what keys to press and it will do something for you, with very litter input from you.

"Superficially, a computer can spit out very flashy and effsctive images, whether you have talent or not. But you know, if you play a pre-programmed instrument, you get the same thing," he says with a laugh. "You can be a keyboard player, if the keyboard does it for you. If you know the buttons to press, it creates an arrangement for you--but lt's not you anymore, it's the programmer who put it in."

In the digital era, when, what separates the authentic from the bad? "It's a matter of talent and vision," he answers.