Image from "Seven." Courtesy Performa

People looked a little bewildered when they first walked into “Seven,” Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler’s performance last night at Nicole Klagsbrun, part of Performa 11. On a bench just to the side of the door sat four people in bathrobes. At one side of the room, a man stripped to his underwear was inside a glass sweat chamber. He was sitting in a large bowl that rotated slowly as a person in a bathrobe pedaled swiftly on an exercise bike outside the chamber. To their right was a woman in a lab coat, operating a large machine made of metal sheeting, copper piping, old coffee cans and light bulbs; she was collecting the colorful liquid produced by the machine into test tubes. A long tube ran across the ceiling that connected the sweat chamber and the machine. Two screens played a video of a group of men in Africa digging up clay out of the ground in a desert.

We were expecting some kind of strangeness. We had spoken to Mr. Kessler several months before about the piece. He had mentioned sweat being turned into chakra and transporting it to Africa for it to be buried in the ground, but he stopped himself as he was explaining and said, “When I put it that way I sound crazy.”

Well, we probably risk sounding crazy too. The performance lasted about 35 minutes and it took nearly 20 of those to start to figure out what was going on. It is difficult to put into words—you really should just see it—but here goes: The video and the live performers were working together.

The clay that was being dug up in Africa onscreen was placed in a canister, brought back to a strange-looking machine in a shack and transported to the makeshift lab at Nicole Klagsbrun. Everything was timed perfectly. The clay popped up in a container on the machine in the gallery. The woman in a lab coat put the lump of clay in a mini fridge connected to the machine. She closed the door and a haunting sound played in the room, and when she opened the door, the lump of clay had turned into a sculpted bowl. The sweat from the person in the sweat chamber was fed through the tubing on the ceiling and then dispensed into the bowl. The sweat was then put into another container and poured into a test tube. When it came out, it was a different color. The woman in the lab coat flashed a thumbs up at the person in the sweat chamber and whispered, “Good job.” This process repeated until seven liquids had been collected.

These were then “transported” back to Africa, onscreen. A man collected them and placed them in a suitcase. He carried the suitcase out to the desert where a small audience was waiting for him. He poured the liquid from each test tube into a hole in the ground. This caused the ground to burst open. Colors corresponding to the colors of the liquid flew out of the earth in bright streams. The audience in the desert applauded politely. The people in the gallery did the same.

David Jon Kassan at work. (Photo: Stongehenge)

On the seventh floor of the Olivia apartment building on West 33rd Street in Midtown last week, a small crowd was seated in a dimly lit conference room, awaiting an art performance that the building's owner, Stonehenge Properties, had promised. “They just like to do things for the community,” a plaid-wearing man told us as he poured sparkling wine.

The evening's entertainment was Brooklyn-based artist David Jon Kassan, whose performances involve painting in public—on an iPad. After working in oil for 20 years, Mr. Kassan converted to digital painting a year ago, following artists like David Hockney and Jorge Colombo, who have also made that leap. He has gained some notice: a YouTube time-lapse video that he produced, showing him painting on his iPad, has received 1.3 million hits since it was posted in June 2010.

Two monitors had been set up on opposite ends of the room, magnifying the brushstrokes that Mr. Kassan applied with his finger as he worked to capture his subject, a somber young blonde woman who sat unflinchingly in front of his device. Kassan stabalized his iPad on a large easel, its proportions comically dominating those of his petite digital canvas.

Seated in front of this setup, Mr. Kassan worked for about an hour, creating a chunky Impressionist portrait. It looked as if real, painted brushstrokes had shaded the subject's digital forehead. He frequently switched digital brush sizes and meticulously layered colors, as if he were painting with oils.

“Everything is a process,” he explained to the audience while adjusting his thick-framed rectangular glasses. “In a couple of hours I hope to get something better.” The crowd sat patiently, watching as Mr. Kassan's fingers stroked the glass screen. Meanwhile, a waspish singer, Jasmine Commerce, filled the room with woeful tunes. After she finished, Mr. Kassan called out to her. “Do you know how to play ‘Scar Tissue’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers?” he asked. She did not, and iTunes, piped in from another iPad, took over.

Conveniently, Uwe Maurer, the director of the ArtRage Studio application that the artist uses, was on hand, holding a booklet covered in Chinese characters and decorated with a digital watercolor of a purple dragon. “There is a learning curve that even children can grasp,” he told us. The picture, he explained, had been painted by a seven-year-old student in Shanghai using ArtRage.

Could iPad oils really be the future of art? Mr. Kassan seemed to think so, and has apparently thought through the logistics of selling digital art: he deletes each file from his iPad after making a sale, ensuring that each customer walks away with an original work.

“With traditional painting, it's almost like there are no rules,” he told the audience. “It's intuitive.” Several audience members nodded their heads in agreement. “We need to make this new medium as intuitive as the old.” He returned to work.