Sundance — it’s not just for movies anymore.

Beginning last year, digital art — both video and virtual — was given a new place of prominence at the annual film festival. While, in the eyes of some, there remains a clear distinction between fine arts and the relative pop art of cinema, Sundance is the latest in a long line of institutions to acknowledge the influence of the moving image on the art world, and vice-versa.

It is this back-and-forth, as digital artists have tried their hand at directing and as traditional filmmakers have begun to co-opt and embrace artistic techniques, that caught the attention of Sundance organizers several years ago, particularly that of senior programmer Shari Frilot.

“There’s something happening in the art world, as artists work with the moving image in different ways, and as we are surrounded more and more by cinematic images that we didn’t really have before,” Ms. Frilot said. “You can’t even ride in a taxi in New York City anymore without being bombarded by television. There’s a space here, somewhere between the art gallery world and the traditional film festival, where this work needs to be seen and discussed.”

So it was last year, when the Sundance Film Festival launched an ambitious art program, complete with three separate galleries, a lounge café with a DJ, and its own micro-cinema, to operate outside the standard screening schedule. Dubbed “New Frontier on Main,” the art series kicks off its second year in a brand new space with an opening reception this afternoon, spotlighting 16 artists who, in the eyes of Sundance programmers, are redefining what it means to make and consume motion pictures.

Last year, organizers were astonished when more than 1,000 festival-goers a day toured the exhibits. “Since we had never done it before, I was literally petrified that no one would come, that the buzz swirling around the films in competition was so intense that no one would make it over to see the work,” Ms. Frilot said. “But the crowds showed up, and it was not just a point of curiosity — there was real excitement over the work, an embracing of this alternative programming to what you would normally find at the festival.”

One of the most talked-about installations at last year’s event was called “Cluster.” Conceived by artist Lincoln Schatz, the work incorporated both time-lapse photography and real-time editing. “Cluster” essentially worked like a mutating mirror, recording images of its observers every few minutes and then blending the footage into an ever-evolving collage with previously recorded imagery.

This year’s artists share a similar fascination with the ways that images and movement can create spectacles never before seen when they’re mixed with technology. On one end of the technological spectrum is Jennifer Steinkamp (jsteinkamp.com), who uses the latest computer technology to meticulously craft images of nature at its most basic and serene. After creating high-definition video projections of trees, she sets the static images into motion as the branches of each tree — which are projected as towering, floor-to-ceiling figures — swirl in a hypnotic pattern.

To vastly different effect, artist Hasan Elahi (trackingtransience.net) uses technology to compartmentalize reality, as well as our conventional perceptions of society. In his “Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project,” Mr. Elahi incorporates the FBI into his artwork — somehow unsurprising since the agency investigated Mr. Elahi for six months as an alleged terrorist. Going so far as to develop a network device that compiles both real-time locations and a catalog of real-time imagery, “Tracking Transience” is effectively Mr. Elahi’s intricately designed online spy network — unleashed on himself.

But the most notable, and unpredictable, artists recruited for this year’s festival might be those involved with the New York-based Graffiti Research Lab (graffitiresearchlab.com), a 21st-century collective that has successfully reinvented the purpose and production of graffiti art for the digital age.

According to the official Sundance program, “L.A.S.E.R. Tag is an open-source Weapon of Mass Defacement (WMD) designed to enable graffiti writers, artists, activists, and citizens to communicate in the urban environment on the same scale as advertisers.” Talking to James Powderly, who founded the Graffiti Research Lab along with Evan Roth, it’s clear that they plan to approach the festival not as a one-day event but as a 10-day mission to shake up the standard Sundance experience.

“Corporations have big advertising agencies to speak for them,” Mr. Powderly said, “and basically we view ourselves as the agencies for the other guys — for independent artists and pranksters who need an additional tool in finding a Microsoft billboard and spraying over it. I’m not sure if they are ready for us, but we’ll be out there, every night somewhere different, encouraging people to use L.A.S.E.R. Tag.”

Since agreeing to attend Sundance well before the schedule of films was even announced, Mr. Powderly said, he and Mr. Roth were ecstatic about the inclusion of the documentary “Slingshot Hip Hop” in this year’s competition. Directed by fellow New Yorker Jackie Reem Salloum, the film tells the story of various Palestinian hip-hop artists who use their music and words to offer alternative means of activism in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Now we have a mission, to collaborate with these performers and give them a voice,” Mr. Powderly said, detailing a “beat case” the GRL has devised — effectively a portable sound system that has enough juice to turn any street corner into an ear-popping concert venue.

It’s with the same spirit that GRL — based out of Manhattan and recently recruited by the Museum of Modern Art to demonstrate its equipment at an opening next month — has altered the conventions of the graffiti world. Using a laser pointer and a computer program, artists can effectively spray paint a skyscraper without the use of paint (popular videos of these improvised digital artworks can be found at the group’s Web site).

“At first we weren’t sure if Sundance would work for us, since we don’t really make films, but there’s a subtle similarity between us and the filmmakers here,” Mr. Powderly said. “Our role is that we make tools for normal people to compete on the scale of major media and advertisers, and that’s precisely what these independent makers of culture have done. They’ve taken it upon themselves to do what most artists rely on the big studios to do.”

ssnyder@nysun.com