Mark Napier
INTERNET ARTMark Napier |
PotatolandTrained as a painter BFA (10yrs)
1995 worked w/ computers; started making a websites, worked with php database
1998 SHREDDER 1.0- Create an alternative, create a different way to browse the web
- Web is a publishing way, design pulling the yahoo site randomly
- Creating an abstract expressionist painting
- Designed 800x600 because there's a lot of white space at the time
- Looking at the craft of digital art
- Metaphor as the web page as paper and undo. The web page is a bunch of instruction it's simple to reinterpret the instructions to something else
- Using Perl: takes the html and changes it to another browser
- Writing software for browser language
-Questioning what is the web?
Q: Interested conceptually or aesthetically?
- Abstract
- Personal desire to tear the web
- Lacking of physical touch; amazing ability to transport links from different place yet it's not touchable
- Able Connecting
- Ironic play; taking physical metaphor applying to it watching what breaks or not
1999 RIOT- Breaking down that the territory of web as nodes
- Defining territories like domain name
- Legal battles who controls which domain
- You surf the previous one is battling with your next one
- Crossing boundaries of websites but crossing between other pple's search site
- Taking apart distinctions of mixing the different websites
- Perl and Javascript
* Disbelief internet art in a museum setting - need to communicate that there is a different space
Expectation complication
Need to understand the internet how it extends to different spaces
Q: Actual problems installing this at the Whitney?
- Memory problems
- Rebooted; nursing it for 2 days
Main problems: Avoid startup screen, screen saver
Connected to Internet there's updates and etc
NETFLAGGEDThe internet is fighting for territories
-Creating a flag for it
- Can be scaled up, billboard size
- Changes meaning and marking
- Database of int'l flags: Drop down menu of national flags; can choose certain colors, parts of the flag
- Alter the flag; save; updates
- Optimized for MS;
- A lot of graphic designers: thinking through visual problems using simple shapes
- Keeping visual vocabulary constricted it pushes them
- Thinking of the meaning; flag colors have meanings
- Using images to define physical territory
- Some pple have fun and take very serously
- All this creative territory without me having to do it; has a second life
- Built a system and allowing the potentional; creating ongoing interaction; performance then object
- Database
Q: Any political problems?
A: One person pushed Greece. He make a flag using Greek flag, save it and move the place. Fill the entire page of greek flag.
He created minimal pattern - wanted Greek to be number one. The site is able to detect which flag designs are most popular.
Q: Physically anywhere
A: No only on internet, owned by Guggenheim. Archived all the data.
Q: Can you change the site?
A: Can but requires some beauacracy - managed to keep it running, maintenance important
Q: Whitney own all the pages?
A: Don't own the gate pieces, depends - tell them what you need - better do do all the hosting to have control - saved with auto web - not actually own the pieces but have them in residence
A: Not well equipped - but very expensive. It's not what museums are good at - multiple artists working with multiple types of technologies - all running simultaneously probably one computer, server - lol
A: Waiting for emulators to come out
BLACK AND WHITE-transitional piece
WAITING ROOM-Architectural graphics
- Scanned; allow people to interact and play with them
- Painterly quality; able to change very quickly
- Experiment; more into graphics
- Tactile relationship with screen; viewer is clicking on the screen to create shapes
- Someone elsewhere is doing the same
- Space of the art because a territory and collaborative piece
- Constantly changing
- Painting authoring tool
- Questioning where the painting because a communally owned object
- Who controls who has dominance, conflicting experiences
- Selling @ Bit Forms gallery; sold as CD and install to a flat panel
Q: How active is the piece?
A: Depends, some people are quite active and keep the piece on/off. Most people buy it and box it and wait if it increases in value. If you want to circulate in the world it's very different. Difference of artist and collectors. Viewed as in investment?
Q: Most of your work Java?
A: Scaled back to specific form. Working with applets.
2002 EMPIRE
Q: Why I valued painting so much?
A: Type of engagement and involvement in a sensory level; both visual and tactile. Setup Empire State building that you can drag and drop; play. Java limits the form. Wanted to make colors in choice. Made the piece in 3D.
Transition from EMPIRE to this 3D piece
- Drawing in 3D images
- Using Open GL to give a much richer effect
- Add textural
Q: What is a monument?
A: Architecture as a power, economic, country.
Questiong:
What if you take that and make it virtual?
What is the physical relationship of this monument to a virtual context?
- Strikes as image as a texture
- Painting with the building
Final version showed at Bit Form gallery
EMPIRE LIGHT: still moves despite not interacting with it
Q: How much motion?
Q: Do you keep it still create emotion?
A: If you stop interacting like a painting stop painting. Sends a time of duration as a key. More as craft issues
A: Craft Issues.
Q: Why are you using a computer do this?
Q: Issues with buyers; issues that come up? Different limitation different issues
Q: Why did you printout vertically?
A: Screen shots of the buildings, balance of show out,
Q: Any idea for more concrete ideas?
A: Actually painting them. Taking 3 years to create technology part and converting them back to a painting
Q: How is painting them back to a different level?
A: Looking painting as a different form. Constantly try to get them out of the web. The interactive work is the core of the image.
Q: How does the artwork propagate?
A: See as the software as the art then image.
Q: Able to navigate in the space?
A: In my version yes but gallery but you're situated only in one perspective to take away the complication. Looking as space creating an event, an event to record, time stamped, influenced by media, etc moment to moment and looking at that moment, destroying and recreating
Q: Don't see the software as authoring tool?
A: It is the unfolding of the piece. It's more about the communication. The process is the artwork. Put the code on microfilm. This is the proof. Artwork must have some form of longevity. Has to be rich visually and choose to use in different ways.
Q: Why not prints and painting?
A: Make something a physical object. Prints as many of it. Sense of the hand - technique - tend to think photo real - work quite loosely. Doesn't matter if the artwork is the software.
Q: How do you keep the process of the unfolding in the painting?
A: No the whole process but the paintings are a snapshot of the experience. The connection is important and original source
Q: Sing your microfilm?
A: Yes. The whole game of possession. Not really care of the artwork Question of ownership and possession - permanence and grabbing - whole idea of opposable thumb - concept of need to grasp, see and touch. Handing out little bits of beauty - whole part of this game and phenomenon.
Q: Dealing with matereality from software to painting?
A: All this uber medium as the web. How to own it and present it.
Adam: How do you create a material object with digital art? Encouraged Camille to make paintings as supplemental work for people to sell and bring with them. How do you create this bridge? Kind of why the McCoys are so successful - concept of this packageble idea.
Christine Paul
Christine Paul author of Digital Art, director of Intelligent Media
How to present New Media work The Myth of Immateriality Presenting & Preserving New Media
New Media: computable, any digital device, process, time based, dynamic unfolds long period of time
Average time visiting a is piece is 2 minutes
Gives an impression
Networked, Real time, telematic, interactivity
Ab Link interaction -- consider interfaces that are inviting
-Museum space people are hesitant
-No exposure to computer with traditional artists
-People turn from afraid to touching to destroying it
Digital Media is extremely modular
With a website how to present it within a museum space?
Dealing with specific dimensions (piece adjusting with each space restrictions)
Curating new media work - constantly going back in forth with the artist - budget dependent (min and max)
Question of curatorial control and voice, leads to roles- Podcasting audio guides for MOMA (process where 'people' become involved)
Challenge traditional roles of curating
"Mobile art"
Martin Wattenberg and Marek Walczak,
Apartment- Installation projection inscribing words to a wall (projection made sense)
- Shown all over the world but never the same way
Thecia Schiphorst, Susan Kozel, Whisper
"Internet Art"
-People spend more time in a lounge space
-Need to revisit the space (uploading images, updating)
-Print cards, URL, printed material (re explore) * museum becomes an entry to artist
Black Box: budget problem, space issue
- light sensors
White Space:
- Feels too sacred
- With networked art it contradicts the feeling opposed to the piece it is placed
Mobile Locative Media
Palm pilots, beaming station
Museum is only one node
What is the role of the museum?
Creating multiple beaming stations among the city
Whisper[s]
Wearable unisex
Create a collective body among people
When you were this wearable technology it measures your muscle tension and connects
Collective body you have the sense of everybody’s
-Pulse
-Position
-Temperature
Requires constant attention
- Artists needs to be present with devices
- Constant documentation for presenting when off performance
- Continuous base (being dressed, document, present)
Follow Through: Jennifer Crowe, Scott Paterson
-Conceptual device to guide museum visitors
-Based on all behavioral studies at museum
-How people move within a space
-Study the behavior of people and created little exercises to make people aware of body language, how to behave and interact within a museum space
-Wear a headset; creates a private space; people more inclined to do it
-The moment of realizing people looking doing the same thing as the exercise despite with the headset
-Body language would vary in museum
-Successful requires little technology, people understand how to use audio guides,
-Difficulty with the infrastructure; numerous sessions to train to explain the piece
THE PORT: Simon Goldin Jakob Senneby
Opened art space within second life
Working with people all over the world but have never met, created a community
Performances
Create a magazine for the port
Call for contributions
Three times a week there would be editorial meetings.
Created wiki
* interest of virtual and real world
** automonous project
*** Goes beyond network spaces
CODeDoc: Paul's most favorite project
Ars Electronica 2003
- diverse exposure
- community base of programmers, arts, net culture, branched out
- see reviews from all categories
CODeDOC II: Second commission
- invite European artists (works lived on american server)
TATE Online: Collaboration with Whitney and Tate
-helps a lot on exposure
AUTOMATED curatingrunme.org
- automated curating
1993 Computer aided curating (conceptual piece)
- Have space on the net where artists create, studio, presented, exhibited, collectors could come and view and purchase (art market); blur the boundaries
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Q.Different interaction within White and black box?
A.The interaction and experience is very different people have expectations, people are going to interact with black space as compared to white box where people are more contemplated. Currently, the trend is "collaborative" coming from the changes of technologies. Art always influence the culture of the time. What bothers her is the art deal with the medium and is ignored.
With New Media art it's not an attitude. You have to collaborate - rarely work alone. So much technical aspects involved to be independent. Different process from giving specs and manufacturing while in New Media the programmer will alter the asethetics piece.
Q.New Media artists rarely look at Whitney for exhibitions?
A. Completely the opposite. Ars Electronica not in the perception of the art world. Still means a lot due to status.
What does it mean in Art History if contemporary art is completely lost? Misunderstanding of what artists are doing today, if part of the practice is ignored. Like to be part of discourse of contemporary art. Important to integrate within museums - main reason for being at the Whitney
Q. Why was there very little interactive Whitney Biennial?
A. Confidential answer -- very different story to exhibit piece at Ars Electronica in comparison to Whitney museum setting. Dealing with profiling and dealing with negative responses - engaging with lawyers - you don't sue a small media festival but you do sue a large institution
A. Much more new media festivals in europe than states. See much more smaller museums showing new media exposure
Gives pressure to bigger instituitions
Q. Selection progress of piece does the complexity of programming make a difference?
A. You don't exhibit work because it's so beautifully crafted - Concept, how it is being implemented, it's all part of it, technical aspect, why is it so badly implemented? How much interactivity to you need for the piece is successful depends on what you are trying to communicate. Lack of literacy of code is one of the big challenges of this art - looking at CODeDOC
Have to understand the behaviors looking past the aesthetics - linear is the main paradigm -
Aesthetics of construction VS Aesthetics of perceptionLike pod casting people are becoming more aware with construction.
A. Tim Hawkinson Show was extremely successful
Q. People you see taking apart pieces fit a certain demographic of interaction?
A. Doesn't matter in terms of age. People do push to be interactive, where it becomes destructive
* Perhaps more pieces that address that issue to make people more careful with interactive pieces.
New Media: Reaction DiVa + Armory
Works should have NO
slow motionreversepoorly lit DIY performanceBORGES Barney
Multiple works became annoying?
Jumping from room to room. Doesn't encourage you to sit longer?
Floating Piece:
-2 pieces
-Breathing not connecting
"Video Artists rarely break away from the format" - A.Chapman
FLUXUS -Happenings
Dick Higgins
Fred Wilson: Giant Chandelier made in black glass.
"Artist best interest to establish themselves the a brand", a logo very much like Hello Kitty.
"Convincing the gallery and the gallery's best interest to have work" that is recognizable. -Chapman.
"What museums buy and what it does for the individual artist" - Chapman
Artists fall into "market aspect"
Kinkade study as a social network aspect. Due to the control and amount of money.
McCoys also do the same thing but the content is different. Make several iterations of an idea.
Wyland Galleries (Hawaii)
Started by doing murals
New Media + Art: Illusionists
Java Shadow Puppet Theater
Wayan Kulit technique - single puppeteer, sings and speaks, epic tale
Camera Obscura: bends the light, visualized thru a pinhole
Sala Delle Perspective 1516 Tromp L'oeil: every single surface of the wall is painted with a 3D perspective
change of spatial perception
Fantasmagorie 1792
Panorama: large paintings on scrolls creating a 360 illusion
Henri Philippoteaux-- siege of Paris Battle of Gettysberg
Kaleidoscope 1816
The Peep Show 1800s
Anorthoscope - Phenkistiscope
Thaumatrope 1825
Pepper's Ghost 1858
Automata
Jacques Vaucanson 1709-1782: mounted on a large box created mechanical version of a duck
Friedrich von Knauss 1770s
Alexandre Nicolas Theroude
Roullet & Decamps
William Grimes:
Cloacamimics digestive system see the whole process from feeding it food to the final product is feces. The feces are sold.
Arthur Ganson:
Adrianne Wortzel:
Arthur Ganson: kinetic sculptures
Madagascar Institute :
Lemur Electronic Musical Robots:
Jessica Murray:
Joel Murphy
James Cohen Gallery
New Media + Art: Works
Creating a poetic experience
Scott Snibbe: researcher, programmer, buddhist influences his whole asethetic
Trying to evoke feelings through a piece of paper inspired by Disney's comment that you don't need eyes and ears to create a character.
"Boundary Functions": draws venn diagrams between people, retro-reflect paneling Screen Series Compliant: altering the shape of a white box through boundariesShy: creating work that runs away. Counter intuitiveCamille Utterback + Romy Achituv
Text Rain: Luminous Flux: painterly effect Liquid Time: camera mounted on ceiling. Create a matrix of clips so depending on your x,y position it shows time. Mapping time to a physical space. Contrast of permanent and moving objects to develop that sense of time Untitled 5: Zachary Simpson: gamer programmer
siteMondrion: Use IR sensors - food lightingSwarm: inspired by dust creatures, Princess Mononoke.
Zach Lieberman Golan Levin: Messa De Voici
* Interactive pieces are not really meant for general public but for people with vocal trainingManual Input Sessions:
The Art of Craft?
How do we judge art?
Why are art curators afraid to criticize beauty?
Where does the craft exist when its incomprehensible to the general public like digital art?
Where else the painting all piece is displayed through a physical vocabulary?
Christine Paul: curated a digital artwork who invited artists who commented on each other's work.
"CODeDOC: (the art of creating projects without the hands on experience, collaborated pieces of code in which the artist has no physical part or integration other than curating the piece.
- Three Points Project
- Levin's "axis of evil"
Definition of craft is to have intimate knowledge of a medium. Is this a bad definition?
How many levels of abstraction is there?
Code profiling other people's code.
Sketching of Digital Art
Are there tests of codes?
Kelly Keanton who sells her sketches as by products (something to sell)
How is "processing" art work being judged?
PHOTOGRAPHY 1802
Thomas Wedgewood record images on coated paper/leather.
Joseph Nicephore Niepce(French) lithography copied oil to engravings via exposure to sun
Jacques Louis Mande Daguerre perfects positive photographic process (hubris)
PHOTOGRAPHY 1871
Richard Leach Maddox silver bromide gelatin solution, mass production of photo plates
George Eastman introduces to Kodak
Reverence Hannibal Goodwin, NJ introduces with the use plastic
STERO PHOTOGRAPHY 1832, 1856-1920
3D Images charles Wheatstone
Twin-lens cameras were available to create a 3D effect when viewed through a stereoscope
David Brewster simplified the viewing instrument publicized it at the World Expo Fair
SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY 1856: subversion of the medium and system
COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY 1861
James Clerk Maxwell: photographs the same image with difference filters RGB to create a colored photo
1890s Frederick Ives Kromscrope
EARLY MOTION CAPTURING
Eadweard MyuBridge 1830 - ?
1873 - setup trip wires to photograph a horse running
Refines the camera to develop new types of shutters
Etienne-Jules Marey 1830-1904 France refines motion in time, improves camera with the use of long strip of film
Emile Reynaud, Prxinoscope 1876 (double buffering the image)
Lumiere 1895: Cinematographe
George Melies: Color Cinematography 1905 using a Animatograph and reversed the principles developing his own camera
Walter Benjamin "The art of the age of machines"
REVIEW:
THE IRONY:
one perspective to bring technology to the mass whilst admiring the nostalgic being and uniqueness.
Mass mentality of positive and negative viewings of media
Perception:
Video - your view is guided rather than self interpreted
Uniqueness VS Ambiguity
Passive VS Active
Reprecussions of reproduction
Painter VS Filmmaker
Surgeon VS Magician
Authorship of View
Perception of changes w/ art/tech
Loss of aura? - What is aura these days?
Is all art reproducable?
Political value of art
Scalable size of art affects the aura --
What happens to the authenticity?
Watch original "Thomas Crown Affair" -
The context determines the value of the art. "A lot of posturing and bullshit" - Adam Chapman
