WHAT IS TECHSPRESSIONISM?
Techspressionism is introduced as a new art-historical term to describe fine artists using digital technology to convey subjective, emotional content.
Techspressionism distinguishes expressive fine art from such genres as “digital art,” which can include animated movies, and video games, as well as from “new media” works that do not embody convincing artistic intent.
The subjective lens of the individual artist (rather than the product of a corporate studio) is what connects Techspressionism to its predecessor, Expressionism. Expressionists presented the world from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically in order to evoke moods or ideas, seeking to express their emotional experience rather than physical reality.
A core group of artists have begun working together to develop momentum for the adoption of the term Techspressionism into common usage. We meet biweekly at our Techspressionist Salon artist meetups on Zoom to discuss art and technology. Further information on the origins of the term Techspressionism is available here.
The Techspressionist Manifesto, a document that draws inspiration from artistic manifestos of the past (including Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto and Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto) is a open-ended document subject to ongoing revisions from group members.
We encourage artists who identify with the approach of using technology as a means to express emotional experience to self-identify as Techspressionists by including the hashtag #techspressionism on Instagram, Twiter, and other social media platforms.
We are actively reviewing images using the hashtag on Instagram and Twitter and reposting a curated selection of these works. Artists whose work is reposted are invited to be included in an online index of Techspressionist visual artists.
– Anne Morgan Spalter, January 2021, Brattleboro, VT, USA.
techspressionism
/tek-spresh-uh-niz-uh m/
An artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience. (1)
ROOT WORDS (source: Oxford Dictionaries):
expressionism: A style of painting, music, or drama in which the artist or writer seeks to express emotional experience rather than impressions of the external world.
technology :The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry.
Techspressionism: Curators in Conversation with Christiane Paul and Helen A. Harrison is the first of a series of Roundtable Discussions created by Techspressionist artists. This conversation is a discussion focusing of Techspressionism as it relates to art-historical movements of the past as well as to digital art at large.
Christiane Paul is Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School, as well as Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation’s 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, and her books are A Companion to Digital Art (Blackwell-Wiley, May 2016); Digital Art (Thames and Hudson, 2003, 2008, 2015, 2023); Context Providers – Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts (Intellect, 2011; Chinese edition, 2012); and New Media in the White Cube and Beyond (UC Press, 2008). At the Whitney Museum she curated exhibitions including Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art 1965 – 2018 (2018/19), Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools (2011) and Profiling (2007), and is responsible for artport, the museum’s portal to Internet art.
Helen A. Harrison, a former New York Times art critic and NPR arts commentator, is the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, New York. A specialist in modern American art, she has been the curator of the Parrrish Art Museum and Guild Hall Museum and a guest curator at the Queens Museum. Her books include Hamptons Bohemia: Two Centuries of Artists and Writers on the Beach, monographs on Jackson Pollock and Larry Rivers, and three mystery novels set in the New York art world.
Bronx-born artist Colin Goldberg’s work explores the relationship between technology and personal expression. His studio practice bridges multiple disciplines, notably painting and digital media. Goldberg first used the term Techspressionism as the title for a solo exhibition in Southampton NY in 2011, and curated the first large-scale group exhibition of Techspressionist works, Techspressionism: Digital and Beyond at Southampton Arts Center (Southampton NY, 2022).
Art in Focus
Illustrated talks that illuminate the world of art.
Hosted by Helen Harrison
The videos below are a series of talks organized in conjunction with the exhibition, Techspressionism: Digital & Beyond, at the Southampton Arts Center, April 21 – July 23, 2022.
These talks were co-sponsored by Stony Brook Southampton Library, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, and the Southampton Arts Center and made possible by support from the John H. Marburger III Fund of Stony Brook University.
Helen A. Harrison, the director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in East Hampton, is the former curator of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton and Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton. She has also been a guest curator at the Queens Museum in Flushing, has taught at the School of Visual Arts, and currently holds an adjunct faculty position in Stony Brook University’s Department of Art. From 1978-2006, she wrote art reviews and feature articles for the Long Island section of The New York Times, and she was the visual arts commentator for WLIU 88.3 FM, Long Island University’s NPR-affiliated radio station, from 2004-2009. Her articles, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous scholarly and popular publications, and she’s the author of several books, including, most recently, two mystery novels set in the New York art world.
FOCUS: Digital / Analog Hybrids
Tuesday, May 3, 2022 via Zoom
Anne Spalter
Rhode Island School of Design
Anne discusses how she used cutting edge artificial intelligence to create new types of compositions–but unexpectedly ended up using familiar drawing and painting tools to realize her final works in Techspressionism: Digital and Beyond.
Digital mixed-media artist Anne Spalter is an academic pioneer who founded the original digital fine arts courses at Brown University and RISD in the 1990s and authored the internationally taught textbook, The Computer in the Visual Arts (Addison-Wesley, 1999). Her artistic process combines a consistent set of personal symbols with a hybrid arsenal of traditional mark-making methods and innovative digital tools. A new body of work, further developed at a recent residency at MASS MoCA, combines artificial intelligence algorithms with oil paint and pastels. She is currently creating NFT artworks.
FOCUS: What the Heck is Techspressionism?
Tuesday, May 17, 2022 via Zoom
Colin Goldberg
Artist/ Curator of “Techspressionism: Digital & Beyond”
Colin coined the term Techspressionism in 2011 to describe “an artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience.” Since then, it has evolved into an international movement, with periodic online meetups, modeled on the 19th century salon concept, in which artists share their works and personal creative philosophies. Colin will discuss Techspressionism’s genesis, survey its present flowering, and imagine its potential.
Colin Goldberg was born in the Bronx, New York, to parents of Japanese and Jewish ancestry, both Ph.D. chemists. His grandmother Kimiye was an accomplished practitioner and instructor of Japanese Shodo calligraphy. He has been a freelancer in NYC advertising agencies, coding and designing some of the web’s first consumer-facing sites and launching brands such as Snapple, GOLF Magazine, and Popular Science online. He holds a BA in Studio Art from Binghamton University and a MFA in Computer Art from BGSU, and is a recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts.
FOCUS: Responding to Techspressionism
Tuesday, May 31 via Zoom
Shimon Attie
Bergman Visiting Professor, Stony Brook University
In his artistic practice, Shimon uses both traditional and experimental media, including immersive multiple-channel video and other digital tools. He will respond to the exhibition in light of technology’s expressive potential for re-imagining relationships between space, time, place, memory and identity.
Shimon Attie is an internationally renowned visual artist whose work spans photography, video, site-specific installation, public projects, and new media. A recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s Lee Krasner Award, he was awarded The Rome Prize in 2001, a Visual Artist Fellowship from Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study in 2007, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. He became the inaugural Bergman Visiting Professor at Stony Brook in the fall of 2020.
Some recent posts from our Instagram feed are below. Many thanks to our Instagram curator, Renata Janiszewska. Follow our official account @techspressionism and the hashtag #techspressionism on Instagram.
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Jan Swinburne
Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦
@theswinburnecomplex
Jan Swinburne’s intermedia practice overlaps images, sculpture, and experimental moving image art in two streams: Gallery oriented exhibitions, and time based experimental forms. Her thematic focus revolves around words, language as landscape, degenerated and regenerated images and sounds.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Jan Swinburne
Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦
@theswinburnecomplex
Jan Swinburne’s intermedia practice overlaps images, sculpture, and experimental moving image art in two streams: Gallery oriented exhibitions, and time based experimental forms. Her thematic focus revolves around words, language as landscape, degenerated and regenerated images and sounds.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Jan Swinburne
Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦
@theswinburnecomplex
Jan Swinburne’s intermedia practice overlaps images, sculpture, and experimental moving image art in two streams: Gallery oriented exhibitions, and time based experimental forms. Her thematic focus revolves around words, language as landscape, degenerated and regenerated images and sounds.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Lee Schnaiberg
Montreal, Canada 🇨🇦
@leeschnaiberg
Too brute to be fine, too shrewd to be naïve
An outsider's outsider, Schnaiberg's first art teacher was his grandfather, who studied with Arthur Lismer then built an Art Brut collage 'salon' for over 20 years...
After seventeen semesters in art-school [kicked out of some, quit some] Lee finally recieved a BFA. Spent a decade VJing and making experimental documentaries about climate-change solutions. Lee has won awards for his paintings (Laureat du Quebec; CollegeArt '86), videos (Canadian Student Film Festival), and climate movies (EarthVision'98 in Santa Cruz).
The Space In Between has recently been written about in Tripping on nothing: placebo psychedelics and contextual factors (published in Springer Nature 2020) where they imply his paintings make people as high as if they ate mushrooms.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Lee Schnaiberg
Montreal, Canada 🇨🇦
@leeschnaiberg
Too brute to be fine, too shrewd to be naïve
An outsider's outsider, Schnaiberg's first art teacher was his grandfather, who studied with Arthur Lismer then built an Art Brut collage 'salon' for over 20 years...
After seventeen semesters in art-school [kicked out of some, quit some] Lee finally recieved a BFA. Spent a decade VJing and making experimental documentaries about climate-change solutions. Lee has won awards for his paintings (Laureat du Quebec; CollegeArt '86), videos (Canadian Student Film Festival), and climate movies (EarthVision'98 in Santa Cruz).
The Space In Between has recently been written about in Tripping on nothing: placebo psychedelics and contextual factors (published in Springer Nature 2020) where they imply his paintings make people as high as if they ate mushrooms.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Lee Schnaiberg
Montreal, Canada 🇨🇦
@leeschnaiberg
Too brute to be fine, too shrewd to be naïve
An outsider's outsider, Schnaiberg's first art teacher was his grandfather, who studied with Arthur Lismer then built an Art Brut collage 'salon' for over 20 years...
After seventeen semesters in art-school [kicked out of some, quit some] Lee finally recieved a BFA. Spent a decade VJing and making experimental documentaries about climate-change solutions. Lee has won awards for his paintings (Laureat du Quebec; CollegeArt '86), videos (Canadian Student Film Festival), and climate movies (EarthVision'98 in Santa Cruz).
The Space In Between has recently been written about in Tripping on nothing: placebo psychedelics and contextual factors (published in Springer Nature 2020) where they imply his paintings make people as high as if they ate mushrooms.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Martin Ostrachowski
Montreal, Canada 🇨🇦
@mlodotart
Martin’s work is extremely personal, intimate, and explores the concepts of his identity. He enjoys the versatility of clouds, their peculiarity of being intangible, in continuous change and transience, while remaining familiar and relatable to everybody.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Martin Ostrachowski
Montreal, Canada 🇨🇦
@mlodotart
Martin’s work is extremely personal, intimate, and explores the concepts of his identity. He enjoys the versatility of clouds, their peculiarity of being intangible, in continuous change and transience, while remaining familiar and relatable to everybody.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Martin Ostrachowski
Montreal, Canada 🇨🇦
@mlodotart
Martin’s work is extremely personal, intimate, and explores the concepts of his identity. He enjoys the versatility of clouds, their peculiarity of being intangible, in continuous change and transience, while remaining familiar and relatable to everybody.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Techspressionism salons have a new time and date. We are now meeting on the first Thursday of each month. Next salon is Thursday 3rd of August. Open to the public, reserve your spot on zoom at https://techspressionism.com/salon
The topic will be Counterpoint and the moderator Cynthia DiDonato @cdidonato_art whose work Botanical Whispers appears here #techspressionistartist #techspressionism
Our Techspressionist salon is now on the first Thursday of the month at noon eastern time. Open to the public, we ask that you preregister on zoom, link in stories.
Today's Salon to be moderated by @leeschnaiberg and @artbybautista #techspressionism #techspressionistartist 🌻🪐⭐️
NEW TIME FOR OUR SALONS !
Now held every first Thursday of the month at 12 noon ET pre registration required 🕛 Link to register in stories or at http:// techspressionism.com/salon Please arrive 15 minutes in advance if you wish to present. 🌎🌍🌏 #techspressionism #techspressionistartist
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Lindsay Kokoska
Halifax, Canada 🇨🇦
@infinite_mantra
Lindsay Kokoska is a mixed media artist, who combines traditional and digital techniques in her abstract and surreal art. Her work is inspired by her travels, yoga practice, and interest in spirituality. With a unique style that blends animation and fine art compositing, her pieces have a dreamlike quality that captures the viewer's imagination.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Lindsay Kokoska
Halifax, Canada 🇨🇦
@infinite_mantra
Lindsay Kokoska is a mixed media artist, who combines traditional and digital techniques in her abstract and surreal art. Her work is inspired by her travels, yoga practice, and interest in spirituality. With a unique style that blends animation and fine art compositing, her pieces have a dreamlike quality that captures the viewer's imagination.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Lindsay Kokoska
Halifax, Canada 🇨🇦
@infinite_mantra
Lindsay Kokoska is a mixed media artist, who combines traditional and digital techniques in her abstract and surreal art. Her work is inspired by her travels, yoga practice, and interest in spirituality. With a unique style that blends animation and fine art compositing, her pieces have a dreamlike quality that captures the viewer's imagination.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Colman Jones
Lion's Head, Canada 🇨🇦
@colman.jones
Colman Jones is a digital artist /musician, /composer, photographer, ex-TV/radio producer and award winning science writer. He composes and performs progressive/ experimental/ambient music. He loves photography and cats.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Colman Jones
Lion's Head, Canada 🇨🇦
@colman.jones
Colman Jones is a digital artist /musician, /composer, photographer, ex-TV/radio producer and award winning science writer. He composes and performs progressive/ experimental/ambient music. He loves photography and cats.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Colman Jones
Lion's Head, Canada 🇨🇦
@colman.jones
Colman Jones is a digital artist /musician, /composer, photographer, ex-TV/radio producer and award winning science writer. He composes and performs progressive/ experimental/ambient music. He loves photography and cats.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Clive Holden
Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦
@cliveholden
Clive Holden (b. 1959) is from Vancouver Island.
He has lived in Winnipeg and Montreal, and now lives in Toronto with his wife, novelist Alissa York.
His moving image electronic artworks often include algorithmic chance procedures, and complete themselves ‘live’.
His work is made with a hybrid blend of analog and digital materials and tools.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Clive Holden
Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦
@cliveholden
Clive Holden (b. 1959) is from Vancouver Island.
He has lived in Winnipeg and Montreal, and now lives in Toronto with his wife, novelist Alissa York.
His moving image electronic artworks often include algorithmic chance procedures, and complete themselves ‘live’.
His work is made with a hybrid blend of analog and digital materials and tools.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Clive Holden
Toronto, Canada 🇨🇦
@cliveholden
Clive Holden (b. 1959) is from Vancouver Island.
He has lived in Winnipeg and Montreal, and now lives in Toronto with his wife, novelist Alissa York.
His moving image electronic artworks often include algorithmic chance procedures, and complete themselves ‘live’.
His work is made with a hybrid blend of analog and digital materials and tools.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Deann Stein Hasinoff
Edmonton, Canada 🇨🇦
@deann_stein_hasinoff_art
Deann Stein Hasinoff is an Alberta based artist using apps and photography to create her work. Her art centres on making the invisible visible, originally influenced by her work with adults with brain injury and then by her own experiences with chronic illness and anxiety. Automatic drawing is an integral part of the process; a bridge between the unconscious and conscious self. Stein Hasinoff seeks to bring to the fore subjects not often a part of conversation, and to find art in the everyday.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Deann Stein Hasinoff
Edmonton, Canada 🇨🇦
@deann_stein_hasinoff_art
Deann Stein Hasinoff is an Alberta based artist using apps and photography to create her work. Her art centres on making the invisible visible, originally influenced by her work with adults with brain injury and then by her own experiences with chronic illness and anxiety. Automatic drawing is an integral part of the process; a bridge between the unconscious and conscious self. Stein Hasinoff seeks to bring to the fore subjects not often a part of conversation, and to find art in the everyday.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Deann Stein Hasinoff
Edmonton, Canada 🇨🇦
@deann_stein_hasinoff_art
Deann Stein Hasinoff is an Alberta based artist using apps and photography to create her work. Her art centres on making the invisible visible, originally influenced by her work with adults with brain injury and then by her own experiences with chronic illness and anxiety. Automatic drawing is an integral part of the process; a bridge between the unconscious and conscious self. Stein Hasinoff seeks to bring to the fore subjects not often a part of conversation, and to find art in the everyday.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Jack Fishburn
North Battleford, Canada 🇨🇦
.
@jfishburnartworks
I'm a digital artist/photographer living in Saskatchewan, Canada. I enjoy unraveling the mysteries of nature and the universe. I try to experiment with different mediums but making trippy space art is my favourite.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Jack Fishburn
North Battleford, Canada 🇨🇦
.
@jfishburnartworks
I'm a digital artist/photographer living in Saskatchewan, Canada. I enjoy unraveling the mysteries of nature and the universe. I try to experiment with different mediums but making trippy space art is my favourite.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
Jack Fishburn
North Battleford, Canada 🇨🇦
.
@jfishburnartworks
I'm a digital artist/photographer living in Saskatchewan, Canada. I enjoy unraveling the mysteries of nature and the universe. I try to experiment with different mediums but making trippy space art is my favourite.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
DJ Monetise
Pemberton, Canada 🇨🇦
.
@dj.monetise
Mixed media artist practicing on the unceded traditional territory of the Lil’wat Nation. Utilizing technologies from traditional media to photography, cellphone apps to VR modeling to respond to and reflect on internal conditions, describe narratives and/or interrogate, experiment and generate via experimental workflows. Exploring grief, complexity, quantum physics, ways of being and connection with place.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
DJ Monetise
Pemberton, Canada 🇨🇦
.
@dj.monetise
Mixed media artist practicing on the unceded traditional territory of the Lil’wat Nation. Utilizing technologies from traditional media to photography, cellphone apps to VR modeling to respond to and reflect on internal conditions, describe narratives and/or interrogate, experiment and generate via experimental workflows. Exploring grief, complexity, quantum physics, ways of being and connection with place.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada
Today’s featured #Techspressionist visual artist:
DJ Monetise
Pemberton, Canada 🇨🇦
.
@dj.monetise
Mixed media artist practicing on the unceded traditional territory of the Lil’wat Nation. Utilizing technologies from traditional media to photography, cellphone apps to VR modeling to respond to and reflect on internal conditions, describe narratives and/or interrogate, experiment and generate via experimental workflows. Exploring grief, complexity, quantum physics, ways of being and connection with place.
#techspressionism
@techspressionismcanada