Interview 10 // Brandon Gellis

Hello,

My name is Colin Goldberg and I'm here with artist Brandon S Gellis and we're here to conduct a Techspressionist artist interview. So today is Wednesday, March 31st and without further ado, I'll introduce Brandon. If you want to tell yourself a little bit about your background, like where you were born, where you live in practice now, and some of your cultural influences. Hi,

My name is Brandon S Gellis and I was born in Los Angeles, California and raised there and have moved around quite a bit but I am soon hopefully to be an associate professor of design and technology at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. Just waiting on the sign, the signature for my tenure packet and a lot of my focus ties back to the environment growing up in California, being a student, and the environment. I'm a student in the University of Wyoming, very conscious about the environment and influence. Having a toddler now also has made me really think about my dad's words growing up were which were I'm not recycling for me, I'm recycling for you and your children. And so I'm carrying that on.

Brandon Gellis

And that has always really stuck with me. And so that's really made me think about community and identity and how we act as individuals are out how we act and preserve our community that we all want to identify with and that we love and want to support. And so I've brought those principles into a lot of my work thinking about environmental impact.

Brandon Gellis

I'm married to a scientist, a paleo biologist, I think a lot about ecology, and I think a lot about the environment. And conservation. And I also now in the last year, year and a half, having now been a fund-raising I'm father, I really think about the lessons we learn and how we develop community and how we support community and the lessons we learn through stories and through life lessons and through teaching a child with tabula rasa, you know, a blank slate of ideologies or behaviors and mannerisms and how do we as responsible adults teach children how to be conscious and loving and respectful children and then therefore adults. And so I think this is a body of work that I'm currently working on that is gonna follow me throughout my career at this point, at least for the next 17 years until she like graduates high school or 16 years.

Brandon Gellis

But really how do, the work I'm thinking about right now is how do we use fairy tales and stories and family time and faith and tradition growing up a Jewish person in Los Angeles, and how do we use that as a way to identify myself as an activist in Los Angeles and ultimately identifying as gay? How do I use these influences from my upbringing and from my mature, more mature self now starting my forties? How do I think about the lessons I've learned and that have helped form who I am and how can I hopefully instill my child to be raised with the same passion and compassion for the environment, for others, for art, for human beings? For science, for any of her interests, how do I help her grow up to be a really good person? And so right now, work I'm working on is exploring the analogy or metaphor of, well, it's exploring morals and traditions and looking at the lessons we learn from fairy tales and stories, which I mentioned, and how do we all grow up to be such individuals and so different?

Brandon Gellis

And so I'm concerned with, there's a lot of people in the world that in my mind don't care for others or think about themselves primarily. And that's something that I'm thinking about is how do we become so individualistic and deviate from the same original path? Let's say that the developed world reads the same fairy tales. How do we end up so differently through life lessons? So that's

My very roundabout story. Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, it's refreshing to realize that there's so many things that we can really hear about these sort of conceptual frameworks or topics, the content of the work, essentially. I'm so used to, especially within the context of this project of Techspressionism, the discussion revolving around the technology itself or shop talk, like what software did you use or what version of software did you use or this or that? And I think a lot of people, a lot of times, people forget to ask or to even talk about what the work is actually about. And I think that's one thing that I'm hoping to accomplish with working with you and all the other artists involved in Techspressionism is really to get people to look beyond the technology and to just see it as like a conduit, which is a reflection of today's society to be able to connect with people.

Colin Goldberg

And I think that's one of the things and I definitely also relate to what you were saying about being a father. And I have a young child myself, a daughter also, and it definitely has made me think about, I mean, it completely has changed the way that I view the world in a lot of ways. But also, I feel like it's sort of becoming a parent has reinvigorated me as an artist in a lot of ways because we'll spend time together making stuff and it brings me back to the way I was when I was a kid. It brings me back to like the early feeling of joy of making things. And you sometimes can lose that the older you get if you continue down that path of being an artist when practicality starts to creep in and you have to find a way to support your art habit, as I like to call it sometimes. So yeah, so what was it that originally made you want to become an artist?

Colin Goldberg

Or did you know this from like an early age or were there any specific things that happened in your life that made you want to become an artist? Or did you know this from like an early age or were there any specific things that happened in your life that made you want to kind of follow that path? Well, I was pre-law and I got into law schools and just chose not to go.

So that was the kind of big turning point was growing up in a very traditional Jewish family or very traditional cultural family, even very Americanized. There was this idea that my brother was going to be a doctor and I was going to be an attorney and it would be exactly how everyone else in my family was.

Brandon Gellis

But... No, that wasn't the case, thankfully. I think having a spouse who was working allowed me to take some risks and I decided to enroll in art school and after my undergrad. And that was really fantastic. And I didn't have a... I don't have a fine arts background from my undergrad, but I've always been extremely creative and involved in theater and art making and collaborative type things. I've done a lot of different types of projects that were creatively oriented.

Brandon Gellis

And so I got a diploma in desktop design, so graphic design, and it opened up a ton of doors for me. So I always knew that I was interested in art, but I, to be really honest, sorry, mom, I didn't feel like I was encouraged or supported to be an artist. But the minute my parents saw how excited I was, it never came up again that I was going to be an artist. I was supposed to be a lawyer, for example. So it was instantaneous.

Brandon Gellis

And that's how it is. I'm very fortunate. That's how it has been for all of my big decisions as an adult, has just been if I really believe in it and I'm really committed to it, I've gotten a lot of support and I'm super fortunate. And I have a really fantastic partner that we've supported each other tremendously throughout the beginnings of our careers. Having met in college helped.

Brandon Gellis

And... So we've been able to kind of take turns and balance our schedules and make things work. So, yeah. Gotcha. Nice. That's great.

So as far as, you know, your current work or even, you know, when you were just getting started, you know, making artwork, say, you know, like after you finished your undergrad, or even, you know, going back earlier than that, are there any artists that, in particular, that you would consider influences in your work, you know, either in terms of style or process or even just sort of the ideas?

So, actually, so I thought about this question earlier. And when I was in graduate school is when I really started thinking about artistic influences and realized that these were a lot of artists that I'd always been very interested in. And growing up in Southern California, I was always able to go to art museums and go to see multimodal or multidisciplinary shows before I even really knew what those were. And I went to an art and humanities magnet for high school, and that really encouraged us to look at the conceptual, theoretical, and art historical references that you can see in people's works, artists like Kienholz and David Hockney and people like that, and going to the Getty Malibu, estates and seeing the private collections from the Getty family and things like that, and doing work about that for school from many different lenses, discipline-wise, was really fantastic and introduced me.

Brandon Gellis

So I would say in the last 15 years, David was Norowitz and David Hockney and Felix Gonzalez Torres, for example. Of course, I mean, everyone says Andy Warhol, or most people do. Robert Mapplethorpe, people of that were really influential for my creative practice, even before I knew I had a creative practice. They were influential in my creative thinking, in just my coming of age and who I was and the things I was interested in. I've always been very interested in pop art and modern art, very contemporary practices, even dating back to artists like Duchamp, for example.

Brandon Gellis

Jasper Johns, people of that. I really love Marina Abramović and Yoko Ono and their participatory and performative works. Judy Chicago, people of that nature and work like that. And I would say actually currently, I'm really inspired by two artists, Philip Arad, who is a really fantastic digital collage maker, and James who is an artist and often a commercial artist out of London. And I actually reached out to him recently and asked questions about how he makes his work. And he wrote me back this fantastic email and gave me unbelievable insights into how to take my current work that I'm interested in and turn it into simpler motion graphics without having to really delve into more AR and VR work that I've also been doing. So it'll simplify things for me and allow me to use a lot of bright colors and a lot of three-dimensionality or two-dimensionality in three-dimensional space.

Brandon Gellis

So it's kind of tying into a bunch of interests of mine. So that's really exciting.

Gotcha. So do you, in terms of your process, I mean, do you start with an idea and then figure out how, you know, what tools and what sort of media to use to execute them? Or is it process driven, where you start playing with a certain, you know, set of tools and then the ideas kind of like emerge?

It's such a great question and it's something I ask my students on a regular basis because a lot of them say to me, I just want to make something that's pretty. And I'm like, that's awesome. Pretty is subjective and art making is subjective. And we need to talk about the critical content behind things. The theory, why, how, do you want to move people because something's pretty? Or do you want to let people think about your work and be moved by it and find the beauty that isn't necessarily just right up front? And so to answer your question... I'm having flashbacks to my graduate school.

I know, I know.

Because I was one of those people that literally said, you know, my work is, I don't know what it's about. It's about my process and it just sort of like, you know, it comes out the way it comes out. And it's definitely something that I still have a hard time answering that question.

So it's interesting that as an instructor, you know, you pose the same question to your students. And it is, even as an instructor and seeing it from the other side of the fence, it is so hard. And it ties back to my rigid poli sci background and my marketing and design background that I had before I became a professor for about a decade. And so I was thinking extremely linearly always. And the hardest part for me in grad school was I kept, I was constantly told I have good ideas. I need to figure out how to implement them in nonlinear or non-literal approaches. And that was hard from a decade or more of training. And so I try to bring all these practices together in front of my students. And if with my, I usually teach sophomores, juniors, and seniors. And with my sophomores, we talk about the different approaches.

Brandon Gellis

And we'll do projects and exercises which helps me develop my voice creatively. And we'll do something very literal. Or do something very client oriented. We'll also develop a project that is very theoretical and conceptual and almost whimsical. I tend to pull upon interests of mine in sci-fi and science fiction and use speculative design and phantasmal design development and how do you create things that are so whimsical that they're not yet possible. They're the what ifs. The internet of things type of thinking for people. Which also gives a grounding agent for them because they can think about, okay, this is technology based. But it hasn't yet happened. How do we unfold or how do we extrapolate our ideas into what if questions and what if statements. And so it's really exciting for me and I'm really motivated by it.

Brandon Gellis

But ultimately I have to stop and say to myself, okay, I know I want to create a show around augmented and virtual and mixed reality space. I know I want to immerse people. And I want to learn this new technology so I also can teach it better to my students. And vice versa. So I'm going to create a body of work that is rooted in let's say VR. Because I have the headsets. But I know I also want the work to be about fairy tales.

Brandon Gellis

So it's a give and a take for me still now. This many years later and with this many more years to keep going. It's a give and a take for me. And I like to think that my ideas are always rooted in something conceptual and something important. Important to me at least. And it's up to other people to interpret. And something that's something that I'm going to be able to do. And it's something or art that creates discussion and dialogue. And there's a difference for me about discussion and dialogue. For me discussion I suppose is kind of this idea that like people are going to talk about something and they're going to experience the art and love their response to it. But dialogue for me is where people really learn from it. And really, really learn from each other. And so I kind of love this idea of making art and then immersing people in an interactive experience.

Brandon Gellis

Even if it's low tech. And getting them to be interactive. And communicating with each other. And pulling out ideas. And it also drives my future ideas. So there's no set answer. But I think my work should always have an important idea behind it. Even if I start with the discipline before I start with the critical concept.

I mean I didn't realize, so you said you worked for like 10 years sort of within marketing. Yeah. You know like so that's, I didn't realize that. You might have told me that at some point. But I kind of forgot that you spent that much time within the sort of commercial realm. And like I have as well been, you know, that's been a parallel track for me alongside my own personal practice has been client work. And working both as a freelancer and in agencies and different sort of settings. And you know, I mean I tend to find that having to do something for someone else the way they want it really forces you to learn the tools in a very sort of concise way that maybe just experimental personal work might not. Like I know when I'm doing my own work usually I'm using software in a way it really wasn't intended to be used.

Colin Goldberg

And then when I'm doing my client work it's sort of like they want it to be a very specific way. And I just want to get it done as quickly and efficiently as possible. So I can get back to my fun studio work. So it sort of like forces me to try to do that. So I mean did you find like when you started you know, more using the tools for were you always like making your own sort of personal work at the same time as doing client work? Or was there a point where you said like you know what, I'm tired of doing this stuff.

I want to do my own thing now, you know? It was that. Excuse me. I was working for a number of years in marketing and branding for a university and was the lead designer and developer and strategist for the messaging and the designs and all the collateral on the website and the print materials. And I thought why am I doing this still? So and I mean this was in my 20s or like early 30s when this happened. And that's when I decided that it was really time for me to go to graduate school. And I left my job with the support of my partner and went to graduate school. And for better or for worse I intentionally chose a multimedia expression based program digital practices or emergent digital practices which forced me into completely new realms. And that was the best decision.

Brandon Gellis

It got me out of my shell and it has also enabled me to be able to offer so many different classes for my students. And therefore and I can't say it enough when I design a project or a class for my students I get so much out of it because it forces me into a new mindset. And I'm constantly learning. For me the best way to learn is to teach. And I learn better. So to your point about the software it's really funny because I actually was emailing with an artist recently in the UK. And he said to me I do this work and I've learned what I need to know about the software to do this work. But when I teach the software and that is also the case for me and when I teach the software I'm forced one to learn a lot more the basics or the traditional or intended functionality of the software. But I'm also forced to learn things that are very specialized or advanced that I wouldn't have learned on my own necessarily because my students' interest in those things.

Brandon Gellis

So I tend to leave my projects really open-ended. We're doing a 3D modeling project and it's going to go into game space because we're online right now. It's not, you're not going to be able to test it in the VR headsets in Unity for example. But we're going to make the files as though they'll work for you and then we can preview them in Unity through certain plugins. So they see them in as though it would look like through a headset. And so it has forced me to learn all these new features of lighting and animation and camera rigging exactly to meet the needs of VR that maybe I hadn't thought I needed on my own. So it's been very powerful and very informative and I've grown a lot from it and it's opened up a lot of doors for me.

Brandon Gellis

So I think that's it. I think the idea of one, I left branding because I was bored of it but I use those skills all the time. And I'm currently the co-founder and co-director of the Center for Design Thinking on campus here which is an open resource across the university and it has institutional support or had to get started which was great. But the idea is I'm using all these standard strategy approaches in my classes which is develop an idea, really listen and emulate it. And then you can empathize with a client or someone else or just think alternatively and then iterate and iterate and prototype and test and all these things. And it marries so well into all aspects of digital design in my mind.

I mean it, you know the, I always like this conversation makes me think about a show that I went to at the Guggenheim Zaha Hadid and you know seeing her work, her body of work, it really, you know it was liberating to me to see somebody who is both an artist and a designer. And when I say designer I mean everything from architecture, automotive design to everything. And she didn't, you know, and then there's these abstract crazy wall pieces alongside, you know, these completely utilitarian, practical, you know, product design pieces. And, you know, for a long time I sort of felt like I needed to like silo myself, you know, like have the design self and that, you know, doesn't get revealed to the art people and then the art people can't really, and then, you know, it's like this idea that they need to be sort of separate identities when in fact like, you know, both things, you know, it's like the different sides of the brain.

Colin Goldberg

So it's cool to hear other people that, you know, sort of have walked on both sides of that fence and, you know, like really like benefit from being on both sides. And I think, you know, it's like those same, like you were saying, those same sort of principles or methodologies that might be behind, you know, you know, I think a lot of times with client work, with commercial work, it's really, you know, approached from the standpoint of problem solving where a lot of times with personal work, it's more approached from the standpoint of exploration, you know, but certainly like the problem solving sort of, you know, the problem solving, I guess approach or whatever else, you know, it definitely can be helpful and comes into play in terms of finding what tools to use or thinking about, you know, how best to express an idea.

Absolutely.

So that really does play in like the question you asked a minute ago about, you know, do I start with an idea or the tool and the problem solving really does play into it for me. And so that has been a very positive reinforced skill that I have also, I believe, positively utilized with my students and instilled in a lot of them. And it's great because I hear the whining, sorry to admit it, the whining of, but I just want to make pretty art ends up being, I can make really dynamic art, but it can also be dramatic. It can also be driven. It can also be innovative. It can also be exploratory and it can also be sexy, you know, and appealing. So it's just because you're thinking about the practicality of it doesn't mean that it's boring. It means that you thought about it a little bit more and maybe we're able to figure out some possible no-go approaches before even starting to dive into it.

Brandon Gellis

But it's still very iterative. It has to be.

Gotcha.

But it is way more expressive than a client.

I mean, it's cool to hear, you know, your feeling about teaching and from the standpoint of like, you know, teaching within art, you know, because I spent a couple semesters, I taught design, you know, after I got my MFA. And I have to say, like, I really didn't enjoy it a whole lot, but it probably was that, you know, personally, internally, I was moving away from that, you know, and wanted to go more towards, you know, a studio practice, a personal studio practice. But it was, you know, there were definitely aspects of it that, you know, like creating the syllabus, you know, and finding that there were students that were excited about the projects. I mean, one thing was like, you know, it was a web design class and the initial syllabus that I was going to inherit was like, you know, make a website.

Colin Goldberg

And I was like, you know, I'm going to make a website in Dreamweaver for this fictional company and come up with a logo for it and all this stuff. And I'm like, you know, these are students that are going to graduate in a year or two. They have portfolios, you know, why not have them register a domain for themselves at the start of the semester and build a portfolio for themselves? So, you know, I wrote a syllabus around that idea and the administration liked it. And, you know, the students at the end of it had something usable, you know, and I felt like that was, that was fulfilling and satisfying, you know, and I felt like that was fulfilling and satisfying. And so I wrote a lot about academia that maybe I'm just not a big rule follower and I grew up, my parents were both academics and taught for many, many years.

Colin Goldberg

So I sort of was rebelling against, you know, much of the same way that, you know, you might have with what your parents' expectations might've been. So, you know, I think maybe at this point, if you want to share your screen, we could just take a look at some of your work if you want to just talk us through, you know, any, any stuff that you want to show us.

Yeah, sure. That'd be great. Let me pull

Up, oops.

Wait, I might need to actually give you co-host. Okay. To allow you to share. Hang on one second.

All righty. You know, and to the point that you made a minute ago about, you know, the teaching I've been very fortunate. I've been able to develop classes that I want to teach and still meet the student needs and objectives of the discipline and the job force, for example, but I don't love teaching a web design class. So I get it done with the first six, eight weeks. We do HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and then we do visual programming and we introduce to unity and do some C sharp and things. And all of a sudden everyone is either they love it or they hate it. Right. Who's going to be the marketer and you know, who's going to be the artist, you know, but it's so much more meaningful when they believe in it and you believe in it. Yeah.

And, and, you know, it's funny when you say that because, you know, back in the day in an agency environment, it was always like, you know, there was a designer and then there was a coder and like, and at this point the code, you know, the code can be what you want. It's what drives the visuals or of course, like with CSS, it is, you know, and a lot of it, you know, now it's, you know, both hats get worn, you know, by one person and the people that are able to wear both hats, you know, are going to be able to execute their vision with the most fluidity, you know?

I always explain, I always explain to my students that I think what the most important thing is that I want to instill in them the skill set so they can be the one that is one person the company needs if it's a small budget or a startup or, you know, job security and that, but that I want to instill in them the creative ability to think as individuals and to be leaders so that ultimately they can rise through the ranks and become a creative director. So they have the technical and the, the applied and the theoretical know-how. And that's, that's what's worked for me, I guess. And so I try to instill that. Okay, let me share, let me share my screen.

Brandon Gellis

So I guess I'll show, so my work has really gone from kind of installation, physical installation based. And so this was the first, oops, this was the first really large body of work that I created in my tenure track position. And it was a 4,000 square foot exhibition. And so it was 20, 20 plus pieces. It took me two years and thankfully a stipend from the museum to develop because there was a limit to the funds that I had. Starting in my position, I was able to acquire quite a bit of technology, a laser cutter, CNC mill, 3D printers. And I built all these things into my curriculum too.

Brandon Gellis

Video materials, and then I started teaching interactive design to my students, for example. And so in this piece, this is a 3D printed landscape that's been flipped upside down. People see themselves in the mirror of it with some etching. So the light comes through from a motion sensitive and sound sensitive LED ring that changes the color and illuminates the person in their view in the gold, the gold mirror acrylic as they're thinking about the landscape. And so I played with this idea of austerity and about how, so this piece here, angle of repose is literally using, it's surrounded in wood from the Rocky mountain. So it's pine that is, or fir that is native to the Rocky mountain forest. And then what I'm talking about is like oil exploitation and fracking and non-renewable resources. And so the material here on the ground is actually wool carpeting.

Brandon Gellis

That is interlaced with a polypropylene plastic netting. And so that it is water resistant, stain resistant, but also super durable in and of itself beyond the wool, which is very durable. But, and then on top of it are actually cut out in between is gold mirror acrylic. And the idea of this is you're looking at the strata from top to bottom of like, a, a mineral deposits, but you're actually looking at the oil, the little oil caverns that the oil is extracted from, but you're seeing yourself in the gold acrylic. And so these pieces go together.

Brandon Gellis

Focal point is a body of work that I have other photos of it too, but it's maybe there's one up here. Let's see. Focal point. The primary image here.

Where was this? Where was the show installed?

This show was at the Loveland museum of art, and this was called innate confluences. And so it was looking at the Rocky mountain national, let's say Rocky mountain regional landscape during the Anthropocene. So from a hundred thousand years ago to present looking at what the landscape looks like after the impact of humans crossing the Bering sea bridge into North America. And so all of this, all of this work is, is work that talks about the environment being impacted and altered the use of plastic. So you'll notice pretty much everything in the show is made of plastic. And so it's intentionally a comment on the use of plastics and how we're eroding the natural landscape through the use of plastics and our need and desire to have the most up-to-date technologies at all time. And so it's about our dependence on the, on the landscape, our dependence on technology and how we're indifferent to what the landscape ultimately how the landscape survives or doesn't survive.

Brandon Gellis

There's also work in here that you'll see little 3d printed sculptures. Those are all micro scale, large format. They were originally large mega fauna that were mammoths, mastodons, large birds, for example, that were hunted to extinction by humans, large camels, horses that were hunted to extinction or their entire landscape was destroyed and therefore their food chain. And so all those species went extinct about 25,000 years ago during the large mega fauna extinction in North America.

Brandon Gellis

So then I start moving.

What's the, what's the scale of that one that looks like a land that was the landscape that was flipped upside down. That kind of looks like a geode almost with the, that you had the led ring.

Oh, so that's actually really small. It's intentional that it's small so that people are forced to kind of reach down and it's in a, it's in a it's movable. The whole point of the exhibition or a major point of the exhibition was interactivity. And they, the museum ended up actually bringing like eight classes of students to come look at the work and talk about, about the environment and the Anthropocene. And it was really amazing. There were people, retired women doing yoga in the space, which was unbelievable. And it was great because they were all kind of conservation type people and very liberal, I would say. And they were just like, this is so moving and it's so, it's so interesting. This piece, islands of fertility was actually a grouping of them that kind of came off the wall and out of podiums.

Brandon Gellis

And this one piece is that roughly about, six to eight inches square, probably about the size of a large grapefruit. The idea is that I wanted people to lift it up or kind of bend it off the wall so that they can hold it in their hands. And that's a similar idea with, sorry, with these pieces, which I guess I don't have on here. These 3d printed pieces is that people can pick them up. And it was also inspired by Felix Gonzalez Torres and they're really heavy. They're SLA 3d printed, a laser lithography, stereo lithographic laser printing. And so they're resin based. They're not hollow. So they're actually way like the, as much as like a baseball. And so people would pick them up and hold them. And eventually the museum was given about five of each species that were on display. And if people took them, they were gone.

Brandon Gellis

And so it was inspired by Felix Gonzalez Torres is this idea of, as people take the candy, from his scenes, from his installations that talk about friends of his that have been underappreciated or the government, not paying attention to people with AIDS and HIV in the 1980s. And then his partner, Ross and people taking the candy and sometimes being really greedy and taking the candy. That's the end of it. Ross is gone. And so it's up to the curator to replace the pieces when they want to in the exhibit. And so I melded my interests a bit with the environment, but, but also queer activism art in that type of piece, for example.

Brandon Gellis

So this next body of work was really looking at taking an in situ situation. So going into a rainforest in Costa Rica, surrounded by all the different animals and the endangered species and some really scary little snakes that were very bright colored and very little. And I knew that they could not control their poison, but, and also monkeys and different animals in the trees and flying the drones through the rainforest to actually figure out less invasive ways for scientists to look into higher levels of trees, to see the different species of plant and animals in there without climbing and scaring the animals or without getting permits and harming the trees. So we were looking at the use of drones as very, very viable ways to figure out and capture what's in the trees. So we can look at the arboreal swamp, little ecosystems that grow on branches of plants, primarily of orchids and that nature.

Brandon Gellis

And then also just different insect species that are in the trees. And so these are screen capture, excuse me, these are video taken from the drones that I then augmented in, P5JS. So open processing using specific data sets of the species in the forest. So using data sets and not knowing what the end result was going to be. So then I get these stills that are augmented through the coded language randomly or algorithmically, but randomly to me. And then I took them into after effects and augmented the motion graphic video files and further pushed the materials into this, unrecognizable state. And for me, it's a comment that when we go into the natural landscape and we are exploring these amazing protected spaces, one, are we influencing them without really realizing? And so each, each step we take or each thing we do in the space, we're ultimately affecting the landscape.

Brandon Gellis

We're ultimately affecting the species, but also when we're in the space and we have our cameras stuck to our faces, are we actually experiencing the natural world or are we only experiencing the one scene that we're, that we're viewing through the camera lens? And so for me, using the drones was a double-edged sword. It was like, it scares the animals. It scared the monkeys. So I knew that we needed to be careful. And so we, we, we backed them away and we were very cautious, as best as we could. But I also knew that if I just allowed the camera to roll, I didn't have to pay attention to what was being captured. I could actually look around me as well. And so it allowed me a more of a chance to experience the natural beauty of the environment. But then when I documented it and I showed it to people in exhibition format as motion graphics or as stills, it was just, a captured image of one moment in time that I've then augmented and changed and will never, will never get that back.

Brandon Gellis

But also, no one else will ever get to see the true beauty of what I saw because I, I, I've changed it so much. And then this is the same content of the original depth. So taking the images from the drone and taking them into again, digital, coding language and actually pulling out the pixel depth based on the, CMYK, color values and the amount of lighting and shadowing in the space. So this is actually a motion graphic. Ultimately called whisper to my thirst, whisper to my thirsty lips. That is actually a rotating motion graphic that you can watch on a monitor or you can step into it in VR space and see the point cloud of the, the color data as it revolves around you of the space. So it's again, conceptual, but very abstracted and people don't really understand that this is the origin of that.

Brandon Gellis

And even the origin of that is a video of trees. And flowers in trees. People aren't even, you know, aware of that. And part of that is the discussion for me is that what are you not aware of? And then I start moving into again, some whimsical work. And this was a work. This is the student of mine, Billy, who went with me to Costa Rica with our botany colleagues. And he did a lot of the drone flying. So I could do a lot of the thinking and documenting and conceptual thinking. And together we developed a body of work. That was our response to the things we saw in Costa Rica. And so this is scenes from the drone and this is imagery that's been augmented by digital, image modification. He wrote poems about the things he saw. And we documented the street art we saw in San Jose compared with the natural landscapes that we saw two hours north in the environment.

Brandon Gellis

And then this for me is a piece inspired by, a waterfall and this rippling effect. And so it's a light, an LED motion tracking changing, waterfall, of fiber optic cables. But if you notice the rectangular view in the background, it's actually this view right here. And so the waterfall of light is coming out of the data gathered from the, from the drone footage and then CNC drilled through acrylic.

Brandon Gellis

Wow. And then really we're coming to where I am now and where I am now is taking this thinking about impact and, and I'm breezing over this, but a lot of this work to date that I've discussed is about impact and how we as people don't have compassion for the landscape. Has we in people, how we as people are lacking compassion for animals that the white rhino, you know, animals that were hunting to extinction, elephants just for the sake of the touch. Because it has some medicinal value or it has some black market value to some people to a very small group of people or hunting of, turtles and dolphins, on the black market things that nature. And so I'm really taking this idea and with the last two bodies of work, I talked about translocation and altered perspectives. They're really flipping the switch or flipping the idea and it's really how is the landscape informing my thinking versus how do we actually build our how am I as a human or as a person impacting the landscape without considering the landscape?

Brandon Gellis

So I go from this more recent work of how does the landscape inform me conversely into this idea of using technology to think about landscape as a virtual space or as a motion graphic space, for example, in a gallery or in a museum. And so these are two different, on the left you have a video-based piece that is called Blending In. It's a collaboration also that was started with that student, Billy, I mentioned. And it's using a camera feed and footage and video and imagery from our different explorations in the background. And the code that's running the video projection is pulling from the color values of the images. And then there's a web camera that is pulling from the audience participation that's informing how much the content glitches together and how much color and saturation you see of the imagery and of the video, but it's based on flipping it and allowing the audience to be a participant and an active member of the work.

Brandon Gellis

The work on the right, Velocity, is a motion graphic VR piece. I was just trying to learn how to teach VR to my students. So I took just a generalized, generative point cloud. And when the wearer wears the headset, you might be able to see the trace of myself here, me wearing the headset. I am in the headset and there's people around me that see what I'm seeing on a video screen. And the point cloud, the color and the saturation and the brightness and how fast the points move around me, I think are driven by, oh, they're moving around me. They're bending around me in space. They're actually not. The infrared detectors are picking up me as well as they're picking up the other people in the room. And the point cloud is actually generated and moved based on how many people are in the space. And so for me, it's a discussion of the other and maybe thinking I'm in control, but it's really the people outside of me in the space are the ones controlling what we're all seeing.

Brandon Gellis

And I, as the user, am not aware of that. So it's this discussion for me of starting to really think about, about coming back to work about my queer identity and myself as a father and thinking about who I am in society and who I am as informed by other people whether I'm aware of it or not and so that is also led into these pieces two years ago I had the great pleasure of taking a group of students with a colleague of mine to England to London Oxford in Berlin for a study abroad opportunity and growing up Jewish I was always very cognizant of the Holocaust and my parents have said to me why do I want to go to Germany I've been there a few times and lived there for a short period of time and they've always said to me why do you want to go to Germany you know Germans don't want us and I said it's not exactly the case anymore and Germany has really as a nation has really embraced acknowledging the travesties of World War two and the Nazi regime and has really made an effort to make up and take responsibility and so I was walking down the streets and we're going to these different sites that are all culture related that are art related art historical collections related and we're walking down the streets and the students asked me what are these golden placards that we see all over the city especially in residential areas and they're called stumbling blocks and what they are is they notate the name of the people in the family that were taken from the home that this block is in front of and what concentration camp they were sent to and the date that they were murdered and so I worked with the stumbling block program they gave me their data of the 50 plus thousand locations in Berlin of people that have been that it's been determined people were taken from their homes and I used that data juxtaposed on a vector map of Berlin that's vinyl cut and adhered to the wall and I used that work to map out basically just cubes of space pixel space and so what you're seeing on the left side here is all the missing pieces that you can presumably identify is from where there's been so much laser cutting that it's all disappeared and fallen out like glitter all the missing space is where entire neighborhoods of families of people were taken and were murdered and so all of the brown lines on here are houses that were taken and all of these open spaces are where it was so much of it and so many people within the houses the laser just kept cutting through the vinyl the vellum vellum vellum until it fell out and it creates this really amazing temporal and ephemeral light play on the wall behind it of these different punch cut areas of communities and what you're not seeing here and I don't and I must not have great photography of this or up on my website is that from a full room view I have three strips of vellum hanging that were laser-cut as curtains and you look through them and throughout the centers of them and all over in different burrows you can see the walls of the houses and the windows and the windows and the windows throughout the city there's whole populations missing from the history of the community so this really got me thinking about my queer identity and my Jewish Heritage and has led me to my most recent work which is I mentioned I'm working with my daughter with fairy tales and this is just the beginning of this work I've already done so much more work in the last two or three months since this went into but this is a 3D modeled environment of what she sees when we read a fairy tale about a knight and a prince saving a princess but the story we actually read is the prince and the night which is a love story where a knight and a prince save each other from a dragon and so what you see in the background of this work in the in the gallery what you actually see in the background let me see if I have another view of it.

Brandon Gellis

But what you see in the background of this work in the gallery is a very, this is my very first initial idea that's already been changed, but you see a marriage scene in front of a palace and you see the royal family and all the guards and the knights on the left side supporting them. But what you see on the right side are all the local villagers who to me represent a significant popular population of the world right now, and a significant population in the US of people that don't support others and people that don't support gay marriage and people that don't support queer families having children, for example. And so what you see on the wall is my jaded perspective of how I perceive the fairy tale. And what you see in the scene in the AR or in the VR scene is my daughter's romanticized perspective or what I think she sees because after reading the book, she's going to be able to see what she sees in the book.

Brandon Gellis

She's going to be able to see what she sees in the book. She's going to be able to see what she sees in the book. She's going to be able to see what she sees in the book. She's going to be able to see what she sees in the AR scene. She says prince and she says dragon and she says moon and things like that. So those are the things you really see in the AR scene. But what I'm really seeing is what I've grown to take from these books, these original fairy tales, even how I respond being jaded to the loving fairy tale about a prince and a knight, two men falling in love and whatnot.

Brandon Gellis

And it just shows to me that we have a lot of different ways of thinking about our lives. And that's why I'm making art. And that's my current drive right now is about making art that helps people speak and think about things and making art that is activist based. And so I think for I stopped sharing, I think for all my work, it's activism based. And it's mostly all been about the message more than the medium. No offense, Marshall McLuhan. But it's been about the message more than the medium. No offense, Marshall McLuhan. But it's been about the message more than the medium. No offense, Marshall McLuhan. But it's been a married relationship of that, of course. And I realized I went through the work really fast. I hope that's okay.

No, I mean, it's a significant body of work, you know, and it's good to see sort of an overview, you know, of all the work.

And so is the website URL? Is that just your name.com? It's just BrandonGellis.com. Yeah, gotcha.

Just my name.

And if you want to see I'm working, I mentioned that I'm collaborating with Negin. Oh, gosh, it has to Sabian. It's a Sabian, who is also a Techspressionist member, and we're working on a collaboration. And I'll show that really quickly. This is just, we decided to work on a collaboration based on the environment. And it's actually bringing me back a little bit to work from I haven't done as much environmental focused work in the last, let's say, year and a half, two years. But it's really great, because it's also letting me focus on something that I'm really wanting to do, which is mix digital collage with content I find in popular culture and art magazines, and then bring them together into a collage environment. And then ultimately create a motion graphic through the collage that I've seen a lot of artists that I like that I like their work.

Brandon Gellis

But I haven't seen a lot of artists do the analog and digital and the motion graphic digital thing. So that's where I hope I'm doing something separate. But this is actually on this side, this is actually photography that you might have seen in the first big body work I showed you any confluence is where this is the local my local trash dump. And this is all plastic waste that has been filled in there. And so I brought it in and I've just augmented it and clipped the work and then this is a Nautilus. And then this is a piece that I made out of plastic bottles.

Brandon Gellis

And I'm playing with this did unregistered look this color registration look as a way of bringing in bright colors, but also motion and movement. And then this piece I really struggled about whether I wanted to even do this. And this is an illustration of a turtle that has been duplicated in Photoshop as in layers and so it's looks less clear. And muddied.

Brandon Gellis

And so I've started playing with this idea of an x ray of this deceased animal and of its skeleton and then I've made it harder to see and skewed it and here is a plastic kids straw. I mean, I'm with my two year old I'm just like do we really need plastic straws for birthday parties anymore. So I've really changed the way that I've created these drawings. And so I've really changed the way I think and the way that I am working based on as you said, and we both agree based on how my life is now with having a child and also how I teach my child. And so I'm really concerned about marine species and plastics.

Brandon Gellis

And to find some visual references for making this. I saw some really disturbing photos that have also just reinvigorated my drive. So some really upsetting photos of what's happened to some marine life that are innocent by standards in our dependence and use of plastics and I realized I sound like I'm on my soapbox right now but it's stuff that really matters to me. Sure. And I think is in some respects gone by the wayside a little bit during COVID.

Brandon Gellis

And what's really funny is the way I think about COVID. Is that we wouldn't even necessarily we might not even have COVID that has affected humans and other species if it wasn't for over exploitation of rainforests. If it wasn't for that we brought those animals into a food market and this is just my thoughts. Or if it wasn't that we took down their natural environment, would we even be in the predicament we're in right now. And that might be a factor. I think that's a far fetched idea for people. But my point of that is I've heard so much from activists and students. We don't even talk about the environment anymore or climate change because we're talking so much about the pandemic. But I still see that they're so interconnected to me.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's interesting that you say that because I almost feel that sometimes, you know, I mean, because of the pandemic, you know, carbon levels apparently have actually gone down. Right. And it's almost like, you know, Mother Earth. Or Gaia or whatever. Right. Is like, you know, I told you. Humanity is smack and saying, look, you know, this is what happens when you act up.

I mean, it's terrible. Obviously, the pandemic is horrible. And I have so much sympathy for people that have lost family or been affected by it. And so it's very upsetting for me to even think, oh, you know, that, wow, it's made carbon levels go down. And that's a positive thing. But at the same time, it's such a horribly negative circumstance for everyone that it just it hurts me inside to think about, you know, to think about that. But I

Still think, you know, I think it's useful to try to find a silver lining, you know, when you can, you know what I mean? And I think that certainly, you know, I mean, people driving back and forth, you know, from one location to the other to go sit in the cubicle and be in front of a computer. It's just such a waste of resources. Energy.

Colin Goldberg

You know, it really is just not a viable way to live, you know, and, you know, maybe this, you know, there could be some wisdom taken from like, you know, the way that people's lifestyles have changed as a result of the pandemic.

Sure. So, you know, quickly just to sort of wrap things up.

I was wondering, you know, what it is that, you know, like, like, you know, this idea of Techspressionism is something that is really important to you. And I think it's something that kind of like, you know, it started just as something that I came up with as a name for one of my shows. And then it kind of grew into this thing that, you know, to me, honestly, like, it kind of like means a different thing to everybody involved, you know? So I'm interested in hearing like, you know, sort of what interests you about it and what it means to you.

I, you know, I think you're so spot, first of all, thank you for having me and for sharing Techspressionism and for including me in it. And it's been so positive for me. As an artist and as a thinker.

You know, just really quickly, like, you know, I really see it as something that is, you know, the only requirement is self-identification. That is, you're a Techspressionist when you say you are. I actually have that on the website, you know, and then I think I might have taken it off. I don't know. I should put it back on there.

No, but I like it.

That's kind of the way I feel, you know, like, you know, it started sort of with a hashtag campaign, you know? And I feel like, you know, and I was actually working on implementing something similar for a client, the same mechanism. And she was like, well, what if someone posts something, you know, inappropriate with a hashtag? And I was like, well, you know, you can always choose what you curate to publish on your own feed, but you can't control what the general population is going to do. And if they use a hashtag or not, you know, so it's interesting. And, you know, like, to me, the goal is that it becomes broader. You know, the. It becomes a term and then maybe one day an actual word that gets brought into common usage and people should be able to use it however they choose, you know?

And that's no different from how anybody uses anything in this globally connected Internet based world. Anyone can take any content. And just like they always say, just like they I always tell my students don't say they. But just as scholars or people commonly say, there's always a digital artifact of anything you put online, even if you remove it. So someone's taking a picture of it. Someone saved it. Someone's curated like you showed me with how you go back and look at different.

The way back machine.

Yeah, the way back machine, which is lovely, which is super interesting. I think that expressionism for me is this is going to sound a little cliche, but I talk with my students a lot about Samuel Beckett has a quote that is ever tried, ever failed, no matter. Try again, fail again and fail better. And I really take that to heart in my teaching, but also in my making is no one's perfect. You're going to make mistakes as a person. You're going to make mistakes as an artist. I'm definitely making mistakes as a father, judging by the things my daughter repeats. And then. But for me, the idea of expressionism is it's all about experimentation. And as long as you try and.

Brandon Gellis

Even if it fails and even if it is unsuccessful. You always learn. From that, and that's something that expressionism has really done for me and just talking with different people like you and others as part of which I think it's a movement, frankly, an art movement. But it's this idea that there is even even though there's always a digital artifact, there is a reset button. You can always go back and you can try again and you can explore differently with different feedback and talking with other members of expressionism. It's always it's allowed me to say, okay, maybe I failed with that technology or that digital. Application, but I'm going to try it again. So it's been, I suppose, a level of encouragement. And it's also been it's been inspiring for me talking with different people. And also, I'm in a very traditional fine arts department, which I think I've mentioned to you before.

Brandon Gellis

And it's really great for me to have a community, a global community of other art practitioners, other artists who are digitally minded and who aren't worried about tenure. Like I've had to work. I've had to worry about and my colleagues have had to worry about but are interested in having a dialogue and feedback because it's passion. And that's something that I really appreciate and I really enjoy.

Brandon Gellis

Awesome. Awesome. Well, thanks for that.

Yeah, I mean, definitely, you know, it's been a pleasure having you be involved in the project. And, you know, I think that, you know, every time that we meet up in these salons like, you know, that we do every two weeks or whatever, it's it just feels like. You know, it's like it's like this extended family that keeps growing, you know what I mean? And there's kind of like these regulars that come in and then someone brings a friend and know like, you know, like this person might might be interested or appreciate this and then just getting the different people to come in and present their work. And, you know, the different ways that people are able to share information, expertise and also just different perspectives. It's really interesting. You know, and everybody comes at it from a different point of view.

Colin Goldberg

And, you know, it's funny, but like the way that you describe it about people that don't have to worry about tenure, you know, sort of the flip side of that is that if you're making work. Commercially as a means to support yourself, then it's the whims of the market that you're sort of bowing to, you know what I mean? So, like, there's always, you know, there's always some catch, I guess, to some degree. Yeah.

Absolutely. There's always something. And I think what I've picked up from a lot of the Techspressionist group is the adaptive nature of people is like, I'm going to explore. And if the market is going this way, look at the NFTs. I mean, like you developed an exhibition for NFTs like the day NFTs became a real thing. So, I mean, like, at least in my mind and I'm in Wyoming, so we're 20 years behind. But that's what I think.

But to me, it sounds like you guys are ahead. You know, I mean, really, like, you guys are really. Doing a lot of progressive stuff, you know, within your program. It sounds like I mean, honestly, I would love to be able to just stop what I'm doing and start developing really cool experimental content for VR headsets and stuff like that. Like, that would be, you know, like, I feel like I'm just, you know, just able to scrape together like an hour or two.

Sure.

Like time where I just have complete.

Sure.

Freedom to make stuff. I know.

And it's that.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, so but, you know, I yeah. And but it definitely sounds like you guys in your program are really exploring a lot of pretty advanced.

Yeah, it's really I have I have the best life. I'm so fortunate on so many fronts. I'm so fortunate. And I just try to take that positivity and the honor that I have to get to do what I want to do and have a family and all these things. And I'm just so I'm very lucky. And. I try to pass that on to my students. And if you ever want to know about VR or learn about it or something of the nature, your work would be amazing in virtual space. I'd be happy to help you with that.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I just I mean, I got my first headset, you know, not that long ago. I got, you know, the Oculus. Two.

And yeah, yeah.

So, you know, I mean, I played a little bit with Tilt Brush and, you know, that's pretty much the extent of it. You know, I mean, Honestly, I probably spent more time with a virtual lightsaber and Star Wars games than making things. But, you know, that's just – you've got to have some entertainment.

Lightsaber and whatnot.

It's a good refresh. It's a good time just to slow down. We all need to slow down. Life's been crazy for so long. And also it's nice. The headsets are more affordable now that you can have more than one and you can – that with your daughter. And you know. Right.

And it's.

And a lot of the VR experiences. Right. Now are meant for multiple players. So I'd be happy to help you take one of your pieces in layers and bring it in to VR space. And it's not that it's not. It's not as challenging once you know how to do it.

I mean, one thing that I really that blew my mind was like, you know, at first it wasn't set up for the video pass through.

Sure. You know, where you sort of.

Oh, yeah. The grainy. Right. And so now I set that as a default, you know, where like I just have and that is total like. I'm in a William Gibson novel, you know, like, I mean, it's just insane to like be basically wearing something completely covering my face and I'm seeing the room in 3D through, you know, camera driven monitors in a headset and stuff is overlaid. I mean, I never thought that would exist in my lifetime that I could.

I always dreamed of it, you know, total recall and movies like that are very future in Mars and things. All those types of like. Obviously, I love those silly movies, but like Google Glasses, obviously, if it came out right now would be a huge hit. But ten years ago, it just was too soon. Right. It's just a shame. Also, it's kind of I think they're kind of reckless, like walking down the street talking to people in your glasses and not watching where you're going.

Right, right. Well, I mean, and also, you know, the whole I mean, you know, there is sort of this big brother. Aspect to the fact that like, you know, you could have Google Glass on and face recognition turned on. And then, you know, I mean, with the, you know, sort of the proper hack, you know, the walking down the street and seeing people's social security numbers above their heads or something.

And I have no doubt that's happened. I'm sad. Yeah, I'm sure.

I mean, it's all the espionage stuff. It's again, it is part of the like speculative what if questions. But they're obviously. It's obviously at least in my mind, it's obvious that there has to be an ethical line. And maybe the technology, maybe our society as mature, respectful people weren't also ready for the technology to make a general statement.

I mean, you know, it's funny, but like, maybe it isn't funny, but like, you know, I feel like the more that you use computers, I don't know if it's you become cynical or what it is about. Yeah. Technology itself. But I mean, you know, I almost feel that when people talk about privacy on the Internet and stuff like that, you know, I mean, probably the majority of the general public never thinks about where the Internet came from.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. It was exactly the Department of Advanced Research Projects Agency, the arm of the United States government that the Internet is built on top of. Yeah. So for people to think that. Yeah. Anything is actually private. Yeah. That, you know, people on the dark web, they still have to download the Tor browser from a regular server.

I wonder if those servers have packet sniffers on them.

Oh, I'm sure. Of course they do.

You would think that the government would probably have that in mind.

You know what I mean?

Well, the government is very behind on all of, the government is obviously beyond behind on technology and Internet usage and Internet. Yeah. And I think that's a big part of the reason why I think that the government is very behind on all of the Internet accessibility. Yeah.

Well, you know, definitely in terms of using it for the public good. Sure. But I think the amount of, like, you know, I just sort of, I mean, maybe it's just getting into my sort of conspiracy self, but I mean, you know, the depth of what is, like, I feel like, you know, if something is possible, it's probably already implemented.

You know what I mean? That's so interesting. You couldn't say it better. I couldn't say it better. I couldn't say it better myself. And I talk about that with my students. I had a student, I had a project where I had students do a whole immersive project, an activist-based project using Spark AR, which is from Facebook, which is a really handy app and desktop option. And a student that didn't want a Facebook account. And I said, okay, then just don't publish it. And she said, but I have an Instagram account. And I said, then they already have your information.

Right.

So that was a learning lesson. And also my students are always floored when I talk to them about if you have ever had a login account on anything online, your information is already out there. You have to be vigilant. So it's great that, I mean, we live in a rural, more rural-oriented community where most of my students are from smaller rural ranch communities and they're just like, we still have dial-up. Which, one, surprises me. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. They're just unaware in some instances. And so I feel like it's important that I explain to them, your identity has already been duplicated.

Brandon Gellis

Someone's already got it, saving it for 20 years from now or five years from now. So just, you need to be vigilant and aware.

Absolutely.

That's very pessimistic, obviously.

Right on. Well, I mean, I guess we should probably wrap it up. It's been a little while, but I mean, it's been a great interview. I really appreciate you sharing your work and the conversation. Thank

You. And I look forward to seeing you at

The salons and the upcoming, the collab show, the second round you're going to be in, which should be exciting.

I'm excited. Yeah.

Awesome.

I look forward to it.

And sometimes it's so hard for me to make it to the salons just because I teach at the same time. Yeah. So whenever possible, we try to have some work time so I can do both. So, well, thank you. Great to talk to you. And thanks for the opportunity.

Okay.

And feel free to edit out whatever you need to.

I don't edit anything. Oh, well then sorry everyone for having watched so much. And thank you if you did. Thank you.

Have a great one. Bye.

You too. Bye-bye.