Interview 11 // Michael Rees

Okay. Hello. Today is April 6th, and my name is Colin Goldberg. I'm here with Michael Rees, and I'm just going to pass the mic over to Michael to maybe introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about your background, like where you were born, where you live and practice now, and any cultural influences that you'd like to share. Sure.

Well, my name is Michael Rees, and I was born in Kansas City, Missouri. And I always like to mention that my father was an interior designer, which is a little bit odd, a little bit unusual. But my mother was a kind of a, definitely a housewife, but she also had moments where she wrote humor in newspaper columns, right? She did some newspaper columns, local newspaper columns, and wrote humor. She was always trying to write humor her whole life. And so I love that about my mom. I love that she gave it that shot. So that's, and my brother's an architect, and he lives in Kansas City, Missouri. So, you know, we're, we kind of, you know, we kind of coalesced around expression, you know, artistic expression and research and evolution from very early age, very important to us. I mean, the house was a, was like a bricoleur, you know, full of objects and full of collectibles now my mom and dad are past, but I have a lot of those objects.

Michael Rees

And so, you know, like, like even now, one of my favorite is this one. It's, you know, it's not even a very big one, but it's those Japanese lobsters, you know, that are made, pounded tin, and they're just beautifully made, extremely well done. They have fish and all kinds of different things. And they got this on one of their trips around the world. So I just keep this around. I mean, it reminds me of what objects are. And I'm sure we're going to get into it a little bit, but, you know, so much is stored in this object for me. It's not just about the object and, and it's sort of incredible craftsmanship and this sort of almost like a precursor to robotics in a way, but it, you know, it's animate. It's, it's something to interact with, to play with, whatever, but it's also the store of memories.

Michael Rees

You know, I remember where it was in my house. I remember when my parents brought it home. I remember things about it. Things about the way my father presented it to people and showed it and, and, you know, all that kind of thing. So, you know, that's what objects are amazing. Human beings are capable of storing all kinds of knowledge, information, et cetera, into objects.

Michael Rees

So cultural influences, you know, I, I went to, I went to the Kansas City Art Institute, got my BFA from there. And then I went to Germany and I studied in Dusseldorf. And. I studied with Gunther Uecker, even though I was really, I wanted to study with Joseph Beuys, but Beuys was much too famous for doing that kind of nonsense at those times. And I was very interested in Joseph Beuys as an early artist, as a young artist.

Michael Rees

And you know, of course there's a lot of controversy around Beuys and it just keeps coming. And, you know, I don't know how to parse all that stuff. It is an objective fact that I was interested in him, objective fact that he was very influential. I was very influential on my early years, but it was also really important to meet him and to be able to reject him, you know, and to go to Europe and go to Germany and say, you know, that's not what I thought it was. And which was the case. That was the experience that I had when I, when I met Beuys.

Michael Rees

And you know, then I came back, I went to Yale and I was in graduate school at Yale and I had a lot of good people around me. Notably, Matthew Barney was a very. A great friend. And, and we, we sort of came up together a little bit, good colleague, but also Michael Gray and Katie Shimmers and several other people that were at Yale that, you know, maybe haven't gone on to have big art careers, but nonetheless.

Were you there when Greg Little was there?

Yeah. Actually, no, no, Greg was before me, but I know Greg from, we were colleagues, well, his wife and I were colleagues at Oberlin and he, he teaches a course, I thought it was at the Kent State. I don't know. I think it was at the Kent State, one of the Kent State Annex universities or something, but.

Well, he was the graduate advisor for both myself and Patrick. Yeah, I knew that. And I thought that you know him, so that's really

Serendipitous. Yeah, I knew that. We, we had been, yeah. So I knew Greg, but not at Yale. He had already, he was prior to me at Yale. And you know, these kinds of things are really interesting because, you know, you've, you find yourself in a place like that, probably out of some sense of ambition, but then you, you luck out. You luck out because what you do is you make lifelong friends and conversations, really lifelong. I mean, friends are very important, the people there and all that stuff. But sometimes I have conversations going on in my head that aren't connected to anybody I know anymore. Right. And so they, they start to see these rich things as well as what you define as art and what you define as your research, what you define as worthwhile and meaningful. These social experiences are extremely important.

Michael Rees

And so, you know, I think it's sad in a way that people have to go to grad school and why we can't sort of create this in the general, in the general sort of milieu. But you know, that's, I guess that's a little bit what the art world is. The art world is this laboratory of those kinds of ideas, of those kinds of social interactions and how people are evolving, developing, pushing, et cetera. I love that kind of conversation. I love that. And that's why I guess I live in the New York area still because you know, it's still here. It's you know, despite all the problems and the coverings up and the comings and goings, you know, the economy is to hell and COVID has ruined New York and all that. Still artists all over the place and they're still going to come to New York. They're still going to be, so I'm going on and on now.

No, it's interesting, you know, and I feel like you know, for me, I mean, my parents were both. I mean, they were both PhD chemists and they, you know, urged me to go to graduate school because they're always big believers in education and you know, getting a terminal degree was important to them, even though now you can apparently get a doctorate of fine arts. And so, but I mean, and, and what I found really the most valuable component was, you know, the, the discourse conversations and critiques, but also having a couple of years to just make work, you know, and not have to think about.

Colin Goldberg

Yeah. Doing something else at the same time. Like that was the purpose of my existence for that short time period. And I have to say, I definitely, I miss it sometimes, you know, but I feel like what's been going on with Techspressionism and the conversations that go on sort of in the salons, but also in like the discord server and other stuff, it reminds me of graduate school where people are talking about the ideas behind the work and, and, and also the, you know, the, the process and what software do you use and this and that, but, but primarily, you know, to, to hear about the ideas. And that's interesting. And it's hard to find, I think outside of some sort of a structured environment in a lot of ways, you know, because so much is about commerce,

You know, The thing is, is that universities give you, you know, because of the loans and all, I mean, because of all those things, it gives you a kind of financial security where you really can take those two years or sometimes three years, or if you're getting a PhD different, but take those time and really invest it. Yeah. You know, really take yourself seriously and give yourself a chance at being serious about art, you know, and lots of people drop off. There's nothing wrong with that, you know, and lots of people keep going. And so, but I love the discourse. I couldn't agree with you more. And I love the sort of personalities. I'm always amazed no matter where I go, what I do, there's a lot of similarities and commonalities to people's stories. But everybody has such a kind of fingerprint.

Michael Rees

Of a personality of a life experience, you know, and that's, that's always pretty fascinating to me.

Did you, did you know that you wanted to be an artist, like from a very early age or like, did you sort of make a decision when you were graduating high school? Like how did that happen?

Yeah. Well, the thing that happened was that I, my brother, I was the younger of two, two boys, right? My brother was older than I was. And he was, he had my father's name. And my father was the designer. And so my brother was actually quite good very early with drawing and sculpting and, and I don't know, he was in a magazine. They had him with his sculptures and stuff. And you know, and it was sort of to promote how talented my dad, you know, my dad's progeny were. And so I was always kind of intimidated because, you know, developmentally I'm a couple of years behind. I couldn't do anything like that, et cetera. And so in a way he kind of occupied that spot in our family. And what I did instead was I thought I wanted to be a writer. And so I studied, you know, I wrote short stories and poems and God, they're awful.

Michael Rees

They're so bad. And maybe they still are bad. They didn't get any better. And you know, that's what I thought I wanted to do. That's where I thought I wanted to go with it is to be a writer. And then I went to college and I, you know, met some people, some wonderful people. And I met some people that were great artists and loved art and all that stuff. And they kind of just, it was like a whole renaissance for me. It really happened. And the other thing, it coincided with me learning about Egon Schiele, who I'd never known about when I was a kid in the Midwest. I think there were a couple of shows in galleries in New York. I think, I can't remember. I'm thinking it was Tibor Danagi, but maybe it wasn't. And I saw these Egon Schiele and it just like blew me away. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't, you know, you talk about expressionism.

Michael Rees

You know, that stuff is so powerful and poignant and I'll never forget. I mean, it was almost like receiving energy through these works. I mean, they did something to me. They changed me. And for a long time, I made a lot of drawings that look like Egon Schiele, which, you know, it's funny about art. You know, originality is so important and all. And you know, we've kind of knocked that down pretty good. Yeah. But the thing is, is when you're a young artist, you're trying to find a place. And that sense of copying, which is so much the way we learn language and so much the way we learn so many things is by mimicking, you know. And so I spent a lot of time mimicking other artists and, you know, what a great experience that was because as you are trying to construct, doing a lot of drawing and painting, as you try to construct a drawing.

Michael Rees

Or you're trying to construct a painting. You're thinking through them. And you're thinking your own thoughts. But you're also thinking through them. And it's almost like you're on the inside of it. And I just think that's a really powerful, rich experience for young artists. It's almost impossible not to do. You know, remember that famous book by, you know, Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence. You know, it's such a good book. Such an interesting book. About how, you know, poets would do the same thing. They would adopt the voice and the language of the earlier poet, the more famous poet. It does so many things for you. It shows you that you can do it. It shows you that you have to reject it at a certain point to find your own voice.

Michael Rees

And so, you know, that was part of my early experience as an artist was doing all these paintings. And then one day came and I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know where I'd go to school. I didn't know, you know, what to do with myself. And I realized sort of I became a carpenter, started making money, you know, just helping with carpentry and stuff. And at night I was so captivated by it. I started making these box sculpture things. And I realized almost immediately, oh, I'm not a painter. I'm a sculptor. I mean, it was just like, you know, how do you put these clothes on and know that they fit so well? You know? Yeah. How does that work? How does that happen? So then I was lucky to get into the Kansas City Art Institute and I, you know, I had early years with there, with other artists, again, all great people, super motivated, very big.

Michael Rees

I mean, that was wild times, those seventies, right? We kind of don't have that anymore. We were doing things in art school that were quite ambitious, quite advanced, and had lots of material associated with it, large scale pieces, endeavors. And, you know, today people don't have, you know, it's a very, it's a much more narrow experience. I can say that as a teacher, and I can also say that as going around to all these art schools, giving talks and lectures, you know, that sense of ambition is kind of, well, you know, again, the seventies were this wild anarchic time. They were just bursting at the seams. And I think that's what I'm trying to do. And that's why I love my book. It's called The Key to Creativity. And so that's kind of how I started off with creativity while the rest of the culture was somehow, you know, stuck.

Michael Rees

Right? But, you know, New York City didn't even hesitate. You know, the music scene was extraordinary. It just was exploding. So I loved all that stuff, you know? And I loved that early experience of being able to do large scale public works without any permissions. You know, we just did things. And today you could never pull a thing like that off. The control systems are extreme. So you know I'm you know I definitely have this punk background you know and punk art school you know you remember that david byrne was in an art school and right you know they started the talking heads and all that stuff yeah you know that was like that was I'm still carry that inside of me somewhere is still this punk ethic you know this punk aesthetic

Interesting yeah well I think yeah definitely a lot you know that rebellious spirit I think is a lot of times what makes people want to follow the path you know being an artist in the first place but yeah

And

Then sort of going more towards the establishment side like I saw in your wikipedia page that you had shown in the whitney like can you tell me a little bit about that work and

How you

Ended up there well that was you know that was 1994 and I had done I had done a sort of a show with lisa spelman at 303 and that was this very kind of very art the povera kind of work and stuff it was kind of very casual in a way It was definitely all about language and it was definitely all about, also about the hand and about sort of the evolution of something over time, things changing and the whole show, I forget, I don't think I had a title. The show might've been called Untitled or something like that, but it had all kinds of pieces in it, like Doobie Doobie Doo and Caduceus. And sorry, I forget. I'm forgetting the name of one of the pieces. But, you know, some of the, one of those pieces is the collection of the Whitney Museum, et cetera. But it was kind of about, it was an early attempt to kind of deal with the construction of male, of masculinity, right?

Michael Rees

The masculine thing. And so the sort of rubric or the question was something about doing and being, right? And the finger represented a kind of a doing and the, you know, the penis, a kind of being. So the pieces were all made of fingers and penises, right? Caduceus was, these two huge, you know, I could even get a couple of pictures of those up. They were really odd. You know, I couldn't actually believe that.

Let me give you, let me, I think I need to give you some sort of co-host privilege to share screen in one sec. I probably should have done that ahead of time.

No problem.

All right. Now it's your turn.

Let's see now. I wasn't really thinking that I'd end up talking about this, but you know, I was very influenced by feminism, right? And very, you know, when we were in the university, there was an awful lot of classes we were taking and reading we were doing and stuff that was going on. And we, you know.

I don't see your screen. I don't know if you need to.

Oh, I haven't shared.

Oh, you didn't share it yet. Okay, gotcha. Yeah. I mean, whatever you want to, whatever you want to show. There we go.

Here's one of them. This was a piece called, and, you know, you can see how casual they were. They were steel studs. You know, I worked with the, and then these wires, and then there were plasticine clay pieces out on the edge and stuff like that. Now I'm having a hard time finding this, finding that works offhand because I really wasn't prepared to talk about these pieces.

Gotcha. Sorry. I kind of like, I just pulled that out of the hat, but I thought that was. That was really an interesting.

Yeah. It's kind of cool to be talking about that stuff, actually, because, you know, I think it has a lot of influence on today. Again, I was interested in the construction of masculinity, you know, and I wanted, I really felt, you know, I rationalized that I really couldn't address or speak to issues, you know, that, that, wow, I really am not finding this easily, but I couldn't really speak to issues for women. Right. It would be presumptuous for me to do so. But what I could do is I could examine the masculine and examine how that played and behaved. And so I set up these sort of, you know, very influenced by Nauman for sure.

Michael Rees

And, gosh, I just, I'm distracted trying. I just sense that it's the next, you know, title that I'm going to read here. Let's see. Oh, more. Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm not, well, dumpsters and clouds.

Okay.

I'm not going to find it.

That's okay. I mean, if you want to, do you want to pull up some, some current work or, you know, like definitely.

I mean, it does, it, it, it is important. Right. And, you know, I'll just go to my website here. You know, it's probably something on my website, by the way.

Gotcha. And that's just.

Yeah, here it is. Right here on my website. Wouldn't you think I'd be better than that? Okay. There you go. Yeah.

Right here on my website. So, you know, this again, maybe not great documentation. Back in the corner over here was Caduceus. This was called stud study. This was something about monkeys. Well, monkey see monkey do. There was a monkey, two monkeys climbing up inside of the, the lamp over here. There was the doobie doobie doo back there in the corner. And those are the monkeys climbing up. And, you know, I kind of was inspired by an interested in, you know, the art of the time, you know, I mean, Nauman was a big influence, as I mentioned, and the use of language and the use of these kind of language structures to interrogate objects and to see their sort of devolution as they go terrible picture, but this little tag right there says, gosh, you know, there it is. It says word. So that the gap between two places was filled with a word, you know, that was the, the kind of thing that I was trying to get at.

Michael Rees

You know, it was written about which was fun, you know, I was my, my swans, you know, my first show in New York and, and, you know, it kind of had a drum roll to it and all that stuff. But then I went on and I started making a completely different kind of work, which, because those were the pieces that were in the Whitney Museum. And those were the finger.

They were finger pieces to you live like downtown in that kind of area like down in the side village.

Yeah, I lived in I bounced in and out of New York. Right. So I lived on. I lived on 14th Street between B and C, and I lived there since like my brother got that apartment and like, I don't know, maybe 1977 or something like that. And we sort of kept it in the family for a while. He had it, I had it, we rented it out. We did this that in Stuyvesant town or is that a little bit?

Yeah,

It's on the south side of the street. And, you know, that was the Lower East Side. But then when I was doing these pieces, I've been teaching at Oberlin. But then I came back to New York and I lived on Walker Street. Right. And so that was kind of interesting. But I can't. I'm not finding on my website those early Pudo pieces, but then they inspired 2005 Pudo pieces. I went back and re-investigated it. And these were the kind of the monster series, so to speak. And cool.

Michael Rees

And you know, we could do these animations and stuff. And I was so interested in all of the kind of affordances that technology was bringing me. And the fact that any one of these frames could become a sculpture so that not only is rendered or is this like claymation? No, this is rendered. These are physical objects that are rendered, not physical objects. I'm sorry. They're virtual objects that are rendered. And, you know, they're it's basically keyframe animation.

Michael Rees

And so, you know, but what's incredible is that I'm able to use time as an element of sculpt. Right.

And I'm like seeing an NFT while I'm watching this. Yeah. Like that should be minted.

I agree. I'm totally with you, my friend. Totally with you. And I did these works for a long time. I did a lot of them and they were probably, you know, like probably some of the most successful works that I'd ever done.

What timeframe is this made?

This is like 2002 to 2008 or maybe even 2010. And you know, it's working a lot of things. I mean, I think that's one of the other things that are working. I think that's one of the other things that artists naturally do. You know, sometimes people are really lucky and they just hit on something and it's very popular and then they just keep doing that and that's their thing. And for me, I'm just always interested in something else like that show at 303 got a lot of success and it made a splash and I moved on and I started doing these other pieces that maybe weren't received as well. And so but I'm constantly doing that. And I, you know, even though it's maybe a little bit difficult to work it out, work at all the details of living out, it still is just naturally the way it works for me.

When did you start working with like, you know, render like 3D rendering and basically like when did technology or computer technology kind of come into your practice? Yeah.

How did that happen?

Yeah. Here's another. This is a double. I started working with technology in about 1993. So it's pretty early. Right. And what I'd heard. I'd found out about. I mean, you know, by the way, I'm not counting goofing around with my friend's MacBook, you know, Mac, Macintosh computer and doing drawings and the paint programs and all that sort of stuff and just goofing around with that and trying to see where we could find it, what we could do with it and all that sort of stuff.

Michael Rees

You know, it was so I'm not counting all that sort of earlier stuff, but by.

That definitely was like part of it. Right. I mean, it was. Even the. You know, just the realization that like, wow, like I can use this in a creative way or, you know, I would.

Well, you know, the thing is, it was so expensive. It was so expensive. It's like a computer cost five thousand dollars. And it's like I was an artist. I didn't have that kind of jack. And I just thought I'll never be able to get this. And but I also in the back of my head sort of said to myself, you know, I borrowed my friend's computer, went over and hung out with them and click, click, click and tried things. But then I also said to myself, you know, when this gets to deal with 3D, I'm in. And then so 1993 is sort of a moment. A friend, a good friend of mine, Michael Gray, Michael Joaquin Gray, was making these beautiful sculptures, the Ganymedes, and he was doing it with stereo lithography. And I think I also had seen a Matt Mulligan thing and I was like, OK, this is it. I got to get into this.

Michael Rees

And I got an opportunity to teach at a school and they made it available to us to learn to be upgraded. Right. To learn about this stuff. And so I did Photoshop and Illustrator. And at that point, I used a program called Alias Sketch for the 3D stuff, but it couldn't quite make its way into physical objects yet.

Is that Wavefront, right? It was.

It was like Wavefront Junior. It was like the sort of popular, you know, we'll make something for the masses, you know, cost a couple hundred bucks versus, you know, Alias Wavefront, the big boy that was at those days. Yeah.!!

ito Well, Joseph Nechvatal was the guy that connected me to Greg and then, you know, and then I found out that Bowling Green had this relationship with Silicon Graphics and they had an Onyx workstation, which at the time was like, you know, amazing. It was like they had the monolith from whatever that movie was, you know, but it was like that, you know. And then I remember getting there and there was like a little room where like the computer art grads got as our studio. Our studio. Which was like a closet, you know, and there's like the Onyx in the corner, like gathering dust, you know, and it was so sad that like I built it up into like and by that time, you know, desktop rendering was like standard practice.

Colin Goldberg

You know, this souped up, you know, kind of mini computer, you know, or mini mini mainframe or whatever you want to call it. So but yeah, it's fun to reminisce about like the you know, the technology back then. Yeah. And I think that's the idea that it could be in the hands, you know, like that what's capable, what's possible on a desktop now. I mean, it was something that was only accessible to studios back then.

That's exactly right. And then but, you know, to me, again, the interest was to always the physical component was always really important to me. And you know, Joseph wrote that interesting book Immersion into Noise, and he talks about his ideas about the virtual, the virtual and the actual. And, you know, I'm always sort of. But he says that he had been committed to that. So this is obviously one frame of that animation frozen in time and put on this, you know, put in this place, this particular spot.

And that's a physical is that a physical?

Yeah, that's a sculpture. Yeah, that's a wow. That's incredible.

Eighteen feet tall from the foot to the top of the fingers.

So how do you go from like a 3D rendered? You know, digital object to something of that scale? Yeah.

Well, I mean, with great but also with my computer. Pain that's how you do it no I mean actually it's become easier than it's ever been but in this case the form was milled on a three-axis mill and then we assembled all the individual parts because we couldn't mill it in one single shot we assembled all the in the different parts and that we actually inside of that thing is a big steel girder that holds it into place and keeps it keeps it set and it just once once you have the 3d model that 3d model is translatable either through 3d printing through a kind of a printer driver kind of situation or through various tool paths in a cab cam cam standing for computer aided manufacturer kind of environment right and at this point this is the way the world is made you know everything you know everything from the beginning to the end of the century is a computer aided manufacturer soup to nuts is manufactured in this manner when I first started it was it they were just getting off the ground they were just beginning but I think it was an interesting time and one of the things that I always saw was an interesting parallel between things that were going on in this tech world that ostensibly had no interest in art and things that were going in the art world you know I mentioned nauman for example nauman made those tunnel pieces if you remember they go from like different cross-section.

Michael Rees

He made all kinds of different versions of them, right? And they went from different cross-sections, maybe a square to a triangle to a circle, etc., right? And those were essentially algorithmic pieces. And, you know, basically, they were essentially algorithms. So, and Nauman, I don't think it's well known or well talked about, had studied math, and he was very conversant with all these mathematical things. So I saw this parallel all the time. Between an artist and what an artist is doing, and computers and what a computer, computers are trying to figure out the very same algorithms with the silicon graphic machines we're talking about, except they were on mainframes, and it cost a fortune to develop. And Nauman was doing the same thing in a studio. I mean, I think it came later with, you know, I mean, I did a whole project called the Sculptural User Interface.

Michael Rees

And I had all these ideas. But Linux, to me, was another sort of, you know, I mean, I did a whole project called the Sculptural User Interface. And I had all these ideas. But Linux, to me, was another sort of, you know, I mean, I did a whole project called sort of thing that wasn't ostensibly directly involved with art, or even aware of the dialogue about art, but actually used artistic means. And that I'm, in my interpretation of this, is that they kind of made the, they took the readymade, and they made it ready. Now, that refers both to Duchamp, of course, but it also refers to Kosuth, who wrote about that. And he actually coined this, like, the Sculptural User Interface. And he said, you know, I'm going to sort of terminology, the readymade made ready. But that's what open source did.

Michael Rees

It basically put toolkits out there online for anybody to use for any purpose. It took off the, you know, readymade code or off the shelf code, and it made it available to anybody to do their purposes with. And so again, I see that as a kind of a reflection of two parts of culture that may not know anything about each other, still working on some of the same things. And I think that's a really good example of how we can, you know, have the same kinds of problems, and some of this having the same kinds of implications, you know.

Michael Rees

Again, if, if I'd been a little more prepared, I'd bring up a book that it's, let me just see if I can find it real quick.

And, you know, but it's interesting that you relate, like, Linux or Linux to, you know, the readymade, I never really, you know, I mean, they both are sort of a response to, you know, a philosophical, issue, maybe, you know, with, with sort of scarcity, or, you know, the, I guess, you know, people, prior to open source programming, you know, I think having access to, to, to development tools and everything else like that, you know, it was very sort of rarefied. You know, like before there was Blender, I mean, you couldn't, you couldn't own a 3d program without either being extremely wealthy or, or pirating it.

And, you know, and basically, even the computer companies gave us all license to, gave us all license to pirate it.

I mean, Bill Gates, or being part of an academic institution where you have access to it, too.

You know, Bill Gates said, I don't mind if they steal it, just as long as they steal mine, because he knew eventually, it was a long game, and they would all end up using Microsoft or, you know, Maya or whatever. And that's sort of right turned out to be. But you know, the other thing that was happening a lot, what I loved about digital media, was the ability to collect and sort of work with ideas. You know, this was like, just this little book that I've made to kind of document some of my ideas that I used to give to people. And so, you know, this is the sort of visual essay of what I was thinking about when I was developing. This is a, these are, you know, this is the sculptural user interface, right? And the act of typing made three-dimensional form. And I created this whole, you know, I created this whole program that would make sculptures like what you see in the upper left-hand corner.

Michael Rees

You know, that was the screen grab of those sculptures, right? And so basically, you know, a letter would be associated with a form and then you would type in that, you know, you'd a letter or you do anything you wanted to, it could be an absurdist poem, it could be a secret agent story, it could be whatever you wanted. And then I had these ideas about how I would like to work that into a full installation with computer stations and all this stuff. Some of it's very naive and very clumsy, you know, looking back on it, but at the same time, you know, it's research. And that's one of the other things that technology did for me, is it freed me up from being only about expression, you know, Techspressionism, notwithstanding, but it allowed me to be, you know, to, to delve into ideas and to combine strange bedfellows.

Michael Rees

So, you know, this is a pretty strange bunch of bedfellows here. We have, you know, Duchamp, Boyce, Kosuth, and Leinix, you know, there, there it is, there's my sort of visual essay, you know. And then at the same time, I was also interested in tree branching systems, because the sculptural user interface was essentially a tree branch, you know, it always, if this, then that, if this, then that, if this, then that. And so this is, you know, this is Darwin's famous, little Darwinian famous thing. This is the Sephiroth, the tree of life thing. You know, I just was kind of interested across cultures and time about, about, you know, once again, I put the Duchamp bottle tree in there. These things were really fascinating to me, right. And, and I was interested to, to look and to draw them all into the same space and to imagine them, you know.

It's funny too, because I feel like, you know, the longer I've been involved in this sort of Techspressionism project with it sort of having been coalesced into a group, the more that, you know, I sort of question, you know, what constitutes expression that is, you know, under, underneath the intellectualization, there's still a feeling about something that's sort of like the kernel, you know what I mean? And it's interesting to think that of things that way that, that on the surface seem very, you know, conceptual and intellectual. But then if you dig down into the sort of origin, story of the idea, there's this kernel that is about a feeling about something, you know, some issue, some, something, you know, like it's, I feel like, you know, with the, anything to do with a human being right like there's that's what separates us from machines yeah you know well

We have a synthetic imagination for sure and we also I mean I think the thing that's kind of important is that you know the hybrid is you know being able to put this together with that it's such a basic thing it's but it's a metaphor Therefore... Already it's a metaphor. And this is, this is really at the root of language, you know, the development of metaphor and our ability to say metaphor and do metaphor. And as you say, you know, you dig down to the basement of it and there's some, some, something bugging you, some kernel, some, you're almost, like the princess and the pea. You just, you just can't get comfortable. You got to go at it. You got to feel it. You got to bring it up. You got to look at these things and imagine, and sometimes you're totally wrong, but the point is the speculation, you know, it's interesting to imagine the difference between expression and speculation, right?

Michael Rees

Because for me, that is, that's a rich territory, right? I love the idea of speculating. This is essentially what I'm doing here. There's no objective relationship between, you know, between these artists, right? I'm making up the narrative that weaves these things together for me. And maybe it's good for you too. I don't know, but I'm looking at it. That's the point. And, you know, I think it's interesting because this work, you know, the scopes for the user interface, at the same time, I'm also working with, it's too bad I can't call it up, but the program is so long gone. It worked on, it worked on the Macintosh operating system, 10.0. 10.6.8 was the last time that I could use it. And I just don't have the wherewithal, the means, the attention to keep this program going.

I installed a virtual, a virtual box or one of those parallels, I think, just because I used to love, I don't know if you ever used Adobe Streamline. I mean, they, they killed that off, you know, years ago, but I really, I could make things with that program that I couldn't make in anything else, you know, I ended up getting, installing, you know, this, this emulator just so I could run an old version of Mac OS on my, on my machine, just, you know.

I'm going to have to consult with you about that because I would like to get a copy of that and, because I still have the program, of course. Yeah.

If you have parallels, you can, you can install, you know, off of, you know, if you have the installer CDs, you know, it'll work for sure.

I don't know if I have the installer CDs.

Or the disc images too. As long as you have the disc images and the serial, you know, you're good to go.

But, you know, so this work, I was kind of concurrently working with this stuff. And these are the, you know, I showed you that animation and this is one of the sculptures that got, got realized from that animation. And, you know, again, I would really love to pull together these sort of, like, I don't know, visual, I don't know what to call them.

I, visual essays is too literal too. Who is that one in the red background? That looks really...

I mean, this orange one right here in the middle is Francis Bacon.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Francis Bacon, you know.

Gotcha.

And, you know, I'm just kind of, again, examining things that are of interest to me. And, and, you know, kind of creating works, Hans Bellmer, of course, and Joseph Beuys with the animal, biting the animal, the sheep with, you know, and then the Nauman, and then Abu Ghraib. I mean, you know, somehow these are poles, right? All the way from the Dance of Joy and Matisse to the Abu Ghraib pyramid, you know, that disgusting moment in American culture, right? In American politics.

Michael Rees

And then, you know, at the same time, growing together different parts of my work. This work on the left was from that period of 303 that I showed you with earlier. And I did these performance photographs and stuff. And the piece on the right being, you know, kind of also a kind of a dancer, a performative space. There was always an animation and a physical sculpture and a performative space. And so I was dealing with those different ranges and trying to, you know, I don't know, being an artist about it, just being in my studio, putting this next to that, next to that, and imagining, you know, possibilities, imagining places to be, imagining ways to work, you know? So these are all examples of different versions of that stuff, you know? So anyway, it's kind of fun for me to look back on that.

Michael Rees

I don't often show this very much anymore. So, you know, but that's definitely part of, you know, my growth and my development. Also, you know, in the 80s, in the 90s, I'm sorry, in the 90s, I got really interested in these pieces. I mean, we're just going on down memory lane here. This was the Ajna series. And, you know, it was very inspired. I mean, look at these.

I don't

Know, you know, I'm always a little hesitant to say it. But look, for me, this image is extraordinary. I love this. It's beautiful. And what's incredible about it is it reminds me a little bit of something that's always been kind of near and dear to my heart, which is, I don't know if you remember the Kafka, the penal colony, right? And in the penal colony, the engineer who is going to fix the machine because it's misbehaving and all this stuff, and he pulls out a drawing. And the drawing is described in the text. And it's an incredible text, right? Beautifully written.

Michael Rees

But the lines are so dense that you can't understand. You can't understand anything unless you have extreme expertise. And so this kind of reminds me of that penal colony moment and all of the things that implies. But at the same time, you can make things out. You can make shadows of things out. And you can kind of, and again, these are works of imagination. This is kind of an imaginary anatomy.

Michael Rees

But it coincides. I mean, all these works, I want to say. All these works have rich layers that are associated with it. And I sometimes am not very good at getting to all the layers. But this work is being developed at the same time that the Visible Human Project is being developed.

And that was one of

The first digital portraits of the internal anatomy. And I was very excited about all that stuff. I thought it was extraordinary. They got a criminal. They sliced him and diced him. He donated his body to science. And supposedly, they made him a human. And he donated his body to science. And supposedly, they made him a human. And they made one of the most accurate portraits of human anatomy that had ever been made up until that point. And there were these amazing pictures of that. And some of them were pictures where it had the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci behind the actual three-dimensional anatomy. One in particular was the way the eyeballs worked. They had the drawings in the background. You know, computer renderings, right? Which, you know, very technical. The Leonardo drawings as wallpaper in the background, where the, you know, the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci were made.

Michael Rees

And they were very said, you know, in the pain and in the anguish. And you know, that's it. And in the end, is that the three-dimensional model of the guy's eyeball socket was floating in the center. I mean, they were...

I had the CD-ROM, I think, where you could go through the slices. And, you know, I remember that CD-ROM.

It's like another relic.

But I loved thinking also about, you know, Leonardo, as brilliant as he was and the invention of the, you know, the invention of sort of empirical observation. I mean, I loved all the stories. I loved, you know, Titian doing those, you know, those drawings. I'm forgetting the names of them right now. You know, the character, the body exposed holding the skin. And Titian did the drawings of the first anatomy book by Vesalius, right? Vesalius was the first anatomy book. I think I got that right. And, you know, they were, I loved all the stories. I loved imagining a time when bodies, which usually were put to the grave, were now all of a sudden in scientific laboratories and people were risking their lives to study how we are, what we are. And just what a tremendous moment that was. And then at the same time to see this Leonardo drawing, Leonardo, you know, kind of doing empirical observation, you know, really like an important moment in the modern history.

Michael Rees

And I think that's what I'm most proud of. The modern experience, what became the modern experience. And knowing that he got things wrong because he drew them according to the beliefs of the day, right? He drew the male and the female reproductive system, for example, according to what they thought, how they thought it worked. And he was wrong. It wasn't correct. He didn't have enough knowledge. And so I thought that was amazing to have a masterpiece by an artist, an artist sort of enacting this empirical aspect.

Michael Rees

But also. But to have in the foreground what is put forward to be the perfect representation of the human anatomy. And when it is actually saying that we could easily just as easily be wrong about the functions of things in our body. We don't understand certain things. We still don't understand certain things, although we're able to manipulate them and use them. And so I started to blend a sort of an Eastern or what I imagine to be an Eastern metaphysical anatomy.

Michael Rees

With a West. With an Eastern sort of analytic anatomy. Right. And again, in a speculative fanciful, fantastical kind of way. Those early wireframes that you saw gave way to these pieces. Meaning that they were 3D printed from the digital files. Right. And so there is the there they are. And this is Ajna 1, Ajna 2, Ajna 3. Ajna is the Hindi word for chakra. For the sixth chakra. The one in your forehead there. I've got some things going on with that. And these are kind of occult images on some level. But again, they're also fantasies. They're ways to think about the body and to play with the body and to realize it. And when you're making work like this, it's kind of incredible. When you're all in, you're all in. You know, and I was all into this work. I lived alone pretty much in a loft. And I moved back to Kansas City.

Michael Rees

Missouri, because I could pay $400 a month to live in this loft. And I spent every dime I had on computers. I remember I had the worst diet ever. About three in the afternoon. I used to go get Reese's peanut butter cups and cigarettes and come back and eat them. And that was my that was like that was my lunch.

I was

Just all in with these and I was making this stuff. And, you know, this was at the Whitney Biennial, the 1995 Biennial. And these were the Ajna Spine series. You know, and of course, this the tables are kind of a maybe a little bit of a wunderkammer kind of look, a cabinet of curiosities kind of thing. And then those wireframe drawings in the background and stuff. And, you know, I was really lucky because each one of these things were really expensive to make. But I had two things happen to me that were really lucky. First of all, I started writing articles about rapid prototyping in rapid prototyping journals. These were mechanical engineering journals, completely absurd thing to do. But I was just fascinated by the fact, you know, Duchamp once said that, you know, he was an aesthetic engineer.

Michael Rees

That's what he called himself. And I thought, how interesting to sort of blend together this notion of it, which is sort of maybe what technology is to blend together engineering and art and put them into the same conversation, the same dialog. And so I sort of forgot where I was headed with that.

Well, I think like, you know, in today's world, that's assumed to be a dichotomy. But maybe back in the day they were basically synonymous. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So I think in the Renaissance they were synonymous. I really do. I think, you know, Leonardo is the perfect exemplar of that. And I think somehow or another, partially because of the mystical part. I mean, you know, there was a lot of people exploring, you know, the natural world and wondering whether it was really metaphysically developed. And then there were also people exploring the natural world, believing that it was metaphysically developed. And that's, you know, Newton is, you know, he wrote metaphysics. He wrote several volumes of metaphysics. And so those things. But then they got cleaved apart, you know, and they got cleaved maybe for good purpose, maybe for good reason. But, you know, the thing that was kind of.

Michael Rees

This was just a real thing. It was a really important thing for me to investigate.

It's incredible work. So tell me a little bit about the work that's behind you in this sort of virtual background, those inflatables. I know you presented on them a little bit at the salon, but for the people who haven't seen that, if you could just tell us a little bit about that, let me get some stuff up here.

Yeah, this is you know, this is my most most recent body of work. And it is. Wait, somehow I'm all goofed up here. Give me a second. I want to get back to where it was. There we go. Synthetic cells. And then we're here.

There we go.

Sorry.

Sorry about that.

Now, this was, you know, I had a was very fortunate to be invited by the curator, Tom Moran, to do a show at Grounds for Sculpture, and part of this is that I had done a previous show called Clowntown, which was deeply I've been working with augmented reality. Since about 2012, maybe. And really kind of exploring and experimenting and learning and all that sort of stuff. You know, of course, there's Manifest AR who were way early. I think they were in 2010. You know, people like Mark Square and Will Pappenheimer and Chris Manzion and all kinds of other Tomiko Thiel, all kinds of wonderful, all the wonderful other people exploring and experimenting. So I'm getting to it kind of a little bit later. But.

Michael Rees

I was totally intrigued by it, instantly amazed by what AR is and what it can do. And, you know, you've got to be careful, of course. You've got to check yourself at the door. Can't all be technology. But it seemed to me that what augmented reality offered us was a kind of an instant semiotic, a way to control what we're seeing by adding other information to it, to augment the information, basically. And it was definitely couched in language as a race against nature as opposed to nature. Right. It wasn't a phenomena of nature, so to speak. It was more a phenomena of culture. And so the way that I put this is that, you know, when that famous film was shown where the train is driving into when photography film was invented and the train is driving into the audience, the audience is diving out of the way thinking that the train is coming right at them when indeed augmented reality is exactly the opposite of that.

Michael Rees

That it is not natural. It is constructed and synthetic. And so we have a completely different response to it than we do to believing that it's real, right? In other words, I would never mistake something I see in the augment for being real. I know that it is a synthetic construction. Some kind of, you know, could be poetic, could be informational, what have you. And so that was fascinating to me from the get-go. You know, I studied that from the beginning and tried to make sense of how to use, you know, augmented reality. And I kind of created a platform for myself of the virtual through photographic to the interactive. And the interactive part is the augmented reality. So I had these physical objects and, you know, they would often have photographs or photographic targets on them. And those photographic targets, you know, in this case, the photographic target is the picture of the wall.

Michael Rees

And what it brought up was this animated pig, right? So the pig could walk in space and you could interact with the pig. You can make it larger and smaller. And there was a second pig in the back that was just circling around. You could interact with the front pig, but the back pig just circled around. It was always present. And, you know, a little bit I was trying to, you know, I was trying to, you know, I saw these as pastoral sculptures, sculptures about the landscape or about nature and about animals or, you know, the human pastoral experience. And, but also in my mind, of course, was the idea that, you know, math is the universal language of nature and how if you don't know any math or math is foreign to you or difficult to understand, how strange an idea that seems to you. And so how strange it could be that mathematics, something so abstract, actually controls the growth of, you know, cells on the skin and all this, you know, it's like a very specific point of view.

Michael Rees

And so I kind of wanted to play with that. I wanted to work with it. And so on the one hand, you have these objects, which are, you know, computer generated designs that are, you know, like I would describe them in a way as mathematical objects, primarily because they couldn't exist without the computer math that created them. And at the same time, some of these, some of these formulas are very similar to the formulas of the Schwartzfield metric, which describes, you know, the black holes and things like that, you know? Now, again, that makes me sound like I'm really smart. I know what I'm talking about. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just synthetically organizing these things in ways that are interesting, interesting to me, you know? And so when I call them a math object, that's kind of what I'm getting at, you know, that it took math to make them.

Michael Rees

It wasn't. It wasn't an action of my hands molding something. I didn't find something in space. It took this computer program to create these forms and shapes. And yet they have this notion of a portal about them, et cetera. And then at the same time, the image becomes a portal of sorts, a different kind of portal. And what it calls up only, but these things, when you first see them, you don't have the tablets in your hand, you see them as images. And you see them like you would see a photograph. So these photographs, I had many people say, why are you putting those images on those beautiful sculptures? You know, what is the point? Blah, blah, blah. They didn't realize immediately that it was the augmented reality. And so then what happens is the photograph kind of destabilizes the sculpture.

Michael Rees

And then the augmented reality destabilizes both of those, both the photograph and the sculpture. And then you're left once again with sort of a challenge, a plunge of sorts. Or it's put to you to fabricate what is actually happening, what is actually going on. Now, I think in the future, when people are completely comfortable with AR, that won't be as much of an issue, right? People will begin to have different kinds of experiences around augmented reality. But now in its early days, people are surprised when it happens. And the tablet, you take the tablet around with you, and you have to focus the tablet on the picture. And so there's an aspect of you as the viewer finding the experience. And there's a sense of discovery in that. This can't be conveyed with this picture. You know, it just can't.

Michael Rees

And this is such an important aspect of the experience of these works. All the sculpture was called synthetic cells, sight, and parasite. And the parasite aspect was both to deal with these insects and animals that are commensal with human beings. Meaning that there are no environments that don't have these animals or insects. And also, so, and then that was, you know, so the augmented reality has kind of a parasitic relationship to the sculpture, right? It's inside of that sculpture. It's invested in it. It's hidden in there almost. And we have to use this viewing device to allow it to be revealed. And then, but at the same time, I also had a second aspect of the exhibition, which was always planned. And that was that other artists could participate in the show. And we invited many other artists that did augmented reality to join us.

Michael Rees

And I mentioned some of them. Chris Manzione, Will Pappenheimer, John Craig Freeman, Claudia Hart, Tamiko Thiel. I think I got everybody. There's six. Oh, Carla Gannis and Carla Gannis. And each of them developed pieces, you know, specifically for the exhibition. This was a, sorry. That was a turtle clock. And so the turtle went around and 360 degrees and every three seconds stuck its head out, right. And did that. So, you know, so it was a big kind of, there was a rooster against that piece, a house fly, common house fly. Now I think I can find some, I think I can find some animations of this. And animations are always good because it really does kind of give a sense or help you understand what is actually happening.

So are the tablets sort of like installed as part of the exhibition in fixed places or does it work with the experience of it?

Yeah, that's a great, that's a great question because I developed, I was one of the first people to do this. Everybody I know that's an augmented reality artist is like, oh my God, I've never done this before. And I'm like, I'm going to steal that. And they have. So I have a stand on wheels and then I have a mount and then the tablet goes onto the mount. And so you literally, you know, when you ask for it, whatever, you grab the tablet and you're able to walk around and you're able to walk around and train it on each of the images to get the experience of what you're trying to. Now let's see if I. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Well, I thought I almost had it there.

Michael Rees

Is it amazing how many photographs we take these days?

Yeah. It looks like you have a pretty good storehouse there.

I do. And I like if I were a little bit better prepared, I'd have this. I've had this at the ready for you.

Oh, darn it.

Oh, there it is. There it is. There it is. Okay. So this might be able to give you a bit of a sense of what's going on. Yeah. You know, I've been having a whole experience of the piece. No, that's not the one. That's not a good one. Sorry about that. Let's try this one. You kind of bring the tablet to it and then the augment shows up and then you're able with finger gestures to interact with the pig inside there.

Michael Rees

And that was actually quite a fun thing because kids especially. Yeah. People in general would do a lot of play with this. So they pose the pig in a certain place and they get their friend to stand in between the screen and the sculpture and then they would take pictures of it. Right. And then they would laugh hysterically and have a great time. They would, you know, the pig, they put the pig kissing the person or something like that.

Right.

And that was very much, I mean, I really, this show I wanted to have, you know, the overwhelming, the overwhelming. Arching experience of the show. I wanted it to be joy. I wanted to bring joy to the table. I put this show, it sort of has a cousin or maybe a brother or a sister in the Clowntown show, which was a very political show, which also had augmented reality in it in a very deep way. And I put those two sort of together in part because the Clowntown show had this kind of analytic, heavy quality about this moment that we were in right at the change from the Obama presidency to the Trump presidency. And this work I sort of decided that I wanted to explore and experiment with trying to connect with people not through an analytic or even maybe perhaps a you know sense of superior view or something like that but actually just meet everyone in the same place meet through joy let's find commonality and common relationships that we can build on let's stop with the division and all that sort of stuff so I really tried do that with this show you know and I had I've always been a little bit lucky to have these wonderful experiences I was down during the show and I was hanging out in the show just sort of you know taking care of business or something and I saw these people and they were walking around with the tablet and they went from piece to piece to piece and I noticed that they had missed something that they didn't use the tablet correctly or something like that and it was a mother and her two children at least I presume and

I went over and I said

You know excuse me but I just want to let you know that there are these other experiences all three of them without exception turned to me with this look on their face like excuse me but we're having an experience here and I love that they didn't they everything they were experiencing was enough for them and it was big and expansive and bold you know and I kind of loved that I had the great opportunity to experience that to reach people on that level you know that's

Awesome that's like you know they weren't an external observer anymore they were a participant you know and that's something that's pretty rare I think you know in terms of an artistic you know experience as a consumer quote unquote of art you know to really feel that you know yeah I agree with you I totally agree with you so yeah that's a great you know it's a really amazing body of work and thank

You very

Much you know I definitely you know I was struck by it when I saw you show it in the in the salon and I think it actually you know I was telling you before the interview it you might have seen me I posted about it that afterwards I went and searched for ar apps and in the app store and when I was hanging out with my six-year-old you know I got her to do to an ar piece by drawing a picture of our cat and then the that was the trigger image you know and then the video was a video of that cat you know

And then dropped

It on the on the ottoman or whatever and then you know oh and then you see the picture and then it just turns into the video and it's really like you know it's like magic you know and but it's like the type of magic where you're going to the magic show to see the magic like how are you doing it's like you're describing it isn't like you know you're shocked by this surprising experience it's like wow here's like this really cool like magical thing and then you're primed to experience it by you know either being involved in the creative process or as a user of ar you know knowing that there's going to be this additional layer of information or experiential information on top of things and I think you know it definitely as time goes on this is going to be more and more just built into our personal daily lives you know I mean I think google glass was a little bit ahead of its time but you know I could see down the road there being you know this being something where it does become just part of our normal everyday existence and it'll be interesting to see how that you know how that happens I

Mean the first time interesting how creepy how creepy google glass ended up coming off it

Is straight well

I think part of it is

Like that google has this storehouse of personal information on like every human being so it's sort of like that combo creates some frightening possibilities in

A lot of ways it really you know it really does yeah so here's some of the people and you know this is john craig freeman and if you go to my website you can read you know you can read their what they were thinking about their works and you know this was different than having a group show because again it had a it was a show within a show and each of the and it sort of was a show about opportunities or possibilities as opposed to sort of a like an encapsulation of one thing or another right it was about it was something that was expansive and reached out as opposed to focused and about a single thing it was about ar you know on some level but it was you know it was about ar and so that had that focus but the works of the artist ranged widely and broadly right I mean this is will pappenheimer tamiko theil gardens of the anthropocene and Carla Gannis did a comedy routine with the inflatable boy that was very funny chris monzion did it did sort of you know kind of a more formal but almost experiential experience of the you know you know in the

World of us in the world of us in the world of us and of From your standpoint, you know, you know, since we're sort of framing the interview within sort of this Techspressionism, social sculpture or whatever you'd like to call it, you know, I'd like to sort of know what is it that, you know, interests you about the idea and, you know, what would your own sort of personal definition of it be?

Oh, of Techspressionism. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question. You know, I think that, I mean, I might have a long answer and a short answer. I think to kind of get at it a little bit, you know, human beings are tool makers. We're technologists. You know, that's not all we do. That's not the only thing that we're about. And so what's fascinating to me is that we've invented a sort of all-in-one technology, something that we're really literally trying to fit everything into. It's our commerce. It's our health. It's, you know, and that's this, these computing devices, whether it's a computer or a phone. I don't really think it does a form factor questions, not otherwise. And so the aspect that, I mean, the art world just never ceases to amaze me how they maintain their gate and keep people out and so on and so forth.

Michael Rees

And how the word technology has this pejorative connotation. And part of that was the 1968 software show at, you know, at the Jewish Museum, which, you know, and so, you know, and it flubbed up. But that is like the access point of the beginning of so much of art and art as we understand it today. And so the idea that technology is a font of experience. Now, this goes back to, is technology just a tool or is technology something else? So if we treat technology as a tool, then I just have these questions. I have these great tools that I'm working with and I can use them for whatever purposes. And they have no other greater import. But we all know that not to be the case. You just mentioned the way Google uses technology is actually kind of onerous and difficult. And that it has all kinds of political implications as well as ethical, philosophical, other kinds of implications.

And so when I... Their don't be evil motto. I think they started with that in premonition of...

The capacity for it, right?

How evil they were going to become. But, you know, so the thing that I'm kind of trying to get at here a little bit is that technology is a philosophy. It's a philosophy of behavior. You know, it's a philosophy of many different things. And so this notion that the gatekeepers would keep technology away because for some reason... And they do. They try. They have. They have. There haven't been as many. It's starting to happen more and more. As new generations, they live in technology. So there's no question.

Michael Rees

So the point is, is that technology is big. It's a big thing. It's a philosophy. It's full of attitudes and thoughts and positions and implications that we haven't quite completely thought out. And so to use it in an expressionistic manner, in other words, an intuitive, felt kind of way, is inevitable.

Michael Rees

It's just inevitable. And so what I would think of about Techspressionism is I'd put it in the context of that inevitability. And also that kind of intuitive... You know, I mean, I know some of my software, my favorite software so well that they ostensibly disappear for me when I'm using them. I'm aware that I'm on a computer in a 3D program. I'm aware. But all of a sudden, it's so... It's so unavailable to me. It's so immediate and it's so all-encompassing to me that all of that can... I can suspend that for some period of time. And so I think what we'll see... We won't see necessarily... You know, there's a big debate. Is there anything new here? Well, I don't know if there's anything new, except that the speed and accessibility is greatly increased.

Michael Rees

And so that is going to mean that we might see... Different variants emerge. There might be some emergent behavior in this aspect, in what happens with this technology. And I'm just... I'm along for the ride. I can't wait to see it. I'm totally game for it. And so that's how I would couch that question a little bit.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, I keep thinking back to that book by Negroponte, Being Digital. You know, in this sort of like moment where... It's bits versus atoms, you know? And like what constitutes reality, you know? And I feel like as time goes on, it's like a meaningless question, you know? Like it's all reality. And people used to think that, you know, what happens online is sort of separate from real life, quote unquote. You know? And as time moves forward, it just becomes more and more... More obvious that it's just a component of real life, you know?

Virtualization of everything. That's what's going on right now. Mm-hmm. You know?

Totally. Totally. Or sort of like actualization of what we thought was virtual, you know? Right. That's right.

Well, there you go. There's our Joseph Nequital coinage. Right.

Or actual. In a nutshell. Sure thing. Yeah. Awesome. Well, you know, thank you so much, Michael, for the interview, for your time. And sharing your work with us. It was really interesting to see some of that earlier work, too. I mean, those wireframe forms and the sculptures are just, you know, mind-boggling.

I really enjoy that stuff.

Well, Colin, I appreciate you inviting me to do this. And I think that what you're doing is really interesting. And I'm delighted that you're out here doing it. So, you know, keep going, man.

All right. Thank you, Michael. All right.

Have a great day. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.