Interview 29 // Claudia Hart

Hello, today is Monday, December 8th, 2025, and my name is Colin Goldberg, and I'm a Techspressionist. I'm here with artist Claudia Hart, who I'll be chatting with as part of the Techspressionist Artist Interview Series. So first, let me share a little bit about Claudia's background, so you can get a sense of who she is and what kind of work she does. Claudia Hart is a pioneering transmedia artist whose work bridges the analog and digital worlds.

Colin Goldberg

Trained in art and architectural history at NYU in Columbia, she began exhibiting in the New York art scene before moving into virtual imaging in the early 1990s. Since then, Hart has explored simulation technologies from a feminist perspective. Reimagining Western canons through fantastical, theatrical, and often haunting digital worlds. Her practice spans 3D animation, VR, AR, and computer-fabricated objects, all part of her conceptual exploration of media, history, and identity.

Colin Goldberg

Writing and performance are central to her work. Hart creates immersive environments where she gives voice to allegorical, symbolic narratives, spaces that reflect on the present through the lens of myth and art history. Her first museum retrospective, Pattern in Politics, is currently on view at the Francisco Karolinum Linz in Linz, Austria. So, why don't you, tell us a little bit about this show, if you would, Claudia Hart and if you have some images of the installation that you can share with us, that would be great.

All right, great. Hello. Glad to be here. And I'm happy to be talking to this audience, I'll say right off the start, because I feel like the context that you have built actually is related to my practice very much, as I have been an image maker trying to make A translation into technology of a certain kind of painting, and romantic painting, in fact, since I started with all this about 30 years ago. So. Hello, folks. I'm happy to talk to people who understand what I'm talking about. So, that sometimes happens. So, I think you want me to go now to share screen, correct?

Yeah, that would be great if you could share a little.

Yes, I can.

Show in Linz.

Yes, and so I'm going to share my website, basically.

Okay.

Okay, you got it?

Is that just, claudiahart.com?

Yes, you can see Claudiahart.com. And, I use this in a very encyclopedic way. My, my website is, has everything in it? My web… Designer is actually, A very successful experimental jazz drummer, and part of his creative practice is still doing this with me, and we have a lot of fun with it. So, I keep it very relevant, and we get a lot of hits. I think we get some crazy number… we get about 10,000 hits, A month, I think. Anyway, so… let's start. You wanted me to talk first about pattern… the retrospective, correct?

Yep.

So…

That show is… it's up currently, correct, in Austria? Yes.

So, this is a show that is… Yes, it's up until February 6th. And… it shows with a point of view, which is pretty much what you talked about, work of mine that starts, with earlier… things. From, not the 90s? Oh, wait, we do have a thing from the late 90s in there. We do have stuff there, but also has a certain point of view. About image making, Can you hear me? Oh, you turned off your phone. That… that is about a painting tradition, romantic painting, basically, and has this feminist woman… woman, romantic… point of view, so the work is very selected to relate to that. And, so I'm gonna start here, at the entrance, because in these first images here, it's a sort of synopsis of everything, so, these were photographs that I did, when did I do them?

Claudia Hart

2002, in which I made up this fantasy character who was a fashion model. Named E, and I integrated her into, actually, analog photographs. And… I either made, used, experimental fashion designer work, or I also used, things that I designed myself. These aren't really great images, so I want to go sort of fast through it. And this was a,. It's called The Seasons, in which a female body rots, decays, and grows roses all over itself, and these are the kind of themes we're talking about here. Also, here's another one. This is Ophelia.

Claudia Hart

That comes… the character in, the Shakespeare play, but she's an example of… The focus of the retrospective, but also this theme that has been happening since the beginning for me, in which I'm dealing with these, canonical women heroines. And, thinking very much about them in terms of 19th century romantic painting. Which I can get into a little after this. Here… here is the, this one, which I'll show a little later, also, which is the seasons in which this character… there she is. I made a 3D model, and I made up a kind of fake aging process that I called kryptonite, which was… basically, I… made a… like, when you make your baby's gold plate your baby's booties, And then I, I put shoe polish all over it, and then I, it's just funny, that's why I mention it, and then varnished it, and I called it kryptonite, which was a kind of playful, ironic.

Claudia Hart

Way of dealing with history and feminism and all this. And there, it was also an animation in which the flowers grow all over her, and she rots. And dies, and then comes back to life. Again, within this, this is actually more recent work that was also acquired by the museum, in which I'm hybridizing, just as you mentioned, hand-making… handmade processes with Tech… tech processes. And, so for example, in this one. I'm gonna mention a technology here, which is the UV printer, which is a new technology that sprays pure pigment, pure chroma, as a very fine spray, onto… it can be objects, or it can be… flat work like this, which was, A drawing. And that is a way that I'm able to integrate 3D images that are purely simulated, as you mentioned, with processes, that are extremely contemporary and could have never exist… well, didn't exist before a few years ago, right? So this mixing of things that I make with my hands and innovative new technology processes are my signature, and you wanted me to talk a little about earlier work, and I will. I sort of had… not sort of, this is what I've always done since day zero, is… Intermedia, as you mentioned. Intermedia meant, from my generation, a mixture Between medias.

Claudia Hart

And that is a sort of Techspressionism thing, I believe, right? That's why, I can talk to you all, and you know about The technologies I use, and also the impulse to make pictures, to make images, as opposed to algorithmic phone-based work. There's a lot of work that's done nowadays for the phone. Phone is very important in our culture, but it also, doesn't require much processing power, and although the new phones are super powerful, the kind of technologies I used from the beginning, had to do with simulations, technologies, 3D, tremendously power-intensive.

Claudia Hart

And, you can start, because of AI, to put this stuff on a phone, but, but before, it was way too power, hungry to be used for telephone platform, and that's why you see me doing installation-based work that mixes medium. Because it was not meant for the phone, it's meant for… to exist as images within an installation environment. So here's, like, early… did things like paintings on wood, where I do hand painting underneath, and then do a UV-printed spray, pure chroma.

Claudia Hart

Layer on top of it. These are…

Wallpaper yours as well?

Yes, the wallpaper is actually augmented reality, so I was interested in, in pattern, wallpaper, my generation, pattern and decoration, the decorative, pattern… was very significant, but I make my patterns trackable, so when you look at it with a custom app on your phone, you can see animation in it, and this is… Trackable wallpaper. And… more from the Lynch Show, which is animated versions of Matisse paintings. In which I'm using pattern, so whereas Matisse made floral things, and I make some floral things, I'm dealing with noise, algorithmic noise, as a substitute for the organic, right?

Claudia Hart

So, noise… is my contemporary version of floral, and you see these appearing along with a lot… and these are very slow-moving animations where I'm really thinking I'm making a contemporary version of a painting. Right here also, is… wait, what is this? Processing history. It was also a, animation… that… comes from the Acropolis, so I animated the figures on the Acropolis, which exist in Chicago, where I taught and lived for many years, the World's Fair.

Claudia Hart

Was part of the history of Chicago, and we have these old buildings, part of the World's Fair, with these figures from the Acropolis, and I brought them to life and made them move a little bit, because if you're a painting and you're animated, you don't move that much. And this idea of loop-based, slowly moving translations of painting and image into, animation, but also into physical objects. Using advanced technology is, I would say, my signature. Here is another wallpaper that's augmented reality, meaning I make a custom app, and if you look at it, you see animation in it.

Claudia Hart

This was also a documentation. I did a… Art Block's NFT, things, and they were based on, algorithmic simulations of flowers and old wallpaper from the 19th century that I used AI to produce. So, this return to flowers, organic forms that mutate and change slowly, slowly over time is when it's moving image what I do, but I also make still images with them. And there are also installation shots of them as these slow-moving animations which have noise in them instead of, like, Matisse gets translated into noise instead of flowers.

At the… your show, your recent show at BidForms, where we first met. I remember seeing some of the screen-based work that was very… you know, very slowly animating, and at first, I thought it was just sort of a still image on the screen, and then, you know, when I looked at it more closely, I saw that it was moving, you know, very slowly and subtly, and I think that's an interesting… you know, kind of, difference between a lot of the screen-based work that I usually will see online, say, where it's very frenetic and moving quickly, but to have work that's installed physically that's, you know, almost has the presence of a painting in that it looks like a still image, but then when you get closer to it.

Colin Goldberg

It's moving very slowly. I think that's… you know, that… that actually, I thought, was really interesting visually.

Well, they're ambient, they're temporally… if you're a painting, and you're moving, you're not gonna move that much. That's what I figure. Right.

Exactly. You're not gonna move at all.

Yeah. Or if you move, it's just a little bit. And so it's like ambient temp… Temp… the time space is ambient. It exists at the same rate of breathing, or something like that, right?

Right.

Of the body, as opposed to, of the noise and fast speed and glittery stuff, which is what you see in most technology art nowadays. By the way, these were mixed media paintings. Can we get bigger on that? I'll show you… I can show you closer shots of that. But these are things where I watercolored… I like to mix hand drawing, watercoloring, layers, print with this UV printer on top of it, sand it…

Roughly, like, how many works were included in the retrospective?

I don't know. I have no idea.

How about the span of time that was covered in the show?

The span of time went from, I guess. The late 90s, to now. I have a few things that we took from the bid form, recent bid form show. Here's another example of, like, mixed media, in a way, intermedia, because I… I did, I worked with a CNC router. And when I… That's a computer-controlled cutter, right? And when I did it, I wanted it to look like hand-whittled, handmade, carved wood. So, I treated… the router and the models that I made to fake hand-making.

Claudia Hart

And I used… Very rough pieces of crappy wood, that were aged. And, and then I actually simulated oldness when I routed it in the 3D model, like, fake… Rubbing and scraping, and then had it cut it by computer. So, this play between handmade and simulated, is my thing. And… it ends up as a sculpture where it's totally confusing how I made it.

Now, is that all one piece? Were the, like, the vibe.

It's using the same model, the same 3D model.

Huh.

But… I mean… It's not one piece.

Gotcha. Unless you think…

That everything, everything's one piece.

Like, the sculpture in the center, This sculpture… That's, like, one…

Are you… oh, is that one piece of wood? Yes, it's one piece of wood, except the stems are… because for… I think of things like transport.

Right, sure, no. But, like, the vase, it's… like, the vase, the flower pot, is actually…

One piece of wood with the table, which is one piece of wood, which.

Gotcha, gotcha.

And then I have the… these things, and then the flowers are actually resin printed, so…

Huh.

It seems sort of like ceramics, and resin is… A natural material, so this sort of ambiguity between natural form and handmade and physical is what I've done forever.

The sculpture was created from the same 3D models that the wall pieces are, right?

Yes.

Gotcha.

And these are… you wanted me to show you this a little bit more, and we can go into that, but this is a nice way to see that these are paintings where I combined a lot of handmade right? The underneath layers are like you could see on this one… can you see my cursor? Right, so those are my Mary Mecco floral bedsheets in my…

Gotcha.

And then I, I, you know, I hand-painted them, so it's a lot of brush marks, and the void spaces are there, and then, and then I took…

One thing I relate to, you know, in terms of your work, is I do a lot of work, you know, that combines painting and digital media as well, so I definitely, you know, that, it kind of resonates with me, this… those works in particular.

Yeah, and that's… that… so, that's why I was interested in this, 3D print… this, what's called UV printing, because I could actually… you can really see it here, there's, like, more or less… A real ton of handwork in there. That takes a long time, because I'm very perfectionist, so I'll, like, oh, I don't like that, and I sand it down, and I paint on top of it, or… This one…

The UV printer, like, is there… like, do you feed the media through it, or is it like a bed, like a laser?

Flat bed, like a CNC router.

Okay.

Where you can spray on a flat thing, but also a shaped thing.

Huh.

And then, what you're spraying is pure pigment. I mean, the color is great. Suspended in resin, right?

Have one of those machines in your.

No, those machines cost 100 plus K.

I was gonna say…

So, I… I work with a color center, which is… they're very arty, and they… Work with basically only artists.

Huh.

And…

What's the name of that place, out of curiosity?

Called the Color Center.

The color center, is that…

It's in Brooklyn. Yeah, it's in Brooklyn.

Oh, cool.

You should use them.

Yeah, I'd like to check that out, for sure.

Yes, he's a great colorist. Cody is a fantastic colorist. And then… and we always argue about color. Because he likes… I like low contrast, and he likes high contrast, and then we have a lot of argumentation about that. But, anyway, like, some of these… like, this one, I actually painted a fake Mary Heilmann painting underneath of it.

Okay.

You could sort of see it there. And then, and then I sprayed… a 3D model… Of a painting that I made a 3D model of.

Of a woman painter from that?

Early 20th century. And this one, there's, like, you could see there's so much handwork in this, because I hated it, and I ended up… using tiny brushes and, like, making another painting on top of it. Which… so there's this weird mixture all the time. Of both. Also, because I can do both.

Right, and you came from a… painting background prior to working with technology, right at.

I learned how to draw. This is an interesting anecdote, because when I went to architecture school, you had to be able to draw from the model.

And.

Andy Warhol. Had made a school down on Lafayette Street in New York. To train artists how to do classical Drawing.

Really? Huh.

Yeah, it was on Lafayette Street, and approx… near Astor Place.

Okay.

And, yeah. I don't think it exists anymore, but, so, when I went to architecture school, they required… realistic drawing is part of that kind of practice, and… I went to perfect my technique, and he, Warhol, made everybody copy classical sculptures.

So you would go in there.

And… Sit in a room and copy classical like, the Venus D'Amilo, or something.

Interesting. I like that. He wasn't actually there instructing, was he?

No, but he funded the whole thing.

Interesting. Right, it was his vision, yeah. That's really interesting. No, because you think of Warhol, and you think, you know, he's so far removed. From…

Work like that, handwork, but actually, I guess… No!

When he was doing his siltscreen work, he was.

Yes!

Commercial illustration, right?

Right, a great draftsman. Fantastic draftsman, that's why he did it. He started as an illustrator and a draftsperson. So, yeah, and that thing closed, so I, I was… how old was I when I did that? And, so, I… I could draw, like, Durer at that point.

I would sit there with a lot of really hard pencils, and change from one pencil to the next, like a maniac.

Like, I was very interested in doing things like that. And I think that's why I went into simulations technology, because you have to be nuts to do it. It's so detail-oriented. And skill-based. And… So, I'm a, you know, I'm a nut, so I do that.

Huh.

Wait, so what else do you want? Should we go out of this thing?

Yeah, so is that, so the… You wanted me to go backwards. Yeah, the work in the show, in the museum retrospective, that goes back to the… the 90s, you said? Is that kind of where the earliest…

Yeah, you wanted me to go backwards.

Yeah, so let's, let's… Or should I go, just…

You go first, go backwards, and then go forwards again.

Well, why don't we stop the share for a second, and let me just, you know, why don't we just talk a bit, because usually… Okay. I wanted to sort of lead with this show, because it's up now, and it also… shows, you know, a good portion of your, you know, your life's work. But just to get a little bit of a background on you for, you know, the viewers, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, just your personal background, where you were born, where you live and practice now, like, stuff like that?

Alright, I… I was born on Queens Boulevard.

Okay.

Yeah. St. John's Hospital.

Gotcha, gotcha.

It's now called St. John's Line.

I grew up in Queens, and you said you grew up part on Long Island as well, Nassau?

Yes, and they moved up in the world and moved to the Nassau-Queens border.

Okay.

Where I went to, briefly, public school. And you…

You know, you lived in the… I remember we were talking about the East Village, so we both… we both had spent time living in the East Village as well. When did you end up there?

Wait, so let me put it this way. My mother had cultural aspirations for me, so she desperately wanted me to, so I went to the Brooklyn Museum Kitty Art School. And, so I learned, you know, a lot of stuff by doing that. And then, she desperately wanted me to be cultural, so she would bring me to art museums in New York. And including all of them, because… they were free in those days.

Right.

And I, I, so, this interest in museums and the history of art and classicism and being in museums. Colored mic.

Like, early memories of things that, like, stick out in your head of, like, wow, I saw this, and it, you know, it stayed with me.

Yes, yes, like, for example, the Van Gogh drawing show, which was… Where was that time? I can't remember whether it was the Met or wherever. That was, like. Definitely very exciting. Like, I think I threw up because I was so… like, I was really young.

Wow.

And then, she took me to an opening at MoMA of, Barnett Newman. Which was also… I was 11. And that was very, very notable to me.

What did you… about that work as an 11-year-old, you know, when you see it, it's just so… it's not what, you know, your average person is gonna think of as art, you know, with the capital A, or…

Well, I mean, just think, my mother was bringing me to these museums from the time I was a little kid, so…

I do the same thing with my daughter, actually. I love taking her, especially in the city, to all the.

Right, so she's gonna be a mutant, also. She loves it, yeah. Right, it changes your consciousness, and…. And it does, right? So… And she's 11, too, actually, so it's funny that you brought that age up. Yeah, you know what I mean? I mean, it just changes your consciousness, so… so I… the things that I was interested in… I was interested in history, I was interested in romantic art. Romantic painting, Rothko.

Okay. More than Newman. Gotcha, that's a little bit more emotionally…

Yes.

Charged, I guess.

Yes, and, Sublime, the Sublime… Romantic painting, obviously, which is so present in everything that I do.

So, like, what made you want to be an artist, or at what point did you, you know, think, like, this is what I want to do?

I wanted to be an artist, but I didn't actually first study that, because, I was studied,. What did I… I studied science and math, and I was good at math. Which was very unusual for a girl… girl child. And, so… I did that. And that's why, and I didn't go… I think I dropped out of high school. When I was after year one or something. And, and…

And then you ended up in, like, NYU and Columbia and stuff, like.

Right. Tell me a little bit about this.

Story, and you were in a band and everything.

Yes, I was in the music scene, and I was revered Patty Smith, and I played at CBG. Movies and all these places. I was interested in the St. Mark Poetry Project, where all these people were doing that. I played, at Max's Kansas City and CBTV, so I was in the cultural scene.

What was the band called?

Foolish virgins.

Okay. Can we find any of this? Online anywhere, or.

No.

Recording.

That's the guy who founded it, the guy who founded… it was basically… oh, we were trying to… when we talked before, we were trying to figure out how I got into that band, and was it your friend… was it Steve Miller who introduced… like, how did he know about me? I thought maybe it was Steve Miller. Like, and the… so I was recruited by… this guy, to learn the bass. And that guy ended up… As a street alcoholic, And dying. Young.

Oh, jeez.

Right.

Thanks.

That's what happened to the band, so… I have no idea where all the rec… you know?

You said you were on Lafayette, or where were you in the village?

I lived on 8th Street.

Okay, gotcha. On the east side or the west side? You're on the east side?

I was on the east between, Fifth Avenue and what was, Broadway or something, which was a crack corner, and I remember they used the telephone booth outside, downstairs from my… where I was living. And at night, it was just… people made a lot of noise hanging around the… there were no cell phones.

Right.

Around that phone.

God.

Where it was like, what's happening? You couldn't sleep! They made so much noise. And, yeah, right, so that was.

I was… I was not too far from that. I was on A and 2nd, and I remember there was, like, a bullet hole in the front, front glass of my.

Yeah.

And that was years later, too.

Right, exactly.

Gentrified now. Right.

Well, that was the Pat Hearn Gallery where I first showed. It was over first on… it was having you… C first, and then A, or was it A first, and then C? I can't remember. But the whole East Village intermedia art scene took place in the ruins of the East Village, which… because New York was bankrupt at that point.

Right? That was when New York City went bankrupt.

And all of those, parts, regions were wrecks. And that was where all of us young people did a gallery scene.

Like, in the squats, basically, are kind of…

Yeah.

On the edge of that, yeah, yeah. How did you get.

Yeah.

Pat Hearn and that gallery.

My friend Tishan Su, who has since become extremely Blue chip, unsuccessful, showed with Pat and he introduced me to her. And brought me into the gallery, and…

What kind of work were you showing there initially?

I showed… Intermedia. That was where I had Super 8 movies and, photographs and sculptures. And paintings with text. I learned calligraphy and could… could do calligraphic painting of language.

On very flat, oil-painted surfaces that I made over months with a palette knife. Okay.

And it was like theater. Theater sets. And that's what led me into doing 3D. Because it was, like, little worlds that you could build. And that you could do it all in one simulated space, and I could use my math skills. To learn it, because there was no, there was no tutorials, that's for sure.

That actually explains, you know, that gives me a little bit of insight into the work that was at BidForms. It almost feels like they were sort of like dioramas, or they had this theatrical. Aspect to them, like, you're looking into a little scene that has, you know, like, a set or something like that.

Yes, that's exactly what I've always done, right? And that was what attracted me to silicone graphics. Silicon. Silicon? Silicon Graphics, right?

Right?

And in the beginning, you could only learn, that on a Unix… on a… on… on a very expensive… $50,000 ONNX computer.

Right.

And I took classes at this place also downtown, which was called the Center for Advanced Digital Applications, which was made for educating Hollywood's effects artists.

So yeah, when we first were chatting, you said that you worked with people, animators that worked on, the original Tron movie? Is that… Yeah. Was that at that facility?

Yes, the Tron guys. But they… the Tron guys, though, they were all, like, this technology was used by the Army to… it was for war simulations, flight simulators. And the Tron guys, Although they were bohemian. They were all, I think they were all up at Rochester, which was a research facility for the military. And they were hippies, but they worked for… military…

Gotcha.

Simulation technology.

It's an interesting kind of…

Yeah, right, but they also didn't have any females. I, I, like, I remember one of my Tron friends telling me there was something wrong with me because I was a woman and could do math.

It's not sexist or anything.

No, no, they didn't even know it. And in fact, I have a friend who's, like, 15 years older than me, who was also teaching at the NYU,. What's it called? The Institute… Oh, God. And… I can't remember anything, because I'm old. But, she… she also… she's 15 years older than me, and she said they would not let her actually formally teach. She could be an assistant. But because she was a woman. That's what they thought, there was something wrong with us.

Claudia Hart

Like, we had to screw, you know, basically… We were mutants.

Gosh. Now, I remember you were telling me that you, you know, you're… one of your influences, what was his name, Roger Rosenblum, or Robert?

Robert Rosenblum, so that is also a very good story that, so, Rosenblum was… part, was an art historian who was… wrote a book about romanticism. And, he was one of the first art historians who actually was not just a formalist, formally describing things. That's what art historians did, and he brought in social content. And political content. And he wrote this book that was called… what was it called? Romantic… I can't even remember what it's called.

Because I'm old.

And that was sort of, like, in contrast to people like Clement Greenberg.

Exactly, very opposite, right? He brought in content. But he was also a gay man, and he was also part of a, a scene where they were all, Clustered… David Hockney. Who was an early guy working with computers.

But an image maker.

And, they were all clustered around what was the Guggenheim then, was on 59th Street and is now the Museum of Art and Design. And, warhol? Right? So they were, doing that, And… he was my hero and my teacher, and they were very, very helpful to me, as a mutant girl who could do math and… was inappropriately playing in a rock band and all that. So, you know. You know, my… they… they helped me a lot. And they were the ones that say… said, oh, your papers for me were the great writing, and I'm gonna help you.

Claudia Hart

You should be publishing, or you should be doing all these different things, and they really, really helped me.

And that was how I…

Got a scholarship to go to Columbia. You know, because Robert Rosenblum… this wrote me a recommendation, and my professors up there also said, oh, you're… you should write, you should publish, you should do this, and you should do that, and they were very nurturing and helpful. So, but I didn't really…

Were you making art at that point, or painting?

I started making art through, being part of the… downtown… Club scene.

Okay.

And… That was, perform… a lot of performance. And, queer culture, few women, gay men… And… But people like Lori Anderson. The gallery called Holly Solomon, Pattern and Decoration, which was this important art movement that was responding to the minimalist, you know, bro culture of that time, which was Donald Judd and, you know, people like that.

Sarah, probably all.

Yeah, Richard Sarah, they were the two big enemies, and The Super Bros, and then ev- and then…

Was that even a thing back then, or…

Yes. And then, and then there was all of us who were queer men or women, some women, and we resisted that by dealing with, Pat, like what I'm showing you. The pattern, the decorative, beautifulness. All of these things were absolutely contra… Sarah, I mean, look at it.

Right, sure.

And that, she, Holly Solomon had a gallery, Holly Solomon Gallery. She also, she showed Lori and she showed a lot of these people. They were a pattern and decorator.

Now, Lori Anderson, she was married to Lou Reed, right? From…

That was later. At that point, she was with, Perry Hoberman, and… who's also a fantastic early intermedia artist, with a lot of playfulness, and, he developed a lot of those instruments for her.

And.

So, this performative… Using computer… Dealing with the experimental? Live art was all part of that, and so, she introduced me to her son, Tommy Solomon, who was running White Columns, which is still an important nonprofit place. And I, did a show there where I invited 50 artists to make objects.

Yeah, I remember hearing about that because of, Steve Miller. I had done his website for years and years, so I remember seeing… He was in it! Yeah, so you guys knew each other too.

Yes!

And Joseph Nechvatal, like…

Yes.

All sort of… and you knew Greg Little as well, right?

Yes, Greg.

Involved in the group. He was my graduate advisor, so…

Right, so Greg… so in the be… so because… anyway, I did that, and that involved me with, this kind of performance live thing, and the reason I knew Greg was that in trying to create a context.

So I started working with silicon graphics, and I started working with computer and image making, and because of.

Rosenblum romantic painting movement, and all these figures like Ophelia and the romantic heroines from literature came from that interest. And then, you're asking about Greg Little. So, right from the beginning, we started… tried to make a context for people working with 3D specifically, who were, art… artists.

Right, right. And not special effects… He worked at Yale for painting, right? I mean, he was a painter, I think. Because I remember when I… so I ended up going to graduate school at Bowling Green State University.

Yes.

Where I met Patrick, and it was actually Joseph Nechvatal that recommended that place to me, because he said, you know, I have this friend and colleague, Greg Little, who teaches there, and then, you know, I found out two things. One, it was a full ride situation, so if you got into the program, it was a scholarship. But also, they had this relationship with Silicon Graphics, where, you know, it was the largest undergraduate digital art program in the country at that point.

Right.

Because Silicon Graphics, SGI, was hooking them up with all these machines, and I remember, hearing that they had it on Onyx, and I was like…

Yeah.

You know, that sounds good. And by the time I got there, it was actually in the back of, like, an old storage room, and all, you know, the PCs had taken over.

Right. So I started also with that machine, and then Michael Dell, who just gave a billion dollars to the Republican cause, so every child or it can have $200. He actually ported, Lenox, And, what's Linux, and what's the other one called? Two… Unix. Yeah.

Phoenix is when you were…

Yeah.

Duration of that.

Right. Unix to… to a PC platform. And that was really a big deal. So I was able to buy a PC where I could run what I could only do when I was going to special effects films, and what special effects artists at the Center for Advanced Digital Applications, who worked in industry. Could do, and that was oriented towards them.

Was that, like, Maya and tools like that, or…

It wasn't called Maya then, it was… there was one… there were two versions. One of them was called Alias. Alias 2, which was…

That wavefront or something like that.

Yes, it was Alias Wavefront before Autodesk, and then the other one was called… Something Animator? And, so, yes, that's what I used in the beginning. It was not called Maya. And then, and then, you know, the ability… the funny story with that is that I bought this, Dell machine, which cost $7,000, but I was only able to pay for it because I… I moved my credit card debt from one credit card to the next, you know, because they would.

Artists don't do stuff like that.

Yeah, right, so it's like, you can have this 6 months for out-paying interest, and then I would switch to the other one, and it took me.

Creative.

Yes. It took me so long to pay it off, that just like what you're saying, by the time I paid it off, I'd bought cheaper machines, and that one sat in the closet. I still have the hard drive for it, actually. Yeah. But, Greg Little, going back to Greg Little. I was trying to build with Rachel Clark, who was a friend of mine teaching, and still is a professor at, UC Sacramento, a context for artists who worked with this stuff, of which maybe there were, as far as I know, my 5 friends.

So, and…

It was like, my life has always been about, let's make an organization or a book or something where I could find people out there that I can talk to.

I can relate to that.

Yes, that's what I mean, that's what you did with expressionism, and that kind of, community building is a very important part of my practice, so what Rachel and I did, did this project that was called The Real Fake, and we, we made a show, we made a conference at UC Sacramento, California Sacramento. She got them to fund it. We did all this stuff, and then we curated shows with it, and one of the first people that we found who actually was doing this, who we didn't know before, was Greg Little!

Okay. Hmm.

Who…

Yeah, he was doing all sorts of, like, VR stuff with, like, these caves, I think he called them.

Yeah, the cave… no, they were called the caves. My husband started with making caves for Ars Electronica, the festival in Lentz, where…

So, can you explain a little bit to the audience about what a cave is exactly? It's like a… it's like an actual physical, like, space that you go into, right, with, like, VR stuff, projectiles.

Right.

It, or…

La… I think they was using laser technology, so you could… track… it was like a special construction. So that you could do motion tracking.

Okay.

Because it involves such high-end technology.

And so they… it required.

Educational facilities, like what we're talking about, who could afford.

Right.

These kind of machines and this kind of technology, and it actually tracked what's now pretty cheap and easy to do.

Right.

And they would have to build a special room for it called.

It almost made it impossible for the work to have, like, a general audience, because, like, how are they even… how is the public gonna even be able to go in and experience stuff like this, you know?

It was very obscure. And the only people who could do it were people in the special effects industry in Hollywood.

Who had a lot of money.

Or people involved…

Right?

Or in academia, exactly.

Yup. So.

We found Greg, and he was in our first real fake. Show. Cool.

It's so funny how, like, you know, as… as time goes on with this project, with Techspressionism, I keep meeting people, like, of your generation, who are, you know, working with technology early on. And, like, all you guys know each other, and there's this whole, sort of, network of people, like Nina Sobell, or, Cynthia Beth Rubin, you know, like, or Ants Fault, or, like, all you guys, sort of, like… were somehow involved, like, within academia, because, like, back then, right, like, your average computer user isn't able to really make too much interesting stuff, comparatively to, like, if you're involved with an institution, then you have access to, like, the best toys, and… you know.

Well, when I look at the early stuff that you wanted me to show, but we've been talking so long, we're not…

Yeah, yeah, no, why don't you jump onto your.

When I look at it, by the way, I think, ick, it's horrible, because the technology was so limited.

Well, I mean, you know, but back then, it was, you know, it was cutting edge, so I think to look at it…

Alright, I'll do it. So, you want… I'm gonna share again.

Yeah, why don't you bring up… now, so your site is arranged, chronologically, right, on the homepage? You can kind of scroll down.

Yeah, so here we are.

So, you know, and the museum show that you shared is at the top, right, of this stack, so why don't you maybe go all the way down, you know, to the bottom, and share a little bit about what your earliest work involving technology was. I remember before we started the interview, you showed me something that looked sort of like… an animation on a TV set, and she was minted. To… to Bitcoin versus to the Ethereum blockchain?

Yeah, I'll show you that. I'll show a few things very quick. So, this…. That was, I… I mean, my first stuff comes from the late 90s, and I don't even have it on my site, because. I don't know, there's been recently a lot of interest in it, and actually, the earliest stuff I did in the late 90s was all sold. As NFTs, believe it or not. And, and then this… was, I did in 2001,. And that was actually part of this retrospective, and oh yeah, that's what he's saying, I won't really… it comes from Blade Runner, and.

Right.

Yeah, and, and, so… I'll play in a minute.

Claudia Hart

That's, like, the guy… whoops, I didn't mean to do that. Help. I don't… what did I do?

Can you hit escape, maybe? I saw something pop up.

Oh yeah, that's good. But we want to see that other thing. Fair. So, he… That's a, was based… oh, it should loop.

Claudia Hart

Oh, see, that's bad too, so I'm gonna hit… well, that was enough. And… and what… what we did with that… there's some… it was actually in an early experimental animation show at PS1, and then, there were NFTs, and then there were ordinals, which is like, a thing that's minted or written into the blockchain. And that only happened about 4 or 5 years ago, and I made… I was in the first crop of people who made an ordinal.

So that was on to the Bitcoin blockchain versus Ethereum, which most NFTs are.

Right. Correct. Right, and I'm not sure how much of that goes on anymore, maybe it was just a moment.

Yeah, most of it was not on, you know, I mean, I don't… I hadn't heard about ordinals. Was that, like, Kevin McCoy and those people?

Yeah, yes. But I was always, like, weirdly… Had a very… Wait, we're going back here, right? Oh, no, we don't want here, we're going here. I had a different relationship with that community, because they're all futurists, and I was a historian. Looking at art history and romantic painting, which was completely not appreciated. It made me into a real oddball.

Well, that's, you know, that's good, right? I mean, that's a differentiator. Yeah, I guess so.

I don't care anymore, that's the difference.

Well, if your work looks like everybody else, you know, it's not gonna get much notice, right?

This was that… that one, right? This… I made a little NFT out of it in a short version, but it was actually a slow version I made in 2007, I think?

So is this a 3D rendering that's.

Yes.

Or is this a physical object?

It's a 3D rendering that's animating. It's… I made a very fast one, version of it, that we sold as NFTs.

Gotcha. This was printed, too, as a piece in your retrospective, right?

Right.

That you showed earlier.

So, there's a sculpture, it was using the model, there's audio track that is speeded up here also.

Now, do you ever 3D print this piece as well, as a physical object? Yeah. Gotcha.

So, here, wait, I'll show you. What's that? Well, that was good, because it allows you to see the whole thing fast.

Right. And I think, you know, and this is something that, you know, I was thinking about when we first started chatting, before this interview, was how. You know, I think a lot of technology-oriented work, the focus is on you know, the process, or the technology itself, like, look at this, it's AR, or it's VR, or it's 3D printed, and people don't really talk about the content a whole lot, or…

Yes.

You know, a lot of people aren't even interested in the content. They're like, oh, that's cool, you know, that's augmented reality, or that's virtual reality, but like, what is… what is it about? And I think that's something that, you know, your work has a lot of… depth, because, you know, there… it's actually using the technology to express something that's more grounded in art history and, you know, things like topics like feminism. Yeah. You know.

So here, may I show you a shirt that I'm wearing under my sweater? Wait, I hope I can manage this. It's probably gonna be in reverse. Is it… backwards? It says no tech demos.

Okay.

And it's a famous shirt that was made by Operator, who are these dancers who also work in NFT space, but are truly artistic, and they made this famous t-shirt, or a long-sleeve shirt that says, No Tech Demos. Okay. I think, like, what happens is that, A lot of it is tech demos. And you make a kind of statement by refusing that. These were ones that were plastic, and then later I coated, like I showed you, with… I actually dipped them in… Chrome, plated, whatever, right? Right. Like, you do baby boot… and I varnished them and made things like that with them.

I think that I'm always recycling things that I've made.

That I update when the new… when newer technologies allow me to use them.

And…

Also, because I was working in this experimental way, and I'm a woman, my work didn't really have market value, so I couldn't sell it. So I had this stuff, lying around, and much to the consternation of my various gallerists, I would just…

How did you get involved with BitForms, and, you know, and that guy?

Alright, so wait, we'll go back.

Because that was, you know, that's where we met, and I remember seeing some, you know, installation shots on social media of your show, and then I was gonna be down in the city, and made plans to see the show, and then I had reached out to you, and you said, let's meet there. So I was like, that's awesome. And, it was really, you know, it was interesting to be able to see the work, and also talk to you about it, and find out, you know, what it's all about without having just, you know, just the surface experience.

Well, here you have… this is what's good to show this. Let's see, can we make.

And you've had multiple shows with this gallery, correct?

Yeah, so, here's something that was in this recent BidForm show, which has an early animation in it. So, I was curated into a two-person show with Marina Zirkow, who also works, still with BitForms by Michelle Thurse, who was an early curator of weird experimental artists working with technology when it was weird and experimental. Now computers are ubiquitous, and it's not.

Too, with your work is it doesn't have a technological aesthetic to it. You know, you see a lot of the work out there now, and it feels very… you know, very digital, or, like, even my work, really, like, involves wireframe imagery, and kind of elements that speak directly to technology itself, whereas, like, I look at your work, and it's very… you know, the imagery and the treatment is sort of rooted in traditional, art, and it uses technology in a way that isn't really referencing it as part of the visual language of the work, which I think.

Yes, so if you work with technology, CMYK versus RGB becomes an issue. Right? So, I sort of… intentionally, do CMYK, and…

Okay.

It's like my revolutionary statement. And what's interesting is, when you use CMYK, People just don't acknowledge it as technology.

Right. Well, I mean, that's, you know, back… so that, you know, came from, printing, right? Offset printing with cyan, magenta, yellow, black plates, and combining them to make halftones. You know, and then that evolved to digital work, but, that actually reminded me of, you know, what you told me about, ID magazine. So you were… you were, like, a co-founder of that, right? ID, or…

Yeah, so, wait, here, wait, let me just mention this, too. Like, how these are made, because it refers back to everything we were talking about. So… and I'll tell you about ID also, is that, this is… so, there you have… I used AI to make romantic wallpaper. I was asking AI and using romantic language, and asking me to… I asked it to make moldy, old… Wallpaper from the 19th century referring to romantic painting.

And I made a vocabulary of 50 different wallpapers.

The… with, AI, In the beginning of… voice, you know, written, language to image. And I use this vocabulary of the 50 wallpapers as the basis of many, many different things that I do. So this thing has this sort of impressionistic wallpaper, right, as a layer. And then, my Mary Mecco hand-painted Bedsheets, right? I make it very transparent, so you could see the wood texture of the natural wood under it. I use a big brush, With, watery, you know, acrylic.

Claudia Hart

But thin down paint, where you really see the brush strokes. As a layer, I use my romantic moldy wallpaper. This one, I was… playing more with.

Now, for the viewers, they wouldn't know, necessarily, that central component is a screen, right?

Right.

Got an animating element to it.

Yes, and that's, it's called Digital Death. So I made it in, I can't remember. Oh yeah, now I remember. I made it in, 2010, I think, and what I did with that is I realized that if you… if you make the technology behave wrongly. Like, glitch it. It goes crazy, and does weird things, so when I glitched and made the technology inverted From rational programming, it broke up into a million pieces and turned into dust. And before it did that, it sort of quakes and, like, goes crazy. And that was this called digital death.

Claudia Hart

And so it was an animation on a screen that's in a special wood case.

And this is felt.

But it's, like, felt that's impregnated with artificial material, so it's stiff. But it has that nature… nature-y feeling, and… The color code… Joseph Cornell's…

Work a little bit, the boxes, you know?

Yeah, there's a… so there… and because the color palettes are so… CMYK-ish? They're completely not acknowledged by tech. There's a side of the wood thing.

Right.

It's like… They don't think what I'm doing is technology, and I actually sort of love that.

Right. No, that's actually what, you know, that's what attracted me to the work, was the fact that it…. You know, doesn't feel like you could call it digital art. You know, that was a big beef of mine with… The language, like, when I went to graduate school, it was, like, computer art, it was what the MFA program was called, and then the undergraduate program at Bowling Green was called digital art, and I just never felt like I identified with either one of those things. Like, you know, I have these Grounds that are oil that I'm gonna run through my printer and stretch them up, and in the end, like.

Colin Goldberg

I just… I can't call it digital art, it just doesn't feel like they're paintings, as far as I'm concerned, so… that's sort of the origin story of the.

But do people from the painting world think they're paintings?

I don't care, you know? I mean, some of them do, and some of them don't. You know, I finally found a gallery up here in Vermont that, you know, understands what I'm doing, and, you know, and some patronage through that gallery of, you know.

But you have to be in a painting space. For that to happen, because what I find is that when you're in a digital space. Like, the aesthetic and the choice of palette… all of this stuff is prohibitive.

Right. For selling.

They want super saturated, high-key RGB. And…

Well, you know, I feel like it's like, you know, there are these sort of segregated spaces, both physical and online, where they're, you know, a digital art. Space where that's what they're gonna want. It's, you know, a dozen screens, big screens on the wall, there's nothing… there's no paint, there's no sculptural stuff, and it feels very sterile. And then you have, you know, all the whole traditional art world, where they're gonna thumb their nose at stuff that's digital. That, you know, that's changing, of course, but I mean.

Yes.

It's… it's like photography, right? Where there were segregated photography galleries.

Yes.

And, you know, from the art galleries, and then Cindy Sherman came along, and other people like that. Yeah, exactly. You know?

Yeah, so I think we're at this actual transition… transitional moment, and that's interesting and exciting. It opens things up. I followed my… Muse, you know, and now I'm 70 plus. And… So, because it was off-center. I got to do whatever I wanted to, plus I had a teaching job. Right. So…

Well, I feel like, you know, with work like yours, it bridges a gap, because your traditional collector isn't gonna want something where they pay a whole lot of money for it, and then they just put it on their flat-screen TV. You know, they want something that's, like. If it's going to incorporate technology at all, like, a lot of times, you know, I'm not saying people who would buy, like, a Beeple or something that's straight-up tech stuff, but, you know, people who might come from a traditional collecting background still want to see some of the hand in there, traditional materials, but it's also, you know, incorporating the media of today, which is, you know, technology, so…

Yes, I hope so.

We'd like to think that. Here you are with this big museum retrospective.

Yeah, but that's Media… media context. So that's a wonderful museum, and unusual because, the director of it is very intentionally… he comes from experimental Documentary and photography, and makes it himself. And he very intentionally supports This kind of work.

Right, and you mentioned that Linz is where ours Electronica is.

Right, and Ours Electronica, you know, now reaches out to them for some more programming, but… and it was quite interesting to be in their conference, because, they would never talk to me. Ever.

Hmm.

In all those years. Because I was just not… A tech demo.

Right.

And that was, like.

The stamp of institutional approval with the museum, right? Yes! That was amazing! I thought, should I be nice or hostile?

But, I tried to be… What were you?

You are nice, I guess.

I'm always sort of funny and ironic, and that helps. Like, I can't help but doing that, but. But it's like all comedians masking a lot of hostility, and… but anyway, so… but it's like what I do. I, but anyway, in this one, you can see, like, see those bubbles?

Right. Now, is that, like, a metal plate on the interior thing surrounding the screen, or is that wood also?

No, this is felt. Felt?

No, there's a front thing that looks sort of like cloud.

No, this is wood. Wood, wood, wood.

Oh, okay, got it.

That's on this wood panel that I sand and do a light white coat with drippy, gouachey shit on it, and.

So those are, like, what, like, 18 by 24-ish?

Like… Yes.

Size. Gotcha, gotcha. So we should probably, start to wrap things up. Alright.

But I think we covered a lot. Wait, do you want… do you want me to show you one more? I want to show you one more early thing, because we're talking about early things.

That I sort of, like…

So I was…

So how many shows have you done, at BitForms? This was, like, your fourth or something, or, like…

Or fifth…

Fourth or 5th? Yeah. They moved recently, right?

Right, so I did the first one when they were in another space in Chelsea, and then I did, when I started teaching at the Art Institute, I did, Chicago… the Art Institute of Chicago. That's when I did my first solo show, and then…

If you scroll up a little bit, that flower matrix, it was like a person with, like, a headset on or something like that.

This was, yeah, I did that there.

What is that? What is that all about with the headset? Is that, like, a VR?

I did an opera with… See where we can find it.

Huh.

And I also did these…

Pretty much abstract, right?

That was def… that was within the, help. That was inside… wait, let's see… that was in the retrospective and very popular, and I got another commissioned new work in Rotterdam at the Boimans Depot, which comes from that work. Which, by the way, it was written about as… At the time I made it, as, like, the worst thing that was ever done by anybody. It was so extreme, the reviews.

Distinction.

Yes, like, I should be executed.

Well, that's something to be proud of, right?

Now I am like, yeah! What the hell? Yeah, I'm happy about it. But wait, let's see if I can find it in here.

Now, there's a lot to.

Yeah, there's a lot.

Lots to dig through it.

There, that was that. These were those Warhol paper dresses integrated with photography.

But this thing… as we'll say today, a lot to unpack, which is one of my least favorite…

Expressions. Right. So this, this, I just want to show it, because, I mean, it was like an LED billboard. But it was also this and this, and here's this tiny animation. That was… took me… can you believe… 2 or 3 years to make, or something, or a while.

Claudia Hart

That was this little, teeny, happy… that was before there were emojis, but there were happy faces.

Huh.

So that was my happy face. That's how big it was. That was, like, as big as you could get. So anyway, I had to show them. Wait, let's see… Shut up! Wait, I think it took 3 years to make, I don't remember what happened, but anyway.

Cool. Well, I'll definitely be, you know, digging through the website. I just had a couple last questions to ask.

Yes.

That, you know, we kind of have a format for these interviews.

Yes, I stopped sharing.

Roz Dimon, she actually came up with. So, this one is kind of like a must. So, what interests you about Techspressionism, and how did you come to be involved with the community, if you can recall?

Well, I mean, that's… we've been touching on that through the whole thing. And I would say several things. Number one, I love people who self-organize, and artists, when they do that, I think it's very, very important. To not be ruled by, institutions and the dominant voice of the time, and… I've done a lot of that throughout my entire life. I mentioned many of the projects. How I met Greg Little was with Rachel Clark, where we did our thing, which was called Real Fakeness.

Claudia Hart

And we made… A manifesto! Oh, you did one too, right? We all do that. Yeah, right.