Salon 47 // Materiality

Michael Price, Good morning, afternoon, evening around the world. Today is July 6, 2022. This is the Techspressionist Salon Number 47. I'm Michael Price, and I'm hosting today's Salon meeting and wanted to see if Colin Goldberg, who kind of got things started here, had anything to add before we get going. Colin?

No, I don't think so. I did just want to say again, now that we're recording, thank you to Michael for offering to moderate. And I believe Michael will be on. I will be moderating the next one as well. I will not be present for that one because of family obligation, but the show must go on. So I'll pass the mic back to Michael.

All right. So today's theme is materiality, which sounds like a big highfalutin concept, but basically, since we are primarily artists who do, deal with technology and oftentimes in a digital realm that can seem rather ethereal and non material. So what we're going to do today is have a number of the artists who wish to share their work as it relates to materiality.

Michael Pierre Price

Each artist will have roughly five to 10 minutes, depending on how many artists want to share their work today. And then we'll have some follow up. So if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Michael. And we'll have a discussion. So if anybody has questions or anything they'd like to discuss about any of the particular artists works, please wait until all the artists have had a chance to present their work. And then hopefully we'll have some nice lively discussion. If you would like to share your work, please use the raise hand option at the bottom of the screen. And we'll go in order of artists who raise their hands. So just a quick reminder. Don't be shy. Let's get this going.

Michael Pierre Price

Okay, Jan, Jan Swinburne. You're up.

Okay, unmuted and screen share. Let's see if it works. Okay. Glasses would help. Down. Desktop. Okay. Just do that. Well, that's not helpful.

Okay.

So because it was materiality, I thought this would be a good one for me to sort of revisit what I'm doing. Can everyone see my screen? Is that a yes? Yes. Okay. So basically, for those of you who aren't familiar with my work, what I'm doing is I'm taking spoken word, my voice, and translating the audio waveforms into sort of these 3D renderings. And I thought I'd show you where they start and where they end up. And I like the idea of materializing.

Jan Swinburne

I've not really produced prints. I've put stuff up online. And I'm a bit I'm still ambivalent about these particular works and printing them. And it wasn't quite as satisfying as where I've ended up. So what you see here is this word is time. And I'll just show you the variations that I've come up with over the last couple of years, if I can click on them.

Jan Swinburne

And all of these are the word time. And I believe this one was for preparation for what I will be showing you in a minute. And then some of them. This one ended up like one. So I'm going to go ahead and just do a little bit of a waveform.

And then a

Lighter version of that one. Okay, I'm just going to drop this. Hopefully. Okay, so I just want to skip ahead though to. Just see. This one. This one. Okay. This is the word love. And here's some other versions. As well. And I'm really enjoying actually the getting these out into a physical realm and working with my hands on them. The pandemic. Has really done my. Passion for screen work in quite a bit. I don't know why exactly, but.

Jan Swinburne

This is another version of love as well. This one has been rendered. Which you'll see in a minute. That's a different color. So I'm currently working. With the idea of like. I'm materializing them. Using CNC process and hand carving and. Texture and painting. These are quick snaps from my iPhone. They aren't the best pictures. Quality wise, but you can get the idea.

Jan Swinburne

I'm doing a smaller version. I like the idea of sort of materializing them. And then. Dematerializing again, because I do film these. Later. So they, they have a direct relationship. To moving image. And sculpture and combined. And I'll probably be doing some other stuff with them as well. The originals were larger.

Jan Swinburne

This is love. As well. This is what I'm working on. This is a studio shot in progress. From the word desire. And. A different version of love. I decided to call this one. A gap. The Greek and this one. I went with Pradma. Another shot of a gap. Another shot. Pradma. And this was a studio shot where I got some light play on it. And that sort of. Works into the idea of.

Jan Swinburne

The filming that will happen later on or video. We. Have to do. But it's going to be a lot of fun. This is from. This is the word crazy. Naturally. And. Different versions. Different renderings of them. And I've just got one more. I think. No, I've been through them all. Okay. Yeah. So let me just check. Think. Okay.

Jan Swinburne

This is time. Rendered. And this is a still from a quick video. Moving image that I did at the final. Sculpture, but. I will. I will. Let me see if it's still there. Let me see if it's still there. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. And in studio of the larger version of love. So there you have it. And I'm happy to answer any questions if you're interested.

Jan Swinburne

And I will stop sharing my screen. Okay, great.

Thanks, Jan.

Welcome.

Yeah, I'll wait till after all the artists present, but I definitely have a few questions for you. And I'm sure some of the others will as well.

Great.

Very interesting. Yeah. Okay. Patrick Lichty. Hey, Patrick.

You know what? I'd rather step back for a couple minutes.

Oh, okay. All right. I'll keep you in the queue here. All right. On my screen. I've got Renata next.

Thank you, Michael.

All right.

It's supposed to be in full screen.

Here we are.

So in this work, there's a very strong presence of organic dynamic form. Part of what makes it strong is the absolute lack of a space behind the forms. There is no actual surface. You have a void, therefore there is no materiality. You have the light falling on different planes and surfaces, which give it movement.

Renata Janiszewska

And that kind of light comes from, if you think back to the Baroque era, when sculpture and painting had this tension that was dynamic and often curved around itself, which gave the work a lot of drama. So, for example, Caravaggio is an example of that kind of strong play of light and dark, or on dark, because he often had very dark, dark brown, almost black backgrounds.

Renata Janiszewska

And when I make work on a black ground, I feel like the light is very structural, because you can really perceive it against the darkness. There's no actual surface. There's no physicality to this thing. Therefore, it's dematerialized. There is texture, color, and the eye moves around. There are fantasy elements, and they're taken from rocky landscapes, from plant and animal life. But it is paradoxical, because we engage with this in the same way that we engage with sculpture.

Renata Janiszewska

The other thing about the black background is it could suggest deep space, but I don't think that was my intention. It also suggests a lack of light, and that suggests the unknown. And this produces a kind of anxiety. So, to see this whole fiesta of color on this darkness, it's when we see the forms, they're unmoored. They're unmoored. They don't have a place, and they're sort of physically and conceptually loosened from the ground.

Renata Janiszewska

And there was a series of these, and I basically, I'm not sure where I'm going to go with them, because they're fairly recent. And so, this is a companion piece to the one that I just showed you. And I'm finding it's very good to work with color on black. I always think digital work shows really well on black.

Renata Janiszewska

And that is my work.

Thank you. All right. Thanks, Renata. Very intriguing. I'm going to have some comments and questions for you as well. So, awesome. Well, I don't know if Patrick wants to go now or we could go to Colin. So...

Go to Colin. Okay.

All right, Colin, you're up.

Okay. Sounds good. All right. Let me just share my screen here.

Okay. So, I'm going to show a couple things that

Are these drawings that are, I'm using in my AxiDraw plotter for. And they're a combination of ink wash painting and this kind of drawing with metallic and white ink. So, I'm using pens in the plotter. And I'm going to show you a couple of things that are these drawings that I'm using in my AxiDraw plotter for. And basically, you know, what I find interesting is using the hardware to do things that I couldn't do necessarily with an inkjet. So, definitely metallics and printing in white, you know, are things I've always wanted to be able to do and using the plotter has like allowed me to start experimenting.

Colin Goldberg

So, I've been using...

Okay.

So, I've been using a lot of different types of paper, you know, mostly Reeves BFK and been getting that in, you know, a variety of different colors. Black, you know, really works nicely and just sort of an India ink ground. And you know, this was just sort of a last minute idea to show this work because I just started on a new set of these.

Colin Goldberg

And these ones here were made... Maybe in the beginning. Maybe in the beginning of the year, probably around January or so. So they were really like, you know, the first bunch. But usually what I'll do is, you know, paint a series of grounds and actually have a bunch behind me on the table here that I just painted, excuse me, this afternoon that are drying.

Colin Goldberg

So those pieces I actually just photographed. They're still wet. But I couldn't... I couldn't resist getting going on them. So you know, I took a quick shot of them with my phone and then I sized them up in Photoshop to the actual size, which is 13 by 19. And then I dropped them into a layer in Adobe Illustrator and create these different sorts of vector-based compositions that, you know, eventually are going to get overlaid and drawn on top of the painted surface. And, you know, I haven't really started too much on the process of what the composition process. This particular set, I did these kind of graphical elements separately, you know, kind of just completely apart from the underpaintings.

Colin Goldberg

These were actually done a while ago, like a couple weeks ago. And then so... And then it's a process of trying them out and moving them around. And then I kind of just kind of go around on the ground, see where they make sense. And you know, I think it's interesting to try to use the metallics and the white in combination with the painted ground to come up with a sense of space.

Colin Goldberg

So like if I pull up some of the grounds for the previous ones, you can kind of see they're basically like a mock-up. This one was never actually... Or these are actually some of the ones that I composed. And made a different set of grounds that were slightly smaller, that were 11 by 17. But these are kind of like the mock-ups.

Colin Goldberg

And then what I'll do is separate out... Doesn't have a drawing on top of it. But separate out the drawing part of it onto just a separate document and then run it through the Axie draw, which takes an SVG file, which is kind of like an open source document. It's kind of like the vector format. So yeah. So it's all... You know, it's a lot of experimentation.

Colin Goldberg

I really enjoy the combination of the painting and the digital drawing component. And that material part of the work is definitely something that I don't think I'll ever let go of. You know, I enjoy working with animations. So that kind of has allowed me to play a little bit with... Yeah. You know, the whole NFT idea and still feel like I'm, I'm utilizing it first. I'm utilizing the idea of an NFT or the NFTs for something that I think fits, fits with what, what my conception of what they're good for is, you know, as far as still images go still work, you know, I mean, I feel like in some ways I'm still a painter at heart. So I enjoy, you know, that, that sort of, the, the power of the accident watching where the ink is going to go, watching how the print head moves over the surface or how the colors interact.

Colin Goldberg

That's something that's not predictable. So yeah, that's, that's pretty much all, all from all I have to, to share.

Cool. It's, interesting to see, how you combine, different printing techniques, over printing each other. So I find that really, really cool. Thanks, Colin. Okay, Patrick.

I'm okay now. Okay. I'm good now. So let's see. All right. I'm, I'm set so I can share. Yeah. You can see that I'm blowing off a little steam today. So, you'll kind of see me in my, and, I, let's hear, this is some work and some work, of course, with my dear wife and, and, partner in all things. And again, Negin Ehtesabian, who is, who is, who is, I don't know if she's not here, she's sleeping because it's been, it's been a long time with the, with the with the weird show we've been working really hard so anyway what I'm gonna do here is I'm just gonna kind of kind of say this is really kind of funny is that this was actually a shot that I took I had a I had a solo thing at the museum of contemporary art in chicago in 2009 and it was just Thank you.

Patrick Lichty

Just amused me that, you know, that there was this, just this thing that said hi, you know, at there. So it was kind of like a, a Warholian sort of thing, but we're thinking about this idea of, of images and materiality and, and all this. And, and what, what am I working on currently is that, say for example, I, I don't have the, images up that, about the, let's see here. And actually I'll make this a little cleaner.

Patrick Lichty

Is that, I think that I've probably shown the fact that I've been doing a lot of, you know, generative adversarial network work with, with, Iranian carpet, and, and mixing different styles like, Bakhtiari with Isfahani and, and, Baluchi and that sort of thing and seeing what we go and then going and weaving those. That's one form of materiality. But then on the other hand, yeah, I wonder what this whole materiality thing, you know, why in the hell we're making objects. And, I've been doing plotter work, for, I think since about, 2003, 2004 and that sort of thing. So I'm just trying to maybe do something else. So what I, I got, if you're, you know, if you're exploring in the AI realm, you know, some of the new stuff right now is, Dolly and Dolly too.

Patrick Lichty

And, I've been working more with, mid journey and, it's, it's a, it's a text, it's a text driven, AI, that basically has an interface for, discord, which to tell you the truth, like is much more entertaining than the work itself. Because, you know, you're just sitting there watching these prompts that people are feeding the machine and they're really, really interesting. And the issue is that people were winding up stealing everybody else's prompts and, you know, and it's really an interesting sociological situation, but, you know, I wonder, it makes you wonder why do we make art? Why, you know, why do we want to have an object? Why do we want to do all these sorts of things? And I think, you know, I like to, you know, I like looking at this, at this, mid journey stuff and I'm just kind of sitting here and going on about this a bit, because it kind of will pop a little bit when, when you do it as that, when you see it, because a lot of my roots are in, surrealism and data.

Patrick Lichty

And, I'm seeing people saying a lot of, say like, you know, anime style Mecca and, and just, you know, kind of maybe needlessly goth things and, and, you know, let's see the 10th ring of hell or, you know, and I'm just saying, okay, well, this is really, really, this is, oh, well, I guess this is fun. So I, I'm, I just have been decided to say, wonder what is, what are the edges of the field of this thing? And then I'm next thing I'll talk about is kind of like where I'm using, where the neck, one of my new bodies of work or things that I've been developing since 2017 is dealing with 3d scans. So I've been, I've been kind of going a little bit surrealistic. You know, I said, Soren Kierkegaard as anime style Mecca. I said, okay, that's, that's maybe it's interesting. But then the other thing that I thought was really interesting to me is that I typed in tech suppression is still life.

Patrick Lichty

Number one. I'll waste a note. There we go. And here's what I got. And I thought it was really interesting that it gave me this kind of semi, semi real, a realistic, you know, kind of traditional still life in a, you know, and something that looks like, you know, almost like a computer, my old, old style TV screen or computer monitor. And I said, that's really interesting that this thing can actually kind of suss this out. And I'm going, okay. And then, then, then I, then I just got frustrated. I just started feeding it things like, greasy, grimy, gopher guts. It's a great green gobs of greasy, grimy, gopher butts and guts in a, in a studio Ghibli style. Here we go. Brilliant. So, you know, and so that's, and, but you know, I'm, I'm very interested in possibly doing some of these things as oils.

Patrick Lichty

And, so, so I want to kind of talk about, you know, basically with the whole, you know, I'm just saying right at the moment, I've been messing around with, mid journey, you know, because before, and, and Carla and I were working with, play form and I forget the one in the middle, Oh, night cafe. That's what I did. And there's this, I'm very interested in this idea of how these things keep, keep developing. But, since 2017 in, in charge, and actually before that I've been interested in photogrammetry.

Patrick Lichty

You know, I've been very interested in the idea of using, photogrammetry as a, as a source for, VR, 2d works, things like this. And, I'm, I'm generally calling this work since 2017, when I went to the cat cafe in, in Dubai and did a 3D scan of a sleeping cat on a chair having to do with certain Islamic texts. And I'm not kidding. And I just kind of realized that I'm away from the keyboard. I'm making things. And there's this embodiment that has to do with thinking. And here, of course, I have Techspressionists, Tommy Mintz, who I scanned at the Techspressionist digital and beyond exhibition.

Patrick Lichty

And so, you know, what I'm very interested in here is the idea... Of how we, a lot of my work's about mediation, about, you know, taking one thing from one area of representation to another. In other words, how does a portrait of Tommy, you know, as a 3D scan translate as a 2D image? Or what if I take it into Unreal Engine? Or what if I put it, put him at the gas station in AR?

Patrick Lichty

You know, and these are unconventional approaches, which I particularly happen to like. So let's see here. Okay. Yep. This is, so this, this is something I would kind of say, I'll, I'll, I'll rope it in the game a little bit on this. So this is a scan that we did at the ruins of Corian near Limassol, Cyprus. And this is an old Roman villa. And the thing is, is that this, the thing I love about this is that this is not the perspective that I scanned this at. In other words, I went and I rotated this to get this perspective and, and did this shot. And this will have to do with the last shot that I, that, that I talk about.

Patrick Lichty

And, you know, and this is the one thing that I kind of like with this, things like volumetric video or 3D scanning and doing it as 2D or doing it as VR. It gives you these, it gives you these impossible, these impossible perspectives that you can deal with that I really like. And so this one here is also a, you know, this is impossible perspective of the old town. And, you know, is Negin in there? I think, I don't know. I don't know. Is that, in anything she's, I do, she's in, but nevertheless, but this is, you know, kind of also a little bit having to do with our larger Google Earth project in which, you know, we're, you know, exploring the earth and, and, you know, seeing how we see it through each other's eyes.

Patrick Lichty

But this starts getting interesting because during this trip, we also went, yep. We went to the Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Nicholas of the Cats, which actually exists. So we went there and I started doing cat scans again. And these are actually, this, it's actually a monastery that takes care of a 14th century saints cats who brought them down from Constantinople to get rid of the snake population.

Patrick Lichty

And I love the fractured nature of these things. And so the, the interesting thing then what I've been doing is that I've then been executing these as, as sets of either watercolors or oils and take, you know, I like the fact that sometimes these things make me slow down that much. And this is one of those images from, that I captured from the, from the scans. And this is actually a, this comes from an actual 3D scan of, of a street scene in Limassol, Cyprus that, you know, I took this impossible perspective of one form of materiality and then translated it from this 3D scan. And it's, of course, it's very fractured and then putting it into, you know, putting it, putting it into oil. And I just sometimes wonder why, why on earth do I want this thing on canvas? You know, is it, is it, is it something more than the fact that I think it's going to last longer than something on my computer?

Patrick Lichty

Or is it just something, some tchotchke for some, you know, person with some money to have, or is it something, and I'm being rather offhand and, but you know, on the other hand is that I think we as artists, you know, that we want to share our, our, ourselves and the human conditions with others and, you know, have ourselves bring added value to other people's lives. And I believe that. And, you know, and that's I think that's, yeah, that's really valid, but you know, as, as usual in this in this salon, I'm kind of the, the academic who's almost taking, you know, the almost surrealist provocation and just kind of going through here and saying that I've been, I've been pulling around a bit with, with, you know, with the, with the later, you know, with the latest AI stuff.

Patrick Lichty

Working on the, you know, working on these, working these scans. And then, you know, I mean, honestly, a lot of my time, you know, in this last month has just been taken up by the, by the weird show. And, you know, this is probably the last two weeks work. And I figure that I've, I actually have, this is going to sound crazy. I have seven plotters and I'm going to see if I can fire about half them up and maybe start, you know, get the, get the farm running maybe in, in August.

Patrick Lichty

But let's see. Let's see. Is there anything else? Nope. That's it. And I'm going to stop share. And that's me. And so anyway, thanks, Michael. And I hope that, I hope that this at least gave people at least a modicum of entertainment, you know.

All right well it certainly gave me a whole lot of entertainment patrick thank

You're

You're an entertaining guy well

Well I'm

Well with all with all the hard work you've been doing to get the weird show up I could see why wanting to let let out a little bit of creativity here that's a good way it would be therapeutic if nothing else you. Yeah.

It's especially the Ghibli style. Yep. Yep.

Exactly.

Yeah. And, but you know, what's very funny about that is that, you know, you start putting that up in the, in the discord and, you know, people say is see people notice that you're starting to do, you know, start starting to do is starting. To try to break the machine a little bit and they start taking attention to you. It's like, what the hell are you doing? And it's just like saying, I'm doing something you're not.

Awesome. Okay, looks like Lucy has her hand up. Yay, Lucy, good to see you. And congrats again on getting into the film festival with your work. I think that's great. So take it away.

Thanks. So this is a little series that I did last year, about a year ago. So it's not new. And I was playing with, so Windows into a Different Universe. And it's called A Tree Remembers. A Tree Remembers a Greener Time. Let me just, oh, you know what? As usual, I always forget to enable audio. Let me get that one going.

Lucy Boyd-Wilson

Okay, so there's three of these short little animations. They're all about 40 seconds, and it's three versions. This one is A Tree Remembers a Greener Time. So like the tree becomes a window into that greener universe and this one is a tree its memories of a greener time. I'm not going to make it full screen because the playback goes jerky when I do it that way for some reason.

It's not as if I'm going to make it personable. I'm just going to make it more interesting. And you can see that I'm going to need to make it more interesting. And you can see that I'm going to need to make it more interesting. And you can see that I'm going to need to make it more interesting. And you can see that I'm going to need to make it more interesting. And you can see that I'm going to need to make it more interesting. And you can see that I'm going to need to make it more interesting. And you can see that I'm going to need to make it more interesting. And you

Can see that I'm going to need to make it more interesting. And the last one is, a tree sheds its memories of a greener time. That one was like little leaf-shaped windows into a greener universe and that's it that's that little series series. Kind of materiality or not materiality or something, I'm not quite sure.

Well, thank you, Lucy. Those were beautiful. And I'm going to have some questions for you too after this. So thank you for your presentation. Looks like Susan has her hand raised. So Susan in Detroit, have at it. Thank you.

I recently have been thinking quite a bit about I'm partly influenced about thinking about NFTs. And in the last, I think maybe six months or so, I started looking through my files and thinking about what kind of collection I might want to have, partly about NFTs. I and then thinking about the topic of materiality I began thinking how photography really is I mean all my work has base in photography now and how photography for me really is taking something material in this case I'm going to talk about florals but in my other own face and then creating something that is about the material world but extends and expands the idea and the feelings of those items that are captured in real time and so I started looking through my files, as I mentioned, and I didn't realize how much kind of, in a way, casual work I'd created over the years from my garden and from mostly from my garden.

Susan Detroy

It was important work, but I hadn't thought of it as having a place to itself. I mostly was using it as an element to combine with my Portrait of a Woman series that I combined my tastes with. But then I had a shift of ideas and once I started organizing and looking through older photographic pieces I thought I have a lot of floral work so and then the season of roses came and we have a very beautiful garden rose garden here and I began to realize I have a lot of work about roses. So over the last few months, I started pulling together files and images and I'm still doing that, organizing. And I came up with a series that initially is going to be about roses and it'll probably change because that's how things are in the art world.

Susan Detroy

Has a Spanish name because I used to speak Spanish and I used to live in Spain. It's called Las Flores Divinas, divine flowers and flowers that are divine. And as I go deeper into thinking about the series, I started doing a little bit more research about the botany of flowers because I was a botany major or part of my composite degrees were in botany and botanical and I worked in herbarium so I have all this influence from my past of these different things that I did and I have what's happened with looking through the and organizing and starting to concentrate on these pieces is that a kind of combination of my different selves is coming together. And I'm deepening my ideas about the love of earth and representing that in an artistic way. So I'm going to show, I have seven that I've completed that I'm planning to show as in nfts and I'm gonna go through those and all of them are about roses and my work is in I do my work with an iPhone and an iPad and everything I create is made with handheld devices.

Susan Detroy

And that's something I started to, I chose to do a few years ago. And so all of these pieces are created in that way. And these have names, but I don't have those attached to the files that I'm looking at in my photo album. So... I have them in another document that I could look up, but I'm just going to show them. I am particularly enamored with the standalone camera app called Hipstamatic, which some of you may know about. I'm slightly obsessed with Hipstamatic, and I find it to render the real world in an alternative view.

Susan Detroy

Me an alternative, more deeply emotional view of what I'm photographing.

Let's see. Just, I am just

Constantly drawn to the luscious depth of flowering plants. I just think they're beautiful. And I think there's a lot that is communicated by

Taking their form and changing it. Okay. Wow.

I don't know why I'm not showing up.

Did you add more that you wanted to say, Susan?

I don't know that I have. Let me just see. I made a little.

Okay.

I didn't want to cut you off.

No, I think that's it. I haven't actually talked about this work. This is the first time that I've shared something. In an artistic way. I've mentioned it to my close friends, of course, that I'm doing it. But I haven't. I've been more working on it and thinking about it and researching and the idea about plants and how it's connected and all the things I said. But I think that's it for now. Thank you.

Cool. Thank you so very much. Anyone else have anything? That they want to share? Before we get into Q and A and discussion. Okay. I'm not seeing.

Hello, Michael. I'm Malavika here. Yes. I'm thinking of it's here midnight three. So I'm just preparing it two minutes. Can I get it by that time? You can start the Q and A maybe.

Sure. Did you want to do that now?

Hello. Yeah. Can you hear me?

Yes.

So I'm just. No, I'll take little five, 10 minutes because I'm joining from the desktop.

Okay. Okay. Well, that's fine. Let me let me know when you're ready then. And actually, if there's nobody else who wants to share any work, then I think we're. Good to ask questions and or share some comments and feedback. And I don't see any hands raised. So.

Can I just ask a question and maybe I can get some feedback because I like to show my work, but I really I can't deal with this share content thing. All I can do is share one picture. I don't know how people are able to kind of maneuver around and show more than one picture.

Oh. Okay. Well, there's. There's the share screen button at the bottom of the screen that allows you to share what's on your screen.

What's on my screen. Okay. I got that. Okay.

Okay. So if you click on that, then we'll get to see your screen.

But I'm thinking that it's not going to be done on an iPad. Is that correct?

Okay.

Now you're going to be on my technical expertise. I think that probably I could maybe share one picture on the iPad, but I'll have to be on the computer before I do. Okay.

So you can share on an iPad. Yes.

I just shared. That was I was on. I'm on an iPad. I just shared from my iPad.

Oh, and you had more than one picture, right?

I allowed the app to it asked me to share my screen and it and I just press share my screen and then it went to my it went to my what's on my iPad screen.

I don't know. Well. Did it go to I photos or did it ask you which place that you wanted to go or no, you just do that to get to your screen. Okay.

If that's helpful. I don't know.

Because one doesn't unless you have this account. One doesn't. I mean, we're not able to practice this share content. And there's nothing that allows you to do that. I've been on. You know, I don't know how many websites. I've been on a lot of sites that give you instructions and all that. But there's never enough information on about share content.

Unattributed

So. Anyway, I'll just muddle on through it someday. Show you my work. Thanks. Thanks. Anyway.

I don't know if it's helpful but you know it actually once you share a screen. Whatever you do on that screen will be seen. I think it's it. You know, I tend to overcomplicate things sometime myself. But I think it's as simple as that. Like if you share that screen. I'm not sure. I had how it works. Susan seems to know better. But if you're on that screen and then you open up your I photos and your pictures are there. That's you kind of want to prepare though before you do it. So you show you have things grouped in a way, you know, and you're kind of ready. I don't know if that's helpful.

One other piece of advice. It is. If I can. If I can give you one other piece of advice. About practicing. I can practice by setting up a zoom meeting for myself. So at a later date. Just open a meeting with yourself and it'll it will allow you to share your screen and practice. Really?

Oh, that's absolutely.

Yeah.

Oh, great. Thank you so much.

Yeah, it's good.

Great idea.

Great idea.

Bernardo.

Wonderful. Another suggestion is. To create an album in your I photos since you have an iPad. And you can put all the pictures that you want to show. In that album. And then they'll you just go to that album after you share your screen. And that makes it easy. It's a nice preparation to get you ready.

Oh, great. Thanks so much.

Thanks. All you iPad folks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So. Who has any comments or questions? Roz.

Yeah. Jan. Looking at your work. So maybe I missed something. Oh. Is my air conditioner loud? Can you hear? Can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Yes. The voice that carries across the lake. That's my mother always said. But. Yeah. It's a little hot here today and shelter Island. Ah, Jan, when I was looking at your work. And you said that the. Images for words. I know it doesn't really matter, I guess, what process someone uses, but I'm just curious, like. What is where, how, how do the words.

Roz Dimon

Become the mountains or whatever it is. We're looking at. If you want to share that, I. I was, I was looking at them. It's not like I wanted a literal transcription, but I was wondering what you were into. The processes for you of that interpretation.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the question, Roz. I'm really interested. I mean, art is paralanguage anyways, and I've always been interested in sound and language in particular and ambivalent. So basically, I take a screenshot of a waveform and then run it through a 3D app. And that's how I get the initial mountains. And then there's tons and tons of work processing and refining them to be seen, thinking the way the CNC machine will see. So it becomes, there's bits of random things that happen. But there is like, I'm trying to write an expanded artist statement and philosophy behind this, because that is part of taking the spirit of the art and the music and the music and the Australian song lines. And also, the nullification of language is part of it. And aesthetically, it can just be that aesthetic experience.

Jan Swinburne

But what drives the inspiration behind this is, I can't look at a mountain without seeing a waveform. It's that sense of pattern and fractals and whatnot that really, intrigues me. But the added layer of sort of these hidden meanings that exist in all art, as well as kind of voicelessness is another theory that I'm working with as well.

Jan Swinburne

So that's kind of how I get there. It's complicated, and I stumbled upon it playing around with apps, and it kind of changed everything. But it just sits nicely with this long-time fascination. I think it's a really good way to kind of get to the heart of the art. And I think that's what I'm most excited about. And I think that's what I'm most excited about. With language and sound, and I'm hoping to re-embody it, possibly at one point, some of the words I've chosen are edgy, like crazy and psycho, but stringing the words together, and then maybe having some sort of choral work, re-embody, like it's disembodied, re-embodied, materialized, and then working with those sort of concepts, it's complicated, but it's fun. And it can just be a mountain to people if that's what they see.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

So Jan, I have a follow-up question for you from Roz. What inspired you, since you didn't get a chance to play the animation of like the shadows and everything, what inspired you? Because I'm fascinated by the animations of the shadows going across your mountains. For me, it's got this weird element of kind of bringing back into play the dynamics of sound waves and everything else from a very different, from a very different sense of like the standpoint where shadows are formed from shapes of material things. So I was just really intrigued by where that inspiration came from because I find it really quite interesting.

Michael Pierre Price

Yeah.

Thanks, Michael. That is the magic of my studio. And again, it's like I'm working, and I was actually having a bit of a conniption fit this year, because I'm working with the city came in and trimmed my tree. They actually aren't animated. They are live, like it's live filming. So I'm running into the studio at certain times of the day, setting up this weird arrangement. I have to try and capture the motion and the shadows on the sound as well. And that just intrigues me as well. The layers of kind of meaning motion, fractal, the distortions that have, and the sense of being live.

Jan Swinburne

That's something that the filming offers that, you know, it's fun to watch your waveform go up and down and all of that. But when you have this chaos happening on top of this other chaos, which is by this time sort of organized aesthetically, it's really, it just adds. Those are the ones I'm sort of calling out. So I'm going to kind of talk to you about that.

Jan Swinburne

Forms and where you can put it out on the internet. I mean, the landing spots for the internet are windows and pages. And I just would like that to tie in that relationship back to the actual world we live in, as opposed to this mysterious one that we're all creating all the time. So that's kind of where that comes in. And it just gives it that life feeling. It's like, Like, you know, you can do digital music like crazy, but it's good to put a bit of live stuff in there. Otherwise you get those accidentals happening.

Jan Swinburne

Just gives it that quality cool yeah thanks thanks for asking you thanks

That's cool any other questions please

I'm gonna ask a question to colin go for it beautiful new work I mean sometimes if people don't ask things it's not because it's not rather stunning but I like these new pieces they seem to have some kind of like solar disc or there's something different it looks it's happening in these I don't know where my question is but I just wonder where the inspiration comes from and I'm wondering if you have any questions for me I'm gonna ask you I mean you're now living in vermont is that you know I don't know what compels you in your work where the inspiration is but I mean it's beautiful work and I just wonder is it is it totally just out of your mind or do you take a walk on a vermont stream and come back and all of a sudden these are different works

I mean I find that for me usually the process kind of drives the experiment to some degree you know like in terms of using using the plotter it definitely like some types of compositions work better than others compared to say using an inkjet overprint you know and yeah I guess you know I mean a lot of it is really just sort of like not sure exactly where it all comes from I did I do notice like you know with these particular works I'm primarily using like metallic and white inks so a lot of times you know, there'll be juxtaposition of a very complex form with like more geometric geometric forms like the discs where it's sort of like you know I take a like an ellipse and another really much smaller ellipse in the center and then create the in between you know use like a tween tool and illustrator all the all the drawings done in illustrator so a lot of what I do is kind of based on you know misuse of the tools to some degree know like using them for things that they're really not intended for you know and that's a lot of fun a lot of times also what I do is I'll take like you know vector-based shapes wireframe forms and stuff like that and I'll rasterize them so it's you know essentially creating like a flattened version and then trace it back into vector art and then perform some other weird manipulation on it so going back and forth between raster and vector I find that a lot of times that'll you know generate things that I wasn't really intending but you know it's definitely fun and I really consider a lot of what I do just straight experimentation but like what you were saying about taking a walk I mean in some of the nfts that I've been minting over the last couple of months there's definitely sound recordings that I've made down at the swamp you'll hear like the last one I minted actually there's frogs chirping away that's like actual frogs in an actual swamp near where I live you know not downloaded so you know part of it for me is also capturing what's happening in my life creating documentation of what's happening in my life even if I'm the only one that really like knows about it or appreciates it or

Maybe it's even subconscious sometimes but thank you that was that was that was helpful

So malavika are you ready yes

Okay

Go for it thank you

Thank you

I am showing a few of my work where material played a very important role so this what currently is it visible to everyone yes yeah so particularly this work I have done a digital collage and after that I have added threads which are cotton jute different because of the dimension and the textures I have a threaded threads and I have used a tracing paper which I have colored with the pencil colors and also keep the transparencies so what I have tried to show that the design element which is getting created is like a form of a house so all the colors of the natures are in the house that way I've tried to show and that was that became possible because of the material and even the layers which I have created this particular place if you see is all one after another I'm creating layers of tracing papers so certain times the physical material also becomes very important for me to create the effect on my work and even like this rolling concept what I have created like a staircase going upward similarly tracing paper I have used

Second

In this work I have used acrylic sheet engraved along with threads so these are the I mean the upward which you can see on the side of the wall that's in the front of the room and see the line ones. These are the areas where the threads are in a form of a cord because I've twisted two three layers of so three yarns of thread and the other area which you can see these are acrylic along with the engraving. So what I mean to say that because I was listening so I thought of sharing few of my work where I feel material was a very important factor and the another reason is if you see it's creation a shade so even though it's hiding somewhere at the same time it is creating a 3D effect.

Malavika Mandal Andrew

This work I have used crystals and engraving on acrylic. The center part where you can see the globe is crystal. The four images if you see it's actually four side of the sculpture. So again acrylic I have used engraving along with cut work. So it is having a see-through effect and the because of the transparency I can see the globe the obstacle areas and non-obstacle areas. So and along with that certain areas I have painted also with the gold because again materialistic and metallic effect both are creating a dimension opaque effect.

Malavika Mandal Andrew

So you can see in the story of the square it is on the left it is the black part and I have done the same here. So you can see you can see the white part of the square and the black part of the square black part of the square in the inside. So you can see the black part of the square and the black part of the square and the black part of the square and the black part of the square. So you can see that you can see the black part of the square and the black part of the square. So you can see to be it is the light part in the outside and the black part of the square. So you can see you can see the on acrylic I got it made holes on that I have stitched with the metallic thread so the silver is on one side and on the other side it is gold so three layers of transparency is creating the effect yes I think that's all thank you

Wow it looks like there was a bit of magic involved in creating some of that's beautiful malvika

Thank you so much I just thought you know I think these fits for the concept so I thought let me get up and make the things otherwise actually I was lying and listening them because here it is at 3 30 it was when I just started three o'clock sorry night did

You do all did you do all of the work with the crystals yourself or did you work with someone no

I got the it made okay yeah even the acrylic sheet also engraving or cut work I got it made I gave the designs to them and they made it for me wow

Beautiful okay so any other questions discussions I

I have a question I mean I think I want to I think I want to beg the question one more time in other words it's the idea of saying you know what is it about working with the crystals that you're working with and what you're working with working physically you know that those of us who are working with yeah I think what's going on is we're talking about almost everything except the question itself in other words it's like why why is I mean we can maybe say that you know okay it gives us something that we can sell okay that's fine you know or sorry or like why nfts or why this or why that I think that I want to ask the formal question you know it's like why is it you know why why is it in a in a day and age you know that we have all these you know we have all these you know we have all these you know digital artifacts and all and all this technology why is it still important to work with stuff when you know in other words it's like you know in many ways it's sort of like saying we have a you know we have you know we have these tools that almost maybe let us do almost whatever we want you know why why do we why do we constrain ourselves to you know to this to this stuff called matter you know and I think and I mean I'm being a little bit offhand as I am you know as I'm kind of being offhand in the same way that is george gross said the blue to get earns you know I this is bloody serious in other words I'm being comical on the surface but I'm being really incredibly serious about what I'm saying underneath today because I'm just you know getting a little nervous you know getting a little burnout and done but no

And patrick that I think definitely goes out to the heart of the matter and all I can say for myself and I because I've as I taught some things in the past and seeing you know younger folks getting growing up and what their experiences are I for me I think it is partly age because I keep going back to the sense of the physicality of my youth and growing up pre pre-digital world and everything I think there's a for me there's this sense of living as a physical human being and going to museums where I've seen artwork that's very big or very small they have a very different impact can you replicate that in a digital environment or in a vr environment sure you can to some degree but I think there's still the sense of touch there's our senses and to this day right now we haven't replicated those kinds of experiences virtually or to this to this point now whether we'll do that at some point I don't know I'm not sure

Yeah there's that there's that famous essay that talks about you know I mean of course you know you have you know greenberg who did you know avant-garde and kitsch and there's I think it's wine something but michael I forget his name but he did he did a thing on the theatricality of art and the idea of saying you know it you know something with just you know so let's just take collins piece that's at the centerpiece of you know of so you know let's just let's just let's just let's just let's just let's just consider it at a foot tall consider it at the you know 35 feet tall it is in the in the show but I mean you know but what I'm saying and its placement and that sort of thing I mean you know the configuration the form and all these sorts of things and you know the sort of thing that it that expresses I mean in vr we can sort of do these things but you know we're still physical embodied beings you know that are still standing in the space yeah one of the reasons why I don't have a ton of physical work or the work that I do have that is physical you know it's like it's either stuff you can roll up and I really thank Tommy Mintz for getting a massive massive massive mind shift when working with his work because all of a sudden I said oh my god I can actually you know it's like we can you know it's like we can actually have big work again yeah you know but on the other hand yeah and it packs up really tightly and so this has been the big problem with materiality is the fact that this you know this stuff takes up space yeah and you know you wind up with a bunch of this stuff that you know you're wondering you know is this you know are my you know, are my, are my great grandchildren going to get, is, is my, is, is my estate foundation going to get this, you know, you know what I mean?

Patrick Lichty

And what I do with this, you know? And so, you know, that's the reason why I had been a media artist for, you know, mainly for so long, but, you know, there, there is, there, there is, and I use this in the content. There is that sublime quality to the to the to the material you know in other words something that's onspiring and a little scary and you know and that's yeah I mean I in other words let's just say I get it and this is the reason you know why didn't send more than a video to, you know, to Southampton.

Patrick Lichty

And that's the reason why Negin's work, you know, is so spectacular and that sort of thing. You know, it's actually, the thing is those are prints of the actual work that, you know, that are full of, you know, collage and embroidery and that sort of thing. And when people see them in the States, they're going to fall over dead. They're just going to just say, you know, because these are just, you know, the things that were at South Southampton, you know, they were, they were, you know, they were just shadows of, of the real thing. And that's because of the, you know, the, you know, I think the way that she works, you know, in materiality, far more depth than I do is, you know, it's stunning. And, you know, I, the, the, this is kind of why, you know, when I was talking with Tommy and, you know, framing this conversation and that sort of thing, it's like, you know, this is the, you know, this was, these were the sort of things we were talking about, you know, and, you know, there's just, there's, and at the end of the day, and this is the other thing I was talking about, you know, like with, you know, doing a catalog or publishing something, you know, in other words, in a book, you know, Adams.

Patrick Lichty

Override. Yeah. When it comes to history. So I'm. Okay.

Nina.

I think it's the human need for tactility. For touch. That's why pets became so popular during the pandemic. That's the pet. And touch the material. Touch, touch. The paint, the. The clay. The charcoal, whatever it is. On to like Collins doing onto the digital print, bring it out. And. That's what I think. Because the humans need. To touch. That's why they touch each other.

Yeah.

Yeah. Nina, you're sort of right on where I was at with this. I found the pandemics driven me away from a lot of screen work. And like I started carving and it's that, and, and also we live like all the tech. Still doesn't get that tactile thing surface. Just isn't there. There yet. It's just, that's a definite need as well. That is. You know, we're, we are embodied creatures and, you know, to speak to Patrick's.

Jan Swinburne

Conundrum with the stuff. It's like, do we need more stuff and make more stuff? It's definitely something that. I find challenging now that I'm getting back into, 3d objects again. And. You know, there's a. There's a practicality issue there, but for me, it's, it's the desire to like, I want, I want to carve these in stone again eventually. And I'm just, I don't know why, but I do. It's like, it's just the next phase of this ongoing clay. And I think it's just the pen pandemic in particular for me is just put me in this space of like, yeah, I love all this stuff that I can do and I rely on digitally, but man, I'm. In my mind when I get my hands on something, it just. I feel connected more connected than I do to any digital work that I do. And that's just as an artist, that's a deep need for me.

Jan Swinburne

And I wasn't aware of it particularly until recently.

Thanks. The matrix says no fun.

Colin.

Yeah. I mean, you know, like I think that. But for me, I think both the physical and digital worlds have their own specific appeal. Like I remember when I first started seeing art software, you know, like I remember the first time I saw a fractal design painter and I thought, you know, I have really no interest in trying to replicate charcoal using a computer or replicate oil paint using a computer. I'm much more interested in trying to do things that I could do with great difficulty, if at all, with hand media, like generate really intricate wireframe forms or create 3D models, things that, you know, just would be really, you know, difficult to try to do with traditional media. So for me, like, you know, like I know when I'm doing like ink wash stuff, graphics. I can definitely like create a lot more material in a short amount of time with physical media than trying to replicate the same thing digitally.

Colin Goldberg

And I get a more satisfying result as well, you know, and to me, it's the combination of those things that I find interesting and compelling. That being said, you know, definitely I will get lost doing animation or inside the machine. But, you know, I think there's definitely the part of me that. Look. Learned on physical media underneath the computer self that still needs some satisfaction, you know, artistic satisfaction.

Colin Goldberg

Renata.

Yes, I'm looking at it from a historical point of view. I'm looking at the way our museums preserve manuscripts that are thousands of years old. And we all are aware that we're part of the continuum of civilization. And so far, a lot of people have not cottoned on to digital at all. And I'm thinking about how long it's going to take before museums and galleries really understand and really get what they're doing. I read recently that the Albright Knox Gallery purchased its first NFT, but I'm trying to find articles about it online and I can't. But there are some curators who are plunging into digital. But we're still in the postmodern phase of things.

But Rivers Ryan gets it.

Yeah, I know she does. But she's very rare. When you think of all the museums around the world, she's only one curator in one American museum. So I think it's going to take ages for them to put us into our historical context. And that's why it's important, I think, to have a certain reputation. And I think that's the key. And I think that's the key to the material.

I think the thing is interesting. I think I can probably, I mean, this is nothing on a national scale, but I think I can probably rattle off at least six to ten curators in the United States that get it. You know, like Christiane Paul being another one. You know, but I mean, it's like, I think the point that I want to make is the fact that I think in many ways, a lot of the work that I do is based on the fact that I'm not a curator. A lot of us think that things are just beginning. But it's just a matter that there is a rich history that goes back, you know, a long time. And it's like Vera Molnar, you know, a plotter, you know, she's a plotter artist, you know, got into the Venice Biennial. And then she's 90, 92. 98. 98. Yeah, bravo. You know, and so, and, you know, Roman Verostko is 93.

Patrick Lichty

And, you know, and so I guess what I'm saying is, is that there's a lot of history. There's a, there's a, there's a rich history of this stuff. And that, you know, it's, it's, I don't think it's really accepted by the mainstream, but it isn't exactly at the fringe anymore. I think around 2000 or so it really broke through. And, you know, there's a there's a lot of digital work and a lot of museums and that sort of thing but I think it's, I think the range of discussion that it goes around it is far more limited than traditional media. Yeah.

Patrick Lichty

Yeah.

Nina you have a follow up?

Oh, I just want to say, you know I've been able to keep this material thing at bay because I use my iPhone and I use my finger. So I'm constantly touching the screen with tactility with the screen with my iPhone screen that takes over and forming my images. And so I've tried to go back to using charcoal and paints and everything. For this other project but I'm obsessed with my finger on my iPhone screen and creating images obsessed that's

Totally awesome I don't

Use a stylus I never use a styler just my finger finger

Painting and digitally yeah okay lucy

Yeah I just want to say absolutely the materiality the tactile world being able to touch things has a you know that's very just delicious to be able to reach out and touch something pick something up feel its weight but there's another aspect of our bodies and how we relate to the world and that's like scale and that's like scale and that's like scale and that's like scale and yeah when you walk into a gallery or something and you see a small object or small painting compared to a massive one or you walk into a cathedral or you're walking through a forest that relates to our bodies in a certain way that it's just like I feel small and that's an amazing sensation of you know over and above touch touch is amazing and there's also this you know element of scale and there's also the element of balance so I just want to shout out to the immersive arts like virtual reality and dome projection and installation where you're completely surrounded like a cathedral or like a forest but things are like moving like when you're in a forest and everything is quivering all the trees like and you get the sound as well but you can capture some of that in a virtual reality piece when you're you know crafting a world that's not just a virtual reality piece but it's a virtual reality piece where you're in a forest and you're doing all the work to completely surround the viewer with motion and sound you're relating to the viewer's body yeah and so I just want to put like there is a way to relate to the to the to the viewer's body with certain digital mediums that are especially immersive that's kind of new and really exciting even though you know I create immersive works and half the time I like I create immersive works and half the time I like I create immersive works and half the time I create immersive works walk in the woods and I'm like why do I even bother

You know walking is like so rich and

Beautiful absolutely I absolutely

This is my medium and I just have to try anyways I just wanted to like you know relating to our bodies

Scale for sure I agree mediums

Yes scale and motion and sound and that kind of like it's a certain type of sensation it feels you

Feel it

Balance

It

Balance is a feeling you feel it so

And the thing the challenge is and I we're still not quite there you know and you and I have good experience from the from the game world is that it's still really tough to get that sense of complete prep when as a human being we have sensory understanding of our bodies we're still still playing what are we doing right now when of the world much deeper and better than we can do in virtual worlds to this point but that the immersive quality is still is still really dynamic in a virtual environment I agree with you totally from that standpoint and

To be you know crafting with that in mind it's like yeah

What

Does it feel like how slow do you want things to be or usually how slow okay I need to slow it down but anyway

I just want to put that out no thank you thank you and the thing with our virtual environments and with our art today is that we can explore that sense of scale at a much deeper breadth than we can completely materially and so we could we can create environments that are microscopic that are subatomic or galactic in scale that is much harder to do in a per in a completely material realm so that's kind of fascinating too well I'm looking at the time time here and it looks like we're getting close close to finishing so does anybody have any final thing I have one piece left in terms of materiality here here is here is the exhibit catalog for the expressionist show it does exist in a material form so I got mine this past week all your hard work in making that happen.

Michael Pierre Price

If you haven't gotten it, at least get the PDF form, which is free, but I also suggest that you get a nice material. As well.

No, actually the one thing I think is that, you know, is that we have even at least a few dozen of these things around. You know, somebody's gonna come along 20 years later and they're gonna find one of these things and say, what the hell was this? This happens. This happens, you know, because I have this booklet that I got from this colleague who was working. It was another VR pioneer. And the thing is, is that it's called The Idiot's Guide to VR Environmental Design. And it was done in like 1998 or something like that. And she gave me a copy and I said, this is great. And then one of my other things is that I love, I love satellite telecommunication, or especially slow scan TV. I've got a big collection of these crazy things. And the issue is that, you know, one of the people involved with Ars Electronica did a book called Art Communication.

Patrick Lichty

And it was published by Western Front in Vancouver. And it's been out of print for a long time. And I've been doing research on this stuff for like 16, 17 years. And when I was in Vancouver, I found this thing. And I just said, it's fantastic. You know, so I just said, you know, and then the thing is, because I knew that we're, that there were probably maybe about a hundred of these things in existence in the world right now. I scanned it and there, you can, you can, you can find it in various places as a PDF, you know, but the thing is, is that, you know, is that I think both are necessary, but, you know, but digital links and things like that, you know, go. Go, go, go bad. I'm shifting everything over in my boy.com stuff. I've taken everything out of my entire history that I've ever done offline right now.

Patrick Lichty

It's on hard drives. And if something goes wrong with me, my, my legacy is gone, you know, and I'm, I'm putting it, everything on the Patrick wikty.com server on dream host. But you know, it's, you know, the, this is, this is precarious stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it, it, I mean, in regards to the preservation culture, and I think we're not, it makes a really good point. You know, the idea is that, you know, if you're looking at it from an antiquarian perspective, you know, it's, you know, you need, you need, I mean, that's, that's why, that's why I have, that's why I have things in collections. That's why I have things in museums. That's you know, that, that sort of thing. It's like, because of the fact that I know that somebody's probably going to come across this stuff in 50.

Patrick Lichty

Is it? Yeah.

You know? Yep.

Yep. Yep.

Okay. I think we've hit the end of our timeframe here. Reminder again, we'll be meeting in two weeks. I'm not sure yet what our topic is going to be. So if anybody wants to stick around, we can discuss that. And, I thank everybody for, for being here today and for hanging in there with me today. So, thank you, Michael. Alrighty. So we're going to be. Stopping in five, four, three, two, one.

I'll be around. I'll stick around.