Techspressionism:
Expression in a Technological Age

Roundtable · October 3, 2022 · Watch this passage

I thought about the history, being a historian, of course. I looked back and thought about how artists had adapted technological change for their own personal purposes, rather than being sucked in by the technology itself as an end in and of itself; that it became a means to an end that was already a subjective approach, a subjective desire on the artist’s part to express himself or herself, and then find the appropriate technology or the appropriate means by which to do that.

Interview · May 6, 2025 · Watch this passage

I think, to me, there seems to be this prevailing notion that technology is very antithetical to human creativity and human imagination in different ways. And I think that the idea of Techspressionism, similar to a lot of the work that I do, is in a way kind of standing against that, or sort of challenging that prevailing idea, right? But at the end of the day, I think it really is sort of about realizing that technology is sort of another way of parsing the world and of perceiving things around us and of gathering wisdom, right? And figuring out how we then put that to use. And so there’s a very fundamental alignment between imagination and these systems.

Lazaridou interview · December 7, 2023 · Watch this passage

I remember feeling genuine joy for the first time with making art again, exploring that way. I did that through play. I didn't have a set goal in mind. My goal was to just get feelings out or just have my hand play across my tablet.

Interview · April 6, 2021 · Watch this passage

So the point is, is that technology is big. It’s a big thing. It’s a philosophy. It’s full of attitudes and thoughts and positions and implications that we haven’t quite completely thought out. And so to use it in an expressionistic manner—in other words, an intuitive, felt kind of way—is inevitable. It’s just inevitable. And so what I would think of about Techspressionism is I’d put it in the context of that inevitability.

Roundtable · September 16, 2025 · Watch this passage

So, anyhow, in 2020, I did a Google search for the term and saw that there was another artist named Oz Van Rosen, who was using the term in a magazine article, which I thought was really interesting. And I thought, you know, I’ll reach out to her and see what she thinks about putting a group together around the idea, which I did.

Lazaridou interview · December 1, 2023 · Watch this passage

I see all these artists, and they have to describe what it is they do. So if I had to describe what I do, well, what is it that I do? And so I thought, okay, well, this is glitch art in the beginning. There is a category like glitch art. And does glitch art live in another category? Is it part of something else? Well, it’s actually part of using technology to express yourself. And then the words, you know, abstract expressionism came out. And I thought, well, this is—it’s actually abstract Techspressionism. And that’s actually the term that I initially used, was abstract Techspressionism, because I was abstracting my photographs, or my images. And sometimes it’s photographs that are mine, and sometimes it’s just found images that I start off with. So that is how the term came together.

Lazaridou interview · November 28, 2023 · Watch this passage

It's always like, oh it's the death of art, it's the end game, painting is dead. And I saw that kind of as an opportunity really because there were new language systems to revive painting and I saw that new language as technology. And art has always reflected the visual language of the era in which it's made.

Interview · February 17, 2021 · Watch this passage

What's the, you know, in other words, what's, you know, what's, what's the space of human subjectivity within, within the technological frame? We're just really reflecting on the subjective human experience in, you know, in the contemporary moment in which technology is so endemic.

Interview · February 28, 2022 · Watch this passage

A lot of artists mistake the technology for the art. My interest in techno-based art is to really break open different and new tropes of images that could not have been achieved any other way.

Interview · January 7, 2022 · Watch this passage

And the idea of, you know, the use of technology to express, to make an emotional statement or an expressive statement, that juxtaposition I thought was very, very smart and very accurate. So we're really what's going on. Because we're using these tool sets that on one level, produce all the same sort of kinds of effects or kinds of structures, but they're unique to every practitioner.

Interview · January 27, 2021 · Watch this passage

I think what you mentioned before is digital art has suffered from often being lumped in with other things. And that sometimes does make sense. In the context, some of the things are shown, especially in the beginning when experimental work was being done. Where you'd go to a show, and maybe some of the things were really art, fine art that would stand on their own, and then other things were obviously more technical experimentation. And I think it's all valid, but it's one of the reasons. It's that the regular art world was less than welcoming, because someone would go and be, what is this? This isn't artwork. So trying to have a group that's really focused on the artwork aspect of it, I think is important.

Interview · December 8, 2025 · Watch this passage

And so bringing together community and self-organizing is a giant form of resistance to the powers of institutions and dominant ideologies and I think it's profoundly important and meaningful that artists do this themselves.

Interview · October 13, 2021 · Watch this passage

And I feel an affinity with many of the artists, because when you work digitally in this time that we live in, you don't always know where your tribe is located. You don't know where your peers are, because cyberspace is so vast.

Interview · September 21, 2026 · Watch this passage

Just based on the conversation we’ve been having today about our own practices, Techspressionism, if I can pronounce it correctly, exemplifies that kind of experimentation. And an argument I’ve made since I first started working with the computer is that it is not just this cold algorithmic process that, you know, is devoid of or separate from any kind of fine arts history or lineage. It’s something that is expressionistic. It is something where you can explore a language as thoroughly as Jackson Pollock did with his pour paintings, right? We’re using different tools, but our motivations for making work that has these expressive tendencies are not hampered by digital technologies. And it is an argument that I think we all had to make at some point in our careers.

Interview · June 17, 2021 · Watch this passage

We're the next generation of trying to keep that experimental notion of work alive. I think there's a need in every society for the artists to be doing that. And here we are sort of recognizing that in each other. I think that's a really interesting thing.

Interview · February 28, 2022 · Watch this passage

Helen A. Harrison: So what do you think about Techspressionism as a concept? I mean, the idea that technology should be a means of enabling the artists to reach a subjective level in their work; that it’s not just technology for its own sake, but that it has that subjective dimension.

Frank Gillette: Well, I agree with it. I agree with the premise. It’s a good word for it, perhaps. I think over time maybe a shorter word would suffice.

Helen A. Harrison: Too many syllables.

Frank Gillette: And vowels. Yes, I agree with it. I mean, the idea is, it’s not technology for its own sake. It’s technology for the world’s sake.