Joseph Nechvatal interviewed by Colin Goldberg
Techspressionist Artist Interview Series #4 – Original recording: 2000, reposted Feb 4, 2021.
This interview of artist and theoretician Joseph Nechvatal was recorded in Manhattan’s East Village in 2000. It was originally published by artist Colin Goldberg on Everbeta.net, Goldberg’s early streaming content network for the arts. The interview takes place during a walk between the artists’ studios in Manhattan’s East Village and Lower East Side. It is raw footage with in-camera editing only, and is primarily a discussion on Viractuality, the topic of Nechvatal’s Ph.D thesis. It begins in Goldberg’s studio which was located on Avenue A at the time of the recording, and ends at Nechvatal’s studio, which was located at the time on Ludlow Street. Nechvatal is a post-conceptual digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses. Viractualism is an art theory concept developed by Nechvatal in 1999 from the Ph.D. research Nechvatal conducted in the philosophy of art and new technology concerning immersive virtual reality at Roy Ascott‘s Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, University of Wales College, Newport, UK (now the Planetary Collegium at the University of Plymouth). There he developed his concept of the viractual, which strives to create an interface between the biological and the virtual. (Source: Wikipedia)
Techspressionist Interviews are self-produced videos of of artists interviewing other artists in the spirit of Warhol’s Interview Magazine. Many thanks to artist Roz Dimon developing the Interview Series initiative and drafting the format. These videos are also published to the Techspressionism YouTube Channel.