Techspressionist Salon 90
Origins: The Prehistory of Techspressionism – Part One

Moderated by Michael Pierre Price
Recorded January 2, 2025

A selection of Techspressionist artists sharing their work and experiences working with art and technology in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s.  Part one of a two-part salon series.

00:02:33 Steve Miller
00:16:46 Darcy Gerbarg
00:29:20 Lee Musgrave
00:48:21 Nina Sobell
1:02:39 Adrienne Wortzel

ARTISTS

Steve Miller has been working with art, science and technology since 1980. He collaborated with the 2003 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Rod MacKinnon, in a project about human protein, worked at Brookhaven National Labs and at CERN in Geneva. For a decade, Miller proposed to give Brazil, our planetary lungs, a medical check-up by taking x-rays of the Amazon. The painting “Far Enough Away”, featured in this exhibition, is the cover image for his third book, Surfing the Cosmos, to be published by G Editions in the fall of 2022. He exhibits internationally.

NYC, NY USA
Wikipedia website instagram

Darcy Gerbarg is a digital art pioneer  employing both digital technologies and traditional fine art techniques since 1979. She is a Techspressionist, painting in 3DVR: AR and VR Artworks, Interactive, Immersive Environments, and MR Sculpture. Gerbarg exhibits virtual artworks, as well as works on canvas, paper, and ceramics in museums, art fairs, and galleries. Gerbarg’s work is held in private and public art collections.

NYC, NY USA
website instagram

Lee Musgrave studied with Fritz Faiss & Hans Burkhardt. Fritz studied at the Bauhaus with Paul Klee & Wassily Kandinsky. Hans was studio partner of Arshile Gorky. Musgrave has a M.A. from CSU Los Angeles and is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient. His art has been exhibited in over 20 solo and 100 group exhibitions, including the 2018 Barcelona Foto Biennale and the 2016 Berlin Foto Biennale.  Musgrave’s works  have been featured in F-Stop zineArt Ascent zine, DoHo e-zine, and The Photo Review.

White Salmon, WA USA
website instagram

Nina Sobell, is an electronic medium and a pioneer of video, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Internet performance. In collection or shown: DIA, ZKM, ARS, List MIT, Getty, ICA, Whitechapel, the Whitney, LBMA, CAM Houston, Beuys’ FIU Doc 6, Louisiana MoMA, Denmark, Kunst Forum, Hammer, Zwirner, Banff, Kramlich, in shows curated by Lacy, McCarthy, Viola. Received CAPS, NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, Franklin Furnace, Turbulence, Acker Award Video, taught SVA, UCLA, NYU residencies, Rockefeller nominee. BFA Tyler, MFA Cornell

NYC, NY USA
Wikipedia website instagram

Adrianne Wortzel has been making and exhibiting her art for over five decades. Her work combines historical fact with fiction and deploys their considered mix in creating narratives in films, drawings, texts, robotic and telerobotic performance productions with video, artists books, photography and webworks. Her writings include articles, fiction, installation scripts.  She was an early pioneer in the field of telerobotics and theater as well as an early champion of art as experimental research practice in collaboration with scientists and engineers in U.S. and international laboratories.

Astoria, NY USA
Wikipedia website instagram

MODERATOR

Michael Pierre Price works from his home studio in Phoenix, Arizona creating his digital art prints that are primarily inspired by the intersection of modern physics, neuroscience, and spirituality. He often uses mathematics, specialized software, and AI when he creates his abstract, algorithmic, and surrealist art.

Phoenix AZ USA
website instagram

WHAT IS A TECHSPRESSIONIST SALON?

Techspressionist Salons are a time and place in cyberspace where artists gather once a month to hang out, share their work and discuss matters relating to art, philosophy, and technology.

These meetups were conceived as a modern counterpart to the Surrealist salons of the 1920’s, in which artists could meet informally to socialize and discuss ideas. Techspressionism is a 100% volunteer-based international artist community.

The First Techspressionist Salon was held on September 1, 2020, and included artists Colin Goldberg, Patrick Lichty, Steve Miller and Oz Van Rosen, as well as art historian Helen Harrison, Director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, the former home and studio of painters Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. During this first Salon session, the working definition of Techspressionism was decided upon by the participants as: “An artistic approach in which technology is utilized as a means to express emotional experience.”

Artist Davonte Bradley (aka DAVO) proposed the idea of recording the Salons and publishing them on the Techspressionism YouTube Channel, which was implemented starting with Salon #8.

Salons are moderated by a rotating panel of artist volunteers. After the recording ends, artists are welcome to hang out for the afterparty (aka advisory board meeting), in which the topic for the next Salon is decided upon, and other community-related ideas are discussed.

 

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