%) Do you discern some tendencies, directions in which computer based art or new media art is stepping in? Recently there was a turn into biology and organic artificial life. It is bio-art.
I am not particularly interested in current trends, so I do not pay much attention. I think there is an over-emphasis on “next” and “future” in new media art. That may sound paradoxical… but then again, I am not so fond of the adjective “new” in new media, except for the fact that there is a kind of freedom and intensity of exploration that happens on the frontier, where things have not been categorized yet, and the boundaries are not set, and there is no such thing as inter-disciplinarity because things are still pre-disciplinary. So the directions that might catch my attention are ones that are ungraspable, that have no name yet… This is not to say that there is not really interesting work happening in bio-art, but it does not move me.
^) How do you evaluate yourself as an artist on the background of others? Your achievements are impress. Prizes, exhibitions in famous places, astonishing production. Are there some borders which you want trespass to, and aims which you want to fulfill?
This field is very challenging. It changes quickly. It is full of artists that made a strong impression with a couple of works in a short period of time, show everywhere, then get burnt-out and disappear. I have done all that perhaps twice over. I am trying not be rest on the things I have done in the past, but to step outside of the pressures of a career and feel my way into yet another body of work. This has required consciously slowing down, and that is what I am currently engaged in. Slowing down, rather than speeding up, in order to feel out the questions that matter enough to me to devote another 2 or 5 or 10 years to. The truth is, no past success is truly sustaining. We measure ourselves by what we are currently engaged in an achieving. I am happy that work that I have done has made an impression, but it is not enough!
*) How is it for to live in Canada? It is a country on the border with United States, in somehow sister or brother. It is also one of five countries tied strong on the basis of defenses alliance. I am thinking additionally about New Zealand, Great Britain, Australia.
Canada is a curious place. We are deeply interconnected to the United States, but we think of ourselves very differently, and we do not participate in the righteous fervor of the USA. We are critical and self-critical. The USA is not very good at self-reflection, and we seem to feel compelled to do that service for them. This is why such a large portion of comedians in the United States are actually Canadian. It is quite complicated: we rely on the US, and we criticize it relentlessly. There is a bit of duplicity in this of course. As for defense alliances, this is a subject of substantial controversy here. We did not participate in the Iraq war, much to the displeasure of the US and UK. But our current government is much more interested in these sort of alliances. It does not really reflect the mood of the country but the policies of the government of the past 10 years.
#) Do you occupy with programming? Which tools are useful for you in creation of your works? Could you give some names of computer programs and bring style of your research closer? For example how long do you execute your pieces.
I spend a lot of time programming. I do try to separate the hard-core (C++) programming from the programming of the artworks themselves. I use MaxMSP as a tool that allows me to work freely and intuitively with the code I have written in c++. This mix of tools serves me very well. My first two major pieces took about 10 years each. They involved a long slow incremental development period, since I feel that it would be presumptuous of me to think I know what will be the result at the start, since the tools and technologies are full of hidden potentials we cannot foresee. I ask questions and see what arises as I explore them. Some pieces in the past 10 years have been shorter projects, but I love the longer ones… I think something special happens in them.
@) In your pieces alongside of a continuation of video art and object, with the same rights we can find interest in sound, electronic music, literacy threads. The last element I call cybernetic poetry. I am thinking especially about such works as: “Liquid Language” (1989), “The Giver of Names” (1990) and “n-cha(n)t” (2001). Could you comment it?
I love to read, I love and am suspicious of language. Programming is proto-literary, but it is writing with the twist that the text becomes truly active. So as programmers we are populating the world with active texts, texts with real agencies. This makes me think a lot about the ways languages are come about, what powers they confer on their users / speakers and what things are lost in this act of codification. Austrian Playwright Peter Handke wrote in his journal the suggestion that formulation is the beginning of forgetting and warned against writing key revelations down because in the act of writing them down, they lose some of their power. I think this expresses a really interesting quandary with language, and by extension, with programming, algorithmic simulation, etc.