Contemporary Art

	post 911 art: safety series No. 1, by Owen F. Smith. 32” x 20” digital print.

New Media Mentoring: Owen F. Smith & David

Owen F. Smith and David Colagiovanni met in 2000 at the University of Maine in a class Owen taught about Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Marshall Mcluhen. The two have remained friends ever since. Owen and David share an interest in the theory of intermedia, Fluxus, and a belief in art as a fundamental way to look at and understand the world. Both men create work that reflects their desire to push media to its limits. Both look for diverse approaches to everything they create. The following email exchange took place between May 14 and June 5, 2006, and is part of a continuing conversation and an example of a mentoring relationship.

OWEN: For me, as always, the point is to find a way to facilitate the conceptual aspects of art-making, and the media just follows. So the question is not why, really, but why not? I suppose we are still culturally locked into the media fixation of older approaches to art-making — that is art as the making of things . . . .

DAVID: I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never felt attached to a particular medium — be it new media, sculpture, painting, etc. Most important in my process is the idea. Sometimes the idea wants to manifest itself as sculpture, sometimes as a video, web page or some combination of different processes.
It works both ways, though. Different media can make you think in different ways and create new or recycled ideas. For instance, if someone says, “I have a crane you could use whenever you’d like,” I’d most likely figure out a way to use it.

	post 911 art: safety series No. 4, by Owen F. Smith. 32” x 20” digital print.

OWEN: Yes, this form of responsiveness to the world around us is, I believe, a key approach in art-making on both a conceptual and a medium level. If one sits down and says, “I am a painter, so what am I going to paint today?” you are starting with the wrong question and a big set of creative blinders.
In fact, most artists don’t start with a media, regardless if they work with traditional media or not. They start with an experience, an image, a feeling, or an idea. But it is the next step that falls short for me in some peoples’ creative process. At some point in the process, they default to a familiar or habitual medium, rather than asking, “What medium or material will communicate best what I want to say or ask?”

I find myself drawn to an aspect of digital media related to this de-prioritization of medium—and that is its lack of, for a better word, “stability.” It seems to be constantly changing. It is neither fine art nor popular culture and it seems to simultaneously exist as all content and all form. So new media materials and processes first attracted me as a way to make conceptually based art (content) with a medium that had aesthetic properties without being overly object-centered (form). So, how and when did you start working with media-based art forms?

DAVID: One day while watching a video using a video projector in a dark basement, I aimed the projector towards the ceiling, which was painted white, and had pipes exposed which were also painted white. The credits were rolling and when
I pointed the video at the pipes, the words rolled over them. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Over the next few weeks, I started recording things with an old VHS camcorder and projecting these video experiments onto different surfaces.
The first piece I made with projection was the ‘Golf Bag’ — I discovered an old golf bag at a transfer station and dragged it back to my studio, set up the video camera and recorded myself painting it white. When I was done, I rewound the video and projected it onto the painted golf bag life-size. The result was an experience with the golf bag that was somehow physical. It appeared that I was actually there painting the bag.

	Wishing You Were There #12, by Owen F. Smith. 22” x 36” digital print.

OWEN: Yes, I remember when you premiered that piece at your show in Lord Hall at the University of Maine. What year was that — 2000? It really struck me as a great realization of a simple concept that was both insightful and funny at the same time. It also struck me as a natural transition from the performance-based event works you were doing at the same time — a way to make a performance, extend it by giving it an ongoing physical presence that was both live and recorded, art and document, as well as digital and analog.

DAVID: I always try to really think about the media I use and I try to get to its real properties (what it actually does, rather than its intended use) — or as you describe it — a ‘simple concept.’ I often come back to the idea of doing something simple through a very complex system. But performance is really the backbone or roots of my work.

Video provides a way to insert myself, my ideas and my performance into a physical space. It’s like being in two places at the same time (here — writing to you — and on someone’s iPod in Japan cutting my hair in reverse). Most people are used to looking at TV or the web, and somehow we as artists working with new media can obstruct what they (the audience), are used to seeing and present it in a different way as a medium they are used to, but presented in a way that they haven’t seen before. How do you use media and how do you anticipate the viewer’s response to the technologies?

OWEN: I really do not like to say I do media or technology-based art, because then people have an immediate preconceived reaction having something to do with Toy Story or 3D animation. I tend to do my finished work mostly in what I call hybrid media. For me, this draws heavily from imaging, video, performance and net art (art that is made using web technologies and displayed on the network/web) and combines with sculpture, installation and printmaking.

	Detail of In and Out of Touch, by Owen F. Smith. 24’ x 36’ sculptural installation (Without Borders 2 exhibition).

The truth is that I end up using technology — in some form or another — in most of the artworks I do these says, although much of the finished work does not necessarily seem overly technological. I use technology throughout most of my creative processes, and it’s also part of the mediums I use in my works — not just some of the media or materials that are the finished works.

I am not interested in technology for its newness or its “bells and whistles.” Media-based art that relies on these aspects alone will not, simply put, survive the test of time as anything more than a curiosity.

DAVID: You’ve touched on a point that is important in the discussion of media-based work — the fact that a great deal of media-based art tends to be overly technical, or based on a concept tied solely to what the media is doing. I call this “art without a soul.” It’s my goal to have the technology in a piece almost disappear or become translucent as a result of the idea expressed. I try to use ideas and concepts that anyone can connect to in some way. How do you use the computer or technologies in your creative process?

OWEN: I use the computer and related digital media as a means of sketching and keeping track of ideas. I keep a “sketch book” with images, notes, collages — even digital drawings. I also use technologies as a means of experimentation. I am always fiddling with my computer, software, peripherals (cameras, recorders, printers) to see what the technology might do, and in particular, what I might do that the technology was not intended to do.

There are a couple of related terms for this approach in Net Art and they are Hactivism and Glitches. In both Net Art and in my own work, technology is used in unintended ways or ways that cause problems — or even damage or undermine the technology itself. So, for example, I emptied the ink out of an old printer I had lying around and refilled it with other fluids, such as coffee, juice, even blood, to see how it might print.

	In the Land of OZ, by Owen F. Smith. 26” x 18” digital print.

In another example, I have been exploring over the past several years the flaws technology produces. I use the distortion of pixilation and compression artifacts as an aesthetic property. So rather than rejecting the image because it has those nasty image disruptions, I am seeking to explore what this means for images and our aesthetic understanding, and not just see them as a distortion based in improper image compression.

The more I consider this kind of work, it leads me to think about the part of my own process that involves creative play. How do you see play? Do you feel it is something important for art and/or highlighted through digital media or processes,
or . . . ?

DAVID: I must experiment, whether with a pencil or camera or computer, and with play, my activities can remain fast and furious, half-considered and imaginative. It’s interesting how you refer to sketching with the computer. Sketching is a very playful process.

The video journal (my video podcast) is my version of a video sketchbook. I look at this project as solely experimental. I don’t consider the pieces finished by any means. Rather, they are just small documents of my ideas. I have no overall direction for the series, which keeps it very playful and open. It’s important for artists to remain open minded and playful in whatever medium they work. To answer your question more fully: most importantly, play is fun and allows for experimentation, provides new discoveries and leads eventually to growth. It provides us with a new way of doing something.

I think the piece you made two years ago, Who am I this time? illustrates a point you made earlier about digital media — its lack of stability and its existence simultaneously as all content and all form. That project seemed to be a remark on this idea as well as your identity. How do you as a person come to relate to the web or define yourself within it?

	Media/Mediated/Mediating Life, by Owen F. Smith. 50” x 24” x 72” sculpture.

OWEN: The Net Art piece you mentioned I did in 2003 (www.altarts.org/owensmith), and it is a good example of what we are talking about on a number of levels. It is a kind of work that falls into a category I think of as being “serious about not being serious,” or maybe the other way around. In regard to art, the web is a great environment to get your ideas and work out there, not just as a stand-in for “the real thing,” but as a medium for art and creative engagement itself. If you truly want to make democratic art for all people, then you cannot get much better than the web. Yes, it has its economic and geographic exclusivity, but at the same time it does avoid many of the traps of traditional art objects and the art and gallery system. This is what attracts me to Net Art work.

The work Who am I this Time? is a playful engagement of a serious topic—how or in what ways has technology changed our lives, as well as our sense of ourselves? Have you ever Googled yourself? In addition to possibly getting information on yourself, you also get other people with the same name.

This is where the piece started, with a proposition that given the web, we are now all part of one larger net-based collective — not just one Amy Casey, Josh Blose or Owen Smith — but kind of the sum of our total selves, with no individuality or originality, only our transitory selves as marked and indexed by Google.

The work is a collective portrait of “Owen Smith,” but it could be you or anyone. The website is an assembled site of pages from more than 80 different Owen Smiths on the web (I copied all the related pages and made mirror pages on my site, so the links are all internally connected). In total they become a composite. There is no longer one Owen Smith — a real Owen Smith — but only the combined fragments as linked on the web, so definitions of self become very different in our technologically mediated world. With the realities of identity theft, this can be scary, but it can also offer a new arena for creativity and exploration.

So did I steal other peoples’ identities as I used their pages for my own ends? Or were they public, or better yet, mine already? This brings up another interesting question for artists and people involved in the arts. What or how do you see ownership changing in relation to art, given the effects of digital media and reproducibility — either for you, the artist, or for a potential buyer/owner?

DAVID: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. The medium (a DVD or video-tape) is extremely reproducible. In the case of the video journal, I give away a small, compressed version of my work to anyone with an internet connection. If someone subscribes to my podcast (www.thevideojournal.com), they could download 50 videos in a year.

With other pieces — mainly the video-sculpture and multi-screen works — I keep a very close eye on where they go. I also keep a very precise record. These pieces are made in a signed/numbered limited edition, similar to how a print maker would edition a print. I’ve considered including a buyer’s contract with these works, where a buyer/receiver of the work would sign a legal agreement not to copy or distribute the work.

It’s a tricky situation. On one hand, I want to spread the work as far as technologically possible and reach as many viewers as I can. But with some things, I’d like the assurance that it won’t be copied. I want to offer a certain level of security to potential buyers — that what they own is limited, collectible and an investment in my work.

You seem to be more democratic in your approach to this subject, as I tend to be a little safer in my approach to copyright and longevity. But I always try to have some project I’m working on and distributing that is accessible to anyone. How have you come to think of democracy as it relates to the distribution of your work?

OWEN: Your point is well taken, David. This is certainly an issue with many aspects to consider and no one single answer. The whole notion of democratization in the arts is exactly what attracts me to new media and digital art forms. Rather than see the loss of originality, control and even ownership in digital art as a real problem facing artists, I see these aspects as both a basic feature of the medium and as something I personally find of real importance. Rather than seeing the potential loss of authority over my art (its democratization) as a crisis to overcome, I see it as a benefit and as part of why I like working in New Media and digital art mediums.

In software, they have a term — open source — and I like the idea of extending this concept to art. Not that people can just do anything they want with my work, but that they can have access to it and even make use of it for their own ends. To paraphrase John Cage, permission does not give one the right to do whatever one wants. In fact, like democracy itself, permission comes with many responsibilities.

To push this even further, many of my multiples ask the viewer/owner to manipulate and change the work — so we become collaborators in the finished piece. My way of looking at the situation is that if digital art mediums and their inherent reproducibility give people access and privileges, then it also asks them to respect and honor the experience of the work of art.
Of course people can take advantage of this kind of openness, the same way people can take advantage of any democratic system (as the old Soviet system proved, no choice is safer in that there is only one possibility). But you have to hope for the best, and I myself would always give people the possibilities openness and distribution offer in digital media.
So, David, let me end our conversation by asking what are you currently working on and what are you thinking about in terms of art and technology?

DAVID: I’m working on few different things: a documentary about a percussionist who makes bells out of fire extinguishers (Paul Bosse); recording people in my garage screaming — called Simultaneous Portraits or Danger Music for Dick (www.unc.edu/~colagiov/danger.html); and next, a series of video sculptures that focuses on distorting the body through electronic media.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
David Colagiovanni earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a BFA from the University of Maine, Orono. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. He is the recipient of the figurative sculpture award from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the Elizabeth Graves Foundation for the Studio Arts.
A native of Carver, MA, David has lived in Jonesport, ME. David works in a combination of sculpture and video, blending industrial and everyday materials with projected video, monitors, LCD TVs and surveillance equipment. For more information, visit his website: www.unc.edu/~colagiov/index.html.

Owen Smith is a Professor of Digital Art and Chair of the New Media Department at the University of Maine. His love of art is life long. He grew up in Issaquah, WA, in a house of artists — his mother is a designer and illustrator, his sister is a painter and his father is a sculptor. Owen has a keen interest in all things in flux and Fluxus (an art group that is his scholarly specialization), and he believes in art as an attitude — not as a thing. He has published numerous articles, essays, and books on modern and contemporary art, and his artwork has been seen nationally and internationally in more than 60 exhibitions. For more information, visit his website, www.ofsmith.com.

Download this article in PDF form