Now what we're seeing is people have more free time
they have more access to resources
and they have kind of infinite knowledge
at their fingertips which means
they can tap into
any form of creation almost
and I think to some extent that
trumps the Renaissance by orders of magnitude
The Future of Art
We don't know what happens when we get
more and more layers of infrastructure right
I think if we look back and see the boom
that happened since the web
and since the technical stacks that
became standardized and enabled
layers of innovation
to happen on top of them
We couldn't even predict 10 years ago
the kinds of things we're seeing nowadays.
I think I'm mostly interested in the ways
especially recently
that people can work together through the Internet
to create things that would otherwise
be impossible
I think now that we have kind of
more computer resources than we've ever had
both on the processing side
and also on the storage and organization
and communication side
you know what we're seeing is
richer and more full content
that more contextually, that's more human.
With the democratization that's come with a lot of the
social networking tools
and with the web being so democratically available
I think more people are trying to
take on the role of curator
even if it's in very very small parts of their life.
We will always and still have those "experts" but
I think that we will start to see more sort of
more democratic roles of curation.
There was this discussion at the beginning
when I was blogging
and they said,
"Oh bloggers are curators, you think you're curators"
No I'm not!
Sometimes I work as a curator
but it's something different from my blog.
The term is being expanded to say select or highlight
I work a lot with intuition.
That is the role that we play
making connections between things
that might not otherwise be obvious connections.
Well I think the switch was like a long time ago
when basically the amount of information
available and the amount of books available
suddenly became
more than the abilities of human beings
to read for all his life, to even understand.
And nowadays we're just surrounded
by so many informations
so how do we deal with this?
basically we deal with it on a daily basis one by one
by sort of like digging our own histories with that
It's really a very interesting subjective process
that I'm going to apply myself on a daily basis
Like grabbing informations here or there
and putting them in contact and see what happens.
Each time that I make films now I'm like,
"oh yeah let's do this film by getting inspired
by the images of that guy
and the ideas of that dude,
And okay I'm going to make a film today like this
and see what happens."
It's really exciting and just like
constantly remixing history.
Telling our whole history through that.
It's very exciting.
The idea of originality and proprietariness
also contributes to the whole "great man theory"
which is slowly sort of disintegrating.
The idea of the genius, you know, the Freud,
the Marx, the Leonardo
the Einstein that come up with an idea
that is completely related to
the man that came up with it
whereas today
ideas just get thrown out there and used
and it's that use that that in a way is the art
rather than the person
who comes up with the idea
[Take Away Show #41 The Arcade Fire "Neon Bible" by Vincent Moon]
I think we'll probably see more and more
non-linear, interactive experiences.
Lev Manovich says that the twenty-first century
will be defined by the database.
And I think there's some truth to that
but maybe even going beyond the database
into the interface
because I think that's really the intersection between
kind of all the rich data and rich stories
that we're wrapping our heads around
and the ability to say something about them.
Every single experimental film is about time
because film only captures time and space.
I think we will
in some strange way
enter into new types of film
probably starting with an idea of three-dimensional
and probably somehow interactive at the same time.
It's not something that particularly interests me.
I like certain limitations.
I think already film has almost
not enough limitations to be able to focus
and so I wouldn't be one to jump in
and start making 3D interactive
but I'm sure that people will start to do that
and you'll start dealing with spaces that are deeper.
I don't just mean 3D like James Cameron or whatever,
I mean more dimensions where when you move
through the space something else is changing
and you're getting a greater understanding.
And I think the visual capacity of people to think
is tremendous, it's really huge
but it has to be trained a bit
but I'm always impressed how quickly either
children or adults can pick up on visual analogy
and then move more or less through spaces
that are abstract
and when they become more dynamic I think
that will be kind of the front edge of art
because it will be at the front edge of expanding
how we understand reality
and how we can process information.
The funny thing about video mapping I think
is that it's getting part of the environment
so there's no border between you
and the content and the light.
So you think about it more naturally
and everything that happens
you adapt to it like it's real.
You don't make the shift
between the virtual layer
and the real layer anymore.
Where is art going?
I think it will more part of our natural environment.
and we don't see it as an "add-to" anymore.
So we react on it more naturally.
If these shifts were simply documented in a
holographic medium through mono-channelled P.O.V.
directionality similar to contemporary cinematic 3D
technology, the shifts would indeed resemble
traditional theater complete with the fourth wall
that maintains the tradition of theatrical realism
via an audience/performative vision.
If the holographic medium instead attempted to break
this fourth wall, such as augmented reality integrated
with artificial intelligence is progressing towards
the shifts could become an integral part of future
genre, creation, knowledge formation/codification.
[Spatial Sound Sculpture by Daniel Franke & Christopher Warnow]
I think mostly we're just seeing
what happens when you reach a point where
computational resources are no longer
the most significant factor in thinking.
We're really able to you know basically waste
cycles and memory and transfer speeds.
It lends itself to a completely
different type of creative process
where you can really kind of explore and experiment
a lot more freely than one could before.
We don't have to necessarily know
where we're going with a piece of software
when we start writing it.
We can actually explore and iterate
and potentially even throw away something
that would have taken days or weeks to make
without feeling any sense of investment
just start anew.
That's really powerful I think.
Perhaps most significantly
it lets us create our own limitations
and I think those generally
can be a lot more meaningful than
the ones that are arbitrarily put on by the media.
If you have an artwork for example
that basically just creates a set of data
which could be interpreted many different ways
like you could take the data
and you could make it into a photograph
that would be three dimensional
or have a relief
or instead of making lots of photographs
it would be a film or whatever
that means that the only original thing
is that set of data.
So where is the artwork?
Is the artwork the data?
Or is the artwork the output?
There's something really magic and beautiful about
being able to take something that was created for one
purpose and then put it towards your art practice and
make something really new and beautiful
and meaningful with that.
On the other hand
I'm not necessarily excited by
a technology that comes out just because it's new
or just because it's available all of a sudden.
There has to be a reason underlying why
it's being used to in some way support or enhance
the meaning or the beauty of what you're making.
I identified myself as a painter.
I was pushing away ideas and concepts
and things that I wanted to work with because
I didn't feel that I could really paint them.
The best way to approach a project or a problem is
to use the best tool for the job.
And sometimes it is painting
and sometimes that's programming.
Often time when I have picked up new technologies
and incorporated them into my work
it hasn't been because I saw the technology
and I thought, "okay I want to do something with this."
It's because there was another project
that sort of called for a technological solution.
Every once in a while you see something and think,
"Oh that's cool, I want to do something with it."
For myself, when I've approached things that way
it's really difficult to make the work
not about the technology.
People get sidetracked so easily
and fall into this like,
"What can the computer do?" versus
"How is it a tool helping me?"
The simpler works
are finally the more precise works
and have clear thought
and I think that will continue
and be even more poignant when get
noisier and noisier.
For example a concept which has been explored by
Transmediale and many other festivals was
surveillance!
And then I would go to the biennale of Lyon
which is a traditional biennale of contemporary art
and I would see a very simple artwork
without any technology
and it would investigate surveillance
and comment on it without any technology
and it would be stronger.
Performance art is making a big comeback now.
It's getting a newfound footing
especially in the major institutions.
And it seems to me that that's a reaction against
the computer space and the technology
so we have this extreme high-tech
and then it's balanced out by this complete
appreciation now where
it's only a person on a stage with no props
and no help
and it's the human doing something.
I'm really interested in going back to objects
and things that are tangible
and also on the other side of that
experiences that are maybe intangible
but that you have with other people around you
in their physical presence
and all the messiness that that entails.
In a lot of ways I feel like I have a sort of
split practice
where on the one hand there's the Internet work
because it's cheap, ubiquitous, it's available to me
I can put stuff up there
it does not take a lot of time
and you've got potentially this unknown audience
that you have no idea who they are
and can get very, very interesting things happening
when you relate with people.
But then on the other hand I have this live practice
sometimes more theatrical
sometimes more relational where
it's about actually staring someone in the face
or being in the same room with them
and imposing your physical presence on them.
Our specific desire is basically to create social links.
And the results are only the pretext to that.
the films, the music, the albums
or the pieces on the walls.
Basically we live in a world where
so many people create.
You have people talking about the decay
of the creative industry.
How the music industry can survive to adapt.
This is not the point.
I think the point is what's really exciting nowadays is
how do people create?
and how that way that they create
changes something in this world.
I was kind of taken by this
Bruce Nauman quote that like,
"Anything I do in the studio, I'm an artist
I'm in my artist's studio, if I do it here, it's art."
And I thought like, that seems really freeing and great
but then he actually limited it to his studio;
he can only feel secure in his studio
and I thought well, I'm going to try to shoot stuff
out of the studio
I was always shooting in the studio
now I want to do it in front of an art audience
call the whole process art
and not do it in my studio
and see if there's any barrier
and of course there's no barrier.
Anywhere you go and anything you do
you can call it art if you want to
if you're an artist
if you're brave enough to call yourself an artist
then you can say, "This is my art."
of course people can laugh at it, but it is art.
There is no obvious relation between the quality
of a piece of work for example
and the value.
The market is very much disconnected from
the actual object or the content
Artists got fascinated with exactly that fact
a hundred years ago.
When Duchamp introduced the readymade
that was exactly his point.
You can put anything in there and then it will
eventually become a commodity in that market.
We are beginning to see new ways of funding
happening and dissemination and artists participating
more directly in their own market
and not necessarily
being cloistered off in their studios
where you have the dealer acting
as the sole middleman between
the artist and the rest of the world.
I was in New York with my friend Yancey
who is one of the guys behind Kickstarter
and he mentioned something really interesting
He was like, "Oh yeah, you know
the way you live your life
you could probably live your life by having two
or three Kickstarter projects a year.
and that's it, you know?"
And it's kind of true.
I'm totally into this way of doing things
of crowdfunding
which is not a very nice word
but I really believe in it so much.
I just really think about it
from different positions in the world
and this is really amazing this Kickstarter thing
to a lot of cultures.
I think we're going to see
really fantastic things coming
especially in the next five years.
The word is going to be spread out
all around the world.
[Braun Tube Jazz Band by Ei Wada]
Well there has been a long tradition
of the national artist.
There are a number of names that you all know
nations are a really proud about that they are
British or Indian or U.S. artists.
I'm a nomad myself.
For us being in a tribe that moves around
is not a problem at all
because we don't care about places at all.
No matter if you are in Toronto, Berlin or Amsterdam
what matters for us is which kind of value
do you embrace for your work.
This doesn't matter whether you are based in Asia
Europe or in America.
Certain values are all over the planet
and you'll find them anywhere
and it doesn't matter if you're nomadic
or a resident of a city.
We've been seeing a rising of nomad artists
in the past ten years a lot
And basically it corresponds
to a real need in our society
of movement, of bodies in motion
who go from one place to another by basically
taking the pretext of making films or music
to move around, to travel
It's a very interesting idea of modern nomadism.
And I guess, I don't know, but well
that's what I'm doing and it's quite fantastic!
I think a lot of people are doing this nowadays
more and more, and it's not going to stop
that's for sure.
There's a real tendency towards that
in our generation.
And the Internet and all the digital tools
or small cameras
are an incredible way to work, to do this now.
What I appreciate in my life is
no matter where I go
there are at least seven to ten people
that I really know profoundly well
I can trust them, they trust me
and it goes far beyond a Facebook relationship.
And I think that's really crucially important.
You need to trust people, they need to know you
they need to be here for you in good and bad times
and not just only when you are in the "show mode"
when you present and you are the cool artist.
I couldn't imagine being an artist without that.
For these types of creatives
identity becomes a series of fragmented reality
sets that need to be constantly channeled
monitored and updated.
This fragmentation does alter
how we process the world via associated
emotional and psychological effects.
These identities, established through the use of
avatars or profile creation
alter according to the foibles of specific
platforms and interfaces.
A subject may a have a multitude of profiles
created across a wide distribution base.
These staggered profiles create a type of
socialphrenic functioning that eclipses
solo persona extensions.
Users may reference a fellow synthetic
by their character or avatar name
even when interacting in
phenomenologically-defined reality.
According to traditional psychological theory
these type of identity ecologies would represent
a subtle splintering of a primary identity
akin to schizophrenia.
The base categories denoting emotion
and psychological states need overhauling
in line with contemporary/synthetic conceptions.
I was kind of working with a lot of different voices
in my head and different little people on my shoulder.
I had an opportunity to do a program
at Yale University, and while I was there
I painted this big very somber black painting
and as a way to sort of break myself
of that cycle and kind of push myself
into a completely new direction
I painted a tiny little turtle down in the corner
of this very somber black on black painting
and that single little defacement
allowed a whole new part of me into the work.
I went from thinking of art as a strictly serious thing
and if you're going to make serious art
it has to be serious
but that you can make serious art
and have a very large amount of humor in it
and sometimes that's the best way
because you can use humor as a tool
to attach things in people's brains
and to kind of sneak things in the back door
and allow concepts and ideas and things
to move into the viewer's consciousness
without them necessarily knowing it.
One way that artists can strengthen their ability to
make these unusual connections is
through the power of the subconscious mind
that we normally experience as dreaming.
I would be very curious to get
to a level of experience
that would be dreamlike.
Where you could be walking through a space
in someone else's dream
and have more of a sense because
it's very hard for me to know if I dream
similar to the way you dream
or even to remember my dream so precisely
that I think it would be quite interesting
if somebody could make a piece
that's as real as a dream
and that you could actually make choices
maybe but you're not in control
and things like that.
And I think in a way that must be
the future of where art is about
I have an experience and I'm trying to
share it with other people
and I'm limited if I'm painting on a canvas
and it's square and it's this big.
For all you cared you could draw the universe
you could draw little martians
running all over the place
you could draw things you imagined
you could draw real life scenes
you could draw what you think about
you could draw dreams
you could draw people, in fact
lots of people say they can't draw people but
when you put your mind to it
you can really draw anything.
You know, maybe decorate the street
because the street's a very nice thing
but it's not the greatest to look at, you know?
but what I might do is
leave the arrows and all the little dots
and slashes and lines
but everywhere there wasn't that
you could make the most beautiful designs
you could ...
I'd make it a law that your car would have to have
wet paint on it every day on its tires
and when you rode around it would make
any colored track all over the road
but it couldn't be on the lines
and that
that would make
I guess the world a better place.
The Future of Art
Conceived & Edited by Gabriel Shalom
Produced by KS12 / Emergence Collective
Executive Producer: Patrizia Kommerell
Assistant Editor: Clare Molloy
Production Assistant: Annika Bauer
This video was shot, edited and screened at the Transmediale Festival 2011 in Berlin, Germany
CC 2011 BY-NC-SA KS12 / Emergence Collective
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