Untitled by Matt Schell and his computer, 2018
One of the things I enjoy about creating art with software is the potential for indirect creation, where software tools add a layer of distance between your hand and the brush placing the strokes. Computers allow for the creation of wonderfully complex and playful art making tools, particularly if you learn how to create rules and systems with code or code-like visual programming tools. In art we talk a great deal about authorship, authorial intent and mastery. But the work I’m interested in elides some of those things. It places the artist in a kind of improvised dance with flickering randomness, or with their audience as co-creator. Something arises from these interactions which is usually a bit softened in it’s emotional impact, perhaps a mood is evoked but it’s not entirely clear what mood. I find this refreshing after sitting through years of extremely didactic artworks including most mainstream narrative output and music. The hero dies, the strings swell up, his wife collapses in tears and we might as well have a giant flashing sign saying “FEEL SAD NOW”. I find myself interested in more diffuse impressions which are slightly harder to grasp and touch. By not hammering the audience with canned emotional cues we give people some emotional negative space to fill with their own feelings.
In a sense the work becomes more like the Rorschach blot images used in psychology. What do you see? Is it two dogs biting or a beautiful tree? The audience brings their own interiority to the piece and the feelings experienced are more unique to them. Of course that feeling may be “meh” as the emotional broth is too thin and they are not interested in coming up with a response from their side. That’s a risk I’m willing to live with.
Consider the paintings of Jackson Pollock, made possible with gracious funding of the American government via that notable arts institutition the Central Intelligence Agency. I remember my father taking me to the Guggenheim in New York City as a young child and seeing them and getting an absolute charge, particularly after walking up a long ramp filled with paintings that were mostly boring to me at the time. The energy, chaos and complexity of the works really crackled off the walls for me. As a child I could respond directly and my young anarchic heart sung out in sympathy with the splatters and arcs of paint. In Zen Buddhism we talk about ‘beginners mind’, the mind that is simple and unencumbered by cynicism and knowing. My life-beginners-mind recognized a kindred spirit in Pollock and his paintings. Of course various adults look at the work and petulantly say “Bah. My kid could do that.” And they’re probably right, but could you?
Procedural, software mediated generative works help me to reach some of that naive beginners mind place by inserting shaped randomness into the work. Noise, juxtaposition, surprise all arise through the use of random number generation. It’s a wonderful feeling when something you’ve made makes something that surprises or delights you, like magic.
