January 30, 2006
Lauren Cornell Interviews
MTAA
Artists M. River and T. Whid formed MTAA in 1996 and soon after began to explore the internet as a medium for public art. The duo's exhibition history includes group shows and screenings at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Postmasters Gallery and Artists Space, all in New York City, and at The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. International exhibitions include the Seoul Net & Film Festival in Korea and Videozone2 - The 2nd International Video Art Biennial in Israel. In the forthcoming New Media Art (Taschen, 2006), authors Mark Tribe and Reena Jana describe MTAA's 1 year performance video (aka samHsiehUpdate) as "a deftly transparent demonstration of new media's ability to manipulate our perceptions of time." The collaboration has also earned grants and awards from Rhizome.org, Eyebeam, New Radio & Performing Arts, Inc. and The Whitney Museum's Artport web site.
LAUREN CORNELL: Can you tell me a little bit about your net art pre-history, and how you met and started collaborating?
M. RIVER: I began working with performance and collaboration in grad school at Cranbrook (outside of Detroit). Driving North nonstop for 4 days until the road runs out, breaking into stranger's yards and mowing their lawns, backyard camping at mansions-my friends and I did these things together and called it "Art." It felt like 'odd sculpture' for me then. What I do with Tim in MTAA often reminds me of that feeling. From Cranbrook, I headed blindly to Brooklyn where coincidentally, Tim had also just moved. One day Tim called and asked if I wanted to collaborate on some paintings. I said, "Yes." And we've been working together under the name MTAA since.
T. WHID: I was working exclusively on underground comics, but I wanted to work on a painting. First I called a mutual friend to see if he wanted to collaborate. He declined but suggested I call M. since he had some canvasses stretched. We both thought the collaboration successful and continued working together.
LC: Something distinctive to me about MTAA is the heavy ratio of youthfulness you bring to everything. The voice that broadcasts out of your work or your blog is one that is always questioning and critical, and sometimes feels as angry as your average 16-year-old punk. You?ve told me before that people found you aggressive or crude. Do you find your attitude clashes with larger new media mores or manners?
MR: I think it is important to note that MTAA is performed. In MTAA, I work under the name "Mark River." This is not my name. (It's Michael Sarff-for the Rhizome record.) The M. River voice - in our work or on our blog - is not exactly mine. It's something used to create a world. Yes, you might read it as a world full of young DIY punks who want to tear things down and build new things up, but I'm not sure if that?s what our voice is all about in the end. I also think our voice has a little more depth than your average 16-year-old. (Then again...)
I do think our voice sometimes rubs people the wrong way. I'm not sure why. It might be that people feel more comfortable with art that's aloof. Humor doesn't always play well in the art world. As for aggressive or crude, I personally would like to see more "R" and "NC-17" new media and net artworks. Not that I would like everything to be blood and guts or that Tim and I strive for that in our work. I just feel that we need to get over the Science Fair default values of computer art. It's boring. That?s my 16 year old boy answer. That and I "heart" JODI. As for MTAA brawls, no, we get along swell.
TW: Hmmm. Am I totally deluded in not really seeing myself that way. I do think that a lot of new media curators don't see our work in the "big story." The problem with the new media art establishment is that it?s based too much in academia (since there isn't much of a market). Our voice, compared to this academic voice, might seem immature or angry, but in my opinion, it's just normal. Anyway, we're old fogies compared to the likes of Cory Arcangel and Paper Rad.
LC: Both of you have been involved with Rhizome since its beginning. As my job now involves mapping Rhizome's future (in collaboration with my colleagues, and the broader Rhiz network of course), I find myself constantly considering the organization's history: how it has grown, and made efforts to adapt to the changing conditions of the web, and concurrently, to internet art and new media.
Now, Rhizome's constituency is very broad. But, when it first started as a mailing list, it was quite small. People talk to me a lot about these early days during which net art belonged to an avant-garde of first adopters, an avant-garde that Rhizome, and other platforms like Nettime and the Thing, were home to. What was your impression of Rhizome, and its community, at that time?
MR: Just to skip down to the bottom line, I think people participating on Rhizome specifically, and the net in general, tended to experiment more in the beginning. Luckily, play and experimentation seem to be part of net's heart, so new weird things still show up.
TW: Rhizome was the first place that I found online where people talked about art and took it seriously. At first I remember being confused by the whole net art thing. I remember a contest to crown "Mr. Net Art" (I think Robin Murphy won). I was also confused by Robin's wrestling posts (do a deep Rhizome search for that one). I lurked for a long time before I took part in the discussion, then it was mostly "Direct To Your Home Art Pojects" (http://mteww.com/dyhap) emails.
LC: Who did you admire then, or whose work informed yours?
MR: I was looking at works by the original "net.artists" (JODI, Shulgin, Lialina, Cosic, etc) as well as Potatoland, Fakeshop, hell.com, Murph the surf, meiko and ryu, one38, Kanarek's World of Awe, restlessculture, the McCoys, GH, eToy, 01etc, Pavu, RSG, EDT, Wolfgang, blackhawk and Mouchette. It seems like I could on for a long time with this list but these are some names that jumped up.
LC: That seems like a very heady, and exciting time, those were the first artists to hash out Internet art as a form. No wonder you made the switch from painting and comics. What kind of work were you making at the time?
TW: Our first piece for the web was "Buying Time: The Nostalgia Free History Sale" (http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/1997/buytime/buytime.html). We didn't even have a computer when we started this project. We did it at Creative Time's offices (I remember not knowing what an HTML comment was). After that we used Rhizome and other email lists as a platform for the "Direct To Your Home Art Projects" (http://www.mteww.com/dyhap/) which was our second online project.
LC: With Both "Buying Time" and "Direct To Your Home Art Projects," and later works, you translate Fluxus, or conceptual art practices, to the web.
In your piece, "Five Small Videos..," you perform the repetitive gestures and everyday actions found in early video performances. Are these projects part of a larger interest or desire to situate net art within a larger historical art practice, or alternately, to see how particular art projects/movements translate online?
MR: For me, it is more B than A. Start with an understood set of rules or contexts. Once these rules and contexts move online or become automated within a computer, the results begin to distort. Although, I do not feel distortion is really our end goal.
Translation is the tricky word here. When you translate, you hope the meaning stays the same. I think the meaning of a work like "1YPV" is different than Teching Hesh's work upon which it's based. It's not just the difference in the mechanics of the work; it's a change of message.
TW: Part of our M.O. has been to situate our practice very clearly in art historical traditions. It was obvious to us very early on that the real power of the net was about information and interaction between individuals (as opposed to pretty moving pictures weeeeeee).
Creating art from interactions between individuals or purely out of information was nothing new to art. It felt natural to follow in this tradition.
LC: Throughout your work, you seem interested in illuminating the relationship between the artist and the audience, and by doing so, you often throw your artistic process into relief. What is your interest in visualizing these relationships? MTAA's, and the one you hold with your audience?
TW: Er, can I pass on this question?
MR: It's funny. Tim and I both have this deep interest in how people and groups communicate, but we don't talk about the "why" very much.
I think Tim's interest could be tagged as political. Mine? It's hard say.
We meet in a restaurant in Brooklyn. You ask us some questions. A few months later, you email us some more questions. Tim and I respond to the questions separately and then join the answers together. A friend edits the text. We send it all back to you.
You join all the text together in some manner. You place the text on the net for people to read and comment on. This is like our work - an imperfect group dialogue in which the process and misunderstandings might add up to some new meaning. This might be what interests me.
LC: Your works often have on off-line component, though they start with the web. In the case of "MITD" (http://lifeofmo.blogspot.com/2005/12/we-are-all-together-update.html), the piece started online, with viewers voting on which random bad art idea of yours you should make, and ended with you manifesting the piece in Artist Space. Does the nature of your work change substantially when it moves in between on and offline spaces?
MR: We've made net projects that move to installations, say "1YPV." We have installations that move onto the web, say "KDM100" (coming to a browser near you in 2006). In both cases, some details change in the move. Works like ?MITD? or "Printer Tree" are a bit different. They stand in both worlds. They make an arc from net to physical space. Both ends of this arc make the work.
TW: A lot of times the offline components are simply reformatted for the gallery space. For example, "1YPV (Gallery Version)" uses some of the same software as web version. It has the same video - but at a higher quality. In the case of "MITD," the piece itself is comprised of 3 components (a web page, a video and a sculpture). So, the nature of that piece is significantly different from "1YPV". It's more of an old school process piece, which happens to use the web and digital video.
LC: The years worth of XML code was an ingenious way to make your piece 1 Year Performance Video tangible and also marketable. I'm wondering if you ever imagine being able to quit your day jobs and be supported by your art?
MR: Strange. I never know what to make of this question. I think this might be the fourth or fifth time we've been asked in an interview or lecture about quitting our day jobs. The first thing I always feel is, "Gee" is their something you're not telling me? This thought is followed by, "I wonder if everyone gets this question?" Then, I tell myself, "No, everyone does not get this question." This thought always leads to, "Ya know, I don't care" Okay, maybe I do care, but not right now. In the end, I always look up with a dumb smile and say, "Yeah, sure. Why not" I say this because I think it's what you need me to say.
TW: Practically speaking, it would be harder for us to support ourselves as a partnership than it would for an artist working alone. We need twice the income. Theoretically, since there are two of us, we should be able to make twice the amount of art as a single artist. But the reality is that we?re lazy, so it takes two of us to produce the same amount of art as one hard-working artist.
LC: Tim, you were kind enough to make time to come and talk to the local television news station NY1 when they taped the Rhizome ArtBase 101 exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art this summer. I remember I talked to them first, and gave them a pretty rote explanation of the show. (I was trying to keep it simple and sound-bytey so my main points would stay in tact.) I was really amazed at how bold your comments were. As I recall, you started talking about how other art forms were "dead media" and that net art was the art form of "the future". This was, of course, complemented by the fact that your red t-shirt made you look like a communist. Do you really believe in Internet-based art?s ascension as a medium?
TW: Yes. But I didn't mean just Internet-based art, but all digital/new media art. In any case, when artwork becomes digital, why shouldn't it be networked? Perhaps the distinction is meaningless.
LC: A question of terminology: MTAA describes its work as "net art" but surely you've noticed that people have decried "net art" dead or "over", a chapter that is now closed, etc. To me, it seems that terms like net art must be?to a certain extent?dealt with like terms such as feminism which are interpreted differently by different people in different contexts. What is your definition of net art ? and how does it relate to what you do?
MR: I guess this is the point to drag out Ye Ol' Simple Net Art Diagram (http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/off-line_art/snad.html) and the Abe Linkin's remix of it (http://www.linkoln.net/complex/). I'm fine with leaving terms like "net art" or "feminism" linked to certain classic moments, groups, and stances as long as people agree on the context. Not agreeing on the context leads to the same old arguments. It's like when "conceptual art" and "conceptual art" get hashed out over and over again. The other thing, of course, is that we can use "net art" or "feminism' to refer to a past set of ideals-but that doesn't exclude it from being an ongoing and evolving practice. Examples? RSS feeds or Le Tigre.
TW: My definition of net art is any art work that uses a network as an integral part of its medium. I'm really a modernist at heart (I'll just speak for myself) in that I believe that artwork should somehow marry its form, content, and subject. If you're using the Internet to make art, then the art should somehow use the network. If your work is a JPEG that would look just as good (or perhaps better) printed and hung on a wall, then it's not net art because it's not using the medium of the network.
But these definitions can change quickly. For example, XML feeds are altering the way media files are distributed over the web. If you take a series of JPEGs (or MP3s, or MPEGs) and create a feed and distribute them over time, then suddenly you're using the network and it could be net art (as opposed to digital photography or whatever).
LC: With another one of your works "To Be Listened to" (http://mteww.com./rhiz05/), it appears that you?ve jumped on the podcasting wagon?or were you riding in it before? Can you talk a bit about this piece?
MR: "To Be Listened to" (2bL2) in someways, continues the methods we used in ?Pirated Movie? (http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/off-line_art/Pirated_Movie.html) or "V-TAV" (http://www.mteww.com/VTAV/). We create a shell to distribute work and ask artists we like to provide the content. think 2bL2 will differ in that the shell created will allow listeners to organize as ell as participate in the work. What T.Whid talks to me about for 2bL2?s structure is a small remix and rate community. I think this is why we are dragging our feet on this one. We don?t want it to be another podcast.
TW: And that means we need more money too!:-)
LC: What does MTAA have to look forward to in 2006? Any New Years resolutions? As MTAA seems to wear its collective heart on its sleeve, I'm sure you won't mind sharing.
TW: We have plans to put "Karaoke DeathMatch 100" (http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/news/twhid/what_is_karaoke_deathmatch_100.html) online as a video blog and feed (URL to come, stay tuned). We've also received a grant to do a big piece that is going in a gallery somewhere (and still be net art). And our Rhizome commission, "To Be Listened to" of course.
MR: When we began working with the net it was easy to knockout a work. One good weekend together and a project could be done. Now, the scale is larger and the timeframe longer. We are looking at one big monster of a project this year, and it?s giving me the willies. I hope it turns out. I also hope we find time for the smaller scale projects. I find the small projects can be a place for the experimentation needed to drive the larger works.
As for the personal heart-on-the-sleeve in 06, or at least what "M. River' might have for a heart, I just don?t know. I?d like to give those choices for change away this year. Send me an email. Tell me how to live a better life. Send to mriver[at]mteww.com subject head: "m.river resolution 06." Best resolutions go on the blog.
+ + +
LINKS:
+ http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/off-line_art/snad.html
+ http://www.linkoln.net/complex/
+ http://mteww.com./rhiz05/
+ http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/off-line_art/Pirated_Movie.html
+ http://www.mteww.com/VTAV/
+ http://www.mteww.com/mtaaRR/news/twhid/what_is_karaoke_deathmatch_100.html
[via Rhizome]
Posted by jo at January 30, 2006 11:14 AM
