Edited Questions
I just completed an interview with artist, curator, and filmmaker Keith Miller for Artslant.
There were a few questions that were edited from the final, but I am posting two of them here just for fun.
KM
Your artistic practice often seems more industrial than a standard artist’s studio, yet I don’t think of you as a sculptor. From the videos and installations to the objects (that are sculptures), to performance or ‘data-mining’… How do you classify what you do and how do you see that in relation to current practices, artistic, industrial or otherwise?
ND
I do what I can to keep a studio that allows me to make the kind of work that I want to make. Economics limits how far I can take it, but my ideal studio would probably have a railroad siding running into it. My current studio has some limitations, but there are is always a work around. I have no problem sending drawings out to have parts laser cut if I need them, but I don’t let people build my work for me. I am good at compartmentalizing things, and do so in my art practice regularly. Industrial processes are just another tool like any technology, but the more you know about any process, the better prepared you are and the larger your breadth of tools becomes. You also have to keep good company. When I made my Data Mine installation/performance that you referred to, those words were not really part of our political landscape. I learned the term from friends who are scientists who use statistical software to glean information from large data samples. I extracted data from discarded computer hard drives for two years and it seemed to be a novelty. Now, we see that the entire data landscape is minable by those with the software and equipment to do it. The artist can’t stop these things from happening, but can maybe predict them. I classify my self as a sculptor because the things I make are three-dimensional. The term artist is probably better, because my best work usually involves performance or a bit of multi-media. I am not a fan of the installation artist designation, but I basically make installations all the time.
KM
What is your feeling on technology in today’s world and in your work and the work of other contemporary artists?
ND
Technology is what it is. I don’t value it if it can’t contribute to the work’s content. Making work that centers on the technological feature usually goes nowhere with exceptions like Paul B. Davis’s hacked Nintendo console games which use the game system as their subject as well as a point of departure for a larger conversation. Of course, the issue with those pieces is that hacking an 8-bit console game ROM is a piece of cake when you have a home computer that is infinitely more powerful than the computers used to write the game in first place. To an outside eye, it seems impossible and totally unnecessary to remix a 15 year-old game. I like work that uses technology because the language of technology, and I mean the real language of pop tech culture, is one that is not understood by those who were not born into it, and is therefore an empowering subject for those who are natives.
Artslant Interview
Sunday, September 9, 2007
