Artist: Jeffers EganBrian Sherwin: Jeffers, you studied at the University of Wisconsin and at the Artcenter College of Design in Pasadena.. What can you tell us about your academic background? Did you have any influential instructors? Do you have any advice for art students who are considering those programs?
Jeffers Egan: The first two years(94-95) of undergraduate I studied film at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, in particular European/Russian cinema and was enamored by the emotional impact of the long takes of both Jansco(Red Psalm/Red and the White) and Antonioni(blow up/zabriskie point), as well as the cinematography and slow pacing of Tarakovsky's films(solaris/stalker/andrei rubelev). At the same time I was experimenting with early desktop computer gfx/video compositing software (After Effects 3.1) and started to make short films.
Attending ArtCenter was a revelation for me as it made the Fine Art world real - the faculty was very accomplished (Bruce Hainley, Diana Thater, Liz Larner, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe), students were getting shows at quality galleries in LA, European collectors were visiting our studios and media like the New York Times were around school writing stories about our program. I also took courses from noted digital theorist Peter Lunenfeld which really assisted me to contextualize the computer within my work. It was also imperative that I could see an instructor like Jennifer Steinkamp (www.jsteinkamp.com) have success as an artist while producing strictly computer based abstract animation works.
It was also an exciting time as the gallery scene in Chinatown was just beginning. In fact the gallery that started the scene, China Art Objects was founded by three ArtCenter students that I knew, so it was cool to have an affiliation with that particular gallery and be at the epicenter of the huge movement that grew up around it. It was inspiring to see the impact one can make on the art world having a great idea at the right time in the right moment.
To prospective students I highly recommend the ArtCenter grad program, the faculty and connections are absolutely phenomenal. LA is also an amazing, and always up and coming art scene, there are plenty of industry jobs to support yourself through school, and the architecture scene is also fantastic(Gehry, Morphosis, Coop Himmelb(l)au, SCI-ARC). Unfortunately, since Ted Pope left the faculty(in 98) UW-Madison has refocused entirely on traditional media and so I would not recommend it for any students interested in new media/computer arts.
Artist: Jeffers EganTitle: "reaching in" (still frame)
Medium: Motion Painting/Digital Animation
Dimensions: variable, HDTV 1080p resolution
Year: 2006, Edition of 5
BS: Jeffers, for the last several years your work has meshed abstract painting, real-time computerized visuals, and electronic music together. These works have been known to explore the perception of what visual art can be. Can you discuss your work and perhaps tells us about your early years exploring these mediums?
JE: I make video/animation based work in many formats - live AV, motion paintings, interactive architecture, dvds. I work with animation because life is in constant motion, and I like to represent that flux within my work. All of my pieces are non-representational, fully computer generated technorganic works. Developed entirely with handcrafted, algorithmic processes, my work embraces digital based media technologies as a means to understand, critique and transform our society. Exploring the concepts of digital as organism, and software as ecosystem, my work postulates a confluence between digital and natural worlds and contends that change(animation) and aesthetics(beauty) are the fundamental building blocks of 21st Century culture. Delving into these parallel processes, the macro/microcosm of the digital arises as a locus of investigation; a new aesthetic adventure cast in the time-shifting, sense-warping fluidity of the sublime.
Working with electronic music has always been a large portion of my work, in part because exploring technology is always a theme and the process of how electronic music is produced is very similar to how I work. The early years, starting around 1996, I produced works in conjunction with electronic musicians that I knew. At Wesleyan I worked on several projects with noise/electronic musician Seth Misterka as well as koto/electronic musician Brett Larner. It was a cool time, as the experimental music scene in Middletown was quite established, and there were amazing creative students on campus to be inspired by. Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) is a good friend from that time and Josh Clayton (Kit Clayton and Jitter) was also a Wes student.
Misterka was organizing regular shows that he and I were producing works for. I would create video tapes for multiple screens(projection and large TV) and Seth and/or Brett would improvise audio as the performance.
After transferring to Wisconsin I met Jake Mandell and we lived and worked on projects together, eventually showing them at the Contemporary Art Museum in Madison and Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis. We were also listening to a lot of early IDM music and going to raves(which were really good in the Midwest at that time). Stewart Walker was a good friend of Jake's, so there was a lot of talk of the future of techno music and I was always thinking and planning how video/computer art would be part of that future.
Artist: Jeffers Egan
Title: "hard mix" (still frame)
Medium: Motion Painting/Digital Animation
Dimensions: variable, 1080p HDTV resolution
Year: 2006, Edition of 5
BS: You have stated that your Motion Painting works are the next generation of visual art. Some feel that fusing digital technology with the raw expressiveness of abstraction updates painting to the next level of art evolution. It has been suggested that people can relate to these works due to the relevance they have in our media saturated world. Do you agree with these views? In your opinion, where does this leave works-- paintings specifically--that depend on traditional mediums? Do you think at some point works that infuse technology will become the standard, so to speak?JE: I was just at Art Chicago and was surprised, in comparison to last year, by how much screen based work was exhibited. So yes, I think we are about to arrive at a moment of paradigm shift - towards technology based art works and away from traditional media. Technology within all aspects of culture is so pervasive now - more and more of the audience can relate, and are drawn to media based works because the screen and conceptual underpinnings are familiar. At the same time my works don't function in the same way traditional tele-visual media do, so I am playing with the disconnect there. The audience is used to the tele-theatrical and the rapid mtv edit, and so are intrigued, challenged and hopefully enlightened that the imagery, pacing and intent is so different.
I think it still is going to take time, and the immediate future is going to be a mixture of traditional and technological based works. I also think that each generation is more technologically savvy than the last, so artists naturally will be inclined to produce media based works and collectors will have a higher comfort level and familiarity with technology. I imagine as screen prices fall, say when a 40" LCD screen is less than $100, then a huge number of artists can afford to have multiple "canvases", and cost wise it can make sense for dealers and collectors.
We should always remember that artists of any era are always pushing the technical envelope, Picasso was a master technician and always pushing the boundaries of the technology of his field.
Artist: Jeffers Egan
Title: "cosmo" (still frame)
Medium: Motion Painting/Digital Animation
Dimensions: variable, SD resolution
Year: 2005, Edition of 8
BS: Jeffers, your work has been shown at the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit, and several other venues throughout the world. You have also been included in the Bridge Art Fair in the past. Would you like to discuss those experiences? Perhaps you can explain how you feel-- the energy you get--when onlookers view you or your work in action?
JE: It is always a great feeling when you can see the impact the work is having on the viewer, and it is a different set of reactions depending on the type of event. Last year I played a live AV set with Deadbeat (www.scape-music.com) at the Mediaterrae Festival (www.mediaterrae.com) in Avellino, Italy and the crowd was insane, screaming and yelling every time the audio and video were synced up just right, or when a portion of video they liked came up - so those moments are really fun as its kind of an interactive thing where you can read and respond to the audience and choose imagery to play based on what they are enjoying.
One of the most beautiful and unexpected moments in seeing a reaction to my work occurred at the Bridge Art Fair in Miami. I was showing motion paintings on 42" LCD screens at the Cimatics Platform booth from Brussels. A couple walked in with their two young children in strollers, and as soon as they entered the booth both the children leapt out of their strollers and started reaching and grabbing, trying to interact, truly grasp and become part of the motion paintings. They were too young to speak and so were having this intense pre-verbal relationship with the works which was really stunning. The parents were beside themselves and told me their children had been in the strollers all day long and had not once reacted to or even noticed any other art works.
BS: So would you say that you create these works for the 'here and now' or are you creating them for the future, so to speak? Is it your desire to spearhead visual art in this direction?
JE: Yes, I absolutely wish to be at the vanguard of moving Fine Art forward and I've been conscious of moving the boundaries, for instance Slither DVD was the world's first audio/visual DVD album to feature 5.1 surround sound. Artists find forms of expressions that are relevant to the age in which they live. I feel I need a new set of tools(the computer) and techniques(software) that can depict, relate and challenge viewers in this new millennium.
In a sense I'm looking backward as I'm looking forward, because I'm very conscious of Art History and view my work as a small piece in a long lineage of motion based artworks - a continuation of the work so many other artists have started. Oskar Fischinger was producing animated "motion paintings" and abstract music videos already in the 1920's, the Bauhaus was experimenting with all sorts of technological advancements, particularly in photography, around the same time(Moholy Nagy was a huge proponent of technological experimentation), Jordan Belson's films and AV light shows of the 50's and 60's, Stan Brakhage's structuralist films/pure cinema, and Larry Cuba's computer works from the early 80's are but a few landmarks on this roadmap.
The wonderful thing to me is that the computer is so powerful, its really the perfect tool to realize ambitious projects - and really synthesize a lot of the thinking/research and ideas about abstraction and motion pictures developed over the past century. I also think we might be entering a golden age for abstraction, the software tools are so robust(Jitter, Touch, VVVV, processing) and abstraction has been so well developed in the underground techno art/electronic music scene, I think a mainstream break through would be quite timely.
Artist: Jeffers Egan
Title: "slowfields" (still frame)
Medium: Motion Painting/Digital Animation
Dimensions: variable, 1080p HDTV resolution
Year: 2006, Edition of 5
JE: What is most significant to me about both Rothko and Pollock is that they considered painting not only as an object to be admired but as a time and place to experience. There is an element of active viewership present in their works, whereby the process of viewing leads one to a deeper self-awareness. Pollock constructed this experience by considering the canvas as a place of action, where the all over drip style integrated the viewer within the work. Rothko utilized large canvas size and the color-field to draw the viewer in and construct a contemplative aura within the work itself. I am integrating these concepts into my work and adding the dimension of time as a means to the further lead the viewer to a moment of self-experience/awareness.
In current contemporary Fine Art I really admire James Turrell's work, in particular his Sky Space series. Turrell has a great ability to interrelate natural processes with technology, in this case modulating the color of the sky by outfitting a room with floor mounted LED light tubes. I had the unique pleasure of experiencing Turrell's Sky Box meditation room at the James Goldstein house in Beverly Hills. The experience was completely meditative, yet sense-defying - I lost all track of time, and visually was quite disorientated, for instance the windows to the sky often appeared as a paper thin sheets of light.
I am also influenced by the idea of the digital as organism and software as ecosystem, ie seeing the computer as a natural system and utilizing it to develop a new visual language.
BS: Can you tell us about your process? Perhaps you could tell us about some of the early stages in creating these works?
JE: My works are generated entirely within the computer using 2D/3D and compositing softwares. Most is off-the-shelf, Adobe After Effects, Derivative Touch(www.derivativeinc.com/) and then there is some custom code as well. Each work starts with me staring at blank screen, like a painter starting with a blank canvas. I don't use any external footage or prerecorded video, so every element is created by hand, so to speak, by manipulating parameters of an algorithm. I don't story board at all, although I might start with the thought of a particular color, or sketch a quick idea for a form. From there I build the scene piece by piece in the compositing software, often reworking a layer several times to get the right motion and look.
Artist: Jeffers EganTitle: "slerk" (still frame)
Medium: Motion Painting/Digital Animation
Dimensions: variable, SD resolution
Year: 2005, Edition of 8
BS: Finally, what are you working on at this time? Can you give our readers some insight into your current work?
JE: Recently I just finished the interior design and concept branding for my mother's new restaurant called sucre (www.sucresweet.com), a patisserie + dessert lounge in Madison, Wisconsin. This was a wonderful opportunity to build an artwork into an interior(the design includes a 14' 1/2" four plasma screen motion painting), and also to design a space that people utilize on a daily basis. I am particularly fascinated to watch how aesthetic and design choices completely effect the psychology and behavior of the customer.
Currently I am working on a new live performance instrument I'll use for a Sept/Oct tour with Bernd Friedman + Jaki Liebezeit (www.nonplace.de) in Mexico and South America, as well as a show in Poland at the Plateaux Festival (www.plateuaxfestival.pl). Additionally, I was just invited this September to create an audio/visual installation for the exhibition "Perspectives on Time & Space" at the Kaiser+Cream Art & Gallery Center in Frankfurt, Germany (www.kaiser-cream.com), an event curated by Achim Szepanski - the founder of the Mille Plateaux record label.
Going forward I anticipate utilizing what I've learned from designing sucre and producing more interior spaces - bringing fine art + architecture + design into a cohesive entity. A large part of that is creating more meditation rooms and interactive architectural elements as well as integrating my motion paintings into interior spaces. The next creative step for the motion paintings is to realize them entirely in real-time (using Touch) to create works that are constantly evolving and changing - where no moment is ever the same.
You can learn more about Jeffers Egan by visiting his website-- www.jeffersegan.com. You can read more of my interviews by visiting the following page-- www.myartspace.com/interviews.
Take care, Stay true,
Brian Sherwin
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