User:SN/Interview
SR - Describe your works that you've made since you came to PZI
NS - I came here with bits of code that transforms specificities of one media to another. I was looking how the information mediates within different medias. Now, I moved towards looking for patterns, independencies, and newly born sense in this transformations.
SR - Describe the progress between the works through explaining what you've made.
NS - I started with the simple code that transforms one media to another through its binary representation. For Example, I broke down a text to zeroes and ones and mapped these combinations with RGB values of the newly born image and vice versa. So text became Image, Image became text, without changing the information source. These were quite formal experiments, and I didn't have any additional intentions, it was the experiment for the sake of experiment.
SR - Do this project has a name?
NS - I decided to go formal, as my experiments are formal. So the names are Sketch#001, Sketch#002, etc. It would be unfair to put in this experiments some sense that doesn't exist there. So I see them as tools, that I can use in future works, rather than a separate project.
SR - Can you give me a precise description of the results of these experiments?
NS- So, basically in case of text to image transformation the result is a square image of abstract pixels in grayish colors with flashes of pink and green shades. The size of the picture depends on the amount of the text. If to talk about the image to text transformations, the result is a list of letters, which most of the time do not form any words. For example, I used one of the Malevich paintings, and among thousands of letters, I could find only one word "knot."
RS - In which form they exist?
NS - Now it is mostly text files and images on my computer. But I'm planning to print results in the scale of its original resource.
RS - What was the advantage for you in this experiments? Why did you want to do that? what were the limitations?
NS - It all started as exercises that help me to learn a new programming language. At that time I was quite disoriented in what I want to do and what my interests are in particular, more concrete than just "I'm interested in generative art". So I decided just to put my hands on. It gave me a good starting point, so I began to extend my borders in programming, but also in understanding how I can apply this knowledge. The process itself helped me to bust ideas, concretize questions that I want to research. Learning new tool helps you to understand better the environment in which this tool can be applied.
RS- Describe please the transition from this period of the transcription to the next stage in your work, how does it manifest your work?
NS- I started to look for dependencies between medias. I tried to apply this in more creative way. So I used partially this code to scan web pages and then translated these web pages to images. And then I made some 'barcodes' of my daily usage of internet, also considering time scale. So I used the tool in a more personal way. The result is mostly messy gray abstract pictures with splashes of black. I tried to reflect on the fact that we are consuming tons of information, that we even do not try to understand or think about.
RS - How I can read these barcodes of your daily life on the internet?
NS - You cannot pick any concrete information. This is the point. It mostly plays on your perception.
RS - How I can experience this?
NS - I cannot say what will be your experience. But I can describe mine. I'm drowning in a gray mass of useless info.
RS - Is there one big project there that you are working on?
NS - There are two projects, one I finished recently. The first project I made for the Eye on Art exhibition in EYE museum. The other we started together with Pleun during one of the thematics.
RS - Describe the Eye Museum project.
NS - The project is based on EYE archive. The exhibition was about boundaries of the archive, so we were investigating archive limitations, characteristics of its system, and also look at archive as a medium. My work is about how formalities of the indexing system create distortion in understanding what piece is about and what is the narrative of this piece. I took BW silent movies and created the sound based on formal characteristics of the moving image. I used granular synthesis principles to create noisy, distorted sound.
RS - Describe the evolution of your work. What is the difference between first experiments and eye project? What is the major development in your approach?
NS - The difference is context. First bits of code were experiments for the sake of experiment. In Eye work they are nothing more than tools to show the formal nature of the archive, and that the archival system is biased.
RS - Can you describe the piece you are doing together with Pleun?
NS - We played on the field of combinatory literature, machine art and chain reactions. Originally the project is a small performance where I play the role of a computer, Pleun is a printer, and an audience is a sort of random function. First, the script follows the provided link and extracts all the text and separately all the links. I ask someone to feed me a number that defines which word will be retrieved and another number that defines which link to follow next. Then I ask Pleun to print this word and let script follow chosen link. The process repeats until script cannot follow the link. It caused the script to finish "the poem". Most of the times is a list of words within any connection, but also there are exciting combinations. Such as, for example, exploring the apple site, we received:
Learn
Apple
Last
Spies
It is interesting, especially if to remember the scandal around Apple declining to provide personal information to FBI. But if to say in general, what this project states is the role of the reader and its subjective interpretation. He is the one who creates connections between words, so the project plays on the field where computer pretend to be a human, human pretend to be a computer and in between there is a spectator who creates connections and interpretations.