Doing things

I've been mostly just trying to make progress on ongoing projects... stream things, edit video, feed the cat. Lately I've been on some information technology sub-quests to support the shop, and I've been busy with things like making space in the rack, running cable, getting some old computers ready to sell, setting up a new file server, trying to automate more things.

In the midst of that I said "yes" to a couple things people asked me to do. I maintain that this is usually a bad idea, and I still feel massively burned out from the streak of things I did at conferences and events several years back.

Anyway, one of those things did not work out and I'm still feeling bad about that. I got an email invitation to be part of Tinkerfest, this small local maker-faire-type event at a local science museum. The invitation sat in my inbox for a while gathering anxiety and dust, until I finally managed to respond late, and ask if there was still something I could do to help out, pushing myself a bit toward something I'd usually feel too broken to do.

I think that was a bad idea still. As I'm realizing this week, the problem isn't even that it feels like a whole month of work to make a suitably fun activity for the event, and it isn't even that I feel drained already from the prospect of going to another event alone and figuring out how to entertain or inspire or whatever when I'm so so exhausted. I'm just not even sure I could be around that many people right now without having a panic attack. And so I managed to eventually say "no", but that process took far too long and involved way too much communication across that enormous gulf I feel between myself and the more extroverted or neurotypical folks who often end up planning these events.

So, blah. I'm going to try not to do these things still, and try to just focus on my own shop and my own video for the most part. I feel overwhelmed enough by that.

The other thing I said "yes" to worked out a bit better, but it was still a massive source of stress this week. I agreed to an interview over email, by the young daughter of a colleague, for a school project. The kind of thing I should be able to relax about a little, I guess, but then I was surprised to find that the questions were mostly about art, and I still have a really hard time with art. Anyway, I thought I'd share the answers I wrote for that, just with you my patrons.

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1. What kind of art to make?

This is a really hard question for me, and I haven't had a good answer for the past couple years. The reasons to make art can be so personal; for me, for a while, it was mostly about communication. I had been working for a long time on intricate designs that would always end up stuck hidden inside of other things- inside some code nobody would read or a product nobody would understand. I was tired of that. I was tired of feeling confined to engineering jobs where the things I made were just seen as solutions to problems, and I thought that if I could focus on applying my creativity to something that more people could see and interact with, maybe it would be a more satisfying form of communication.

I'm not sure this worked out, though. I have troubles with communication, and those troubles seem to transcend the medium. It's hard to talk to people through art just like it's hard to talk to people in other ways, and I still struggle with relevance and meaning and avoiding harm.

I've also made art that was more personal, like a communication between aspects of myself, stuff I didn't intend to share. It's usually hard for me to set aside time to make these sorts of things, but I think they're important.

2. What was your inspiration for making Forest?

I was especially interested in interactive generative systems at the time, like computer programs that model a tiny world that you can see in a small way, and interact with somehow. I liked the idea that it was like figuring out how to talk to some other species of thing. I was hoping to make work that you can appreciate from a distance, but which also invites you to get closer and have a dialogue with some inanimate system that gives you opportunities to understand and play.

This idea combined with the specific opportunity we had, to make an installation on the scale of an entire wall at the TIFF digiPlaySpace, where

visitors of all ages can see the piece from a distance or touch it and move it with their hands. I wanted to make something large and tactile that could appeal in different ways to people with different ages and interests. I had been working with LED lighting as an art medium at the time, and my techniques at the time along with the constraints for scale and durability brought us to many of the decisions that ultimately shape the way Forest came together.

3. How would you describe Forest?

It's a wall sized interactive light sculpture, 16 feet wide by 8 feet tall, made from layers of CNC-cut wood. The surface is covered with circular cutouts of different sizes. The tiny circles form strands of winding light that reach from the floor toward the ceiling, going through and around the larger circles. Each large circle has a wooden spinner that divides it into two, acting as a tactile knob or valve or even a tiny catapult.

The light moves around through the sculpture via a kind of fluid simulation, and the wooden spinners each have a sensor to measure their angle and correspondingly move the simulated barriers in the software's model world. This simulated fluid field is projected onto each LED light according to that light's location.

I wrote the software that runs this simulated world, and I wrote a different program to help design the flowing structure of the strands of light using a growth algorithm. Forest was a huge collaboration though, and it really came together as a result of so much hard work by the students of Ryerson University RTA School of Media's New Media program, led by director Steven Daniels, assistant professor David Bouchard, production manager Ashley Lewis, and curator Nick Pagee.

In hindsight this is really what I like most about Forest. It felt successful as a collaborative project as well as an interactive environment for all ages. It was really stressful for me but also really wonderful to finally meet everyone involved after so much online collaboration, and then to see the gallery visitors interact with the piece.

4. Why did you decide to become an artist?

The short answer is that at some point I felt free to describe some of what I was doing as "art", and I started focusing more on that part of myself until at some point it seemed worth acknowledging that as who I am. The label fits better than most others I've tried, at least.

Most of my background is self-taught tinkering, but I did spend four years at university for engineering because my parents felt it was necessary and worth the debt, and I didn't know how to say no at the time. But I feel very far from the traditional art background and that world. So, even though I'd get interested in drawing and making tiny whimsical machines out of cardboard, I think I ran into more people who worked against my creativity than people who encouraged it. That came much later, when I found myself surrounded by an artist scene in San Francisco, which was great for a minute, but I got burned pretty badly there by trusting people too much.

So, I was already running away from that scene a bit when I started designing Forest. I don't keep in touch with those people any more, but I kept trying to make art for a while.

5. When were you first interested in art?

I think I've always been interested in the personal creative practice of art. Besides distracting myself with doodles and little paper sculptures in school, I remember saving up my allowance money at a young age to buy my first piece of furniture, a very flimsy little drafting table to draw on. I remember getting a long roll of paper, and filling it with a sprawling imaginary cityscape full of buildings and roads and robots.

It was much later that I got interested at all in the "art world", and that was mostly via going to museums and imagining what it would be like to make an object that people would encounter in that setting. I especially liked the exhibits in children's science museums, which seemed to have a really delightful combination of playfulness and education and creativity.

6. What was your first art show?

It depends on what you mean by an "art show". I've never had a solo gallery show or anything. I'm not sure if that's even something I'd want. I've brought my work to events, and I've been part of a few small group shows including one at a museum, New Experiments in Art and Technology at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. I thought this was what I wanted, but actually all of those experiences have been quite bad for me personally. It felt like the thing I was supposed to want was this sense of connection with others through the art, but a gallery opening event quickly became one of my least favorite things. The bigger the art gallery or the event, the worse it felt. I think at this point that's just a world that seems very alien and inhospitable to me.

7. What is your favorite art piece you have made and why?

I do like some of the work I've been doing recently, focusing on Internet video rather than anything related to the gallery world. But I have to say Forest was my favorite so far on account of the collaboration. Working with other people really doesn't come naturally to me, so when it works out well I have to value that.

8. How many art pieces have you made?

This really depends on your definition of "art", there's a huge range from the random things I make for myself and never share, to the projects I put months of my life and everything I can into.

On the high end of this range, I have a couple thousand files stashed in a folder on my computer labeled "art", but most of that is certainly junk. I've also done hundreds of live videos by now, and something like 40 edited videos.

I tried making an art portfolio web site some time ago, and it has less than 20 projects on it.

And then if you're talking about stuff that's been in a show of any kind, just a few. Five or so.

9. What is your favorite thing about making art?

This really really depends on what mood I'm in when you ask! Sometimes it's hard to find the joy in anything, and I just feel stuck. Other times, it feels like a sip of water in the desert. Right now it's somewhere in between, but closer to the former. When art has felt refreshing, it's because I felt some kind of connection was possible through it. When I feel bad about art, sometimes it's because the connection doesn't seem possible. Right now that's not the problem though; more like I have trouble seeing how anything good could come from what I do.

10. Who is your favorite artist and why?

I don't know. I find other people really stressful. I thought I had people I could take inspiration from, but these days I don't think I do. I've been staying away from artists mostly.