Four individuals in the digital art business who were at the recent NOTACON held in downtown Cleveland are interviewed here. They are William Scheele of Cleveland-based New Center for Art and Technology, Laurence Gartel, aka the "father" of digital art living in Boca Raton Fla., Digital filmmaker Kasumi at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and award winning Cleveland-area digital artist Michael Nekic.
William Scheele: cultivating the applied side of digital art
Applied digital art is a growth industry envisioned for Northeast Ohio by William Scheele director of the Cleveland-based New Center for Art and Technology (http://www.newcat.org).
Mr. Scheele, in his outreach drive for digital art has a co-outreacher in NOTACON, the Northeast Ohio Technology and Art Conference, (held on April 23-25, 2004). Directed by Paul "Froggy" Schenider, NOTACON, is one of a very few computer geek conferences in the Midwest and is said to be one of the first geek conferences anywhere to have an art venue. It is schedule to return to Cleveland next April. Along with Mr. Scheele this story also has interviews with Laurence Gartel, the "father" of digital art, Kasumi a digital film maker at Cleveland Institute of Art and pioneering Cleveland area digital artist Michael Nekic who just won at the European-based 2004 Digital Hall of Fame contest. All three artists showed at the 2004 NOTACON.
"Digital art is used in advertising, architecture, everywhere you look today. New CAT? is focusing on the applied side in an effort to build regional economic development initiatives," said Mr. Scheele. "The esthetic art object is basically useless (other than to cultivate ideas etc.)."
In the 21st century, "art is not esoteric like in times past. There is a new breed of creative people. If they know computing, artists can get jobs. Part of New CAT?'s missions is to recognize that there are jobs out there."
Scheele brought the first North American exhibit of the Digital Hall of Fame to Cleveland to December 2002. More recently he directed the Creative Arts & Industries 2004 forum held with the bits@pieces@PBL digital art show at the Peter B. Lewis Weatherhead School of Management Building of Case Western Reserve University. See Cool Cleveland story about the Creative Arts and Industries forum here. (http://www.pulsarmail.com/show_article.php?p=81P0E084R8016N36H)
These were part of New CAT?'s Creative Arts and Industry Project that has so far involved Cleveland State University, Cleveland Institute of Art and Case. Given funding Scheele is aiming to stage his next digital art extravaganza late this year along with conducting a study of the creative arts of this region.
Scheele says it is time for Cleveland to catch up. (Where have you heard this before?) "There is more recognition of creative industries in Europe and other places in the U.S. than here. We are behind. There is a great need to explain the competitive advantages that digital art can bring to businesses here." A town that has the world class Cleveland Museum of Art might gain by listening to Scheele.
"The digital divide doesn't just exist at the entry level. A lot of business people have no idea what technology can make possible. The most asked question at our shows is 'how did they do that?' I want them to ask 'why they did they do that.'"
"Art is one of the mysteriously wonderful things humans can do," said Scheele. "Not everyone feels that they can do art. Artists have a unique place. They create, a mysterious act to many who don't create."
Securing the North American premier of the Digital Hall of Fame was as simple as making the right contact made at the right time. Via e-mail Scheele met Anders Ronnblom editor of EFX Art and Design magazine in Stockholm Sweden, called by some, "the bible of digital art," which can be found here. http://www.macartdesign.matchbox.se/ "They talked about sending art exhibitions to different parts of the world. I asked if we could have it here and they were thrilled that someone wanted to do it in the U.S."
And for this viewer's eyes it was quiet the show! Who needs Cedar Point when you have the Digital Hall of Fame?
"In NOTACON we did a good thing," said Scheele. This conference broached the membranes between the worlds of the geeks, the D Js? and the artists.
Of course, like many people trying something new in Cleveland, Scheele has yet to make a buck on it. "I'm a volunteer. This is an act of passion," he said. Mr. Scheele's applied passion may be very useful for a town's prospects.
Laurence Gartel: "Technology drives art"
The premiere digital artist at NOTACON 2004 was Laurence Gartel, who is known as the "father" of digital art. You can find Mr. Gartel featured as the last entry "New Visual Languages," of the 2001 book "La Storia Dell' Arte" an art history in Italian by Maria Carla Prette and Alfonso De Giorgis.
Gartel came to his position through serendipity. In 1975 he left the School of Visual Arts in New York City to follow a girl friend to Buffalo. There he met video guru Nam June Paik of the Media Study Department at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
"He had a huge warehouse of apparatus to help produce analog processed art," said Gartel. The experimentation superseded everything. "We didn't know what it was for back then. Mr. Paik was the first person to take a monitor and put it in an art gallery." Paik showed in the Whitney and Guggenheim museums in New York City among other venues.
"I took the next step and moved images from the analog world to the digital world," said Gartel. His first computer, in 1975, had all of 2 kilobytes of memory on a 12" floppy disk. "There was no design software then. No one was doing digital design then." In 1977 Gartel graduated from the School of Visual Arts.
Then times changed. Mr. Gartel had the opportunity to teach Andy Worhol how to use the powerful Amiga Computer with its early image processing software.
"Now anyone with Photoshop can press the twirl function on Photoshop," he said. At NOTACON he presented 30 Years of Digital Art: A personal highway experience & Photoshop Workshop. He discussed how he creates "emotional" art within Photoshop's layers and channels. "I don't know all of Photoshop. I've dug pretty deep into it though."
"I'm not a geek. I don't speak in geek language," he said. " People want to hear personal stuff. I make the image to show emotion. Very few people can demonstrate emotion in a technical presentation."
"I've had a good run," he said. "Laurence M. Gartel: A Cybernetic Romance," the first book featuring one person's digital art was published in 1989. In 1992 he went around the world following the Masters Golf PGS Tour for Golf Illustrated Magazine with a Canon 760, which he said is the first digital camera. It used 2-1/4 disks that held 25 photos at 640x640 pixel resolution. "No one knew what my camera was."
He also has many associations with musicians such as Debbie Harry of Blondie, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols, Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys, Wendy O Williams of the Plasmatics and others. In 2001 while working on a project with Britney Spears he and Ms. Spears had their photo taken, facing the camera with arms wrapped around each other.
The future of digital art grows more expansive with each technical innovation. "Sony just came out with a record-to-DVD system. It will be very empowering," he said. (This is the RDR-GX 7? DVD Recorder with a street price of about $700.)
He thinks because of increased wireless bandwidth and improved data compression, in about five years streaming video will be available anywhere in the world on mobile devices. "There are a lot of sociological implications to this. How is this going to be used in society? Gaming and pornography are driving this. Will there be a pervert sitting next to you on the bus that is streaming porno? This should be interesting."
"Technology is always a driving force behind art," said Gartel who lives in Boca Raton Florida, not far from the Digital Art Museum (DAM) in the South Beach section of Miami. "Mini movies are a new genre," he said. To be released through video stores this autumn will be Gartel's new DVD titled "Gartel Dance Trance and Other Living Things," with 3D digital art and "techno trans" music. You can find the Gartel Museum here. http://www.gartelmuseum.com
Cleveland's Kasumi: no talking heads, just wild experimental digital film
Kasumi is a painter and digital and analog film maker and an assistant professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She has two films collections, including her "Synesthetics: 9 Short Films" and "The Free Speech Zone" available for purchase on DVD through Microcinema Inc. of San Francisco Calif. Find Microcinema here http://www.microcinema.com
In years past, "The galleries that Bill Scheele managed were beautiful, imaginative and full of wonderful artwork. It was a privilege to have my artwork on display there. He always puts on a really high class show and decidedly knows what he is doing," said Kasumi who presented some of her work at NOTACON.
After the earlier years, "Bill and I lost touch for a while I immersed myself in film and video." When she and Scheele reconnected, she put a bug in his ear about opening a gallery for New Media. "I nagged him incessantly."
"For the last six years I've been creating works that combine 35 and 16mm film, digital video, hand painted celluloid and sound design." Her show "Experimental Film" featuring the work of many film makers is presented on Adelphia Channel 21 at midnight on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
"With little funding in this country for the arts, I've created - out of necessity - a mixed media style of film making. The current atmosphere of fear, repression and religious zealotry supplies me with no end of subject matter."
Her films have been screened world-wide and won top prizes in such festivals as the Cleveland International Film Festival, Iranian Young Cinema Festival, Seoul Film and Net Festival, Athens International Film Festival, IFP Midwest, Melbourne International Animation Festival, Montecatini International Short Film Conference, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tirana Int’l Film Festival, Tirana, Albania, Rio de Janeiro Int’l Short Film Festival, Amsterdam International Short Film Festival, NEMO Festival, Paris, France, Hamburg International Short Film Festival and many others.
Kasumi's films are a disturbing and thought provoking montages of images constructed in the subconscious mind, unsettling visions and hard break beats.
In addition to being an experimental video and film maker, Kasumi is a musician who has performed twice at Carnegie Hall and who has recorded four LP albums; a theatrical production designer, and a published author. While in Japan, her soundtrack performance of Oginsama was nominated for an Academy award. Her written work includes two published books, over 50 newspaper and magazine articles published worldwide and several dramatic film scripts currently under option.
On the faculty of The Cleveland Institute of Art, she urges her students to see what's out there and not just what's showing at the local multiplex.
Cleveland's Michael Nekic: What is the place of digital art in Cleveland?
Ask Michael Nekic (http://www.michaelnekic.com), a photographer living in Chardon, about the odd place Cleveland has in the acceptance of digital art techniques. He has won awards locally and internationally while being scoffed at by some local artists. He took an honorable mention in the 5th Annual Digital Hall of Fame with a work titled "The Trouble with Clones," as well as showed his work at NOTACON.
"I've been doing digital art for seven years," said Mr. Nekic who's digital art is not drawn from photographs, has been working in digital art for seven years and showing his work for two years. "I waited until I had a product worth showing."
He was a black and white landscape photographer for 30 years who experimented with solarization and other techniques. His brother, degreed in computer science, suggested that Nekic get into the new graphics software. "After three months of photoshop I packed up my darkroom for ever," he said. "The computer is my darkroom on steroids."
"I feel like a photographer producing for the art market in 1950," said Nekic. "In 2003 I was waiting to receive the check for first place of the Gates Mills show. Another artist, a woman, next to me commented that (his digital art) had no business being in the show. It was comical to step forward a couple minutes later to receive the check (for first place)."
"Painters are slightly intimidated by this because the enormous range of images you can create digitally," said Nekic. He said that some galleries are thinking of spinning of digital art into their own shows.
"Digital is not going to go away," he said. "Digital will take over photography. Film simply won't exist."
The Art and Function gallery in Chardon represents Nekic. His Hall of Fame of Digital Art winner will be displayed at a show at The Gallery in downtown Willoughby. The opening is September 17.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Lee Batdorff bat@adva.com (:divend:)