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An interview with Talan Memmott, page 3 Q. The W/Readers Reprocess: Then? MDC: Kate Hayles, in her new work Writing Machines, points out that your work often requires "three different sensory modalities: sight, sound, and kinesthesia." There is a similar sensory complexity to Self Portrait(s)—but not necessarily the same ones. What kinds of cognitive and sensory processing do you consider the most critical for this work? . TM: Writing Machines takes up Lexia to Perplexia, which does have a rather different intent than Self Portrait(s). With Lexia to Perplexia there is a lot of negotiation around the media itself and an overt attempt to complicate signification, navigation, and orientation. Hypermedia becomes hyper(active)media. With Self Portrait(s) I would say that rather than moving in the direction of hyper(active) media, hypermedia moves toward something like hypermedi[t]ation. If a reader/user were to sit down with Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)] and only view a single screen, it is not very likely that the would understand what was going on in the piece—other than it being a montage of image elements coupled with a text. The context of the work emerges through interaction with it. Although there is only one link in the piece, that one link is what opens the piece up to its many possible recombinations. It probably wouldn't take too terribly long to decipher the functionality of the work but this is perhaps just the beginning of an analytical process for the reader/user. Once the recombinant nature of the piece is evident the reader/user can get into questions about intent, identity, history, authenticity, so on . . .. I this is an important aspect of the work. Q. The W/Readers Look for Open Windows: What is the dynamic of the structure? MDC: I am normally not a fan of random generation—but in this case, it is a device that serves to illustrate the facile nature of public descriptions (and images) of artists and their lives. It tends to mirror the ways in which these bios are invented fictions, at best. Sometimes I almost laughed out loud at the recombinations—but that, too, shows that I am as ready as the next one to accept the depersonalization of the individual, serious effort. Can you talk about the function of random generation of material in this piece? TM: One of the main things in the development of the recombinant text was an attempt to maintain coherence while undermining context. In this regard, I am not sure that random is appropriate to the text or portraits in the piece. I think recombinant is actually more accurate to the way this functions. Recombinant does insinuate some level of randomness in the output, but the variables and arrays that make-up the possibilities are completely intentional. By this I mean that the form of the individual biographical texts was templated based on research into the way short artist bios are generally constructed. And, where the divisions were made in these texts was deliberate, so as to maintain some level of coherence in the recombinations. The portraits as well, are essentially split up categorically—eyes, nose, mouth; elements of face—and placed on the portrait plane where they would appear in the original portraits from which they are taken. I suppose I could have positioned the various portrait elements randomly, or let them be positioned randomly through scripting, but if I were to have done this the chance that a portrait emerge with all of the elements of a single artist, and that it appear somewhat like its original would have been lost.
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Q. The W/Readers Spot One: Who Lives Here? MDC: The title would seem to be central to the piece—as it represents the whole work so clearly. You have drawn on a long history of self-portraiture in art. I have always been interested in this signaling move—a non-verbal, direct appeal. Here, we have the graphic of Van Gogh's ear, and the repetition of EARness as a reminder that this collection is about Talan, too. I think of the salient details of many of the artists' self portraits—or vignettes—all the way from Rembrandt in The Night Watch to Diego Rivera's robust child to Gaugin with his beauties. In each case the author signals specific qualities, almost tells an instant narrative. Since your Self Portrait(s) not only does this in electronic form, but also presents itself as a continually changing pastiche of face, form, narrative, and allegiance, are we to contemplate the impossibility of fixed identity? TM: Yes. Both the impossibility of fixed identity and the projection of identity these particular painters chose for themselves. My own placement in the work is perhaps as signature, rendered through the functionality, style, and the decision to create such a work. Q. The W/Readers Circumnavigate the House: What is the shape of the structure? MDC: It seems, when we examine the structure, there is an architectural level where we can identify the elements (two operative panels, twelve painters, seven pieces to the portraits). Tracking the relationship between those elements and the "passage" through the piece is sometimes difficult. There's no beginning, middle or end to this work—rather an accretion of realizations. Did you think about process as an integral part of the substructure? TM: Process, for both myself in the construction of a piece and for the reader/user of a piece is an integral part to most of my work. I think process is important to hypermedia in general. You are right to recognize that there is no beginning, middle, or end to this work. The first portrait that is loaded is a recombination, and when one does click on the single link in the piece the same pages are reloaded, though recombined. So, there are in fact only two pages of content in this piece—the portrait and the biographical text. The work, the recombination happens through scripting, which is of course hidden to the user. There is the (authorial) process of development, the processing (or computation) that occurs through interacting with the work as application, and the analytical (or sensorial) process for the reader/user. All three are important to consider in terms of hypermedia. >> |