Spiegel Online has just published a feature on generative art: Kunst aus dem Computer: Malen nach Zahlen (in German). It features work by myself, Neil Banas (who was blogged on Generator.x a while back) and San Base.
The opening paragraph strangely proclaims that “Marius Watz is always afraid.” (Marius Watz hat ständig Angst.) That seems to be a slighthly overenthusiastic interpretation of a comment I made about the importance of backup and having access to data while travelling. It also states that I’ve exhibited in Los Angeles, which I haven’t.
The rest of the article seems ok, if a tad superficial. In particular, I think the issue of whether or not generative art can be sold is a bit more resolved than it comes across in the article. The answer is yes, of course it can. The main challenges here are reaching collectors and museums, as well as to make sure the work is collected in a form that can be maintained for posterity.
See the following two articles at Artinfo for some pointers on the subject of selling and collecting media art:
Thanks to Christina Vassallo for providing me with these links in the first place.
Hahaha! I love it.
There is a narrative formula in journalism that consistently gives us bullshit cuteisms like « Marius Ways is always afraid ». It has more to do with « selling the story » by transforming daily practice into pseudo-myth. These are nothing but the same tautological tropes that have been repeated over and over for decades. I say pseudo because they only need to build you up into a myth for the length of the story itself. Tomorrow the same journalist will be writing about a banker, insolent youths, or the latest Internet fad. They’ll also have some insignificant comment, mole or stutter blown up into the major story « hook » for them, too.
I once gave a press conference in Pakistan that led to this hillarious headline : « An Artist’s Advice for the New Economy ». I love that one. Now I’m a frikkin’ economist! Oh, and they also said I live in « Aix-en-Provence, Paris, France » (I guess that’s supposed to be a suburb of Paris?). Damn journalists…
The frightening aspect of this trope is the feel-good impression of objectivity that it gives to the journalists themselves. The more you complain about journalists exaggerating the truth, the more they think they’ve nailed you precisely in your Achilles Heel.
Journalists are, in the most banal sense of the term, everyone’s enemy. They’re like pesky gnats that are useful onto to the exent that they keep living things from growing too big. Their goals are diametrically opposed to their subject, and that’s by design. Luckily neither you nor I are really in any position to be damaged by any of these silly games.
I suspect that, to the journalist, your work must be some sort of spectacular hocus-pocus — feeding off of the same Matrix-tinged awe and fear that many people have for contemporary machines. Hence the need to re-inject you into some recognizable humanist framework (man fears power of machine).
P.S. You should acutally make yourself a T-Shirt with his phrase, signed « Marius Wats is always afraid. — Konrad Lischka ».
That sounds like a reasonable analysis, I have had the same thing happen in the past. I suspect writing like that would be an easy habit to pick up if you’re constantly writing about things you know nothing about.