Tell me about yourself, where you live and your background/lifestyle
I live in Quincy, Massachusetts, USA. Quincy borders Boston to the South, on the US East Coast. I live on the coast too, in an old New England neighborhood. I’m married. My husband and I have 2 children, daughter 15 and son 11, colonial style house (built in 1920s), 2 car garage & 2 cars, small yard and swimming pool. Ours is the typical dual income US suburban family life. Except that I’m no longer working a full time job. I quit 2 years ago to explore my artistic talents.
Now I’m a software engineer and digital artist focused on Internet Art. I have19 years experience in information systems application development and in software development. In 1995 I began studying digital art at Massachusetts College of Art. During the autumn of 1996 I was the Resident Artist for the DoWhile Studio, in Boston. There I explored many technical areas and learned to appreciate the artist’s responsibility to the community. In 1997 I started my company, Pixelyze, which specializes in web development and digital art.
Since then I’ve been a member of the technical team for artnetweb http://www.artnetweb.com/ and regularly collaborate with other Internet artists. I’ve exhibited at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center and at the Harriet Tubman House Gallery in Boston. I’ve also perform in collaborative online venues, including New York city's fakeshop and Austria's ARS Intertwindness. In addition to the pieces online at The PROCESS Art-in-Progress virtual gallery, http://progress.ukonline.co.uk/, my work is also featured in the US e-zine, Moondance, http://www.moondance.org/Summer98/Art/art.htm, in the SWARM collaboration for Austria's ARS Electronica Infowar, http://www.thing.net/~rdom/swarm.html , and my commissioned web art, "With Liberty and Justice for All", is featured in the British e-zine frAme. I was also recently quoted and photographed in a front page New York Times article on Hacktivism. http://custwww.xensei.com/users/carmin/scrapbook/articles/nyt103198/31hack.html Art activism has become very important to me. NYTimes’ coverage of FloodNet, has led to many other interviews.
My resume contains more details: http://www.pixelyze.com/users/carmin/ckresume.htm
Who first influenced you artistically?
A childhood friend, Scott Façon, influenced me most artistically. I had already shown a talent for portraiture and abstract/psychedelic posters. Scott did beautiful surreal drawings and paintings. I loved his work, and tried to imitate him. He introduced me to artists like Dali, Escher, Vermeer, and photographer, Jerry Uelsmann. I loved the absurd attention to detail in light & shadow and form that these artists mastered. I also liked the geometric patterns by Mondrian, etc. Although I appreciated the art, I didn’t care for the vague dreamy paintings by Monet, or the hard edged abstracts by Picasso.
What first attracted you to the Internet?
I was a programmer at a large high tech company. E-mail was mandatory at work, so the Internet was an edict, rather than a choice.
I bought my PC, a 90 MHz Pentium, in Feb. 1995. I didn’t have www access at work at that time. I love new tech and couldn’t wait to try out Netscape 1 and this new World Wide Web thang. I loved it! The ability to communicate world wide via text and images, collapsing time and distance, was absolutely fantastic! I could see the world was changing rapidly, and this web thang was a major catalyst.
Does the Internet allow you to show your work as you would like: How could it be improved to suit you?
Pixels are my natural medium. The net is my favorite venue. I chose to focus my artwork on the net, so it allows me to show my work as I would like, although that the fine detailed work I do is lost online due to compression. I enjoy applying the technology in my artwork. Working within the myriad limitations challenges me. I like Internet technology to be creatively pushed, but not abused or wasted. The work I do for the web is geared to the technology, as I understand it. I typically want to want the work to meet the LCD, so that at least 80% of the computers, graphical browsers and I-net connections can experience my work somewhat closely to the way I see it on my own screen. Of course this assumes a good graphics board, but if you’re looking at art online, you gotta have good graphics. I know that not everyone has a good graphic board in their computer, but I can’t compromise on that point.
I can’t wait for better transfer rates. For example I have a multimedia project that I want to do as I-net art. But the audio and animation would be such a bear, that I don’t even feel like working on it – yet. The best improvements would be reliable interoperability and code languages. It would be so wonderful to just need to code one version of a website and know that version runs on 80% of the graphical browsers and platforms.
I recently saw a show about a fractal compression method. The result was amazing. I wish there were a compression method that gave higher quality images that download quickly, but that aren’t resizable after they have been compressed. That way the value of the original isn’t lost, but the quality of the detail work can still be appreciated.
What kind of artwork do you expect to be doing in the next 12 months or so?
I will continue working as an electronic civil disobedience (ecd) art activist. In Jan. ‘99 the FloodNet performance art piece project comes to an end. The Electronic Disturbance Theater, who brought FloodNet and ecd to the international media scene, is working on a book now, for which I’m doing the artwork. My art activist focus is shifting to a new ecd project; a collaboration with Diane Ludin and Peggy Ahwesh. This one will be a virtual march website, which we’ve already started.
I’m on the web committee for the Boston Cyberarts Festival, http://bostoncyberarts.org/ I’m also the director for the BCF virtual gallery, HyperArtSpace. Working with HyperArtSpace, I have to check out as much online digital art as possible. That keeps me learning about other artists, which is an excellent way to continue my art studies in my specific area of interest. The BCF event lasts 2 weeks next May, but the gallery is permanent, and we change the featured artist each month.
I have an installation based on a Samuel Beckett story that I will complete for the Boston Cyberarts Festival. This installation explores vrml projections in a screenal reality that are echoed as cyberspace projections into fleshspace. I’ll attempt to create iterations of a Beckett scene in 3 concentric realities.
Just for fun I think I’ll be doing more HypArt. http://www.work.de/cgi-bin/HypArt.sh A friend sort of pulled me into that scene and I really enjoyed adding my 2 cents worth to the Project 26 collaborative artwork.