Meeting with Jim Campbell

October 17th was a rainy day, but I was having a shiny mood, as I have met my idol Jim Campbell that morning! Jim is a world-renowned new media artist in which I think I need not to introduce much of his background. I remember the first time I have an opportunity to experience his work – “Motion and Rest Series” was in the Microwave International New Media Art Festival 2003, Hong Kong while I was still in my undergraduate year. Jim, at that work, explores the movement of disable person in low resolution LEDs abstract representation. In that work, the strong sense of exploration of the primitive element of image has blown up my mind, and inspired by it, I created my video piece – “Sliding Whites” in which brought me some accomplishment and keeps motivate me to further my art career. Campbell has indirectly encouraged me via his work, and today, having a chance to meet him is really my great pleasure.

After introducing myself and telling him the story about Sliding Whites, of course, I showed it to him, and I am glad he likes it. Riding on my work, we have a discussion about the analogue age and digital age. Jim said Sliding Whites is really about analogue, which is interesting that I have not really defined the work as about analogue or about digital. It has an analogue concern, but I was come up this idea in a digital way: disassemble image into pixel – this is the way I thought, and further it to the TV cells. Yes, in my age, I definitely have the disconnection towards the former analogue media in which my thinking is highly driven by digital. I claimed myself are in the transition period of analogue and digital, but Jim disagree with I am, but he is. We finally agreed that the late-transition is where I am. Actually, my education has cultivated me to this kind of thinking in which I was exposed by the concept of expanded cinema, and have grown up with the film media; knowing its history. Therefore, I will appreciate former analogue media in a third person position rather than as a practitioner. Probably that’s the reason why I will create a work about analogue from a digital thought. Nevertheless, in the future, when people grow purely in the digital world where they rarely experience analogue, I think less and less people will still care about the tiny dots in the CRT monitor while they don’t even feel the points on the screen, as resolution will only be higher and higher. Anyways, the openness of digital thinking provides innumerable possibilities that we are all exploring, but sometimes look back to the history is still enjoyable and inspiring.

After also presenting Rainy Nights and Face Hack, we further the discussion on the interactivity of new media art. Jim has an interesting perspective towards this issue. From his interview with Work + Conversation, he mentioned there is no interaction between computer and human at all, and the real interactivity that takes place in “interactive” works is between the viewer and himself, or herself. It’s not between the viewer and the computer or the program because the relationship between human and computer is control. On top of this, he further mentioned his film background leading his perceptual concern of the cinematic experience in which he does not think there is any interactive work can provoke an immersion level that film does. Moreover, he thinks that interactivity, theoretically should let it happens more, however, always happens less. Eventually, that is what turns him off, and he said that there are numerous motion detection and tracking interactive works out there, where he thinks it has already over-explored, and nothing has left for us to do. Moreover, he said the good thing about interactivity is the openness, which opens to the viewers’ doing, but the bad thing about that is sometimes it is so open that it is not saying or expressing anything. And, a lot of his works have deal with personal and emotional experience he had, which is what he does not find in any interactive work.

In my perspective, this is the whole point about what is interactivity exploring, and what is inherent in it. It maybe truth that there are difficulties for us to employ interactivity to express personal experience in which viewers can perceive, and what Jim was talking about is the interaction within oneself with similarity of cinematic experience. This is another degree of interaction. However, I do think what interactive works can provide in the interaction is what the former non-interactive media cannot achieve, for instance, the openness, the body experience, the social communication, the manipulation of authorship, the mediated situation, the cyber-network relationship and so on. There are diverse directions of various genres of interactivity in which practitioners are all working with it along with their own emphasis. There are, of course, good works or bad works, and some will say something, but some are not; some are saying something alternative, which sounds like saying nothing. Nevertheless, I think we lack of language of it, or we need not to have it otherwise, and this is what makes it interesting for exploration. An earlier discussion with Ellen Pau in Hong Kong, we questioned if there is a disability of new media art to pursue personal and emotional content. I think it is not exclusively a Yes for this question. At least Jim’s works are profound in this area though it is not interactive in general terms. So, the humanity of new media art to me is rare rather than nothing. There are cases but not every work gives. I believe interactivity has it own aesthetic, which is diverse and multi-disciplinary, and trigger alternative human experience.

Jim further describes his creative process with instances of his low-resolution works in which some of them he spent two years to work on that before he really started finding content that fit the works, and in fact “the Motion and Rest Series” is the first content that match the medium. Moreover, the work with plastic glass (I guess he meant “the Church On Fifth Avenue”), which he likes it a lot; it is an exploration, but it doesn’t touch him like “the Motion and Rest Series”, because it is also about the image and the street scene that kind of things. Anyhow, he thinks it must take long time for it, and he sometimes suggestion students that don’t always work with one work with an idea. If you have an idea that is about technical or conceptual of the medium, don’t only do one work, because that one work is just the beginning of the exploration. Take it further to something that really mean something to you with the content.