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Hollow / Shallow

Interviews with Joseph Kohnke and Karen Kazmer

by Lester Alfonso

Joseph Kohnke is a kinetic sculptor who lives in southern California and is actively producing and exhibiting art there and until Feb. 26, 2009, here in Peterborough, Ontario in a joint show with Karen Kazmer, a medical pratictioner and artist currently living in Vancouver.  What brings it all together is two-sided exhibit called Hollow/Shallow both an exploration "of respiration in two diverse pneumatic installations."  I got a chance to talk a little bit with Joseph and Karen separately at Artspace on opening night Jan 16, 2009.

Hollow by Joseph Kohnke

LESTER: How does this work - Hollow/Shallow?

JOSEPH: Shallow is Karen's piece - which is in the back room.  Hollow is my piece and we collaborated in another show previously in Portland (Oregon) where she had more pieces in the space.  And I had another piece as well and we called it Hollow/Shallow as well but here at Artspace it worked well just to have a piece in here [main gallery] and a piece in the back [Mudroom.]  I was in Chicago and she was in Vancouver.  [We communicated] through emails, talking on the phone...

LESTER: So how did you get together? Was there a curator?  A matchmaker?

JOSEPH:  We met in Chicago.  She was showing a piece right after me in this gallery and I was taking my piece down and she was bringing hers in.  We met.  We talked about Canada - which I never really thought about as a place to be showing.. So she told me a few places to apply to.  And I applied to Grunt in Vancouver where she lives.  We met there when I got accepted there.  And we just kept in contact.  And eventually we did the Portland show together called Hollow/Shallow about 3 or 4 years after we met.

LESTER: Was it like smashing together artistic sensibilities or is it a personality thing or pure politics?

JOSEPH: It was more how we both deal with the issue of asthma.  She grew up with asthma and I have asthma - how we deal with the body, medicine and how that works...how she dealt with asthma in the body being that she's in the medical field.  She deals with patient's breathing... So it was basically bringing our ideas together and we worked with Hollow/Shallow as a concept of using air and the body.  We made separate pieces under that concept to create a large show.  Portland Arts was a large space...

LESTER: Can you tell me a bit about your background?  What do you bring into it?

JOSEPH: I basically make kinetic sculpture...  But I got into it as a kind of therapy for myself, just to get through.  My father died [when I was] in high school so it became a therapeutic thing to do art even though I never thought about becoming an artist - here I am now.  Still doing it.  And my father, he collected a lot of antiques and mechanical devices.  So I saw that as a kid and...I'm still going through that kind of stuff...

LESTER: If someone was to ask you the question "What is art?" would you then include self-healing in your answer?

JOSEPH: Yeah, I think so.  I think some of my favorite artists have their own issues involved in the work.  And I think it takes it to a different level than just craftsmanship.  Some people could say that I'm a good craftsman and not deal with content.  But for myself, I have my own issues involved in it.  It think it's richer content if you have your own issues in there.

LESTER: So when did you officially start calling yourself an artist?  Was that hard or easy?

JOSEPH: I think it's harder as I get older. (laughs) When you're young, in your 20s, [you say] I'm gonna be an artist!  Now, I'm realizing my stuff doesn't sell very easily...it takes a lot of time.  It's harder and harder to rationalize what I'm doing.

LESTER: Is there a big difference between the art scene in the U.S. and Canada?

JOSEPH: Well yeah, there's so much more funding here!  There, in the States, your gonna pay fees just to apply...and there's so much competition and even if you do get the show, you have to ship everything yourself.  There's no stipend.  There's nothing to support you once you have the show.  So you end up taking time off work and buying materials and doing the show and not selling and you're just throwing money out...  Here, there's a lot more funding.

LESTER: Your piece here specifically, Hollow, can you tell me what feeling it comes from?

JOSEPH: It's basically the beginning and end of an asthma attack.  The sound within the body...the heartbeat pounding, the ringing in your ears from the heartbeat pounding.  You don't hear the pounding here but the ringing in your ears and the blood going to your head and the wheeze of your lungs.  You can hear it all within your body and the sound of that.  And how it easily creeps up and then as the attack happens it's very high and then it creeps down towards the end.  So at the end of its cycle..it drifts off.  That's what I was going for.  Not that people see it. (smiles)

LESTER: It's almost like turning something ugly (so to speak) - beautiful by slowing it down...

JOSEPH: Yeah...people find it very peaceful to listen to this.  I find that interesting.  There's no doubt that it's kind of a soothing sound...

LESTER: What do you think of Karen's piece?

JOSEPH: I think what she was going for - this kind of amoeba cell - it's really funny how it's popping out and jumping out at you... It's hokey but it's great at the same time.  I really like it.  

[NOTE: Here's an idea: play both embedded movies at once and you'll get better sense of what it sounds like in the gallery.]

Artspace Interview
 
Shallow by Karen Kazmer
 
LESTER: How did you collaborate [with Joseph Kohnke] - how is this a collaboration?  How did that come about?
 
KAREN: Well, Joseph and I met in Chicago. His work was still up when I went in to check the gallery that I was showing in -I was really intrigued and enthralled with his work.  The notions of poetic memory in the work that I saw had a direct line to emotions in a very gentle, beautiful way.
 

As he was packing his work up, I encouraged him to apply at some of the local galleries in Vancouver which I'm very familiar with. Sure enough, he showed up for an exhibition there.  We were able to engage a bit more and realized that we had some commonalities in our work.  The main element is the idea of breathing and using air to make sounds and movement.
 
In this exhibition air-driven units operate the harmonicas and I use air-driven things to inflate and deflate - to make movement.  So his piece is more about the sound - using the air to create the sound - and I'm using air to create movement in the airbag that coordinates with the robotic elements in the work.
 
His piece is called Hollow and it is about a particular type of breathing that occurs when you're having an asthma attack.  You can't respire fully.  So you have a kind of hollow respiration. Joseph does a much better job of explaining this.
 
This work is about oxygen and breathing also, but in a shallow pond.  There are the organic elements: the amoebas and microorganisms that exist in a small pond. I just went from there.
 
I started thinking about the future, specifically that of algae. They are using it for things we never dreamed of.  We will have hybrids of the mechanical and the biological systems, so to speak, in the near future. They're going to start colliding.  I started thinking about surveillance mirrors becoming a cellular organism.
 
The other elements reference the nervous system: the way the mirrors twitch - the idea of the synapse.  You have your autonomic nervous system and then you have the other nervous system that's more responsive.  The autonomic one is the one that keeps you breathing all the time...  So there are two nervous systems in this work called Shallow.
 
LESTER: You've got a video projection coming from the ceiling and then the hole in the ceiling is jagged - is that part of the piece?
 
KAREN: The hole in the ceiling was created in a jagged way so there wouldn't be any straight edges on the projection. I wanted the projection to be like an amoeba itself.  So you have this sort of amoeba blob shape projecting onto another blob.
 
LESTER: It's got a sci-fi, almost a campy sci-fi feel to it, like Little Shop of Horrors...
 
KAREN:  It does.  It's a little bit into...the idea of a carnival.
 

LESTER: Look!  A caged giant amoeba!
 
KAREN: Right!  Come into my little peep show and I'll show this amoeba that I found!  So it has a different personality than Joseph's - which is obviously more poetic.  And then you come into this mudroom in the back - they call it the Mudroom here, which I found to be very appropriate.
 
LESTER: Perfect!
 
KAREN: This "scumbag" thing that has surveillance mirrors - depending on where you are – will twitch.  One might turn slightly.  One might twitch.  One may completely disregard you and one would be very afraid of you.
 
LESTER: I think it's very interesting to have a collaboration. I'm assuming that you were both autonomous - or did you have influence over each other's pieces?
 
KAREN: In terms of influence, I would say I was influenced a bit by Joseph's piece in the way that it would - not exactly contradict what I'm doing - but it would set the tone.
 
So you walk through Joseph's work with these amazing harmonicas calming you down.  Then you walk through the hallway here and you have a five second delay... by the time you get up to the stairs surveillance mirrors are checking you out.
 
His work sets the tone and I turn it back.  You can walk all the way through his but you can't walk through mine.  You can only circle around it.  Or just be totally revolted and turn around and leave and then go back through Joseph's installation.
 
The thing that I find really interesting about Joseph's work - he's very precise and really knowledgeable about how things should interface.  He just takes [it] up a notch to a level that is very thoughtful. 
 
My work is more, I would say, of the moment. You're greeted by this blob and its twitch... you leave. And the blob just stays there.
 
Joseph's is more about the sound and memory and mine is more about the experience. I watched a lot of people interact with this particular work in Portland.  One viewer came into [the gallery] and started to play his harmonica with the piece.  He was the only person in this huge space with these other harmonicas and I was one of the few people who got a chance to see this.  It was an amazing experience to see a work that could really get to people. I'm really pleased to be able to show alongside his work.
 
LESTER: What is your definition of art?
 
KAREN:  My definition of art   extends beyond what is presented in a gallery.  It goes out into the street and into homes and workplaces of people who don't even consider themselves to be artists. Even the small creative moments a non-artist would have are important. They suddenly have this amazing idea - they might not follow through with it, but they have this idea. It's not always the thing that you make or the event that you produce; the creative process in itself is art to me.
 

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homologies

the STEVE DANIELS interview
by Lester Alfonso

Steve Daniels is an electronic artist and professor at Ryerson University (Toronto) where he teaches courses in Physical Computing, Telepresence and Networked Objects.  I recently spoke to Steve Daniels at the opening of his new exhibition at Artspace.  The exhibition is called "homologies" and it consists of around fifty electronic devices mounted on the walls of the gallery.  The devices are nicknamed "living particles" and each has three arms.  The devices react to differences in the surrounding light.  As the viewer approaches and casts shadows over them, the arms of the devices are triggered and move like living organisms reacting to the presence of others.

 

October 16, 2008 - PETERBOROUGH, ONTARIO

LESTER: Can you describe how this came about or does everybody ask you that question?

STEVE: ...it's one of those questions with such an elaborate answer... 

Where did it come from?  I wish there was a single thread I could offer you.  It came from a whole collection of really interesting failures that guided me to what I think is a really exciting solution. 

It evolved and emerged out of this struggle with completely different technologies and similar intention which was to create objects that could occupy space differently through time.  So change their volume and change their relationship to space and people.  And I had started initially wanting to produce something that was almost materially absent: really thin wires and thin paper-like surfaces that folded.  I just rustled with it for months and couldn't come to terms with how to do it with the technology I was playing with at the time.  And deadlines were looming.  And I found a motor working in one of the buckets of parts in my studio and realized it moved in really fantastic ways too.  That spun off in a completely tangential but somehow similar kind of direction.  And led me to the final form of these objects. 

It's a big weird arc. But the thing that really captured me with these motors, unlike most motors, instead of turning in circles, they move linearly.  They lengthen and shorten - rather than roll.  And the lengthening and shortening sort of echoed the intention around the folding of paper that I was initially working with as the prototypical plan.

So I took the motor and started with it and built the architecture around it that would allow this sort of bending and folding to occur in the context of this new device.

LESTER: [I heard that] there's certain personalities that you then programmed to each one?

STEVE:  Each of the devices has it's own little computer attached to it called a "micro-controller."  And the micro-controller can be programmed using words - typical computer code that allows you to represent not just visual information but also behavioral and social information so the kind of information it might begin to develop with an audience or develop with each other.  This particular generation doesn't yet have it but they will have the ability to speak to one another.  And kind of share their experiences with one another.

But in terms of the personalities - there are very distinct personalities and they emerge from two different properties.  One is there's actually two different bodies of code.  Two different programs have been installed in different devices.  So they're not identical in terms of that aspect of them.

One group is what I would call Calm.  And another group has had this Anxiety function built into them.  And the Anxiety function is this mechanism that allows them.  To respond to the different kinds of stimulus differently through time.  So, instead of becoming predictable, they become erratic.  It just gives a different kind of feel to how the devices work.

And the second aspect that influences how they react to people is just subtle differences in the actual manufacture of the limbs and subtle differences in the electrical components themselves lead to them both seeing and responding to their world in ways that are slightly different.  Some of them tremble when they move and some of them move very gracefully and smoothly and some kind of flutter.  And that's not so much gross...difference but rather those sort of surface imperfections or details that arise as you take the part off the machine and sand the bumps you don't like off by hand and lead to these unexpected variations that also give out a great deal of character to the objects.

LESTER: How much time went into the mounting - the look of grouping them...has that always been part of the idea is having them on a wall?

STEVE:  They were always intended to be perceived as social devices.  Exactly how they were going to look on the wall has gone through several generations and changes.  As the pieces developed and as I was able to see as I get further and further on.  You could begin to see how they did respond to people; or how they responded to different variations in light.  You could then begin to sense how they might work in relation to each other.  So in some levels that came very late in the game but is really critical to the experience. 

In terms of the effort of bringing it all together though has been absolutely enormous.  I've been extraordinarily grateful over the last three and a half weeks to have been supported by nearly fifty different volunteers who have helped with soldering of parts and drilling of holes and assembling countless little objects. 

There's fifty circuit boards in the piece and each circuit board has nearly four hundred holes.  There's nearly 20,000 holes that had to be first drilled be able to solder.  So it begins to get really foolish at some point when your working on something like this alone.  And it wouldn't have been achievable without the just exceptional support that I've had from people here in Peterborough and friends in Toronto who have lent untold hours to helping me get this ready for today.  I feel truly grateful and lucky to have had that much support.

Boisterous kids have started to run around inside the gallery while we talk.

STEVE:  I really hope it's my kid that knocks a piece off the wall first.  [laughter]  It really won't matter but I know the parents are gonna be just traumatized.

LESTER: How are they mounted on the wall? Are they pretty safe?

STEVE: The circuit boards are really safe; the objects are entirely precarious.  They're basically tacked by three little stumps to their circuit boards with hot glue.  And that was both tactical and out of necessity. 

The structures of their legs don't provide a lot of opportunities for attaching.  And if you get their feet too strapped down, they don't move very well.  So they needed to have a joint rather than a connection; they couldn't just be bolted onto a surface.  And if you watch them, it's very subtle but it turns out mechanically it's really important when they open and close you can see their body parts kind of torque around each other.  I tried screwing them down which made them much more stable but their movements were just - they shuddered - probably a reflection of my horrid mechanical skills.  It became really sad.  They're kind of liberated by being only gently tacked to the wall.

LESTER: So how do you feel about someone saying that they start to feel that these things are alive (ie. organic) and therefore it elicits a love...a kind of love.  What do you say to that?

STEVE: I think it's a beautiful interpretation of them.  I think the question is "are they alive?" - that's fundamental to me.  Humans have this extraordinary capacity for empathy and will project...  We project onto all kinds of things - we project onto our favourite toasters and our dearest coffee mugs and you know all kinds of things.  So when you take something that's essentially a plumbing pipe and re-form it and animate it and give it the impression that it's responding to you, it catapults this piece of technology into an completely different space.

You know I used the word earlier - anxiety  - literally in my code, I have a variable now called Anxiety because I see them as...well they're nicknamed living particles and I want to explore what is this question?  What is this convergence between the kinds of technologies that we play with especially when we step back and we kind of realize the dual histories of our technologies - one coming out of design fields which lead to these totally utilitarian relationships through technology.  And the other, very militaristic, which is almost completely destructive.  If it wasn't for killing people and looking good we probably wouldn't have most of the technologies that we do and so I wanted to play on these edges, you know.

Is this thing alive?  What does it come from?  What is it's history?  And in a way that's why I wanted the show named "homologies" because these devices on the walls share those two histories.  They share that history of design and they share in their own way through the fact that the devices themselves were cut by computerized cutting devices they have miniature computers that are born ultimately of militaristic concern not hopefully being deployed in a militaristic...I would be tragicaly hurt if people looked at these and saw them as weapons because I don't think they don't look or respond or feel like weapons in any way.  I sort of see them as sort of as really helpless fish long before I would see them as weapons but they still share that history.

The possibility of these devices is borne on that and so I think it brings me a great deal of joy that you go to love when you look at them because I think a lot of people look at technology and go for the cold and the mechanical and the replicated and it suggests to me that the personalities I hope to instill in them might - the kernel of them - might already be present.  That's an exciting response.

LESTER: Perfect.  I think part of the reason is because they seem so frail. If it was something as mechanical but looked over-bearing, I don't know, it probably would instill fear instead of love.

STEVE: I did want them to feel, this where the second name [comes in].  The piece itself is called Sessile.

LESTER: How do you spell that?

STEVE: S - E - S - S - I - L - E which is, like homologies, a biological term.  Sessile is a biological term for animals, more often even plants, but organisms that are alive but can't get out of the way.  So, whatever they can do, they're in some degree terribly helpless.  They're subject to their environment in a way that things that are mobile are not. 

So "sessile" is a technical description of a life form a living and motile organism that can't get around.  So it can move; it can flex; it can bend. But at the end of its day, its feet or roots or body are one way or another fused to the substrate upon which it survives.  That was also a driving concern. 

So I didn't want them to look like big heavy hunks of technology.  I wanted you to be able to look through them as you could look at them.  That was a real driving element in their design and hopefully in the kinds of movement that they're able to manifest.

LESTER: So, like, I know it's a large question but what is art to you?

STEVE: [chuckles]

LESTER: Is this art?  Are you an artist?  Is that primarily what drives it too?  Is an artist curious about something,  wants to discover [something] and then just plows through..?  Is that what it is?

STEVE: I think people have a difficult time kind of positioning technologically based art forms because, again, the technology gets in the way.  And this is where the design history is so interesting.  Because a relationship to design tells us that technology should serve us.  It's made to be in service of us.  The interfaces are designed to our benefit, to our ease of use, to facilitating a task that we probably don't want to be engaged in.  And to me that's what's profoundly interesting.  And so one of the driving questions for me in creating this work was:  if technology could shape itself, what shape might it pick?  Right?  What would it look like if it wasn't constrained to be in service of us.  What if it was simply in service of self.  What if it's selfish?  What if isn't just a wrench.  That was another those layers I was playing with as I sat down and figured out what they might be. 

But I think technology like this is really exciting and really significantly positioned in terms of art because we live in an era right now where conversation and behaviour are really fundamental parts of our daily lives.  We're living in a time where there's a significant shift away from art being experienced purely as representational to art being experienced also as behavioural.  And part of this is being largely shift by Web. 2.0 technologies and social technologies online that allow people to organize themselves and construct community and relationships in ways that are truly unprecedented.  It a general pattern.  They're age old.  But in terms of the scale we can now achieve with these technologies is completely revolutionary.  And I'm very interested in that and as an artist I'm very interested in where the intersection of beheaviour stands in relation to what most people perceive as art. 

People think of art as often pictorial, although people also understand it as sculptural or formal and having relationships... To me this is the, representation isn't the word - but if you can represent a behaviour, if you can represent a social engagement.  That's what I'm striving to do here.  And I see technology or the technologies I am employing as vital to realizing that vision of exploring that notion of relationship.

When you stand in the gallery here, there's countless little kids who run and put their noses up to the devices the same way they might their pet dog and there's adults who are more suspicious so they kind of stare at them at 45 degrees but still trying to peer in to see what might be going on or if there's a secret to be revealed.  It's gratifying to see people that willing to stand that close to a technology that until that moment had no relationship with.

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