SW: How did you become
interested in digital media?
ML: In 1994 I was invited
to ACCAD [Ohio State University's Advanced Computing Center
for the Arts and Design] to help bridge the gap between computer
programming and conceptual sculptural forms. I was asked what
I, as a sculptor, would want computers to do. I said I would
want to feel like I could stretch everything with my arms through
the screen. I'd make gestural and organic images, not ones connected
point-to-point or interval to interval. The programmers came
up with extrusions, but had no means of printing out the images,
at the time. They wanted to keep the image in ether--what would
later be known as the Internet. But I wanted to make something
physical, as that was my orientation to making and performing
live. All I could do was make hand-made molds of the image on
the computer screen and fill it with resin. After that, I started
reading computer manuals. I still didn't own a computer and
the ones available for sale were far less sophisticated than
what I was working with at ACCAD. I taught myself the basics
behind computer thinking, computer in the mind. I felt there
was a future in computers and art, even though artists weren't
yet using computers. I took a leap of faith and went in that
direction, biding my time until printers and software began
to offer tools that I could use.
SW: We are watching your
most recent works on two TVs, a lap top screen, and a trapezoidal
projection on your wall. You've said that you do not like black
box, video art. How do you describe your work?
ML: A projected environment,
a moving image, a background to your foreground. I want to create
an inexpensive "archival library" that people can
project in their homes. I call these "treatments".
There's a message in light, tones, and sounds in the electrical
energy. In the same sense as Cinematherapy - the way we can
experience and act out vicariously through movies, as the collective
unconscious, without paying the consequences - we can use sound,
tone, and light as a certain way of being in our homes that
will rejuvenate us. I think there's something changing us that
relates to the Internet and globalization. There is another
kind of awareness happening.
SW: Early in your career
as a performance artist and sculptor, your work had social and
political messages. Has that carried over into your work in
digital media?
ML: No. If it's there, it
has more to do with lifestyle and wanting to control the programming
of our own lives, of having the choice. We should have the option
to control, buy, shop, and watch what we want, when we want.
There's this 'repeat, repeat, repeat' on TV all the time. And
'buy, buy, buy'; 'spend, spend, spend'; 'logo, logo, logo';
'good, good, good' thing. MTV is the only entertainment product
that changes its logo everyday. My kids [students at Cornell]
understand that personal branding can change everyday. You can
be a Web artist one day and a mountain climber the next. No
big deal. You don't have to be set in stone for an artificial
time frame, after four years. There's freedom there in that
kind of identity. I think the Internet is providing an "authorless-ness"
that I totally believe in. A functionality that is interactive
and a code that is provided to help everyone get up to speed.
SW: The phrase, "You
want to" is seen in one of your recent video wallpaper
piece, SKINFLICK. What does that phrase mean to you?
ML: The flip side is "to
want you." It's like push advertising, which talks the
buyer into their feelings and hooks you. This happens on a lot
of CDs. If you notice, the first things kids download is music,
using Napster is a case in point. It's their first introduction
to creative commercialism and self-identification. For kids
driving on the net is voracious. They don't worry about paying
consequences or IP [Intellectual Property] because it is free
and its there for the downloading and access is the same as
ownership. They think, 'I like this, I am this, let's keep going
and find the next cool thing, the next cool place to be.' Kids
use the Internet as an active source to create themselves. Anything
on the Internet is totally freeform. And its best transformation
is in terms of Open Source free access. Any controls will cause
a similar chain reaction we have with other media, namely propaganda
and mass belief systems that are nationalized and very territorial
and sway.
SW: Tell me about your
work at Cornell.
ML: I teach a Total Television
Show, graduate seminar called "The Blue Room Presents".
Two class titles were, "TV Talk Shows as an Art Form"
and "Body Painting Live Effects." People can see the
classes online via www.mediartspace.cornell.edu.
I just got a grant to do this class globally through a faculty
innovation group. The grant is called Tele-presence, which is
a new form of active access and in this case Performance Art
collaborations. Sun Microsystems will pitch in servers for any
city-site [educational site] that will collaborate with us live.
I'm hoping for ones in Japan, Monterey, Mexico, Germany or London,
California, and New York City.
SW: Is it helpful or a
hindrance to split your time between Ithaca, NY and New York
City?
ML: It's hard. Something happens
during the four-hour drive between Ithaca and New York. I go
into a space warp. I'm really focused in the city. I've got
things to do, deadlines, and meetings, things I have to give
people. But in Ithaca, things are vague. People don't meet with
a focus. When I leave New York, I forget about deadlines two
hours onto the highway. So it can be counterproductive. On the
other hand, I'm able to work 16 hours a day, six days a week
in Ithaca. And my time in Ithaca is extremely self-reflective
and rejuvenative. It's good to get out of the City, especially
when you are trying to come up with something that's not about
the art world. Because, the art world can be all about its self,
I think it's important to have something to bring to it.
SW: Who or what influences
your current work?
ML: Rauschenberg's White Paintings,
maybe, combined with Artschwager's fuzzy furniture and his early
Line, Table, Window, Chair book, and Yves Klein's copyright
Blue is seminal. I'm into mixing furniture with my images so
that the image is in the furniture and the furniture is the
architectural space. Judy Pfaff, and her bravely physical coming
off the wall installations `view as you go by' looking gave
me the confidence to work with architecture and try anything.
And connected to that, Rosenquist. Laurie Anderson's range out
of the art world, popularizing of Performance into cross-over
media, scaling projects and politics, and musical invention
helped me to express in ways that made me feel less crazy. I
am in awe. I also go to style shops like Moss. I like Rem Koolhaas'
futuro vision and taste… and movies: Rosemary's Baby, Demon
Seed, and Jean Cocteau's Orpheus. I get a lot of ideas from
commercials on TV. I am totally seduced by mediated images.
SW: Which contemporary
artists do you admire?
ML: Mariko Mori. Her work
is beautiful, but it's annoying that she has so much privilege,
which gives her another quicker currency. Venessa Beecroft is
also brilliant. Her work is not digital, but it might as well
be. Oh, and James Turrell. He's a genius. He does what I'm trying
to do in the sublime, but without any technology. He uses the
earth and sky, light, craters, and the change of day. Brillant,
brillant, brillant. The earth is very theatrical, and he has
the ability to frame someone's feelings with his work in a spiritual
way. He's very clear, while I'm still in cinema mode.
In general, most artists do
not impress me. When someone breaks through to show, I think
they then get caught up too fast, too much. People shouldn't
have shows more than every two years. They blow their wads and
they end up looking weak or showing the same work or creating
a kind of coping formula that will work. The art market is cruel
on the artists. There is a way artists must be cared for.
SW: So where do you see
work going in the next few years?
ML: Being inside, I'm becoming
more interested in activating architectural surfaces through
a variety of options. For example, wallpaper that changes in
the form of projected moving images and sound. It's very sci-fi.
I'd like to help people visualize their homes and include these
surfaces that create a sense-balance of sound, tones, and colors
that are transparent. It could make us all a little healthier.
I don't think that's far-fetched. It seems very primitive how
we live in boxes. I've also got ideas for authorless-ness through
the Internet. I want to help kids understand how they have an
Open Source for learning, regardless of whether they are in
school or not, and that access is everyone's right. The Internet's
message is growth and learning. It's easy to communicate with
kids all over world and those participating in Open Source are
so generous. It says, "We are giving you all Script (language)
for free. We want you to be smart and capable." Why not
make a whole generation of really conscious kids? I would like
to be a part of this change in culture.
SW: Any final thoughts
on being Marcia Lyons?
ML: Its only now in my 40's
that I've realized what I am, as an artist. It's been difficult
to become. You just can't imagine how difficult it is on every
level--physically, mentally, emotionally, relationships, survival,
making a living, struggle of family. It's such a struggle just
to be able to express yourself. You have to learn to organize
the world around you. Other people try to organize themselves
to conform to the world. An artist has to organize the world
to work with their vision.
