|
|
| Experimental Tactician. Mārtiņš Ratniks Ieva Astahovska Working in the field of digital media, in the realm of "art and technology", Mārtiņš Ratniks is at present one of the most prominent young artists in this field. And not only there. He's also one of the "golden youths" of the F5 ("Famous Five") group of artists, representing Latvia this year at the Venice Biennale. Outside of the field of digital art, too, the works he has created on his own and in the company of F5 make use of the same crafty manoeuvre - mixing signs, images and cliches from contemporary visual culture, transforming reality into a flight of fancy that awakens everyday reality from its slumber. Utilising codes from visual culture, Mārtiņš Ratniks aptly expresses in his work the "style" of the spirit of the age - games of aesthetic or mental logic, the rules of which are dictated by the possibilities of digital technology. The accustomed perceptual frame is broken down, and the newly created structures tend to address the senses in a direct, mechanical way. The artist creates works that are entertainment "products", rather than art: the language of art, transformed by digital technology, brings with it not only new aesthetic categories, but also changes of perception - movement, rather than "immersion". Instead of thoughts, we have moving images, which make the viewer succumb to being entertained, and which allow art to settle within. Thus, for example, we have the sun, the griffin and the lion from the Latvian national coat of arms turning in techno rhythm ("Independence Day ‘18"), ethnographic designs shower in hip hop movements ("HIP HOP.LV"), or else visual club music rhythms invite one to submit completely to house music, "when not only the body dances, but the mind and soul too" ("Time to Jack", in association with F5). The works of Mārtiņš Ratniks reveal a major interest in experimenting with the language of digital media, often involving paradoxical games that move away from entertainment, gradually being loaded with a very important message, or, less commonly, with "pure" social or political overtones, which, in the field of so-called electronic or digital art, tend to be very pointed. (These, too, have been present, for example in the video clip "History Zoo" for the Festival of Tactical Media in Amsterdam in 2003, where portraits of politicians were transformed into masked terrorists.) In truth, he corresponds more to the artist-as-researcher type, who utilises the internet as his "global laboratory", an inexhaustible virtual resource for all that he needs. For example, there are attempts to visualise invisible physical processes, experimenting with acoustic space, with visualisation of sound and conditions close to synesthesia, the synthesis of the graphic and spatial possibilities of sound and image, approaching issues of the perception of visual culture, contextualising in a "new" format traditional cultural signs and symbols. Among the most vivid works are "Analogue/Digital" (1999), where fragments of reality are sucked into the computer's "trash bin" and reworked in digital format, and "Sound Graffiti" (2000), where colour aerosols sprayed in a dialogue one against the other to the rhythm of electronic music, create "sound graffiti" and are turned into "visual music", while at the same time mixed codes from contemporary and traditional culture are transformed into a texture of digital and universal signs. The characteristic synthesis of social and artistic factors characteristic of the new media art is revealed in his works less as communication, but rather as reflection, focussing on ordinary perception, and sometimes also on existential generalisation. Thus, in the work "History" (2003), with very minor intervention, the artist permits the "cultural fact" to comment on itself: the window of the McDonald's restaurant, filled with an array of colourful toys and clowns, is crowned by the sign "History" (an unusual modification of the practice of ready-made art: an example of found art vividly commenting the experience of mass aesthetics). In the animated clip "103 Seconds" (2004), created for the "Living Spirit" exhibition, time is counted in the foreground, as in the depiction of downloading software, while the artist experiments with how long he can hold his breath. In visual terms, it's very simple: a person holding their breath, with a flashing scale showing the time that has passed and the time left until the program is downloaded - semantically revealing an almost terrifying contemplation on technological control over the field of existence. Another kind of crafty move is the game with apparently opposite or incomparable things, which are equated in the process of mixing - for example, in the animated clip "Bloody TV" (in association with F5). The "immortal" presenters are both beautiful and monstrous, equally "bloody" and optimistic, while the infantilism of the colourful McDonald's toys, in combination with the title "History" crowning the window, has monumental connotations. The obtrusive associations between this language and the artistic experiments of Dada, where unconnected things were strung together in "a cocktail of words", are heightened by the "foreplay" of Dada as a language of technology, and the reaction to social, mass or consumer culture, discussed in the book "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin, which I chanced to come across at this time. The only difference is that Dada was a reaction to the post-war ruins of reality, while today it is a reaction to the fragmentation and "dissolution" into virtual worlds of our contemporary perception. | |
|
Ieva Astahovska: You teach at the Janis Rozentāls Riga School of Art, where training in the classical, traditional realms of art - painting and graphic art - is carefully maintained. The digital media are, after all, something entirely different. How do you view the relationship between these realms?
Mārtiņš Ratniks: But what is the difference? In truth, the differences are formal: the tools and formats differ, but aesthetic aspects do not disappear. You can't be a good computer artist if you can't draw well. You have to be skilled at working with the pencil, and a computer, just like a pencil, is a tool. Only a more complex tool, one that intervenes at a much higher level. In our day, the boundaries between artistic media are undefined, and media are mixed. In our local conditions, these different fields of art seem not to come into contact, but at a general cultural level they do. Nowadays, the traditional fields of art "feed" off digital culture, its aesthetics and ideas. This is expressed very powerfully in painting, for example. There's no point in contrasting the digital and traditional media. They interrelate. Just as the contrasts between the mainstream and the alternative, subculture and "high" culture are nowadays no longer valid. It's all changed. All the labels that are attached nowadays no longer serve as indicators of quality in their own right. In any sphere of culture, there are outstanding phenomena and there's rubbish, and most of it is quite mediocre. I.A: Does it seem to you that the digital media will last as long as painting, for example? After all, the spirit of the age is changing very fast now. M.R.: It will stay with us. The computer is becoming an increasingly important tool in a great variety of different fields, it's increasingly influencing cultural phenomena and will change perception ever more markedly. It's happening already. Digital technology is creating new kinds of aesthetic categories. On the other hand, digital culture has its dangers - a fetish for technology. And the boundary between these two is sometimes very hard to determine. I.A: Can it be the case that in digital art, some absolutely novel phenomenon is initially not appreciated? An analogy in "traditional" art would be the advent of Impressionist painting? M.R.: In my view, it's all more complicated than in the case of the Impressionists. Nowadays, the situation is difficult to conceive as a whole, because very diverse developments are occurring in parallel. Technology provides the possibility of doing ever more complicated things. In digital art, codes from the exact sciences are increasingly appearing. Today's visual culture is powerfully influenced by the internet. The fact that aspects connected with science have entered visual art is largely due to the internet. For example, the NASA servers make publicly available one of the world's largest bodies of data about the Universe. If things like that are available, then many will put them to use. Likewise, a portion of the visual material seen in my works comes from the internet. I've used elements based on purely scientific visualisation. For example the video "Spectrosphere". What we see and hear is, in physical terms, one and the same: frequencies of electromagnetic oscillations, a spectrum of which we are able to pick up only a minute proportion. Of course, it can't be literally "translated": the visualisation is subjectively created, and my work is an aesthetic interpretation. But the source of inspiration is physics. In several works I've created, the essential formal technique involves interaction between image and sound. An absolute synthesis of visual and acoustic structures in my view is a new aspect appearing together with digital art. And it still contains broad possibilities for experimentation and development. I.A: In your works, mixed with signs of contemporary mass culture, we see elements connected with the traditional perception of culture: national symbols, ethnographic designs and folksongs, which I doubt are characteristic of the cultural setting of contemporary youth. In what way do they interest you? M.R.: It's a sign of the times that everything is actively being combined. Perception is very fragmented, but these things all end up somewhere in your head. And this mixing, in my view, serves to organise and link it all together, producing some kind of order in this muddle. I.A: Your works also seem very rational, consciously playing with formal and aesthetic structures. M.R.: Formal aspects are very important, since they also determine the perception of the content. If an excellent idea is poorly visualised, then this can ruin it all. But in the end, it's all directed towards achieving an emotional reaction. I.A: It probably also has a great deal to do with VJing? M.R.: VJing, just like several other phenomena in visual culture, is closely connected with the development of electronic music. In the second half of the 80s, the idea developed that new works can be created by utilising fragments of other compositions - samples. With the development of digital technology, this idea was logically transferred to visual art, borrowing certain compositional structures and techniques from the principles behind electronic music. The idea of sampling is a very characteristic feature of digital culture, and VJing is a clear expression of this, with the use of non-linear montage, transformation and the creation of new structure. In our country, nobody was previously engaged in VJing in this sense of the term. There certainly were events where videos were shown in the background, but VJing is something different: it's the mixing of visual material in harmony with the music being played at the time. The creative aspect in this process lies in my choice, my selection of visual material in the creation of various clips, and the mixing of the videos themselves. I use as video material for VJing banal and cliched elements of mass culture too, and most interesting in all this process is the emergence of surprising meanings, a consequence of conscious mixing of conceptual opposites, balancing between seriousness and humour. But there's no difference between the way I create material for VJing and the way I create a work for an exhibition. Often I utilise material from exhibition videos in club events afterwards. Once, it was the other way round: in 1999 at the Metro club on 18 November the DJs of Varka Crew held an event that had no thematic connection with the national celebrations, but I made use of elements of the Latvian coat of arms. Later, a version of this video appeared in an exhibition (as the video loop "Independence Day 18", which won an award at the Tallinn Print Triennial in 2001 - I.A.). I.A: The work of the F5 group deals with "major" themes, such as truth and beauty... Is that what young people today are thinking about? I had the impression that contemporary culture, including art, largely avoids thinking and talking about such things... M.R.: Well, yes, these works came about as a reflection on some important cultural phenomenon. Probably, everyone thinks about such things. It's only that this is not the most convenient material for a work of art, since it's easier to create a work about some trifle, to concentrate on one particular aspect. To choose some definite phenomenon and create something on that subject. It's more straightforward. But this approach leaves no room for imagination. It's also that the art scene is characterised by carelessness - both in the creation of art and in the perception of it. You rush through without really taking the time to think. An overly active dose of visual information sometimes creates such an overpowering impression that one has no wish to add to it. So in our works, F5 seeks to create more space for feeling, broader possibilities of interpretation. So that in coming into contact with the work, every viewer has the chance of perceiving it quite differently. For ourselves too, when we create our works, we think and talk, but in the end, each of us still feels something different. It's not important to formulate a crystal-clear concept. If it could be written down absolutely perfectly as a text, there'd be no need to create the work at all. I.A: And mixing, with paradoxical combinations of completely incompatible elements, for example making a mandala from cat food, an Oriental religious model of the world in the exhibition "Nature. Environment. Man. 2004"? Are you using it as a technical approach, or would you rather call it a feature of the language of art characteristic of a particular age? M.R.: In a sense, it resembles the koans in Zen Buddhism. To break down the accustomed frame. It's a thrilling approach. I.A: At the academy, the digital media are taught at the Department of Visual Communication. "Visual" seems clear enough, but what about "communication" in this context? M.R.: At a general level, culture nowadays is visual: everything works and is interpreted through visual codes. Previously, language played the deciding role, but now, when technology and the possibilities for communication are becoming ever more important, and physical spatial limits are no longer so significant, it's logical that visual culture is increasingly coming to dominate: it is a seemingly universal code for understanding. It's only that each member of the culture interprets everything differently, since perception is influenced by local cultural aspects. As a result of such interaction, very interesting developments can emerge. As has happened in the contact between Western and Japanese culture, with the expression of exquisitely aestheticised pop culture in the fields of animation and graphic design. I.A: Is a "visual communication" artist connected in his or her creative activity more with the local setting or with the spirit of the age prevailing in the world as a whole? M.R.: Creative activity is undeniably influenced by both things. Everyone exists in their own local situation, and what each person sees and what they work with is often fortuitous. I chance to discover something that interests me, something that causes a "short circuit" in my head and gives rise to an impulse for my work. The spirit of the age is expressed more in connection with broader regularities of cultural development, which at the present day are largely connected with scientific and technological development. Using digital technology as a tool in my art, I come to have a link with it, thanks to the mathematicians, programmers and engineers whose ideas have brought these tools into existence. Accordingly, in art, where there's a great deal of diversity, individuals with similar thinking can be found anywhere. Completely unconnected people, in different parts of the world, can create something surprisingly similar at the same time. I.A: Do you yourself strive to keep abreast of world art life? M.R.: Of course, there are phenomena and individuals that I find interesting, but it's hard for me to name any clear authorities. There are few works of art that surprise me. It's more in the field of the synthesis of sound and imagery that I've seen things that thrill me and make me want to work in this field. | |
| go back | |
