Interview with Doron Golan

Doron Golan is an artist with a well- established reputation in the net art community and recent recipient of a Turbulence commission. His work and life branches out to address the new media practice of his peers in a very real and personal way in his work as collector and patron of computerfinearts.com. This “initiative of supporting net arts and the artist’s community, to form a new arts publication, presentation and distribution platform” has helped him to understand/realise his work in the context of the community and the time. The following interview focuses on his work as an artist.

My first encounter with Doron Golan’s work was with his dv projects. Canal 2 ny is presented much like night-time footage from a surveillance camera, watching over “ground zero” . The sense of quiet unease is heightened in B&L Toy Trains– dialogue for 2 events –, establishing the space within which Doron locates his work: a position of “conversational contrariety”.

These works alone conveyed an unmistakable sense of the artist’s developing concerns over time, which led me to investigate the nature of his practice as a new media artist and understand the quietly expanding content of his work. His early animations evolve, in parallel with technological advancements, to his latest web movies. Centrally fixed is the “pulse” of the work, a breath, which is unmistakably human and always present, a consciousness from which Doron observes his world. His work shows a careful balance between content and technique, a place where his “wondering” is communicated with clarity.

DV: Darshana Vora:
As an artist with evident confidence in the progression of his own voice within the growing possibilities offered by new media, I anticipate that you would wish to move beyond the label of net artist.

DG: Doron Golan:
I agree. I feel that the terms net art and new media are confining. At present, I like using the term media arts to define my practice.

DV:
In looking through your website, I can see a gradual progression in concerns from a more meditative kind of address and study of phenomenon (early animation encoding works using abstract imagery in works such as treetrunk –, contort – , Julia – ) to a more direct formulation of views using video footage, both archival and artist’s own, which you call “reproductions of critical events” in the works “pecker” – , and “hollyland” – , (from which I believe “toy trains – dialogue for 2 events” is now an independent streaming video).

I find that whilst in the early animation works, the presentation was tighter and the ideas being tied in with the composition for presentation, navigational options are carefully chosen to allow/constrain participation; and now the current streaming works and web movies are possibly more relaxed, longer, real-time, while the subject matter is somehow more defined due to the visual footage which one can identify with, though the underlying message is ambiguous.

Would you like to elaborate on how your work has developed and changed, whether you are involved in working in various streams at once, and/or choose to present certain works in a particular format due to suitability, or have your concerns moved on?

DG:
I was introduced to computer and digital art practice in 1985 and embraced it in the 90’s. At the time the issue I was interested in was the new digital aesthetics. I was excited about the new raw experience of the artistic process. In particular the hyper and fast manifestation of the creative expression as a liberating force for the subconscious. Also, I was fascinated by the monitor – the light box. (I still hold on to a theory that interaction with light is both physical and metaphysical encounters with far reaching elements of the universe. And that TV sets, computer monitors and movie theatre experiences are not just content attributed experiences.)

In ’98 I started using Apple’s QuickTime architecture as my main working tool and my choice platform for presentation. I did a body of animation work in the abstract realm. The work was meditative in nature and resembled elements of nature and the outer space. (Clouds formation, behaviour of gasses, nebulas and stars) The work was all Computer Graphics. It used experimental encoding as a creative tool and the computer and it’s mechanical means to simulate macro organism ideas and presentations.

The work also served me as study for streaming and compression for my next body of work, DV based, concerns and critical presentation of phenomena’s-events of the social order.

As broadband came into present, the subject of the Internet as a distribution tool and platform for presentation-publication of artwork became a cardinal point for me and during that time my work gradually started to use linear cinematic language.

My latest project ‘the 9th-allegro’ is a 15-min web movie that among things has been produced using rhetoric of ‘cinema verite’, my next work I will be using Hebrew talking dialogue and sub-titles. My current concerns are about enriching and refining the language of my (artist’s owned!) dv work and strengthen its conversational contrariety (ambiguity).

DV:
In your Quick time movies- “Horatio” – and “pecker” you chose to leave the controls of the individual films with the viewer, leaving the work open to more possibilities. In “goal”, where the sequence of watching the 2 movies can be controlled in time, it becomes possible to alter the perception of the historic event.

DG:
‘Interactivity’ and viewer participation was important as a tool to understand and experience the new form/structure of the media. The fact that I used several (2 and more) dv source or animations was also one literal way to show duality and contradiction in a collage form. As my language expanded, I realized the need to convey my ideas within one source of media, I felt that the level of attention is better served in this form and that I was ready for the challenge and communicate the ideas within the media itself with less dependency on the grammar and form.

DV:
Comparing the B&L Toy Trains dialogue for 2 events –and ‘Canal 2 ny’ (dv streaming projects) with ‘the 9th-allegro'(web-movie), I notice that whilst in the first 2, you adopt a stance of “quiet observer” leaving the viewer with the space to engage their own imagination; ‘the 9th-allegro’ becomes quite animates the imagination with its broader storyboard and cinematic canvas which pins down the geography and personality of the characters in a way that does not allow participation in the film. Is that because I am culturally distanced from the footage, hence find it “foreign” or is your decision to locate your film geographically, significant?

DG:
Allegro is also about broadening the boundaries. Broadband streaming as well as my cinematic canvas. Geography and personalities might be important to me but not important for experiencing the work. The locality/personality is generalized and a literal layer of the work. I do not think it is the more important one. Also allegro is open and less subject specific than the other 3. Or perhaps deals with multiple subjects at the same time. ‘The 9th-intro’ – http://66.240.176.74/the9th/index0.html is more like a painterly portrait (17 century chiaroscuro paintings) and is different from ‘the9th-allegro’.

DV:
Would ‘Toy Trains’ and ‘Canal 2 ny’and ‘the 9th-allegro’ be any different if they were artist’s videos rather than streaming dv/web-movie? Besides the “audience factor”, are there any particular choices that govern your decision to show them either/and as both?

DG:
I think that toy trains, ground zero and the9th-intro (dv streaming projects) differ from artists’ video not only because they are subject to view by computer and monitor. (Whether it is the web or a local station, the work is also played from a computer hard drive using the QuickTime architecture, browser based or stand alone application). Technically, streaming the encoded data is important aspect of the work. But visually – the use of compression to break down the image, elevating the pixels to show as the fundamental element, ideas that reflect expressionist and painterly concepts, I don’t think that video had addressed those concerns. Truth is that I am more interested (and with broadband) in blurring the lines between computer and video work. I think that with my latest work the 9th-allegro (a movie), the work could be looked at as computer and/or film &video work.

DV:

Please can you say more about your use of “conversational contrariety ” .

DG:
The ‘subtle applications’ along my work are my beliefs and observations. I think that as I have been growing up observing ‘objectivity’ and ‘truth’, I found out that reality exists in multiple and fundamental numbers and levels. I have been trying to position the work in that space. Between fusion and confusion, between the serious and the absurd. I’d like the viewer stay in that space, but many choose to call their own interpretation. What I am trying to express through my work is that history and events are time and place related. They are mirrored images and not the real thing – not the grand reality. Assembling ‘charged’ contextual imagery in an absurd, perhaps surprising and somewhat contradictory way and this is all part of the language and the challenge of the work. What I am hoping for is to bring across utopian ideas in a context of uncertainty and wondering. Imposing an extravagant, showy presentation of the work (In the 9th-allegro – Beethoven for one) adds a layer of absurdity to the work but also serves the purpose of expressing the idea of grandiose objectivity. I think that the most important thing about the work is the overall feel and less important is the specific content.