Joseph Nechvatal

Joseph Nechvatal (born 1951) is a post-conceptual digital artist and art theoretician known for creating computer-robotic assisted paintings and computer software animations, often using custom-created computer viruses based in cellular automata models.

Life and work

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Joseph Nechvatal, Fini, 1980, 4x7'

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Joseph Nechvatal Orgiastic abattOir

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Joseph Nechvatal Orgiastic abattOir : flawless ignudiO 2004 computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas 224x168cm

Joseph Nechvatal was born in Chicago. He studied Fine Art and Philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Cornell University and Columbia University, where he studied with Arthur Danto while serving as the archivist to the minimal composer La Monte Young and regularly attending the Mudd Club. From 1979, he exhibited his work in various not-for-profit venues and solo art exhibitions in New York City, primarily at the Brooke Alexander Gallery and Universal Concepts Unlimited. He has also exhibited regularly in Paris, Cologne, Alalst, Belgium, Lund and Munich and has participated in many museum exhibitions around the world. His palimpsest like graphite drawings and politically charged punk photo-mechanical artworks established his career in New York City in the early 1980s. During that period he was associated with the artist group Colab and helped establish the non-profit cultural space ABC No Rio. In 1983 he co-founded the avante-garde audio project Tellus.

Nechvatal began using computers to make "paintings" in 1986. Around that time he created an experimental opera called XS: The Opera Opus (1984-5) with the No Wave musical composer Rhys Chatham. From 1991–1993 he was artist-in-residence at the Louis Pasteur Atelier in Arbois, France and at the Saline Royale/Ledoux Foundation's computer lab. There he worked on The Computer Virus Project, which was an artistic experiment with computer viruses and computer animation.

In 1999 Nechvatal obtained his Ph.D. in the philosophy of art and new technology concerning virtual reality at Roy Ascott's Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA), University of Wales College, Newport, UK (now restructured as the Planetary Collegium at the University of Plymouth). There he developed his central conceptual contribution to art theory: the "viractual". For Nechvatal, the viractual consists of that which results from the blending of computational virtual procedures and spaces with ordinary viewable spaces and objects. Such a blending indicates the subsequent emergence of a new topological cognitive-visiual space which he calls "viractuality"; the space of connection betwixt the computed virtual and the uncomputed corporeal world. For Nechvatal, with the increased augmentation of the self and art via micro-electronics feasible today, the actual may co-exist with the virtual and the organic fuse with the computer-robotic.

In 2002 he extended that experimentation into viral artificial life through a collaboration with the programmer Stephane Sikora of music2eye. This work, generally called the Computer Virus Project II, was informed and inspired by the a-life work of John Horton Conway, particularly Conway's Game of Life, and by the general cellular automata work of John von Neumann and by the genetic programming algorithms of John Koza.

In 2005 Nechvatal exhibited a wide array of Computer Virus Project II works (computer-robotic paintings, digital prints, a digital audio installation and two live electronic virus-attack installations) in a solo show called cOntaminatiOns at Le Chateau de Linardie in Senouillac, France. His work has been collected by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Moderna Musset in Stockholm and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. His work was also included in Documenta VIII.

In 2006 Nechvatal received a mini-retrospective exhibition entitled Contaminations at the Butler Institute of American Art's Beecher Center. Nechvatal has also contributed to avant-garde digital audio work with his viral symphOny, a collaborative musical symphony created by using his computer virus software at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University. Nechvatal pursued his viractual ideas as coordinator for the first International CAiiA Research Conference, Consciousness Reframed: Art and Consciousness in the Post-Biological Era (July 1997). This conference looked at new developments in art, science, technology and consciousness. Nechvatal teaches art theories of the viractual at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (SVA) and at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Critical evaluation

Art historian Donald Kuspit has written in his essay The Matrix of Sensations that Nechvatal's digital painting demonstrates that "there are more possibilities of freedom in digital art — that is, the "mental elements" are "free[r] to enter into various combinations" and thus to be manipulated — than in architecture, painting and sculpture." Frank Popper states in his book From Technological to Virtual Art that Nechvatal's computer virus work is important to the history of art as it has advanced the use of digital technology and artificial intelligence, while defending and preserving the values of formal painting; such as the introspective reflection gained through stillness and the use of natural light.

Joe Lewis, in the March 2003 issue of Art in America, (pp.123-124) wrote: "in the artist/theorist tradition of Robert Smithson, Joseph Nechvatal is a pioneer in the field of digital image making who challenges our perceptions of nature by altering conventional notions of space and time, gender, and self. [...] Nechvatal successfully plunged into the depths where art, technology and theory meet." Nechvatal successfully plunged into the depths where art, technology and theory meet." Joseph Nechvatal's digital paintings conjure up an enigmatic world of almost dreadful depth – a depth that signals the dynamic critical intricacy of a contemporary practice engaged in the fragile wedding of image production and image resistance. His computer-robotic assisted paintings are made up of an oddly excessive concoction of ambiguous sexual body parts (morphed from both sexes) and expressions of political ire; thereby exploring the theme of allegory which addresses the global influence of the viral form. Moreover, Nechvatal’s art evokes a process of self-sampling and psychic self-mixing that apes, yet critiques, the ideological compositional devices engaged in by mainstream media, which it uses to create seemingly objective, continuous permutations of representational meaning. But Nechvatal also brings a subversive reading to computational media by presenting an artistic hyper-self-consciousness that articulates contemporary concerns regarding safety, truth, identity and objectivity.

References

• Donald Kuspit The Matrix of Sensations VI: Digital Artists and the New Creative Renaissance
• Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito The Edge of Art, Thames & Hudson Ltd, p. 213
• Christiane Paul Digital Art, Thames & Hudson Ltd, pp. 57-58
• Donald Kuspit Arte Digital y Videoarte, Circulo de Bellas Artes Madrid, pp. 33-35, color illustrations 2,3&4
• Robert C. Morgan Digital Hybrids, Art Press volume #255, pp. 75-76
• Frank Popper From Technological to Virtual Art, MIT Press, pp. 120-123
• Alan Liu The Laws of Cool, Chicago Press, pp. 331-336 & 485-486
• Robert C. Morgan Voluptuary: An algorithic hermaphornology, Tema Celeste Magazine, volume #93, p. 94
• Joe Lewis Joseph Nechvatal at Universal Concepts Unlimited, Art in America Magazine, March 2003, pp.123-124
• Bruce Wands Art of the Digital Age, London: Thames & Hudson, p. 65
• Margot Lovejoy Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age Routledge 2004
• Willoughby Sharp Joseph Nechvatal, Machine Language Books, 1984, 74 pages
• Alan Moore and Marc Miller, eds., ABC No Rio Dinero: The Story of a Lower East Side Art Gallery (Collaborative Projects, NY, 1985)
• Brandon Taylor Collage Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006, p. 221
• Ebon Fisher Wigglism Leonardo Journal Vol. 40, Number I, p.40, color image p.43
• Wayne Enstice & Melody Peters, Drawing: Space, Form, & Expression, New Jersy: Prentice Hall, pp.312-313
• Robert C. Morgan Nechvatal’s Visionary Computer Virus in Gruson, L. ed. 1993. Joseph Nechvatal: Computer Virus Project. Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans: Fondation Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, pp. 8-15

External links

• Joseph Nechvatal's website
• Tellus Audio Magazine
• music2eye
• The Institute for Electronic Arts
• Viractualism defined at CTheory
• example of red viral attack in the computer fine arts collection
• Interview with Joseph Nechvatal
• Nechvatal's Ph.D. dissertation Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances' : A Study of the Affinity Between Artistic Ideologies Based in Virtual Reality and Previous Immersive Idioms
• Artist Statement on Digital Painting and Artificial Life