Joseph Nechvatal
Life and work
Joseph Nechvatal, Fini, 1980, 4×7′
Joseph Nechvatal Orgiastic abattOir,2004 computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
Joseph Nechvatal Orgiastic abattOir : flawless ignudiO 2004 computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas 224x168cm
Joseph Nechvatal birth Of the viractual 2001 computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
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Joseph Nechvatal cOncerning Abu Graib, triptych 132 x 66, 2006 computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
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Joseph Nechvatal was born in Chicago. He studied fine art and philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Cornell University and Columbia University, where he studied with Arthur Danto while serving as the archivist to the minimalist composer La Monte Young. From 1979, he exhibited his work in New York City, primarily at the Brooke Alexander Gallery and Universal Concepts Unlimited. He has also solo exhibited in Paris, Chicago, Cologne, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Aalst, Belgium, Youngstown, Senouillac, Lund and Munich.
His work in the early 1980s chiefly consisted of postminimalist gray graphite drawings that were often photomechanically enlarged. 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 avant-garde electronic art music audio project Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine. In 1984, Nechvatal began work on an opera called XS: The Opera Opus (1984-6) with the no wave musical composer Rhys Chatham.
He began using computers to make “paintings” in 1986 and later, in his signature work, began to employ computer viruses. These “collaborations” with viral systems positioned his work as an early contribution to what is increasingly referred to as a post-human aesthetic.
From 19911993 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. He exhibited at Documenta 8 in 1987.
In 1999 Nechvatal obtained his Ph.D. in the philosophy of art and new technology concerning immersive virtual reality at Roy Ascott’s Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA), University of Wales College, Newport, UK (now the Planetary Collegium at the University of Plymouth). There he developed his concept of viractualism, a conceptual art idea that strives “to create an interface between the biological and the technological.” According to Nechvatal, this is a new topological space.
In 2002 he extended his experimentation into viral artificial life through a collaboration with the programmer Stephane Sikora of music2eye in a work called the Computer Virus Project II, inspired by the a-life work of John Horton Conway (particularly Conway’s Game of Life), by the general cellular automata work of John von Neumann, by the genetic programming algorithms of John Koza and the auto-destructive art of Gustav Metzger.
In 2005 he exhibited Computer Virus Project II works (digital paintings, digital prints, a digital audio installation and two live electronic virus-attack art installations) in a solo show called cOntaminatiOns at Chteau de Linardi in Senouillac, France. In 2006 Nechvatal received a retrospective exhibition entitled Contaminations at the Butler Institute of American Art’s Beecher Center for Arts and Technology.
Dr. Nechvatal has also contributed to digital audio work with his noise music viral symphOny, a collaborative sound symphony created by using his computer virus software at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University.
Nechvatal teaches art theories of immersive virtual reality and the viractual at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (SVA) and at Stevens Institute of Technology. A book of his collected essays entitled Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality (19932006) was published by Edgewise Press in 2009. Also in 2009, his book Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances was published.
Joe Lewis 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.
Viractualism
Viractualism is an art theory term developed by Nechvatal in 1999. The term viractualism (and viractuality ) emerged out of the Ph.D. research Nechvatal conducted in the philosophy of art and new technology concerning immersive virtual reality at Roy Ascott’s Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA), University of Wales College, Newport, UK (now the Planetary Collegium at the University of Plymouth). There he developed his concept of the viractual, which strives to create an interface between the biological and the virtual. It is central to Nechvatal work as an artist.
The basis of the viractual conception is that virtual producing computer technology has become a noteworthy means for making and understanding contemporary art and that this brings artists to a place where one finds the emerging of the computed (the virtual) with the uncomputed corporeal (the actual). This amalgamate which tends to contradict some central techno clichs of our time – is what Nechvatal calls the viractual. Digitization is a key metaphor for viractuality in the sense that it is the elementary translating procedure today. Nechvatal thinks that in every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest the art practice away from conformisms that are about to overcome it.
For Dr. Nechvatal, the viractual recognizes and uses the power of digitization while being culturally aware of the values of monumentality and permanency qualities which can be found in some compelling analog art. A key influence on Nechvatal was Gilles Deleuze’s consideration of Baruch Spinoza – the 17th century philosopher who merged mind and matter into one material. In Deleuze’s “Spinoza: Practical Philosophy” Deleuze pointed Nechvatal towards an acknowledgment of desires’ productiveness, as Deleuze indicated how desires drive us to stir towards greater or lesser states of exalted comprehensiveness, depending on whether the thing encountered enters into composition with us, or on the contrary, tends to decompose us.
Viractualism signals a new sensibility emerging in art respecting the integration of certain aspects of science, technology, myth and consciousness a consciousness struggling to attend to the prevailing contemporary spirit of our age. Nechvatal identifies the viractualist zeitgeist as specifically a concept in which everything, everywhere, all at once is connected in a rhizomatic web of transmission. Therefore, viractual art may not satisfied with the regurgitation of a standardized analog repertoires for art. Rather, Nechvatal detects in viractual art a fertile attraction towards the abstractions of advanced scientific discovery – discovery now stripped of its fundamentally reductive logical methodology.
According to Nechvatal, the viractual realm is also a political-spiritual chaosmos in the sense that new forms of order may come up such that any form of order is only temporary and provisional. Within viractual creation all signs are subject to boundless semiosis – which is to say that they are translatable into other signs. Here, of course, it is possible to find resonances and affinities between formal and conceptual opposites. Nechvatal suggests that the term (concept) viractual (and viractualism or viractuality) may be a entrainment/grore conception helpful in defining our now third-fused inter-spatiality which is forged from the meeting of the virtual and the actual. – a concept close to what the military call augmented reality, which is the use of transparent displays worn as see-through glasses on which computer data is projected and layered.
Cybism
Cybism is an art theory term developed by Nechvatal as a sub-division of viractuality following discussion with artist Kenneth Wahl at the turn of the century. Wahl preferred the term scybism. The concept was proposed by Nechvatal for an exhibition in 2003 called The Attractions of Cybism for Fairfield University that never was realized.
As defined by Dr. Nechvatal, Cybism is a new sensibility emerging in art respecting the integration of certain aspects of science, technology and consciousness a consciousness struggling to attend to the prevailing current spirit of our age. This cybistic zeitgeist Nechvatal identifies as being precisely a quality-of-life desire in which everything, everywhere, all at once is connected in a rhizomatic web of communication. Therefore, cybism is no longer content with the regurgitation of standardized repertoires. Rather Nechvatal detects in art a fertile attraction towards the abstractions of advanced scientific discovery – discovery now stripped of its fundamentally reductive logical methodology.
Nechvatal states that cybism can be used to characterize a certain group of researchers and their understanding of where cultural space is developing today. Cybists reflect on system dynamics with a hybrid blending (cybridization) of the computational supplied virtual with the analog. This blending of the computational virtual with the analog indicates the subsequent emergence of a new cybrid topological cognitive-vision that Nechvatal has called viractuality: the space of connection betwixt the computed virtual and the uncomputed corporeal (actual) world which merge in cybism.
Nechvatal states that co-extensive notions found in cybism have sharp ramifications for art as product in that the cybists are actively exploring the frontiers of science/technology research so as to become culturally aware of the biases of consciousness in order to amend those biases through the monumentality and permanency which can be found in powerful art. He begins with the realization that every new technology disrupts the previous rhythms of consciousness. In this sense cybist art research begins where hard science/technology ends.
Footnotes
^ Milazzo & Collins 1990, pp. 3-7.
^ McCormick 2005
^ Rhys Chatham, Die Donnergtter (LP, CD), Table of the Elements/Radium 2006, CD Book, p. 14
^ Sharp 1984, pp. 52-55.
^ Joseph Nechvatal, Selected Writings. Paris: Editions Antoine Candau, 1990
^ Popper 2007, pp. 120-123.
^ Lieser, Wolf. Digital Art. Langenscheidt: h.f. ullmann. 2009 p. 87
^ Morgan 2006, pp. 75-76.
^ a b Paul 2006, pp. 57-58.
^ See Joseph Nechvatal, Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality (1993-2006). Edgewise Press. New York, N.Y. 2009
^ Liu 2004, pp. 331-336 & 485-486.
^ video on Joseph Nechvatal’s Computer Virus Project 2.0
^ Nechvatal. J. Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing (July 7, 2009) ISBN 3838304454 / ISBN 978-3838304458
^ Lewis 2003, pp.123-124.
^ Christiane Paul, in her seminal book Digital Art, discusses Nechvatal’s concept of viractualism on page 58. One of the images she chooses to illustrate that section of the book is Nechvatal’s painting entitled the birth Of the viractual (2001). Joe Lewis, in the March 2003 issue of Art in America (pp.123-124), discusses the viractual in his review Joseph Nechvatal at Universal Concepts Unlimited. John Reed in Artforum Web 3-2004 Critc Picks discusses the concept in his piece #1 Joseph Nechvatal. Frank Popper also writes about the viractual concept in his book From Technological to Virtual Art on page 122.
^ a b Our Digital Noology: Catherine Perret in conversation with Joseph Nechvatal
^ Viractualism is a conceptual art concept that indicates and initiates communions of the protoplasmic mass to virtual spatial conditions. Roy Ascott, in his essay “The Architecture of Cyberception”*, has said, “… to inhabit both the real and virtual worlds at one and the same time, and to be both here and potentially everywhere else at the same time is giving us a new sense of self, new ways of thinking and perceiving which extend what we have believed to be our natural, genetic capabilities.” Ascott, R. 1994. “The Architecture of Cyberception” In Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol. 2, No. 8, MIT Press Journals, August 1994
^ a b Viractualism defined at Ctheory
^ The title of the Ph.D. dissertation is “Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances : A Study of the Affinity Between Artistic Ideologies Based in Virtual Reality and Previous Immersive Idioms”. A url introduction to the thesis, entitled “Frame and Excess”, can be read on-line and the entire thesis downloaded in PDF at:
^ Joseph Nechvatal 2009 Video Interview
^ http://thefishpond.in/himanshudamle/2009/viral-art/ Viral Art: consciousness in concurrency with mutation
^ Joseph Nechvatal, “Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality (1993-2006)”. Edgewise Press. 2009. pp. 53-58
^ Viractualism defined at Ctheory
^ Paper read at Oberlin College in application for The Henry Luce Professorship in the Emerging Arts Position (2000) titled The Emerging Arts Lecture at Oberlin
^ Viractualism defined at BeeHive Volume 5 : Issue 2 (12.2002)
^ Joseph Nechvatal oluptuous Viractualism first published in Simultaneita 01/2003, a Roman new media arts magazine, pp. 25-29
^ Deleuze, G. 1984. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights
^ Deleuze, G. 1984. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights, p. 21
^ Viractualism defined at Ctheory
^ 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
^ Concerning the viractual span of liminality in viractualism, Nechvatal refers to two very different, yet complimentary, concepts: entrainment and grore. Entrainment, in electro-physics, is the coupling of two or more oscillators as they lock into a commonly sensed interacting frequency. In alchemical terms an grore (an old form of the word agrger) is a third concept or phenomenon which is established from conjoining two different elements together.
^ Cybism Defined
^ Cybism in Mexico
References
Richard Milazzo and Tricia Collins, Deprivileging Critique, Editions Antoine Candau, 1990.
Carlo McCormick, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 19741984, Princeton University Press, 2006.
Christiane Paul, Digital Art, Thames & Hudson Ltd.
Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. San Francisco: City Lights, 1984.
Rhys Chatham, Die Donnergtter (LP, CD), Table of the Elements/Radium CD Book, 2006.
Willoughby Sharp, Joseph Nechvatal, Machine Language Books, 1984.
Frank Popper, Ecrire sur l’art : De l’art optique a l’art virtuel, L’Harmattan 2007.
Robert C. Morgan, Digital Hybrids, Art Press volume #255.
Wolf Lieser. Digital Art. Langenscheidt: h.f. ullmann. 2009. pp. 81 & 87
Alan Liu, The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information, University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Joe Lewis, Joseph Nechvatal at Universal Concepts Unlimited, Art in America Magazine, March 2003.
Joseph Nechvatal, Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality (19932006). Edgewise Press. 2009.
Joseph Nechvatal, Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2009
Joseph Nechvatal, Selected Writings. Paris: Editions Antoine Candau, 1990
Our Digital Noology: Catherine Perret in conversation with Joseph Nechvatal.
Cybism Defined.
Joseph Nechvatal Voluptuous Viractualism published in Simultaneita (01/2003), a Roman new media arts magazine, pp. 2529.
Viractualism defined at Ctheory.
Paper read at Oberlin College in application for The Henry Luce Professorship in the Emerging Arts Position (2000) titled The Emerging Arts Lecture at Oberlin.
iral Art: consciousness in concurrency with mutation by Himanshu Damle
Video on Joseph Nechvatal’s Computer Virus Project 2.0
Joseph Nechvatal 2009 Video Interview
Further reading
John Johnston, The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI, MIT Press, 2008, cover
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
Frank Popper, From Technological to Virtual Art, MIT Press, pp. 120123
Johanna Drucker, Joseph Nechvatal : Critical Pleasure
Robert C. Morgan, Voluptuary: An algorithic hermaphornology, Tema Celeste Magazine, volume #93, p. 94
Bruce Wands, Art of the Digital Age, London: Thames & Hudson, p. 65
Robert C. Morgan, Laminations of the Soul, Editions Antoine Candau, 1990, pp. 2330
Margot Lovejoy, Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age Routledge 2004
Joseph Nechvatal, Immersive Excess in the Apse of Lascaux, Technonoetic Arts 3, no3. 2005
Johanna Drucker, Joseph Nechvatal : Critical Pleasure, Redaktion Frank Berndt, 1996, pp. 1013
Mario Costa, Phenomenology of New Tech Arts, Artmedia, Salerno, 2005, p. 6 & pp. 36 38
Dominique Moulon, L’art numerique: spectateur-acteuret vie artificielle, Les images numeriques #47-48, 2004, pp. 124125
Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Lrt loque virtuel, in Frontires esthtiques de lrt, Arts 8, Paris: Larmattan, 2004
Brandon Taylor, Collage, Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2006, p. 221
Dominique Moulon, Confrence Report : Media Art in France, Un Point d’Actu, L’Art Numerique, pp. 124125
Edmond Couchot, Des Images, du temps et des machines, dit Actes Sud, 2007, pp. 263264
Fred Forest, Art et Internet, Editions Cercle D’Art / Imaginaire Mode d’Emploi, pp. 48 51
Wayne Enstice & Melody Peters, Drawing: Space, Form, & Expression, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, pp. 312313
Ellen K. Levy, Synthetic Lighting: Complex Simulations of Nature, Photography Quarterly (#88) 2004, pp. 79
Marie-Paule Ngre, Des artistes en leur monde, volume 2, la Gazette de l’Hotel Drout, 2008, pp. 8283
Corrado Levi, andata cos: Cronaca e critica dell’arte 1970-2008, Joseph Nechvatal intervistato nel suo studio a New York (198586), pp. 130135
Donald Kuspit, Del Atre Analogico al Arte Digital in Arte Digital Y Videoarte, Kuspit, D. ed., Consorcio del Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, pp. 3334 & pp. 210 212
Robert C. Morgan, Nechvatal Visionary Computer Virus, in Gruson, L. ed. 1993. Joseph Nechvatal: Computer Virus Project, Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans: Fondation Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, pp. 815
Sarah J. Rogers (ed), Body Mcanique: Artistic Explorations of Digital Realms, Columbus, Ohio, Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University
Edward A. Shanken, Art and Electronic Media. London: Phaidon, 2009. ISBN 9780714847825, pp. 42, 285, 160
External links
Joseph Nechvatal’s website
Joseph Nechvatal’s Parisian Gallery
Examples of Joseph Nechvatal’s noise music at UbuWeb
music2eye
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
– John LeKay interview of Joseph Nechvatal
Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine audio archive at UbuWeb
Our Digital Noology: Catherine Perret in conversation with Joseph Nechvatal
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