ICUL CTION
C o n t e m p o r a r y A r t R e v i e w
Mark Franz
Winter 2016
Also during this time, I helped Golan Levin to install Messa di Voce and had the opportunity to view official Video Data Bank copies of Nam June Paik work in my studio.
After that initial training I had the opportunity to work with several remarkable artists and designers at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. One of whom, Eduardo Kac, introduced me to the primary works and texts of what is called digital poetry, media poetry, or language art. This work resonated with me in the same way that Intermedia had by giving me a framework and vocabulary for what I was already creating. Developing this vocabulary was essential for understanding the unique problems and methods that existed in this work, and provided a way to discussing and critiquing it more specifically. In particular, I was struck by the notion that this work did not rely on language and that it did not need to contain any language at all to be successful. At the same time, I was studying non-objective animation, and found that Oskar Fischinger would give his animations names like“ optical poem” and which further developed an investigation into kinetic and interactive work. I found that these ideas have a long history and had been at the core of some popular artists’ practices as well. This gave me confidence when applying these principles in the commercial design work I was producing for agencies in Chicago, as it relied more heavily on direct connections with the intended audience.
Your approach reveals an incessant search of organic investigation about issues of dislocation, violence as well as other social constructions that affect our unstable contemporary age. The results convey together a consistent sense of unity: before starting to elaborate about
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