Q&A With Paul Slocum, One in all Digital Artwork’s First Champions

This previous week, Paul Slocum celebrated 20 years of And/Or gallery, a pioneering area for the exhibition of latest media artwork. Based in 2006 with a present that includes works by Tom Moody and Saskia Jorda, Slocum’s advert hoc gallery grew to become a house for outsider artists exploring the slicing fringe of artwork made with computer systems and the web. Many of those artists, like Cory Arcangel and Petra Cortright, have come to outline the primary waves of computer- and internet-based artwork and have loved important institutional recognition.

But Slocum is an outlier, seemingly unconcerned with the vagaries of the artwork market or the search for institutional stamps of approval. Over the previous 20 years, his deal with celebrating and preserving the fringes of inventive web subcultures has been central to his work as a gallerist, artist, and restorer.

For this week’s version of Hyperlink Rot, I sat down with Slocum to speak in regards to the development of the gallery, his first pc, and the trick to promoting digital artwork sustainably.

Shanti Escalante-De Mattei: What have been your first interactions with computer systems?

Paul Slocum: Texas Devices is big in Dallas, the place I grew up, and my dad labored for TI. Once I was in third or fourth grade, I took a category at a close-by faculty sponsored by Texas Devices as a result of that they had a category on the TI-99. I used to be obsessed. I used to be staying late, simply studying every thing I may. After that, I used to be really programming stuff on the Atari 2600 sport console. When the Commodore 64 dropped in value—I feel it was round 1984 or ’85—it dropped to love $200, and that’s when lots of people obtained theirs, and that’s once I obtained mine. Then I had entry to one thing the place I may actually perform a little extra severe programming. And I simply beloved it.

What was programming for you at that age? When did you begin to see programming within the context of artwork?

I used to be making generative music, generative graphics, I made video games. I bear in mind I made a factor that performed the Ghostbusters theme music. I by no means actually noticed stuff in museums. Actually, the largest inspiration for me, by far, was PBS. Once I was a child, I submitted a generative artwork program to 3-2-1 Contact journal, which was put out by the Tv Workshop that does Sesame Road. I obtained one printed. Then PBS used to point out Alive from Off Middle, the place they confirmed video artwork. There was additionally one known as Body of Thoughts, an area present that I feel ran all through Texas, they usually additionally confirmed video artwork. I might file it on VHS tapes and watch it time and again. In order that was actually my huge artwork inspiration once I was youthful.

In a while, I’d begin posting what I used to be doing on my web sites and other people started to achieve out to me, saying that a few of the stuff I used to be making needs to be in a gallery or museum. Then I began getting reveals. I obtained an artwork residency and free hire for a yr. My buddy Lauren Grey and I began doing these audiovisual performances known as https://www.qotile.internet/treewave.html—a lot of the music and visuals have been coded by me on an Atari 2600 sport console and a Commodore 64 pc—and we have been getting flown out to Europe to do that fairly usually.

What was occurring in Europe at the moment [early 2000s]?

I used to be seeing these areas that have been a mix of DIY but additionally considerably skilled, doing stuff associated to digital artwork, and I hadn’t actually seen that earlier than. There was a giant occasion known as Read_Me in 2004 in Denmark that I participated in, and that launched me to lots of people within the digital artwork scene.

How did you go from making work to curating it?

I needed to begin a efficiency artwork sequence, and I ended up doing a present with Cory Arcangel associated to his Tremendous Mario Clouds. Then Lauren [Gray] obtained the concept to begin a gallery as a result of she took a category on operating one. She discovered an area in Dallas, I obtained concerned, after which she obtained busy with different issues. Because it went on, it grew to become my factor. I lived behind the area.

I’m inquisitive about what it was prefer to see the shift from digital artwork as programming to one thing that was then referencing and appropriating options of the web.

Nicely, our first present was Tom Moody, who was all about treating his weblog posts as artwork. We have been actually exhibiting weblog posts on a display. That was fairly wild to me on the time. Then Nasty Nets began, and that was form of the start of post-internet artwork to a point. Members included Petra Cortright, Guthrie Lonergan, and Tom Moody, and I began exhibiting their work.

You began seeing these web surf golf equipment, web curatorial golf equipment. Artists have been curating random issues from the web onto blogs, and it form of walked the road between creating and curating. A whole lot of what Guthrie Lonergan was writing about and making work about involved how the web was altering—notably the way it was shifting from early GeoCities homepages into social networking, what we name Net 1.0 transferring to Net 2.0.

What’re your definitions for what Net 1.0 and a couple of.0 are?

Net 1.0 felt extra private. It was folks’s private net pages that they have been constructing themselves. Net 2.0 was when firms got here alongside and obtained way more concerned, being answerable for what every thing appears like to a point. A whole lot of the paintings was addressing how company tradition was taking up the web—altering the aesthetics, and I suppose the vibe of every thing that was occurring. Olia [Lialina] wrote about this, and we had her essays on the present. She described the early web as a Vernacular Net, and now folks see that as having shifted to a corporately managed net.

How do you’re feeling just like the transformation from Net 1.0 to Net 2.0 modified the way in which folks make digital artwork?

We have been centered extra on how the entire world was altering in regard to this shift. Nevertheless it’s a change that feels extra evident now than it did then. A whole lot of the artists I’m most thinking about are posting on Instagram—that’s their follow. I like what they’re doing, however it’s very restricted when it comes to what you possibly can publish on Instagram in comparison with what you can do by yourself web site. WordPress was a giant factor as a result of it allowed you to make your personal weblog and have it work and look the way in which you needed. Artists would construct their very own RSS readers, which allowed folks to comply with totally different blogs and see updates, whereas nonetheless controlling their very own websites. That management was a powerful aesthetic part that set aside what artists have been doing.

Now everyone’s on the principle platform. That’s form of all there may be.

Possibly we should always speak about Web3, then—NFTs and all that. Typically once I converse with folks within the digital artwork area, this huge downside that’s invoked is that the work isn’t correctly valued, that it lacks a monetary base. Kevin McCoy, who I imagine got here up in an analogous time as you, framed that interval as one during which new media artists have been getting reveals and there was loads of power however there was a price downside, and that’s why he ended up creating the NFT. How do you’re feeling in regards to the monetary side of digital artwork as an artist but additionally a gallerist?

Nicely, I had collectors from the very starting. After I did my first present, a collector from Europe reached out to me, and I assumed it was a rip-off, however it was completely reliable. Collectors are undoubtedly on the market, however there simply aren’t a complete lot. By way of NFTs, there’s nothing stopping us from promoting the work from a technical standpoint. A part of what I do on the gallery is attempt to wrangle digital paintings right into a extra steady type the place we will promote it. I archive it, make every kind of notes on it, take care of sophisticated applied sciences, attempt to simplify it for a collector, after which we make editions, similar to you’d with images.

There’s by no means been an enormous marketplace for it, and there undoubtedly appeared to be extra adventurous collectors previously, however I don’t completely perceive why that modified. For years, I saved pondering, Oh, that is ultimately gonna break by means of—collectors will likely be a lot simpler to seek out. However that by no means occurred.

I see the monetary stuff as an issue throughout the board, actually. And principally, I gave up on the concept of turning this into an actual enterprise. I’ve survived as a result of I run on a really small funds, and I’m a software program developer as my fundamental job. I’m right here on the gallery daily, though we’re actually solely doing about one three-month present a yr proper now, as a result of it’s additionally my workplace.

What made you immune to the NFT second?

Personally, I felt just like the NFT factor was a bubble, and it certain looks like it was. Each time I’ve form of made peace with it… my downside is that when NFTs got here alongside, the folks concerned gained loads of energy by means of connections to museums and cash and claimed to be championing digital artwork usually, however ended up supporting solely these concerned in NFTs. A whole lot of the stuff that offered—and nonetheless sells—for giant cash is absolutely secure, straightforward work being marketed as extra progressive than it truly is.

What’s holding you motivated to do that work?

I imply, I’m nearly to chop an enormous verify to my artist, and it feels good once I do this. It will be nice if there have been much more collectors centered on digital artwork, however I’m not holding my breath. I feel the stuff I’m exhibiting and doing is essential. A giant focus of what I do—and a giant goal of the reveals—is to doc and archive this work. I’m archiving about 500 Commodore 64 video games and packages proper now. I need to help artists I feel are essential who’ve misplaced their galleries.

Is there one thing within the new generations of digital artwork that evokes you?

One in all my favourite current reveals was curated by my buddy Sebastian Demian, also referred to as Dem Passwords. The present was about this unbelievable logo-editing neighborhood. We estimate the common age of the youngsters making this work is round 15.

They search out brand identification movies—like a Viacom brand you’d see on the finish of a present within the ’80s or different small graphic animations—and apply video results to make them look totally different, then rework the sound. Many of the movies are 5 to 10 seconds lengthy, and there are millions of them. It was one of the vital attention-grabbing issues I’ve seen in current historical past, however it was arduous to convey to folks what these children are doing.

Need to shut out on any classes from 20 years within the biz?

My greatest factor is that it’s essential to maintain prices down. We discover intelligent methods to make elaborate reveals. Nevertheless it’s not for everyone. There have been loads of occasions once I thought of quitting, particularly once I was in New York. I attempted to open the area there, and I simply couldn’t work out the right way to make it work. It was a troublesome determination to reopen right here [in Pasadena]. However I’m glad I did. It’s attention-grabbing, it’s essential.

I don’t at all times love the time period outsider artwork, however for lack of a greater time period, it’s outsider artwork—and it’s simply as essential, simply as attention-grabbing. I really feel like for those who create the best stuff, it simply form of falls into place.