Chris Joseph

Interview by Simon Mills

SM: How did you came to use new media for your artistic work? How has your practice as a writer/artist changed over the last 10 years?

CJ: My first pieces of what we now call new media were made on old 80s computers, particularly the Sinclair Spectrum. These machines were very basic by today’s standards, but they allowed you to create with text, graphics, sound and programming…

As a teenager I was drawn to writing, particularly poetry, and this continued as my main artistic pursuit until the late 90s, when I began to see pieces of electronic writing on the web. From that point I began to experiment with integrating my ‘day’ job as a web and graphic designer into my writing, and very quickly this made me think completely differently about what ‘writing’ meant or could mean in new media.

Over the past decade my day-to-day practice hasn’t changed much, in some ways – I still use handwritten journals to come up with ideas, and those ideas still come from anywhere and everywhere. I still prefer working at night :) What has definitely changed is the internet, which has made it much easier to research ideas, learn programming techniques, contact and work with collaborators, and distribute the work to a potentially big audience for relatively little cost.

Stylistically and aesthetically my writing has changed enormously in the past decade – it’s impossible to know how it would have changed without new media, but over the decade I’ve gone from an output of 10% electronic, 90% print to 90% electronic.

SM: You mention collaboration in your previous answer. When working in new media where a lot of different skills are required collaboration obviously makes a lot of sense. On the other hand what kind of problems has it caused for you?

I think I’ve been very fortunate in my collaborations so far, as I’ve had very few problems. For me they work best when everyone has a clearly defined role, and everyone trusts everyone else in those roles without needing to oversee or interfere too much. At the same time, to make the collaboration as successful as possible there needs to be an open and friendly atmosphere where you can criticise each other’s contributions. So the less successful collaborations I’ve had were when there wasn’t such an open atmosphere, and this kind of collaborative criticism was difficult.

There have sometimes been issues about the different amount of time people have available for a particular collaboration, but again if everyone’s participation level is clearly defined from the start this isn’t normally a problem.

SM: You mention your work as a web designer. During the 90’s there seemed to be a perception that if you could understand a little HTML and promote yourself on the networks you could become an artist. Do you think that this seeming democratisation of art was ever anything more than an illusion? Does that perception still remain?

CJ: Hmm, good question. It’s difficult for me to judge whether more people are involved in the creation of art now than were before; I do have the impression that more people may be participating in art projects thanks to the web, but that there hasn’t been a big increase in the number of pieces that critics or galleries would call ‘art’. However from another perspective every webpage involves some level of artistic decision making, so perhaps there is some democratisation going on there. Unfortunately the tools for creating multimedia art are still way too expensive for most people, so until this changes (discounting illegal use of these softwares) the democratisation can’t really happen, in my opinion.

SM: I’m interested that you say "Unfortunately the tools for creating multimedia art are still way too expensive for most people, so until this changes (discounting illegal use of these softwares) the democratisation can’t really happen, in my opinion." With the current explosion in network based software such as Flickr, Youtube and blogs it seems that the abiity to get involved creatively online is now very inexpensive. Do you see these kinds of tools changing what we think of as web art?

CJ: I see these sites as being very useful for improving the ease of distribution of static images (flickr), moving images (youtube) and text (blogs), but I don’t see that they contribute much to improving the ease of production of these forms. There is a distinction to be made between digital art and writing, which could only exist on computers, and digitised art and writing, which use computers and the net for distribution, but could exist in the same form elsewhere, such as in print or on a television or radio. Those terms ‘digital’ and ‘digitised’ are clearly not perfect, but whatever you call them the distinction is important. The sites you mentioned don’t help much in making digital art: they do more to help distribute and popularise digitised art. Which is great, but if you want to create some interactive animations or generative musics or whatever then they aren’t of much use… you would still need to invest a significant sum in some software to do the job. Having said that, free open source applications are coming along quickly, but until they have the reach of (say) Flash then they are not of great use to those artists who want to reach large audiences.

SM: Did the bursting the dot com bubble have any effect on the online art world?

CJ: Yes, I think it definitely had an impact: firstly it sent a lot of people who were involved in (mainly commercial) online artistic pursuits away from the internet into other activities; and conversely a number of people (such as myself) who were involved in commercial activities decided to concentrate on artistic pursuits. The net result may have been that those who were left in the online art world were more interested in the possibilities of these new artforms than in making money, which seems like a good thing to me!

SM: What’s your perception regarding the latest buzz about Web 2.0 and Social Software?

CJ: I’m not entirely convinced by 2.0. For one, I’m not sure whether there has really been any qualitative change in the possibilities of social software/networking/communication, or whether 2.0 only really represents us reaching a critical mass of people who have access to the internet and broadband connections. Certainly there have been some very interesting and useful sites appearing in the last couple of years, but I think calling them or the technologies they employ 2.0 is a little hyperbolic . . . it implies a seismic shift when the reality has been a much more gradual change. However we all know how prone the internet is to hype, and if nothing else it serves to historically distinguish this phase of net development as the post-burst-bubble era.

SM: How do you see web art as fitting into art history? Do you see yourself as associated with any particular tradition?

CJ: I think web art fits into many art histories: early multimedia arts such as theatre; time-based arts including animation, film and video art; the avant-garde arts of the early twentieth century such as futurism, dada, surrealism etc., and the arts that were influenced by these, such as fluxus and situationism; concrete and visual poetry, electronic audio art, and many more besides. Web art takes elements of all these previous arts and explores them through the technological media that is peculiar to our time, specifically computers and the internet.

I don’t see myself as associated with any single tradition as such, though I have been particularly influenced by visual poetry, and by the exploration of dada in digital media, which is where 391.org is situated.

SM: You’ve recently been appointed Artist in Residence at the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University. Can you say a little about the institute and the kind of work you’re doing there?

CJ: The IOCT (http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk) is a new space at De Montfort University that exists to foster creative research and collaboration across several disciplines that have been traditionally separate: art and design, music, humanities, computer science and engineering. It encourages transdisciplinary collaboration between individuals and organisations within the university and at local, national and international levels – we have many resident and visiting professors and fellows who are leaders in their fields, such as Howard Rheingold (http://www.rheingold.com) and Steve Grand (http://www.cyberlife-research.com/people/steve). In 2007 the IOCT will also offer a transdisciplinary Masters that will be the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

My position as digital writer in residence is funded by the Arts Council, and comprises three main tasks. Firstly, to provide mentoring and support to regional digital practitioners, through workshops and creative surgeries; secondly to increase the profile of digital writing and interdisciplinary creative practice through regular Salon events (http://www.ioctsalon.com); and finally to respond to the work being undertaken at the IOCT in my own creative practice. I would encourage anyone who is interested in the IOCT or my residency to get in touch!