selected writings/ cmu Prof.'97

*JOHN STURGEON* Artist's Catalogue Statement Chrome/Osome, 1997
Confessions of Addiction, Love & Surgical Musings The history of art practice in electronic media attests to the symbiotic relationship between the evolution of technological tools and creative expression. For those of us long ago addicted to electronic processes, this relationship has proved highly stimulating, a rather hyper-active acceleration of both creative thought/production and the evolving dynamic development of the tools themselves, propelling interdependent paths of desire. Electronic art works have often provided a dexterous saber for critique of current technological culture, while also delineating the tenacious grip of the all too familiar, love/hate relationship with our various chosen techno-tools of production. Critical awareness of the intimacy of this relationship with the "double edged swords" of our art(s) reveals the profound depth of a virtual surgery performed on artist, audience, and culture - as consumers. Aside from the more obvious and all too tangible physical and psychic implications/dangers of lives spent interacting with electronic media, the foundation of our assumptions about art, its production and potency of its affects has been drastically altered. The very nature of creative being lies anesthetized atop the operation slab. Questions beckon - whom, what, why - for what end is this specter scalpel carving? What new self/culture emerges, or surgical mishap may be wrought, in this quickening of our times? Clearly there is an economic (= power/control) foot on the accelerator. The development of tools (sales) is driven by global corporate demands, leaving us constantly learning new hardware/software packages in a seemingly unending addiction for the new, better, faster - more. Creators require a modest mastery of the tools of production. For tools need to disappear, as when one no longer sees/hears the instrument, or becomes one with it. When tools become transparent, personalized territory, then there is a relationship that allows for the subtle, the profound. At the same time, the traditional boundaries of self (garretized artist) and the public sector (audience/collaborators) - public and private space have blurred. The electronic artist's poetic investigation, the spiritual stance, is too often seduced, enslaved, obliterated, swept away in the roar of the "info. superhighway". Our vision blinks spasmodically from fear of drowning in this blinding river of meaningless noise. Two second edits are cut to the beat with increasing frequency, spewing forth from the sewage "tube", which is suckled - uncontrollably. We are disenfranchised from effective strategies and means of contextual control - entangled in the Net,Moses-like avatars surfing the terrain of virtual promise. As an electronic artist - I have long espoused my creative practice as... reminiscent in an essential way to the alchemical art. There the fluidity, specificy and control of the electronic processes re-integrate cyclically distilling into finished works. The corporal life and psychic stuff transform into simulations, like an electro-magnetic Isis conjuring the body Osiris encoded. Then came the enrapturement with a McLuhanesque figment for a global, electro-psychic exoskeleton that would mirror our inner life, transforming us with an omnipresent in-communication... "vibe". "So, why haven't you answered my e-mail, yet?" -Love your addictions. Fetishize your tools - The raster's flickering enslavement of enveloping body armor and economic servitude hovers like an astral specter around the magical qualities of the portable studio experience. The laboratory as ultimate, nomadic crucible - digital camcorder and notebook (with FAX-modem, InterNet connect) in hand, a "zeitgeist" tool kit. We are off to wield the sword at the dragon's throat, preferably in some obscure, slightly primitive 3rd-World spot. The alchemically chic travel through the drudgery of airports, coddling chronic back problems and laboring with "the equipment", like some premature skeletal cyborg, longing for tele-com implants. With hind-sight, as a member of the aging porta-pack generation of the late 60's, the naiveté towards the "virtual" promise held out first by the fabled cable community, then satellite's tele-presence and now the global InterNet, was truly prodigious for its optimism as well as for its myopic vision. Now the artist, desiring redefinition as a more empowered and engaged cultural worker; yet, still allied to the old trickster-fool/clown archetype - rushes head long into this extended love affair. As in all romance, it's difficult to say - who, which or what institution/power base has best been served, benefited most, by this "hot and bothered" desire for copulation, or for the psycho-electronic wedding? Has it been a spiritual quest, after all? Is this a Holy Grail issue... or, fearing the worst, some kind of over stimulated debauchery among electrons... with the master(s) peering in from some obscure slit in the global bedroom drapery? It seems that a perpetual vacillation (cultural worker/trickster) is at the heart of this affair. Titillating questions of a relevant synthesis to identity feed the chase, lust and true love tangle in these oscillations of frequency, seduced by magnetism's so pervasive caress, promised by time's almost palpable omnipotence. Occasionally, the mad dervish balances momentarily in the bliss of quietude achieved as presentness - the Now. In this implosion, wrestled from technology, not without some spiritual labor... with the cool sweat from recent surgery evaporating, I must muse - might it be that I - we've, somehow missed some essential, educational point to this romance.
Back to Documents
*JOHN STURGEON* Populism: Report from the Field ART-COM, Spring 1983 The present tendency/opportunity for visual artists to execute works in the mass media (i.e. telecommunications) is indicative of the times. Clearly, the state of world conditions, with the violent separations in human consciousness, demand that each of us re-evaluate our societal roles with a fresh a fresh and critical eye. Artists have always performed the function of explorer/experimenter with human potentials, pushing at the edges of what is known or accepted; but, visible as a peripheral character in real time social interaction. The archetype of the lone traveler, misunderstood in his time, whose vision is to be redeemed in the future. Yet, with the current era's incredible compression of time, the folding over on to itself of realities, this phenomenon is rapidly disappearing, in part due to the "global village" effect of mass communications. In the past, this foraging in the future provided a buffer zone (time) with which society could direct and realign its consciousness, giving the necessary preparation to new trends in human experience. But, the quickening of the times seems to have altered this function, demanding a more real time, interactive role with a shorter feedback loop. In the age of specialization (fragmentation), what we acutely lack is a sense of overview. And it is in this speciality that the artist, creative overview thinker, has always excelled - that ability to create sweeping gestures that house a certain sense of mythic vision large enough to contain global views. It is not to say that artists "have the answers," but that collectively they provide an area of thought, a scope of vision, from which society can draw a clearer view of potential solutions. the "times" seem to have a way of calling into service that which is necessary for the planet's development. So, it seems perfectly understandable that we should see a proliferation of visual artists "crossing over" into mass media, as a necessary adjustment in roles, taking a more visible/active voice in society, quite often with increased collaborative elements, precisely because the times demand it. Now, we may hear cries of disdain or fears of a new "populism," that could dilute the purity of creative vision, that involvement with mass media is tantamount to heresy or treason. But, it seems that artists have always been persuaded less by definitions of their activities than by the "zeitgeist," which moves them in new directions. The current urgency demands speaking with the most efficient and inclusive voices. Obviously, an active dialogue with and use of mass media and in particular telecommunications, as the interactive/real time global communication, par excellence, is both crucially necessary and inevitable. To refuse to embrace the spirit of the times, to withhold the expertise, while clinging to an archaic, sentimental and ego-centered definition of art and artists' roles, would be an arrogance that spiritually and morally is unaffordable.
Back to Documents
*JOHN STURGEON* Artist's Catalogue Statement Southland Video Anthology, 1976 Long Beach Museum of Art My tapes germinates from expreiences, visions and dreams; expanding in a gestation process where ideas are manipulated as notations, drawings and hieroglyphs. I view my work as poetic, as a synthesis of drawings, paintings and sculptural concerns, as well as sound and time compositions. The intent is to distill the creative process into concise metaphors which convey the initial power and energy of the psychic experiences. The structure attempts to suspend the viewer's conscious act of intellectualization and place him in a state conducive to direct experience. Each video traces an expansion of my boundaries, electromagnetic diagrams of self, a continual probing and documenting with the video eye, the video ear, the whirling texture of being.
Back to Documents

JOHN STURGEON

Artist's Catalogue Statement Chrome/Osome, 1997

Confessions of Addiction, Love & Surgical Musings

The history of art practice in electronic media attests to the symbiotic relationship between the evolution of technological tools and creative expression. For those of us long ago addicted to electronic processes, this relationship has proved highly stimulating, a rather hyper-active acceleration of both creative thought/production and the evolving dynamic development of the tools themselves, propelling interdependent paths of desire. Electronic art works have often provided a dexterous saber for critique of current technological culture, while also delineating the tenacious grip of the all too familiar, love/hate relationship with our various chosen techno-tools of production. Critical awareness of the intimacy of this relationship with the "double edged swords" of our art(s) reveals the profound depth of a virtual surgery performed on artist, audience, and culture - as consumers.

Aside from the more obvious and all too tangible physical and psychic implications/dangers of lives spent interacting with electronic media, the foundation of our assumptions about art, its production and potency of its affects has been drastically altered. The very nature of creative being lies anesthetized atop the operation slab. Questions beckon - whom, what, why - for what end is this specter scalpel carving? What new self/culture emerges, or surgical mishap may be wrought, in this quickening of our times?

Clearly there is an economic (= power/control) foot on the accelerator. The development of tools (sales) is driven by global corporate demands, leaving us constantly learning new hardware/software packages in a seemingly unending addiction for the new, better, faster - more. Creators require a modest mastery of the tools of production. For tools need to disappear, as when one no longer sees/hears the instrument, or becomes one with it. When tools become transparent, personalized territory, then there is a relationship that allows for the subtle, the profound. At the same time, the traditional boundaries of self (garretized artist) and the public sector (audience/collaborators) - public and private space have blurred.

The electronic artist's poetic investigation, the spiritual stance, is too often seduced, enslaved, obliterated, swept away in the roar of the "info. superhighway". Our vision blinks spasmodically from fear of drowning in this blinding river of meaningless noise. Two second edits are cut to the beat with increasing frequency, spewing forth from the sewage "tube", which is suckled - uncontrollably. We are disenfranchised from effective strategies and means of contextual control - entangled in the Net,Moses-like avatars surfing the terrain of virtual promise.

As an electronic artist - I have long espoused my creative practice as... reminiscent in an essential way to the alchemical art. There the fluidity, specificy and control of the electronic processes re-integrate cyclically distilling into finished works. The corporal life and psychic stuff transform into simulations, like an electro-magnetic Isis conjuring the body Osiris encoded. Then came the enrapturement with a McLuhanesque figment for a global, electro-psychic exoskeleton that would mirror our inner life, transforming us with an omnipresent in-communication... "vibe". "So, why haven't you answered my e-mail, yet?" -Love your addictions. Fetishize your tools -

The raster's flickering enslavement of enveloping body armor and economic servitude hovers like an astral specter around the magical qualities of the portable studio experience. The laboratory as ultimate, nomadic crucible - digital camcorder and notebook (with FAX-modem, InterNet connect) in hand, a "zeitgeist" tool kit. We are off to wield the sword at the dragon's throat, preferably in some obscure, slightly primitive 3rd-World spot. The alchemically chic travel through the drudgery of airports, coddling chronic back problems and laboring with "the equipment", like some premature skeletal cyborg, longing for tele-com implants.

With hind-sight, as a member of the aging porta-pack generation of the late 60's, the naiveté towards the "virtual" promise held out first by the fabled cable community, then satellite's tele-presence and now the global InterNet, was truly prodigious for its optimism as well as for its myopic vision. Now the artist, desiring redefinition as a more empowered and engaged cultural worker; yet, still allied to the old trickster-fool/clown archetype - rushes head long into this extended love affair. As in all romance, it's difficult to say - who, which or what institution/power base has best been served, benefited most, by this "hot and bothered" desire for copulation, or for the psycho-electronic wedding? Has it been a spiritual quest, after all? Is this a Holy Grail issue... or, fearing the worst, some kind of over stimulated debauchery among electrons... with the master(s) peering in from some obscure slit in the global bedroom drapery?

It seems that a perpetual vacillation (cultural worker/trickster) is at the heart of this affair. Titillating questions of a relevant synthesis to identity feed the chase, lust and true love tangle in these oscillations of frequency, seduced by magnetism's so pervasive caress, promised by time's almost palpable omnipotence. Occasionally, the mad dervish balances momentarily in the bliss of quietude achieved as presentness - the Now. In this implosion, wrestled from technology, not without some spiritual labor... with the cool sweat from recent surgery evaporating, I must muse - might it be that I - we've, somehow missed some essential, educational point to this romance.

Back to Documents

JOHN STURGEON

Populism: Report from the Field ART-COM, Spring 1983

The present tendency/opportunity for visual artists to execute works in the mass media (i.e. telecommunications) is indicative of the times. Clearly, the state of world conditions, with the violent separations in human consciousness, demand that each of us re-evaluate our societal roles with a fresh a fresh and critical eye. Artists have always performed the function of explorer/experimenter with human potentials, pushing at the edges of what is known or accepted; but, visible as a peripheral character in real time social interaction. The archetype of the lone traveler, misunderstood in his time, whose vision is to be redeemed in the future. Yet, with the current era's incredible compression of time, the folding over on to itself of realities, this phenomenon is rapidly disappearing, in part due to the "global village" effect of mass communications. In the past, this foraging in the future provided a buffer zone (time) with which society could direct and realign its consciousness, giving the necessary preparation to new trends in human experience. But, the quickening of the times seems to have altered this function, demanding a more real time, interactive role with a shorter feedback loop.

In the age of specialization (fragmentation), what we acutely lack is a sense of overview. And it is in this speciality that the artist, creative overview thinker, has always excelled - that ability to create sweeping gestures that house a certain sense of mythic vision large enough to contain global views. It is not to say that artists "have the answers," but that collectively they provide an area of thought, a scope of vision, from which society can draw a clearer view of potential solutions. the "times" seem to have a way of calling into service that which is necessary for the planet's development. So, it seems perfectly understandable that we should see a proliferation of visual artists "crossing over" into mass media, as a necessary adjustment in roles, taking a more visible/active voice in society, quite often with increased collaborative elements, precisely because the times demand it.

Now, we may hear cries of disdain or fears of a new "populism," that could dilute the purity of creative vision, that involvement with mass media is tantamount to heresy or treason. But, it seems that artists have always been persuaded less by definitions of their activities than by the "zeitgeist," which moves them in new directions. The current urgency demands speaking with the most efficient and inclusive voices. Obviously, an active dialogue with and use of mass media and in particular telecommunications, as the interactive/real time global communication, par excellence, is both crucially necessary and inevitable. To refuse to embrace the spirit of the times, to withhold the expertise, while clinging to an archaic, sentimental and ego-centered definition of art and artists' roles, would be an arrogance that spiritually and morally is unaffordable.

Back to Documents

JOHN STURGEON

Artist's Catalogue Statement

Southland Video Anthology, 1976

Long Beach Museum of Art

My tapes germinates from expreiences, visions and dreams; expanding in a gestation process where ideas are manipulated as notations, drawings and hieroglyphs. I view my work as poetic, as a synthesis of drawings, paintings and sculptural concerns, as well as sound and time compositions. The intent is to distill the creative process into concise metaphors which convey the initial power and energy of the psychic experiences. The structure attempts to suspend the viewer's conscious act of intellectualization and place him in a state conducive to direct experience. Each video traces an expansion of my boundaries, electromagnetic diagrams of self, a continual probing and documenting with the video eye, the video ear, the whirling texture of being.

Back to Documents