Myron turner artist biography

Myron Turner

Myron Turner is a multi-media artist whose work has combined photography, lightboxes, printmaking and computers.

Animal
Locomotion builds on the tensions and paradoxes inherent in this
polarity. I already was a strong progammer, and I was drawn to programming languages; this I also attribute to my interest in languages and their structures.

He has exhibited in public galleries and artist run centers throughout Canada, as well as in the United States and South America. But I do think there is the additional problem that net art is still in its beginnings and that artists working in net art forms still must find ways to deal with issues that engage viewers outside it current limited circle.

Some of my works in this area are BigQuestions.com at http://www.room535.org/bigQuestions.com/ and Bstat Zero at http://bstatzero.org/

3.
AdC:
What kind of meaning have the new technologies and the Internet to you,
are they just tools for expressing your artistic intentions, or have they rather an ideological character, as it can be found with many “netartists”, or what else do they mean to you?
MT:
My work is not specifically political.

4.
AdC:
Many “Internet based artists” work on “engaged” themes and subjects, for instance, in social, political, cultural etc concern.
Which contents are you particularly interested in, what are the subjects you are working on and what is your artistic message(s), if you have any, and what are your personal artistic visions for future artworking (if you have any).
MT:
I have a vision of the Internet as an imaginative space, like a vast architectural space, which we can’t see all at once, and when we are inside it we are compelled to imagine its shape and extent, which keeps changing as we move through it.

5.
AdC:
“Art on the net” has the advantage and the disadvantage to be located on the virtual space in Internet which defines also its right to exist.
Do you think, that “art based on the Internet”, can be called still like that, even if it is just used offline?
MT:
I think just by definition networked art requires the network—which doesn’t mean there aren’t other kinds of art designed for the computer.

6.
AdC:
Dealing with this new, and interactive type of art demands an active viewer or user.
and needs the audience much more and in different ways than any other art discipline before.

He is, in addition, an award-winning printmaker. Take database related pieces. Some of them make an effort to map data to visual pattern and images that have traditional aesthetic characteristics. On the other hand, it is possible to bring Intrent art into the gallery space, with works which involved mechanical or projection elements that are responsive to data brought in over the Internet.

7.
AdC:
As Internet based art, as well as other art forms using new technologies are (globally seen) still not widely accepted, yet, as serious art forms, what do you think could be an appropriate solution to change this situation?
MT:
I think I answered this at least in part in question 6—the generation gap.

He has also published three books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in many journals in Canada and The U.S.  Turner's web site is room535.org, which displays both his new media work and a collection of his woodcuts.

In addition to Timeline, which is featured here on Sporkworld, his recent work includes bstatzero, a program that analyzes and displays the web traffic on new media sites so as to show the links between art sites, and by extension, the new media art scene itself.  Bstatzero was featured on the Whitney Artport in February 2006.

Turner's career started in traditional art media (prints, woodcuts, photography), and this experience making "real art" has lent an elegance and craft to his more recent works.  Timeline, for example, is based around a technical concept (the idea of a timeline-based nonlinear editing system), but it includes images and texts which would qualify as "art" if they were encountered outside the context of a new media work.  Much of Turner's work is even more "technical" than Timeline, using data mining (for example  BigQuestions.com) and web programming to illustrate various aspects of networks and the World Wide Web. 

I am always impressed with web artists who are able to do serious programming and yet have actual hand-on art skills.   There is too much web art which fails by being interesting technologically but aesthetically sterile.  On the other hand, there are many skilled artists working on the web who produce excellent online art which is not technologically innovative.  The new media art community often ignores such work in favor of more "boundary-pushing" projects which do something new on a technical level.  I find this to be a disturbing trend -- after all, we still exhibit paintings and do not demand that every new painting use paint in a technologically new way; all that is required is aesthetic innovation).  Still, it is refreshing to find an artist such as Turner who uses web technology (for example, server-side scripting with database integration) to its full potential, in addition to having a good mastery of visual art technique.

-- --Millie Niss (2006)

You are seeing this because the administrator of this website has set up Anubis to protect the server against the scourge of AI companies aggressively scraping websites.

Others, however, may just report back their data; in these cases any conventional aesthetic qualities, if any, will be in the graphic design of the project’s pages, which is a decorative element and not integral to the work.

There are many works for the net which have strong ties to film, video and photography, and can be judged by the aesthetic criteria which apply to these genres.

For many of these kinds of works there is the added dimension of interactivity, and that would have to be brought into any discussion of its aesthetic qualities.

In my own case—and I speak only for work I am currently interested in creating—I like to plan works that deal with the ways in which the individual relates imaginatively to the Internet or sees himself or herself situated as the center of this vast network which can only be grasped in fragments.

He has also published three books of poetry, and his poems have appeared in many journals in Canada and The U.S. #

More info on
http://www.room535.org/

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10 questions—->

AdC:
You belong to an art scene using new technologies, you are an active representative of a genre dealing with Internet based art, called “netart”.
When those artists started who are active since a longer time, the education in New Media was not yet such advanced like nowadays, often they came form different disciplines and had an interdisciplinary approach, those young artists who start now have partially this more advanced education, but rather not much experience in other disciplines.

1.
AdC:
Tell me something about your educational background and what is influencing your work?
MT:
I have been a practicing artist since 1978 but had only a very minimal “official” art education.

I think of the comment that was often made about “modern” poetry in the mid 20th century—that its difficulties made the audience for poetry other poets and professors of poetry.

8.
AdC:
The Internet is called a kind of “democratic” environment, but the conventional art practice is anything else than that, but selective by using filters of different kind.
The audience is mostly only able to make up its mind on second hand.

This can and does cause downtime for the websites, which makes their resources inaccessible for everyone.

Anubis is a compromise. And through these databases users can gain some insight into the interconnections which occur on the Internet.

Myron Turner

6 January 2006

Agricola de Cologne (AdC) interviews Myron Turner (MT)

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Myron Turner is a multi-media artist whose work has combined photography, lightboxes, printmaking and computers.

He has been working with the Internet since 1994 and is coordinator of Manitoba Visual Arts Network. This doesn’t mean that there will necessarily be a wide audience for it. I began using computers in 1990. I guess this is an extension of and move beyond "Sea-Changes,"
where the concern is with a shared identity. Anubis uses a Proof-of-Work scheme in the vein of Hashcash, a proposed proof-of-work scheme for reducing email spam.