((PKG)) PUBLIC SPACE ARTIST
((TRT: 7:45))
((Topic Banner: A Bridge Between Art and Technology))
((Reporter/Camera: Aaron Fedor))

((Producer: Kathleen McLaughlin))
((Editor: Kyle Dubiel))
((Map: New York, New York))
((Main characters: 0 female; 1 male))
((Sub characters: 0 female; 2 male))
((Blurb: A visit with multimedia and installation artist Tony Oursler.))

((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
It might be enough. I think there's enough natural light that we don't need to fill.
((Assistant))
Okay, cool.
((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
So Garrett, you should be standing like here. Turn the light down a little. So the idea you get all the way down, Garrett…and up. Last but not least, he vamps, liberty hounds, drugstore cowboys falsely masquerading as seamen.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
I started as a painter and sculptor when I was a kid. One thing led to another, and I found myself in art school.
((Courtesy: Tony Oursler))
I was always a kind of closet scientist. That's what I wanted to be. You know, in the old days, people used to kind of paint landscapes. And the way I like to explain it is that today, you know, the landscape that we exist in
((Courtesy: Tony Oursler))
is one of technologies and information and new forms of image production. And artists have always used the vernacular, the everyday to express themselves, because this is the world in which we live. We really live in an augmented meta space of technology. And I like to work with that to express myself.
((NATS))
((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
My generation was a kind of TV generation. You know, we watched television more than we did anything except sleep, statistically.
And I think this has just kind of continued through the internet and to the cell phone. Today, you know, people spend more time on social media and on their smartphones than they do pretty much do anything else. And so it became very apparent to me when I was, you know, a young artist that there was something missing from the materials I was working with and that I needed to incorporate this kind of motion and energy and so forth.
((Courtesy: Tony Oursler))
((Artwork))
But which to choose from?
((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
So the very first pieces I made when I was introduced to the video camera were handmade television shows, you know. The idea that you had to battle against this giant corporate structure that was presenting unified information fronts to the population. But if you had the tools of the technology in your hands, you could kind of manipulate that and bounce it back, mirror it back to the culture in a simple way.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
So, I was very curious about how people move through a kind of immersive installation.
((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
Around 1991, small video projectors were introduced to the general public, and I managed to get one of those and immediately started to play around with it. And it immediately changed my life and my work. I started to project faces
((Courtesy: Tony Oursler))
onto figures and the video allowed me to animate them in such a way that they really seemed to come alive. And I thought of them as really entities, which came out of media culture and into physical space. So around 1999, 2000 and there, I began to work with projection and public space.
((Courtesy: Tony Oursler))
Nobody was really doing it at the time, so it was quite difficult to accomplish. The projections in public spaces allowed me to reach a different kind of audience. This is a great place to find somebody who's just walking down the street after work, you know, thinking about what they're going to do that evening. And then they just look up and see this giant fist on the side of a building,
((Courtesy: Tony Oursler))
((Art Work))
Flat wandering, light sensitivity to the eye, visual purple.
((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
The interesting thing about projection for me is that it allows me to infuse different surfaces with images. The classical way that we see is that light strikes a surface, and all the light is absorbed except for one color, and that comes back to the viewer's eye. And that's how we see. But if you take a surface and project imagery onto it, you now have the reflected imagery of the actual object,
((Courtesy: Tony Oursler))
but it's got an overlay of another moving image. And that to me allows people to dream in a very special way. For an artist to really communicate, they have to try to understand what people think and how they think. And I'm very curious. I guess, I'm just a curious person in general, but I'm interested in belief systems, religions, cults, superstition, psychology, neuroscience. It's all fodder.
((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
So, all right. Let's just go to the beginning again so it starts out. So now, we're at what point?
((Courtesy: Tony Oursler))
((Tony Oursler
Multimedia Artist))
I think what art does for an artist to really communicate, they have to try to understand what people think, perspective, you know. And I think this is one of the reasons that people still go to museums and go there more and more and more. It’s because it's one of the few places left in popular culture where your perspective is really respected, you know. You're expected to go to work and do this. You're expected to shop in these certain places. You're expected to watch these certain things. And when it's the viewer and the work, that's where something else happens, you know. That's not the work. That's not me. That's not the viewer alone. But it's something else that allows us to get to a different level. And that's what I really love about art.
((Courtesy: Tony Oursler))