forum: Interview with Sean Eisenstein
Sean Eisenstein is a audio-visual technology artist and performer. Sean is currently studying for an MRES in Digital Art and Technology at the i-dat, Plymouth. He produces both performed and interactive works, as well as a range of mutant sub species in between. His main interests are in the phenomenological exploration as well as the historical/cultural value of states on non-ordinary reality, namely: drug induced hallucination, the schizophrenias and shamanic, drum-beat induced trance. Sean is an oneironaut.
You can have a look at one of his last projects here.
Sean - first of all let me thank you for taking part in this online interview!
Could you outline how you have applied advanced ICT methods in your research, giving examples of particular projects or research you are currently engaged in?
I know that collaboration with live musicians and dancers sporting wearable technology is central to your practice: could you outline how advanced ICT methods have allowed you to progress in your research in ways that would not have otherwise been possible?
Advanced CIT methods...
Advanced Information Communication Technology in research? Firstly alot of the technology I used is old 80's grey boxes with flashy lights and other similar dino-trons, so I don't know how advanced it is. Also I'm coming to hate the word information. I want stories and myths that aren't inherently false by definition. It is definitely technology, and most of my research is closely involved in development. As for methods, I have made up most of my own methods through play. Simple good old fashioned play and plug.
I'm afraid you've got a live one here.
But certainly the way that I connect the grey twinkling dots is advanced if only in technique.
I have spent along time researching interactive video technologies both of an analogue spirit and a digital soul.
I come from a video editing background, but then I simultaneously got bored/traumatized of sitting in my room alone in the dark looking at screens, clicking a mouse and discovered how to jump around with a camera and some grey twinkly boxes.
since then I have wrapped beautiful young ladies up in fairy lights plugged them into the wall and hoped for the best. No actual casualties yet to report.
There was a video studio at my university at sheffield hallam and in moments of profoundly painful existential angst I would jump around wailing and singing while pressing buttons, waving cameras and mirrors and standing inside reactive video projections, and generally losing it big time, like all good real artists.
I guess the fun thing about my work is that it is like making a movie live, just like a musician improvising. i love making connections, especially when they don't really exist, between video mixers, computers (mac and pC), musicians and dancers and video geeks, projectors and cameras, midi keyboards and white plinths with buttons and twinkly lights on them, people, mediums, neurons, unseen entities, ect.
I have been blessed to have found certain communities both online like: vjforums.com, www.audiovisualizers.com, the eyecandy and live AV art mailing lists and offline like the sheffield and dartington humans who taught me that i was not alone as someone who twiddles knobs and presses buttons and jumps around infront of people.
There were lots of online historical resources like the experimental TV center in NYC and the online Vasulka stuff and NO books until very recently that I used to contextualize my practice.
Incidentally Nam June Paik is both the father of video art and of Live Video Art.
So old cameras, video mixers from the 80's, £300 a piece VJ software x2 for PC, £150 VJ software for MAC, video projectors x 3, fairy lights (later replaced by battery powered LED light suits), audio mixers, video editing software (advanced), butchered midi keyboards, glowing LED buttons and knobs, lots of little grey and lime green boxes that allow you to connect things to other things, and an enormous and very evil pet octopus that lives in my 8 boxes of different wires and tries to eat me every time in need a double phono to fire wire connector.
To be honest the ICT or TIC that has allowed me to apply my self through the medium of flashy twinkly things that sound funny is talking to my friends and tutors (the coolest geeks money and favors can buy) and by wondering what happens if I connect my PC and my apple laptop to the same external dvd burner at the same time via firewire and usb respectively and listing to the sound and smell of both computers and the drive dying abruptly and painfully sparking to death through the audio mixer, amp and speakers that they are still connected to, and then wondering to myself about what would happen if i did the same thing to certain parts of my mind.
More often than not something positive happens when you connect things and occasionally something that is more beautiful and profound than you could ever have imagined happens.
I'm an audio visual alchemist.
I recently started working with a software and hardware engineer to make boxes and mannequin heads that twinkle, have buttons and twiddly knobs and can be played like video pianos while the participant stands inside a giant hallucination fractal feedback image and watch themselves on giant screens as they perform and are physically part of a piece of inter-dimensional art. Go and have a look at my work at www.vjvishnu.blip.tv if you don't believe/understand me.
I hope that answers your question.
Next.
Hi Sean. Thank you for your
Hi Sean. Thank you for your exhaustive answer.
I strongly believe, as you said, that lots of works of art are created by connecting things and trying things out randomly, at least at first, and of course I believe the artist's imagination is what could make things connect to each other in beautiful and creative ways.
At the same time though, I think that in some cases technology can be an enhancing mean, especially for video and audio artists like you, doesn't matter how advanced it is. And of course it doesn't have to be improved necessarly, but it could be.
As you said, you are working with a software and hardware engineer for your new project: I am sure you will always go on exploring new ways of expression just connecting your grey boxes or mixing simple things in order to obtain something new and original, but I also believe that at the same time you will explore new technological means that would enable you to find new ways of expression for your creativity. That is what I meant by talking about advanced ICT.
In your work you very often connect not only objects but also different cultures and audio-visual influences. A big part of your work is dedicated to altered states of mind and spiritual experiences. Since I included this interview in our Intimacy forum, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about how do you manage to recreate spiritual and psychological experiences through technological tools and how much do you think your work can intimately reach people's feelings.
I am interested in listening to someone else's opinion about it too. Is there anyone who have had the chance to participate or have a look at Sean's works?
Great question.
Great question.
Well the short answer is come to my exhibition this week in birdwood house gallery, next to the market square, in Totnes, devon. We're open 12 noon till 8 pm every day this week (11th - 15th Feb).
The exhibition features two manaquinn heads with my face magically on them and buttons all over my heads and twiddly knobs on them so that you can play video piano while you stand inside another fractal dimention that you are.
Is that clear?
Anyway it has twinkly lights and lots of colours and trippy sounds, so come and press some buttons and BE a hallucination.
Guaranteed to be thoroughly enjoyable or your money back.
Oh and its free...
Come and have a look. I will ask people how it makes them feel and what kind of spiritual/psychological states it brings up for them, and get back to you.
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That sounds very
That sounds very interesting.
Unfortunately I couldn't make it for the exhibition, but I am looking forward to have some feedback from you and from the people who have been there.
Have you had the chance to ask them about their reactions and feelings?
Exhibition completed
Exhibition completed now.
There was a strange phenomenon around the exhibition.
It was titled "mess with my head" and featured two custom built midi heads with pushy buttons, twiddly dials and twinkly lights on them. One could VJ (video jockey) by playing the heads. There was also other crazyness on other levels (even outside the realms of technology or even art) but this was the basic deal.
The strange thing that I noticed was that women would hover round the doorway entrance to the exhibition looking in with a certain curious trepidation. Then occasionally one or more would come into the space and tentatively approach the heads. Summing up the courage to press a single button seemed to pose the greatest challenge, but once they understood that they could play electronic music and visuals and see themselves as part of those visuals they would laugh, look mezmorized and gleefuly jamm for quite a while.
So eventually i asked one how the work made her feel and she said that she was drawn towards the gallery by the loud intermittant dance music and strange posters outside. Standing in the doorway and especially approaching the heads she felt quite scared of the possible consequences but once she got the idea she actually felt quite addicted.
In fact many people reported both initial fear and eventual addiction in response to the work.
Its a bit like developing a relationship with me myself.
As for the psychological states invoked there are some comments left in the comments book likening the experience to intoxication by psychedelic substances, which was one of the aims all along.
So there you have it; psychedelics, fear and addiction.
Next question.