Excerpts from an interview with Christopher Chambers and David Fried

CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS: Regarding your recent works, the Self Organizing Still Life sculptures and the In bed with Lucy and Dolly photograms: At first glance these appear to be two completely unrelated seriatim. Do their themes spring from a common underlying concept? What are the ideas that led you in these directions and how do they tie together?

DAVID FRIED: I have always worked from concept. Finding the right medium to fit the concept - or in the case of the SOS sculptures combining techniques and even inventing new mediums like interactive granite - allows me much greater flexibility to express my ideas. Consequently, I am free to pursue ideas that might not have occurred to me if I were to begin within the constraints of a single medium. Still, the road between intent and outcome may take some incubation time and a lot of patience to develop skills previously unpracticed. For instance, before the first functioning SOS was created, I needed 2 years of research. I had to take my ideas from pure theory to engineering reality, which as a painter was completely new for me. This process incorporated studying physics, mould making, working with stone and electronics, and then, putting it all together in this unique way - that was extremely challenging for me.

Back to your question: My particular concepts themselves are guided by certain criteria which are essential to all my works both past and present. One of the basic criteria leading up to both the SOS and the Lucy & Dolly work was, to find a way of expressing my understanding of life in a symbolic way that could reveal networks of relationships which do not follow linear and hierarchal patterns.

C.C.: Those concepts are also apparent in chaos and deep-ecology theories. Was this a source of inspiration?

D.F.: Let's say, the research and understanding of certain individuals who are now able to prove those theories has given me a feeling of reassurance because, although Descartes is long gone the separatist view of the world still has a very firm grip on the way technology, culture, and politics are moving. The knowledge is there, but the model has not been fully adopted. I'd say my experiences growing up in the New York City with its quick moves, abrupt truths, and do-or-die endeavors; with all these people networking within the framework of such a concentrated and diverse environment, has probably been a much greater source of inspiration as to how I see relationships, and the impact certain individual actions can have on the whole - be it of private, cultural, or even of spiritual nature. So, I'd like to stress that I am not merely attempting to illustrate scientific understanding. I want to create works that explore inter-dependant relationships and the energy distributed within a dynamic but closed system, and subsequently, raise questions about contemporary individuality within the global village.

C.C.: So, philosophically, you are positioning yourself as a sort of catalyst, a fulcrum between science and the sublime?

D.F.: By way of choosing my subject matter, perhaps yes, but there is no attempt to be didactic here. I can only hope to pass on what interests me, in a way that is accessible to as many cultures as possible. This is not art-about-art, nor is it a manifesto of what could be. Since years, I have distilled the imagery of my work into more and more symbolic forms that can trigger fundamental senses common to the human experience. Like, music doesn't beg for explanation. If my work can connect with a layman, that's good, regardless of their interpretation. This is liberating for me also because so much of what we see in the arts lately is so specific, and often very inaccessible indeed. Of course as we speak there is a great deal of background information that can be communicated, but I try to make that aspect somewhat less important in my work. Although people are also very curious about the technical aspects of the SOS sculptures, any knowledge of it's hand engineered system simply cannot help you access the content any better. Y'know, technical queries are clearly beside the point, and when I'm asked; how does it work? My answer often follows, 'It does! How you work with it is primary.'

C.C.: We are living through yet another revolution in communications technology. Do you think the future of art will also thrive on the accessibility offered by e-mail, sms, chat rooms and the like?

D.F.: Certainly, but content and integrity of what is being communicated will always be a driving force. Nonetheless, in any part of the world, what reaches the public will continue to fluctuate between serious and trendy tendencies. Living in this post-Gutenberg-galaxy is reality.. Things move faster, and although I am happy we do not need to copy books by hand like Monks anymore, our collective attention span isn't getting any longer either. To be plugged in to this availability the viewer must participate much more actively. The whole point is there is little need for the silver-spoon of cultural dictators to fill you up passively. There are a lot of people who are making really fascinating art, and there is a lot of laziness out there too, in spite of the larger room and ease for individuals to express themselves. I've seen too many recent artworks that are really good too, but not original in the least! Repeating previously pioneered art may make a living for some, but it isn't going to take us anywhere further.

C.C.: Would you please explain your reference in the title of the photographic works to Dolly, the first cloned sheep?

D.F.: With her arrival (Dolly), a media star was born. Suddenly everyone knew a barrier was shattered between mankind's practice of altering his environment, and mankind's attempts at re-inventing himself. Man has always looked for what separates himself from other species. For me, Dolly became the missing link, fulfilling man's need to be supreme. On the other hand, Lucy, an ancient hominid, is a woman of more uncertain origin. Although we can clearly interpret her physiological nature, the question is still posed, 'How intelligent was she really?' Well, at least clever enough to eat, sleep and reproduce biologically, which is more than I can say for our predecessors. So we find ourselves in bed with our own past and future, trying to orientate ourselves to this 'brave new world.'

C.C.: By being 'in bed' with ourselves, are you inferring that society is ailing or lame?

D.F.: Yes, but not incurably so. If we are making genetic cookbooks, we must be prepared to sit at the table with our own creations. Now, away from the title, I mean, just looking at the work, the structure of the bubbles themselves reveal to us a very delicate balance between water and air, and more symbolically, remind us of just how fragile and beautiful the architecture of nature is. Though they are pre-biological, they could appear as primordial cells, or test-tube creations. By combining several of these images in sequence they take on a genetic code look. Whereby the SOS, through it's reduced form, motion and interactivity, is able to provoke interpretations about relationships from anywhere between the social level and the cosmos, the Lucy & Dolly works deal more specifically with processes that lead to biological life. They are also symbolic of a non-hierarchal, but corruptible network. Also related is the 'Santiago Theory of Cognition,' which postulates that cognition itself is closely linked to 'autopoiesis;' the self-generation of living networks. The defining characteristic of such a system is that it undergoes continual structural change, while preserving its web-like pattern of organization. It also states that a nervous system or a brain is not required to do this! Such a system learns by feedback-loops and is continually exchanging with, and adapting to its environment. These principles of self-organization and the creation of new structures are applicable to biological life, but it can also to be applied to perception: emotions, social behavior, weather and the entire ecosystem on the whole.

C.C.: Do you propose that society in general will eventually come to respect the finite fragility of the Earth as an inherently closed metabolic system?

D.F.: Right now, political problem solving certainly has not displayed much enlightenment in this area. You know, there is a very old hygienic saying that states that you aren't supposed to shit where you eat. We must learn now that this is utterly false, there is no elsewhere! But before this becomes common sense to the industrialized world there will first have to be a major crisis for change to take hold, as if we don't have enough already.

C.C.: Let's hope it doesn't boil over too soon.

D.F.: Yes, we just might be able to avoid the kind of confrontations that arise from disinformation and a lack of respect for the common condition of mankind in the age of abbreviation and qualitatively changed means of communication like the e-mail, and web-forum systems you mentioned before, and even when the myth of progress and science no longer serves philosophy and wisdom in our societies, we still have individuals and communications to help share information and experience in a less corruptible way.

C.C.: Your SOS objects invite you to 'communicate' with them too. Why did you choose to explore sound as the stimulus?

D.F.: Sound and communication play a major roll in the development of many species and their social spheres. The acronym SOS itself stands for more than communicating a distress call. It indicates belonging to an unwritten social contract simply by being a human. To integrate this I thought the stimulus should be something that we all depend on, but also be something that can be interpreted very differently. Like you and I would dance very differently to the same music, so do the SOS spheres. I give each sphere a different individual character. They also affect one another's path by their individual actions, and even cause feedback through the production of their own sounds of clicking, and so on. The sound sensor allows the SOS to be a Still Life when all is quiet, and a moving object when dialogue occurs. Of course, it can also be stimulated by other sounds that occur when people are active. The SOS can be 'tuned' so that it may only hear the very loudest of sounds, or allow it even to hear a whisper. Another aspect is that the use of sound as a stimulus allows the artwork to extend beyond its own borders, integrating itself in a dialogue with its environment.

Christopher Chambers is an artist, critic, and curator living and working in New York City.