Wolf Lieser / [DAM] Berlin - The past, present and future of Digital Art - Interview

Wolf Lieser, one of the pioneers in digital art has, after some refurbishment, just re-opened his gallery in Berlin. We had a talk with him on a sunny afternoon in one of the cosiest places in Berlin: The area around Tucholskystrasse where gallery after gallery is intercepted only by nice cafés and bars. Read on for an intriguing introduction into digital art…

Congratulations Wolf – you just reopened your gallery. What’s currently on display? Thanks. Well, the current exhibition ‘Electric Paint’ is by an artist from the Netherlands. His name is Eelco Brand and his works are exclusively in 3D. So he constructs three-dimensional objects exactly like an architect would do it with a special software. And the artist designs all the things that you can do with it, like landscapes, streets, interiors…

And this is true for the animations as well? Yes. But what’s important here is that he doesn’t use any photographic material to map it on the models. All the surfaces of the models that he uses are completely designed by him. Of course he doesn’t do every single tree of a forest, but he has to design a certain amount to make it look organic. And that’s of course what creates the emotional situation here. So there is really no photography involved in this. Someone who has no idea about his work might also think that it’s a digitally reworked photograph. Just the way you could use filters to make a photo look as if it was a charcoal drawing. But of course it would take only minutes to do this, while really drawing it is difficult and quite time consuming. Eelco Brand does these short movies that are only about two minutes long, but he produces only two or three of them a year because it’s so much work to develop all this. While the animations tend to be very realistic the pictures have surreal references. Like landscapes that just couldn’t exist that way.

But they are only surrealistic thematically, right? Exactly. Not in the representation… Things like having a grove with the shadow of one tree pointing in the wrong direction or landscapes that are just too perfect.

For how long do we have the chance to see the exhibition? It will be open for the rest of June.

You are working in this special field for some years now. How did it all start? In 1998 I developed the whole concept of [DAM] as an online museum and now also with the commercial gallery [DAM] Berlin. Then in 2005 we launched the d.velop digital art award [ddaa], a lifetime award that is endowed with 20 000 Euro, which we are giving away to outstanding pioneers every year. And those are the three parts of the concept that help you to understand the field better. They give an insight into what people have done with the computer as a tool in the past 40 years and also develop a market for the artists. Of course they all have to live off their work so we have to get their stuff to the collectors and museums.

So what is interesting is that there are so many questions on production and the reproducibility of the pieces when you first get in touch with the subject of digital art. How important is that really for the artists and collectors involved? There are of course some people who primarily focus on the technical aspects but in the end that’s a quite trivial feature. A piece of art is generally not defined by the way it was created. It is of course important for the understanding of the whole thing to know what techniques have been used, e.g. that you are looking at a three-dimensional object, created on a screen. So the techniques are an interesting feature but should primarily make sense in the context of the piece. That is, there should be a reason why the artist has chosen a certain technique. Not just because it was easy to do it that way.

In the end it’s all about art, right? And that’s why I chose this location for the gallery – because there are people passing by. There are many preconceived ideas about digital art around. But when people come in here, then it is because they are interested in something they see, probably without even knowing how it was made or what is digital about it. About 95% of them don’t know anything about that. They just like the picture. Then they start asking. In the past a lot of stuff was about interactivity. Sort of like you have a screen and when you touch it, the colours are affected. And that was fascinating just because it worked! But aesthetically it was very trivial. This was just a prerequisite for digital art.
Concerning the reproducibility: this is a recurrent issue. There has always been this idea in art that people think having an original painting is like having something that you could never copy. So it is the one and only original. From digital files you can of course produce as many copies as you like. So, when you make an edition it is limited by the artist with a signed and numbered package of material. And that is what’s sold to the collector and the museum. But the idea that artists never did a painting twice is of course also nonsense. There have been lots of painters who did pieces with the same theme many times because it sold well. So sticking to handmade paintings is kind of an old-fashioned approach to art. What is essential about a piece of art is its quality. If you can copy it is quite trivial. Of course we limit the copies so that it is more exclusive and collectors are willing to pay the prices that are necessary to cover the costs and enable the artists to live off their work. But in the end this all doesn’t have much to do with the quality. It’s about marketing, influence and so called authorities.

And this approach to art is changing at the moment… Yes, it is. If you have a look at current digital artworks you will see that the techniques are completely in the background. For this new generation it is self-evident, that they use the computer. And also there are some young artists that are working with these technical possibilities for eight to ten years now. So they are taking it all to a really high level. And some pioneers are even doing this for 35 years.

Berlin is surely a good base for a project like [DAM]. Are there other cities? And what would you consider to be Berlin’s standing in this context? As you know I had a gallery in London for three years and before that in the Frankfurt area where we were more into mainstream art. I am devoted to the issue of digital art since 1987 and I have always thought about measures to bring this forward. So I had a really close look at places all over Europe. Like in the area of Cologne and Düsseldorf where there’s still a really strong art scene and then London, which is fantastic for art and has excellent academies. But I realised that the customers there are quite conservative. So young artists and gallery owners are having a hard time earning enough money to pay their rents.
And that’s why Berlin with its boom after the reunion and the situation that has developed since then soon proved to be the best location. Also Berlin meanwhile is considered as a place of fresh innovations and trends on an international level. Because here you can make a living with a relatively low income and work on projects that don’t have to be directly focused on profitability. Just like this gallery here. It’s not huge but there’s really sufficient space to show a decent selection. The same space would probably cost five times as much in London. So that wouldn’t have worked out. Even here it took some time to settle in. But meanwhile there are some collectors in Berlin that buy pieces every now and then and also there are people that travel to Berlin regularly and drop by. Because here they get an update on what’s going on at the moment. Furthermore our lifetime award, the [ddaa] has drawn some attention.

So digital art seems to enter the established art market now. How are your predictions for the future? In the next few years there will be more and more institutions that are interested to devote exhibtions to the subject and new developments in the field. There are already some projects in the pipeline. Especially one aspect in the digital field is going to get bigger: generative art based on algorithms written by the artist. This is called Software Art. Kind of like the next exhibition that is by a young English couple called Boredom Research. The opening will be on July 5 2007. They are doing objects that are based on a software program that they wrote. One of their digital objects is called Biomes and it consists of small organisms that move, communicate with each other and produce sounds. And they actually develop over the years. Some forms gradually die out because of ‘natural’ selection, while others are becoming increasingly complex. You hang it on the wall and just watch the organisms develop. And after four years or even ten years you’ll have completely different organisms on your screen. This is such an exciting project. It is directly connected to the concepts of life and the artists had to work out what the basic mechanisms are that the mutations are triggered by. So this is a perfect example of an artistic project that can only be realised in digital art.
This aspect is in its very beginning but fortunately the market and interest for it is growing. That seems to have something to do with a new generation of collectors that enter the scene now, who are Digital Natives.

You are also travelling a lot… Well, I was in the US last year, in New York and Miami, and I just got back from Korea. But I don’t want the fairs and the travelling to spoil my work here as I’m doing lots of exhibitions in the gallery. And that’s still very important. The art fair business is important to make new contacts, but very different from what we are doing in the gallery. On the fairs the attention span is small and you have to attract and convince very quickly. You know, the next booth is right next to you. Whereas here, people have some time to reflect on a single artist and see some more pieces, maybe come back another time…I like that much more.

Well thanks a lot Wolf. See you in the gallery soon. We wish you a lot of success with your upcoming projects! Many thanks. Bye.