Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

This month we are looking at one of the most influential and highly recognised electronic artists, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.

Born in Mexico (1967), and trained in Canada in Physical Chemistry, he developed as an electronic artist and has been exhibiting around the world for more than 12 years.

His work ranges from kinetic sculpture to large scale responsive environments, from video installation and photography to performing arts. Using robotics, projections, sound, internet and cell-phone links, sensors and other devices, his installations aim to provide “temporary antimonuments for alien agency”.

Talking about his work and the field of interactive and new technologies:

“My work is not always electronic. I have made pieces that are not based on electronic media in the past. However, I think that we live in a technological culture. Even if you are not using a computer you are affected by this environment. Working with technology is inevitable. I don’t work with it because it is original. I always use the word alien instead of the word new. The precedents for new are so large. But if you say alien, it is simply something that does not belong there. You put together things that you have already seen before but the specificity is temporary and local.”

Lozano-Hemmer is interested in the performative and communal essence of interactive art. His large scale installations, f.e. Under Scan (2005) under Relational Architecture series, provide a fruitful field of participation in public spaces , whereas his smaller-scaled sculptural, f.e. Wavefunction (2007) under Subsculpture series, and video installations, f.e. Close Up (2006) from Shadowbox series, explore themes of perception, deception and surveillance .

Usually deploying new technologies and custom-made physical interfaces, his work blends digital and physical, public and personal space, creating a critical discourse on how identity is communicated and formed in a multilayered, electronic world.

“I call my work relationship specific, not site specific… When we are thinking of the internet, the idea of site, in an era of non-location, is a problematic idea. We now live in multiple realities and work that use new technologies are somehow overlaying this electronic reality onto our everyday...I think it is something that we have to look for in more theatrical kinds of interactivity. When we look at 90% of electronic art, including my own, there is usually the need for big explanations. I come from a performance art background and I am interested in more collective and connective experiences that several people partake in. The idea that you are sharing in the complicity of a performance and watching something with people you don’t know goes beyond computers. There is a communion. Robert LePage has said that computers are great for communicating. What they are not good at is communing. Commune understood as the acknowledgement of complicity.“

Interview exerts are from a 2002 interview he gave from ARS Electronica festival of new media art in Linz, Austria, where he was awarded for the second time the Prix ARS Electronica Award for Distinction in Interactive Art for his piece Body Movies.
Follow the link to read the interview or if you would like to know more about the artist’s work go to his website.