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Contents © 2020 Golan Levin and Collaborators
Golan Levin and Collaborators
Interviews and Dialogues
- Peer-Reviewed Publications
- Essays and Statements
- Interviews and Dialogues
- Catalogues and Lists
- Project Reports
- Press Clippings
- Lectures
- Code
- Misc.
- 09 2009. Interview for Dazed and Confused
- 09 2009. Interview by Louise Shannon
- 06 2009. Video interview by Lucrezia Cippitelli
- 06 2009. Video interviews for CMU Campaign
- 04 2009. Interview for Direct Digital, Modena
- 01 2008. Video Interview by M.B. Solano
- 03 2007. Interview for Afterimage
- 02 2007. Interview by Alexandra Nemerov
- 01 2007. Interview by Ulrike Reinhard
- 11 2006. Interview for Teknemedia
- 11 2006. Interview for Neural.IT
- 09 2006. Interview for La Repubblica
- 07 2006. Interview for Bios
- 07 2006. Tmema Interview for Pig Magazine
- 06 2006. Taiwan Museum of Art Survey
- 06 2006. Interview for Res Magazine
- 01 2006. Tmema Interview for Redazione Digicult
- 01 2006. Tmema, Realta' Ampliata e Gesti Interattivi
- 12 2005. Interview for Digimag
- 12 2005. Tmema Interview for Processing
- 11 2005. Interview for Sonic Acts XI
- 10 2005. Interview for Mobile Magazine
- 07 2005. Responses to Manovich's 5 Questions
- 03 2005. Interview for Contemporary Music Review
- 06 2004. Interview for XFUNS Magazine
- 06 2004. [0.81 MB pdf]
Interview for XFUNS (Chinese)
- 06 2004. Interview for CIAC Magazine
- 06 2004. Entrevue pour CIAC Magazine
- 11 2003. Interview for Huddersfield Metro
- 09 2003. Dialogue with Paul D. Miller
- 09 2003. Dialogue about Messa di Voce
- 07 2003. Dialogue about Telesymphony
- 05 2003. Interview for CriticalArtWare
- 03 2003. Interview for MicheleThursz.com
- 12 2002. Interview for Digitall
- 08 2002. Dialogue about Axis
- 07 2002. Interview for Receiver Magazine
- 07 2002. Interview for Aculab Quarterly
- 06 2002. Interview for ZooWire
- 09 2001. Interview for DE:BUG (German)
- 09 2001. Interview for DE:BUG
- 05 2001. Interview for Artbyte
Interview by Simona Lodi for Teknemedia
Golan Levin, November 2006.
I watched your performance at the MediaTeca di Santa Teresa in Milan as part of the series of meetings organised by Maria Grazia Mattei called "Meet the media guru"... and I'd like to ask you if you feel like a guru? What does it mean to be a media guru? What do you think led to you being defined a media guru?
I definitely do not feel like a guru. I think the title is silly, for starters; I am just another mid-career artist. I have been practicing electronic media arts for barely a decade and I hardly think this is qualifications to be a "guru". I also know people who are much more significant and long-lived in the electronic arts, like Toshio Iwai, who deserve the title more than I do.
Do you feel more like a technical experimenter or an artist? when did you realise you were one and/or the other?
I am an artist. I use computer technologies, which means that I have to make experiments in order to find the best means of expressing my ideas. Often my work involves research that requires the invention or creation of entirely new technologies. That is certainly a sort of scientific or engineering research, but it is in the service of an artistic concept. Call that what you want.
What are you working on at the moment? Can you tell us about your future plans?
At the moment I am working on an artwork which can understand and respond to the facial expressions and eye movements of the people who are observing it.
Does art have the role of driving social development in the knowledge era?
Computing is certainly defining culture in many ways at the moment. My work is intended to show alternative modes of computing, towards less utilitarian and more inspirational ends. I do not think art has a very substantial role in driving social development right now, but that is not a reason to give up trying.
What do creativity and innovation in art mean for you?
I have not yet come to any conclusions about whether it is truly possible for there to be anything "new under the sun"; it is certainly possible to say that every artwork has some sort of influence or precursor. Even so, there is an envelope of ideas which we are able to continue expanding by recombining old ideas and applying the capabilities of new technologies. Artists owe it to themselves to know their history well; when they do, they stand a better chance to know where the edges of the envelope are. I love to see advancements in the field made this way.