Ryan Hammond Interview for Peripheral Arteries

Peripheral ARTeries

Ryan Hammond

Ryan Hammond (USA)

an artist’s statement

It's so much easier to destroy things than to create them -- to create chaos and disorder than to create complexity.

You're moving with the natural motion of the universe. In this sense, to imbue matter with information and organization means pushing against the otion of everything around you.

A salmon swimming upstream. We are all attracted to each other because we follow this action in the world, to compile, to complex, to capture and preserve and collect and combine and compound. A minuscule, almost undetectable fraction of all that comprises the known physical universe pushing against the entirety of collapse and degradation, separation and isolation. We're all we have to look to when searching for relief. Everything outside life is dead, unconscious matter, being nothing, everything slowly leaving being. Life keeps itself.

Life is a moment that perpetuates itself.

I want to engulf myself in new logic, non contextual logic, reactionary logic, mutated logic, logic that accepts accident and mistake as equal to conscious and calculative decision making. I want to cultivate a mind that decides to accept or believe that they come from the same place. As evolution moves, so will I. http://www.ryanhammond.us

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Creation Myth

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an interview with

Ryan Hammond Hello Ryan and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries.

I would start this interview with our usual introduc-tory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, do you think that there's still a contrast between tradition and contemporary?

Art happens when we openly engage unknowing and uncertainty. It's a system without a clear goal, without a clearly defined method of interpreting, translating, or assigning value. Art is the space between functionality - an epiphenomenon -- the byproducts of production. It is non-linear omni-directional expansion.

I do see a difference between traditional and contemporary in that traditional artwork is oriented towards choosing a craft from a set of acceptable methods, and working your material into a rough image of an idea/perception. Contemporary practice is more expansive in that any material or process can be absorbed and addressed. One thing that particularly interests me about this expansion is that the subject matter is able to stray further and further from the human form and perspective, as content is generated through intimate relationships with physical material and conceptual intercourse. Artists are running experiments, isolating variables, culling data, creating their own methodologies. I have a fantasy, which I relate to my impulse towards art: imagine science freed from it's dependance on funding from military, medical, and consumer interests. A science directed by play and curiosity.

Ryan Hammond other countries. There was always something deeply dissatisfying about finishing a painting for me, I just wasn't interested in the flat image left behind by my movements. There was something that didn’t translate from the experience of creating the work to the experience of viewing it. My interest in it, and love for it was in the act. It was in the intimacy I achieved with the world through extended observation and intimate relationships with materials. I wanted somehow to give viewers the perceptual experience of the world afforded by the process of painting, rather than the artifact of the painter having that experience. This along with my curious nature is what led to me an interdisciplinary practice.

When I went to college my fascination with perception bloomed into a fixation. I obsessed over questions about consciousness, control, subjectivity, external influences on behavior, and decision making and was able to pursue these questions by taking classes at a University near the art school I attended. I studied neuroscience, cognitive science, social cognition, and evolutionary psychology. These subjects and their offshoots have heavily influenced my thinking, and ways of making. To answer your question as to whether I think formal training could stifle an artist's creativity -- it completely depends on the program. I was in an interdisciplinary program, and each of my teachers had their own ideas about what art should be, what makes good art, and what an artist was. This interdisciplinary attitude cultivated a certain type of objectivity, and a willingness to be open. It validated my natural curiosity, and helped me to develop my ideas into something more substantial

Would you like to tell us something about your background? I have read that you have recently received a BFA from MICA, in Baltimore, where you live and work: how has this experience impacted on the way you produce your art? By the way, I would like to ask what's your point about formal training in Art an especially if in your opinion a formal training -or better, a certain kind of formal training- could even stifle an artist's creativity...

I started my career as a painter. Growing up in Missouri, painting was the most accessible medium. I had a great teacher in high school who pushed me to follow my whims, and it was easy to get some acrylic paint from this funny store called "Hobby Lobby." It had all kinds of ridiculous trinkets and craft materials shipped in from

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even brighter than the moon

and interesting. I think it is often much more difficult to approach schooling in this way. There is more pressure on the student to guide and construct their own experience, but it was well worth it and I have no regrets.

to support, flesh out, or redirect my ideas. My walls are usually covered with printed packets of paper, studies, maps, and diagrams that I arrange and rearrange, annotate, cut-up, quote, and expand on. This is how I map relationships between my fascinations and generate ways to physically engage the topics that interest me. Spatial mapping is really important for me, because my thoughts are often chaotic and un-organized.

A lot of my process is about Mess. I look for ways to introduce, randomness, noise, and confusion. I record ideas or moments and look for ways to ensure I'll encounter them in a different context and time. I try to model my life and art practice after my understanding of evolution‌ there is a set of rules that gets translated and reproduced constantly. Mutation, and accidents are continuously revising them for us, while we are free to step back and select what is interesting. I like the term, "Adjacent Progress," - the idea that the interesting stuff happens in the space between intentionality -- the synergetic or unpredictable effects produced when you make a mess and allow for unintended interactions to occur. Right now, aside from working on proposals, I'm teaching workshops for elementary and middle school age people on design,

Before getting in the matter of you art production, can you tell us something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work?

I've gone through periods of focusing on different technical skills which I revisit periodically. In 2009 I was doing a lot of work with sound. I spent time learning how to record and edit, was making a lot of music and spacial sound installations. Since then I've focused on other digital modes of production such as video editing, programming and web design, alongside more physical methods such as woodworking and construction techniques. I spend most of my time writing and making 3D models since the projects I'm currently pursuing require funding and permits. My research practice is the current that runs through these material and process explorations. All my work deals with research on perception and natural processes and I'm constantly looking for new information

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Ryan Hammond the other displaying a "performance," by Morgan Freeman in "Deep Impact." It seems that in popular American films, a black president is a signifier of the future, and often an apocalyptic one (i.e. Deep Impact, The Fifth Element, Idiocracy, and 2012). I wanted to invite viewers to explore the connection between the fiction of film and the heavily edited, virtual experience of our own political system. Next to the screens, on the floor, sat a stack of photocopied studies in which social scientists predicted real election results by having people evaluate attractiveness and competence solely from a single headshot of candidates which they had no previous knowledge of. USB microscopes were affixed to the surfaces of the screens, and the magnified pixels were projected in real time onto a plastic sheet across from them.

EOE - Close-up of the projected electromagnetic electronics, physical computing, woodworking, divergent thinking, and sewing.

By abstracting the images and magnifying the mechanism of their production I was pointing to the fact that all of our information about fictional narratives and political narratives is delivered in the same way. We learn about the real and the fictional through the same medium, with our bodies in the same position, and in the same context. I had no cohesive plan for the space beforehand, I went into the room with texts I had written and a lot of equipment: computers, DVD players, projectors, screens, lumber, and plastic sheeting. The whole thing came together in about 4 days, though I think the work would've benefited if I could have spent more time in the space.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would like to start from your multidisciplinary installation entitled EOE, an acronym which stands for "Everyone Owns Everything": what was you initial inspiration? Could you take us through your creative process when starting this project?

The phrase, "Everyone Owns Everything," is a sentiment I was working with a couple years before I actually created the installation. Ive always been interested in the idea of ownership because of the confusion that occurs when you look at it from different spacial and temporal scales -especially when considering intellectual property. From a systems theory perspective, it is really impossible to locate the genesis of an idea or an object since all phenomena are seen as the result of complex, omnidirectional influences‌ meaning that if you try to trace a line of cause and effect to find a singular creator or beginning, you will instead end up infinitely expanding a web of contributing factors, and the contributing factors to each of those factors, etc. Another way to say it would be to say that there is no such thing as a truly closed system -- all systems are exchanging energy and matter with their surroundings. I was also thinking about "converse logic," in mathematics and other disciplines.

It's the practice of reversing the two parts of a statement to examine its implications. I started writing the statement, "Everyone Owns Everything," and it's inverse, "Everything Owns Everyone." This is my (arbitrarily selected) starting point. The installation was an attempt to reconcile many things from permaculture, to neuroscience, to popular music videos I was watching, to the psychology of political campaigns.

Another work of yours on which I would like to spend some words is Even Brighter than the Moon: as you have remarked, in this artwork your show

In part of the room, I set up two screens next to each other, one showing a "performance," by Barak Obama,

Everyone Owns Everything

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building around which people dance : a celebration within the architecture of power and domiance. The blue glowing nuclear reactor, which is in a more literal sense a symbol of power, balances between beauty and terror.

Cherynkov glow is to scientists as Katy Perry is to teenagers.

The sexual magnetism of a machine harnessing self illuminating ultramarine blue radioactive material is _____________ that of Katy Perry's immaculate face, unbreakable will, and perfect body:

A. Greater than D. Incomparable to even brighter than the moon

B. Less than

C. Equal to

Across from the projection two screens displayed the radioactive plume released by the Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdown as it dispersed around the globe; the loss of control.

images of a pursuit of limitless power and dominance over the natural world. This is a stimulating concept: I often ask myself if scientific achievements while subverting therelation of master and slave between Nature and Man, actually recreate a subtle bond between Man and Nature... maybe between Man and Man's nature itself...

At it's best, science is about understanding, discovering what is unseen, and rendering us more capable of pursue freedom while working with the massively complex systems we're immersed in. It's a fine contrast between bonding and bondage, one I'm not sure I know how to identify yet.

With Chance as master, we are slaves to circumstance, genetic endowment, and the limitations of a physical form: our strength, our size, our ability to perceive and comprehend. The size of our window.

Nature as master and we are the worst slaves ever, slaves with a fetish for rebellion. The scientists can't stand to take it anymore, they want power play, role reversal: they want a good fight.

I imagine a good science is motivated by bonding rather than bondage: against enforcing a conceptual separation between the dominatrix earth and her subservients. In the story of her tyranny we are warring with our own nature, or with the "wild" which created us. I think bond is a wonderful word to use, because it is the opposite of actions associated with the dark side of science: seperating, deconstructing, simplifying, mastering, and controlling. The separation of the particles in an atom is likely our most massive display of power and control, and controlling subatomic worlds enables the control of larger ones. "Even Brighter than the Moon," is in discussion with these narratives. Edited footage from Katy Perry's video, "Firework," was projected over a screen playing footage of a nuclear reactor core emanating bright blue cherynkov radiation. Katy Perry's "Firework," is a story about people who are subservient to their situation finding power and taking control. A cancer patient, a child in an abusive household, a heavyset girl at a pool party, all find personal power. Power here is represented by images of fireworks (explosions) and a large government

even brighter than the moon

Besides digital installations, you also produce interesting conceptual sculptures: in particular In Each other We Trust made me think that Modern Techonology has revolutionized the idea of producing Art itself and moreover this forces us to rethink to the materiality of an artwork itself: since few years ago an artwork was first of all -if you forgive me this unpleasent classification- a manufactured article: it was the concrete materialization of an idea...

Definitely, I think that technology has always transformed the way art is created, viewed, and defined, because every time a major technology is discovered

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and implemented it transforms all facets of life. Looking at this piece now, it seems funny because It imprints an inspirational message on what is essentially a "dirty" material, both physically and morally. Studies by The University of Utah and Harvard researchers have found that if people are "primed," or exposed to the idea of money before making a decision, they are more likely to act in immoral ways. The phrase, "In God We Trust," seems like an artifact. It's one of those things that becomes invisible through exposure, like the buzzing of a refrigerator, or the hum of an air conditioner. For me, it breaches the separation between church and state. I've received criticisms on this piece by people who see a contradiction in that the phrase I'm stamping is about inclusiveness and community, yet it is excluding those who are religious by marking over the word god. I don't see this as an issue since the call to trust in our own communities -the people we interact with on a daily basis can be embraced with or without a belief in god, while the call to trust in a higher power can be embraced only by those who are religious.

In Each other We Trust, September 2011

As you have remarked in your artist's statement, a crucial part of your work is to examine the ways new technologies modify our experience of space and time in order to address a larger dialogue about human perception and consciousness. This cannot lead us to spend some words about augmented reality: I'm sort of convinced that this is a clear example of how Art and Technology are assimilating one to each other.

At this point change is happening so quickly in relation to human time that it seems even more important to try and understand what technological advances might mean for life. New technologies are integrated into our routines so quickly that we don't have much time to think about whether it's something we want.

And if it's something you don't want, good luck trying to participate in society.

Usually by the time we've been using a technology long enough to understand it's implications it's already being phased out. We are the lab rats in our own experiments; excited and terrified, addicted to novelty. So many artists have

Baltimore Worms, 2012 In collaboration with Michael Koliner

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taken on critical roles in their practice, and are contributing to philosophical and moral discussions. It seems impossible to avoid discussing the tools we use everyday to interact with each other and the landscapes we inhabit. Being an artist is about learning to observe, so it follows to offer interpretations of what we see.

It goes without saying that modern technology has considerably impacted on Contemporary Art: I personally find really stimulating the synergy between Art and Science and I do think that these apparentelydifferent fields soon or later will merge each other, even though it's not uncommon to listen to some old-fashioned opinions according to which only acryl on a canvas makes an artwork... What's your point about this? Do you think that nowadays still exists a dichotomy between Art and Science?

I think that there is a separation between the fields in that science is usually more pragmatic and goal driven, while art is more free, playful, and exploratory. There are of coarse exceptions. For example, "pure research," or "fundamental research," is defined as research that isn't meant to yield specific practical results and is driven by curiosity. Another interesting simplification of the matter is to consider the words analysis and synthesis. Analysis at it's root is about separation: breaking the world into smaller digestible parts, and Synthesis is about putting them together in novel ways. In an extremely reductive sense, Science and Art respectively are described by these actions. In reality, both disciplines utilize both methods, with different subsets focusing more heavily on one or the other, but I think both art and science could benefit from a more integrated or balanced approach to analysis/synthesis. what aspect of your work do you enjoy the most? What gives you the biggest satisfaction?

For your cliche question, I have an equally cliche answer. I love making connections between ideas, finding new relationships between materials, thoughts, and words.

I love mapping, especially mapping in space. For me it's about connection and relationships, and attempting to engage complexity. Always, I find the most intense complexity comes in attempting to engage someone else's perceptions and interpretations of the mess I spew out in front of them.

Let me thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Ryan. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

I won't be showing anytime soon, at the moment I'm focusing on teaching and creating illustrative materials for grant applications and proposals. Hopefully, I'll have a kickstarter up soon to do some fundraising for something I'm working on called, The APO Project so keep a look out for that.

In Each other We Trust, September 2011

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