Episode 020: Gary Hill

Show Notes

This week we chat with contemporary artist, and pioneer of video art, Gary Hill. For many Gary needs no introduction – he was among the first generation of artists to explore television and the video signal as a creative medium in the early 1970s. Through video sculptures, installations, and single-channel works, Gary explores the phenomenological, language, and the body’s relationship to technology. In our chat we’ll hear about Gary’s origins as an artist, the early video art scene in upstate NY, his evolving relationship to technology, and how he approaches the long term maintenance and perpetuation of his installations.

Links from the conversation with Gary
> https://garyhill.com
> The Experimental Television Center

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Ben: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host, Ben Fino-Radin and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. 

Before we get started just a quick reminder that this show is listener supported. If you are enjoying the show and you're in a place to help, please consider heading on over to artandobsolescence.com/donate. Thank you so much this week to Laura for your donation, you are the best. 

This week on the show, we're chatting with a contemporary artist who was among the sort of cohort of folks who were poking and prodding at the medium of video in the sixties and seventies and would go on to become an incredibly influential pioneer of video as a medium in contemporary art, and that is Gary Hill. 

We've heard Gary's name come up once before on the show already in episode four. Collector Pam Kramlich pointed to the experience of seeing Gary's installation Tall Ships in 1992 as the impetus for her attraction to collecting time-based media. Gary's work has been the topic of discussion in the realms of time-based media conservation for many, many years. His work is in many museum collections, and as you'll hear has serious preservation challenges, but I was excited to talk to Gary for different reasons altogether. As you'll hear in the seventies, Gary was living in upstate New York and was part of a small network of various artists and communities and scenes that were doing incredibly experimental work with early video technology. Gary was among the folks that were not only pushing the boundaries of the technology's intended use, but going so far as to design and build. Incredibly complex custom hardware tools and instruments and was part of this generation that approached video art and the signal as a real time thing to be played with and performed. Now as a born and raised upstate New Yorker whose art education was very steeped in this tradition, including a brief stint at the Experimental Television Center, I personally owe my being here doing what I do to many of the people and the places that we'll hear Gary talk about. 

Now, despite this technical background that Gary came up in, and despite the fact that one could point to his early installations as embodying many of the trends of today. Think immersive interactive installations. I think you'll hear in today's conversation, that Gary has a healthy skepticism of technology. And speaking for myself that simultaneous attraction and caution creates a tension in his work that really draws me in both as a viewer and as an art conservator. 

Now that's enough from me. Let's dive into my conversation with Gary Hill and as usual, let's start from the beginning. 

[00:02:40] Gary: I was born in Santa Monica and moved to Redondo Beach slash Torrance, uh, kind of on the border there when I was seven or eight, something . Like that. And was basically within a few years was a skateboarder and surfer. So that's kinda what I did. Still surf when I can on occasion.

 When I was 15 I had a close friend and his brother did welding sculptures and I was super fascinated by it. Ended up saving my money and getting some welding tanks. And basically he was my mentor, whether he knew it or not. And so I started making these sculptures and got completely obsessed in it. Right around the time when I started making sculpture, I guess I took my first LSD trip, which certainly changed my life substantially. The world was different overnight forever.

Um, almost left high school, managed, just hang in there until I was a senior. And I started going to a community college, mostly to get out of the draft. I mean, that's why I went, but I only lasted about two weeks, three weeks and decided I would get out another way. I was still welding at this time and I moved to Woodstock in 69 and continued to do that. I went to uh, the art students league for a month in the summer of oh 1969. They had a branch in Woodstock for a while, no longer. Went back home days before the Woodstock festival, but I had this teacher at the Art Students league like his name is Bruce Dorfman. He's a painter. He was my new mentor, I guess, and he took me to this exhibition in New York called, New York Painting and Sculpture 1940 to 1970. It was at the MET and it was every person in the New York scene. And I was seeing all this for the first time all at once. So before this moment, you know, I was kind of making, let's just call it outsider art. So then I saw this exhibition and probably within a year I went through every possible movement you know, like minimalism process art, conceptual art, I mean, I, you know, my sculpture was changing. It became like these pieces that I would improvise in a space with and I was making sound with them. I used microphones to record them and also I made tape loops, and also fed it back into tape recorders and things like that. But there was no, electronics per se, it was pure kind of concrete, acoustic, whatever they call it. And somewhere in that same period 1969, for sure, I heard Terry Riley for the first time. I mean, just kind of like, what is this, you know, this is incredible, you know, these are things that really are sort of milestones in my head, you know? Then 1973, this would be, People's Video Theater in New York, moved to Woodstock, and it was called Woodstock community video. So I, you know, I didn't know what it was. I just knocked on the door and the, you know, this guy, Ken Marsh, who was the director, welcomed me and showed me a Portapack, you know, the original Sony Portapack. And I asked him, do you have another one? I was actually already playing with feedback of myself, you know, like looking at myself, maybe even talking to myself and then recording that. And then talking to my recorded self, this kind of thing. 

Also there was a number of groups that were funded by New York State Council on the Arts and Rockefeller Foundation, earth score, which was Bob Schuller, Paul Ryan, and, Steven Colpin in High Falls. You know, we became friends and also the Video Freaks were up there, various groups all over New York State. So at that time it was much more of a, kind of a political sense of, you know, what's possible with this, you know, and also having to do with cable and the community feeding back on itself and, you know, very localized happenings sort of thing. Right. 

Ken Marsh he had, some tools too, like he had things that um, Eric Siegel, a colorizer he had made and a kind of broken keyer that would still make some weird noise. So, you know, it was really very much about the physicality and this sort of textual aspect of this, whatever it is, it was still just so open-ended somehow. He asked me to work there. So I basically, ended up recording, whatever town, board meetings, musicians in exchange for using this equipment, like in the middle of the night kind of thing.

So that's kind of how I, you know, almost overnight, completely immersed myself in it. And then because of political changes and stuff at the New York State Council of the Arts, they wanted to focus kind of on art. So I was the artist's TV lab coordinator, you know, artist that's helping people come in and use this equipment to make art. That was very open-ended then, though. It could be documentary, it could be whatever. There was a guy Phil Demitrian who ended up doing a project with Woodstock community video and it was called Woodstock tonight. Sort of like the Johnny Carson show. And we did this every night, a program every night, you know, we'd have guests and you know, based on that format. 

The first time I went to the Experimental Television Center would be 75, something like that, kind of a artist in residence place that had lots of, technology related to video, lots of experimental stuff. Ralph Hocking was the, director of that and Sherry Miller. They had a Paik Abe synthesizer a Wobulator, quite an array. People go there including myself and you just immersed yourself for a week, you know, staying up at all hours and connecting things and disconnecting things. It was really a kind of a cybernetic milieu of stuff that you could wire yourself into this somehow. There was a lot of feedback stuff too, you know, image processing and colorizing and performing live with this kind of thing and lots of stuff. 

I met Dave, Dave Jones, at the Experimental Television Center. He came and lived with me in Barry Town, New York on a street called Station Hill Road. Walter Wright who knew Dave too from the Experimental Television Center and that whole scene came to the Woodstock community video and did a workshop with, you know, Dave's probably first Prototype colorizer and a Wobulator and you know, all this kind of stuff. And we w We became really good friends and wanted to make, you know, a big old video synthesizer. He already had a analog to digital converter real time that he had made before. We went to this place called PD Surplus, it's near Kingston, and it was like this, all this electronic stuff. And we bought a large cardboard box of chips, and there was these memory chips and. I think they were 16 K and he stacked them instead of soldering them, like sequentially. He just soldered the legs. Cause there were like maybe 32 pins or something, you know? So he sorted the legs and made a stack of, maybe four or eight, and he made a 64 by 64 field buffer. When he did this, he went into town he took a picture of him waving. So when I came home, it was just there on the work bench. That happened so many times and it just, this kind of like, you know, I came home and the, these 3,400 PortaPacks the camera, right, it has a little flip down viewer, you know, with a magnifying glass and, it was dark and there was, this was projecting the image on the wall. So this is how I got oh wow you can project these little images from these tiny monitors. from that somehow I ended up making Anne Sat Down Beside Her, which used these viewfinders monitors as projectors. 

By this time I had learned a little bit from Dave about gates and and gates and, or gates and this kind of thing. And uh, I disconnected the input to the buffer and put it through an and gate with the clip pulse of this key, so that you could then just grab Interframe images, you could pile up images of whatever, right. I made these works one's called Bits and one is called Bathing and it has these images where the image is inset a little bit and it freezes the colors are all different but it's not analog colorizing. It was using the bits of the A to D and swapping them around, you know, reorganizing the bits. And the way I did this was I would take his card out, desolder and then, you know, putting bit one into three and you know, all these combinations, but I'd have to re solder and take it out each time to make these stills. Then Dave made a bit switch for a little matrix, you know.

Dave had made the input amps and the output amp, the frame buffer, And I think he went back to Oswego or north New York. I had learned a lot of stuff from him, but certainly I couldn't design circuits, but I could kind of play with these digital chips, you know, like, and gates and this kind of thing and then I would say, Dave, do I need a capacitor on the power for noise or something? He's probably the most patient person I know. Even the stupidest question, he will treat the stupidest and the smartest question is exactly the same. He's just like this, you know. 

[00:12:48] Ben: How many years was that? That the two of you were living in the same house and kind of had that really rich kind of like back and forth? 

[00:12:55] Gary: Probably just a year or two, then he, moved somewhere else because he needed more space. I don't know, but he was still in town for a while, but I don't know how long, because then in 79, I went to Buffalo, to take the line of Woody and Seina's teaching position at media study Buffalo.

But, you know, we were obviously in touch with each other. So I think the next big thing that we did I really took the circuits that he made and made more of them. I mean, these are pretty complicated breadboard circuits, but because of the welding I had done I was pretty good at the soldering and maybe I even enjoyed it, you know? So, you know, I made four of those and three frame buffers maybe, and even made them larger. I don't even know how I did that. I must've called him up a lot there's no way I could've done it myself. But I did make another, A to D converter, and all this stuff to make this work called Mesh. By that time I had a, serious amount of Serge modules to control this work, which was all real time. There was, you know, cameras in the space wire mesh on the walls and 16 little tiny speakers all the way around the room so that the Serge was making the sounds and panning them based on the gauge of the wire mash. So you'd have 60 cycles might be represented by window screen size or something like that. So you see what I mean? So you, so then you'd have two frequencies and you'd get phasing like moire pattern. The relativeness of the sound and the image were quite close.

So anyway there was probably a 10 foot wall of circuits for this thing, you know? Then in 2004, I think, the Centre Georges Pompidou did this kind of historical show, Sound and Light, son et lumière, and they showed Mesh. But in this case, it ended up on a G5, the entire thing, doing exactly the same thing. The big difference was the displays, which were, you know, flat-screen displays, which actually worked much better for the piece.

This may sound crazy, but really all of this equipment, even that which I've had in the past and do not have anymore through the years, it's really been used to, de-limit myself. It's tempting me and I have to push it away. I mean it's kind of an expensive way to limit yourself, but in the beginning I was making stuff, so much stuff, through Dave's knowledge, of course. But it really has functioned like that in a funny kind of way. And yet I enjoy certainly sitting down at a modular whichever one it is and playing around, but have I really used that much of these? No, I haven't. I mean, I've used it somewhat as sound in Happenstance but I've mostly used it, I would say as controlling the Rutt-etra video synthesizer. But I have In the back of my head now for a very long time, I really want to make music that hasn't been made before. But I haven't done it yet. 

[00:16:11] Ben: Every artist seems to be quite different in terms of how active of a role they choose to take in the conservation of their work. And I gather this is something that you've been very proactive about. I'm curious if you could tell us about some of the fundamental challenges you've had with the conservation or maintenance of your work and how you've dealt with these, if there's any kind of overarching philosophy that you follow or principles that are important to you in conserving your work.

[00:16:40] Gary: Uh, I mean a lot of us is flux a lot for me. When I think of a video installation or a media installation I really prefer almost the notion that an installation is kind of like a performance and, there's a history of performances and some people perform better than others. But also that the most important part is, that there's a kind of score. In other words, it's much more like a musical score to me. If you think of like, you know, a Bach work or something. Bach would be interesting because he wrote works for clavier before the piano, and now people play it on a piano, which is totally different. Yet when that person plays it or another conductor conducts a symphony we can still say, oh, I know that work. I know what that is. So I mean, that's very basic, but I think that's the beginning point that I see is the way to think about it. And so when someone says, yeah, but that's not the original monitor, they're barking up the wrong tree for me. I mean, this is completely nuts.

For a handful of works that are CRTs in that description would, would be a particular quality of that physical object. And that's where it gets sticky. I wouldn't say across the board, it's cool to replace all CRTs with LCD displays. But I also wouldn't say that this is not allowed. It may be not allowed now and we don't know what's going to be available later. I mean, there might be some other thing. There's kind of an idea that came to me because of this problem, like say for a work like, In As Much As It Is Always Already Taking Place, there's 16 CRTs ranging from a half-inch, one inch, three inch, two inch 6, 7, 9, 12, whatever, up to 23 inches. So even right now, you know, to replace that still could be done today. You can find it. This is almost like a archeological process. 

 I did another work kind of about this issue and it's called In As Much As It Has Already Taken Place, which has the same space as the first with the same sized, just blown glass though, you know, they look like CRTs, but there's no images, there's no wires there's no nothing. It just looks like an excavation of a ghost of that previous work and it's made 30 years later so then I thought, wow, you know, what if, what if you were to project on this? The faces are sandblasted. Would that be acceptable? I don't know if it is or not yet, but that's an interesting idea even actually, to do a work that has nothing to do with either one of those. There's an irony involved in projecting on a simulated CRT and it would create a different texture actually altogether. I kind of want to write, what do they call it? Like a white paper on each work you know, kind of branching out? Almost like you're following the thought process. Even if I don't have the answer. At least there's a detailed attempt at what it means and how to maintain that, you know? So Yeah, to me, it's still, I don't have an answer. If I make good enough art, you know, there has been paintings that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to conserve. Right. You know, at that point, you can make CRTs for a price. I mean, people can do it. So if culture wants it, if they think it's saying something and and continues to say something, they'll pay for it.

[00:20:32] Ben: For an artist like yourself the way you approach conservation and the work is very, you know, almost as a score, the idea is the work it's not the be all end all obviously the physical form that it takes is crucial, but it's somewhat fungible. It seems. I'm curious if that means that for you, your older works, do they have as equal as important a place in your daily practice as new work? Because it's kind of a new problem to solve on an ongoing basis in a way?

[00:21:07] Gary: Well, it's certainly taking up some real time right now. I don't know if that's because of, well, this is about the time, you know, 25 years, 30, 40 years after things. I think part of the problem is that you can't ever think that there is a final solution. It's a living thing. That's you have to feed and take care of it. You know? I mean, there's no other way to think about it. You know I have two hundred terabytes of all my work and I think, oh my God, I'm finally done. It's all off tape. You know? And then, you know, I have a copy of that, but of course these are what, five years. So you have to then copy that before the five years. I mean, you know, it's just an ongoing thing, until they come out with some crystal or something that can store the world and maybe you don't have to worry about it anymore, but yeah you know, keeping things alive takes energy and time and you have to really explore.

[00:22:01] Ben: I'm curious if you think the way that you engage with technology has changed at all over the course of your.

[00:22:09] Gary: I would say that, maybe I'm more and more against it. For example, I'm quite generally turned off by even the terminology of immersive and generative. I'm not speaking of specific works or anything, but especially the immersive thing it's just spectacle. It's just size and spectacle. There's very little thinking involved. It's just big and impressive, you know? And the generative thing is kind of a little bit like that too. Wow. Look at it, it's different. Ah, it's still different. It's keeps going. It's doing its thing, you know, but the overall difference is not a difference. That makes a difference. It's just generative. Cool. You coded that. Good for you, but it doesn't have ideas that grip you, that challenge your mind, your existence, your perception, your whatever. Typically it's a wow factor. You think about interactivity, right? Well, a good painting is interactive. It's as simple as that. Every moment in space and time of you in front of that painting the buttons are being pushed. You know, I think when it gets to be somehow extreme where the most important part of the work is the labeling of it as being interactive there's a problem.

I'm sure I've said this multiple times in various, you know, talks and interviews and stuff. But you know, language is the technology. I mean the possibilities are infinite, just completely infinite, but also because it is what we are, we are language you just can't get past that. 

The industry, whether it's TV manufacturers, Hollywood film, that configuration is, you know, it's kind of, it's like a Gestapo. You know this is how you have to frame your work. It's either four by three 16 by nine three by two, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's quite limiting in fact, I mean, I think a square format, is really interesting. Now I think you can get these, but you know what I mean it's not like this industry has placed this and people just kind of automatically accept it. You know, like, I work in 16 by nine two. I am 4k eight K 16, K whatever, two K one K you know, the higher the resolution the merrier. But on the other hand if you're just talking about images you can have a terrible, VHS and there's noise or, crinkled tape or whatever. But if it's a really good idea, really good work, it's a really good work and you kind of just turn that off. You don't even think about it. You're just looking at and seeing and experiencing something entirely different. But you know, people want the next greatest thing, you know? 

[00:25:13] Ben: I'm curious, if there was any advice that you could offer to young up-and-coming artists today?

[00:25:19] Gary: Wow. I mean, be prepared for a long road. I think some people, unfortunately think they're going to make a career. Once you've already stated that in your head, you know, the chances of that are minimal, you know, you really have to find out whether you were born to do this, you know, you can't do anything else, and if that's not the case, then you're going to be confused for quite some time. In terms of the V word, I would probably use something that Paul Ryan talked a lot about which was just go out and record in real time for an hour or half hour or something like this. It sounds simple but you know brings you into this real time space, that you're thinking closer and closer to that moment because it's a continuum, when you try and do that.

Against my better judgment, I would say learn computer programming. Even to survive even as a side job, I mean, if you want to make art, this seems like a fairly high paying or at least decent paying wage and, you know, it has a future and you might be able to use it too in making things, you know? I think that's yeah. Real time, video and computer programming, and with supervision, a decent dose of LSD is very important. 

[00:26:50] Ben: Okay. So go out and pay attention to the world around you in real time, learn how to code, and drop acid. 

[00:26:58] Gary: Not necessarily in that order. 

[00:26:59] Ben: Great. Fantastic. Gary thank you so, so much. 

[00:27:03] Gary: All right. See you later. 

[00:27:05] Ben: And I'll see you later next week to be exact thanks for tuning in my friends and joining me for this week's conversation with Gary Hill. If you liked what you heard today, I hope you'll consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts that really helps other people discover the show. And as always, if you want to keep the conversation going, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram @artobsolescence. Thanks again for tuning in my friends, my name is Ben Faena Radin, and this has been Art and Obsolescence.