Mark Beasley is a young artist whose “artware” (software programs created as works of art) is making for some of the most interesting work in Robert Bills Contemporary’s current show Abstract Places: Mediating the Built Environment. Beasley has been extremely busy lately; in addition to working on his MFA at the University of Chicago,  he has had work in group shows in Cleveland and New York just in the time since Abstract Places opened. Earlier this week he found time to chat with us about his work, the amorphous state of “new media art,” and the ways in which work like his own is changing the rules of everything from the art market to what it means to be an art student.

Mark Beasley, still from “Text-Map (Map My Submissions),” 2007.

The theme of the show is place, and mediating place. Your work in the show
seems like it addresses that theme in a pretty obvious and necessary way — Google Maps is a mediation of place and space we use every day. Your other work doesn’t deal so much with place.  Mediation itself seems to be more a unifying theme in your oeuvre. Talk to me about your approach to this piece, how it fits in your greater body of work.
 
 
Mark: Well I think It’s important to note this is a fairly early work, around 2007, which was when I was really getting involved with making work for the Web. My early approach to make Web work was through text, poetry, or language — this was somewhat due to how I was introduced to it, taking classes such as ‘Web art’ which taught basic web through an e-literature frame.
 
This project was to combine both that background and interest, with the broader rise of Google Maps as a way to navigate/delineate and experience space. I also got interested in Google’s development of APIs (application programming interface) that allowed users to develop custom ways of interacting with their system. So by developing this custom system in which text was the vehicle for navigation, and by developing it in such a way that the text used was mapped in non-linear or unintended ways — by basically sending whole chunks of text to google’s search algorithm — I sought to build a system that acted as an interactive fiction or poem, having the collections of text navigable and represented as the plotted points, however Google resolved them.
 

This makes me want to broach things like Situationism, but I find when people start talking about Situationism things too often get dicey-to-meaningless. Your description of your piece here leads there for me though. Maybe I’ll take a more general tack and say that I’m always curious about the relationship to art history tech artists employ and operate within. Programming seems a world away, and yet this type of art frequently ends up engaging art history and ideas about art history, often in legitimately fresh ways.

Jon Rafman, “Kandinsky Robo-Cop” from Brand New Paint Job, 2010.
 

Yeah. I know sometimes we get accused of being ahistorical, and sometimes we are (not to speak for all tech artists), but I agree that programming, and working in new media/tech/net/web (still very unresolved field) has a way of reengaging histories in unintended and natural ways

 
‘Ahistorical’ doesn’t need to be an accusation in any negative sense. For instance, sometimes I actually get a little disappointed when I see Web art that spends too much time in dialogue with art history. Like there’s an opportunity for genuine newness that’s being missed.  In a way it sometimes even seems to be new art rolling over a little, submitting to art history as the keeper of art value.
 
 
Or using historical references to substantiate or validate new media work. It’s very true. Really the lack of history in new media is one of the things that I believe drives my work and provides for that newness that you speak of.

“Content-Aware Fill Rothko.” Found on tumblr, someone has taken subjected a Mark Rothko to Adobe Photoshop’s “content-aware fill” function, algorithmically  standardizing the content of the entire field.

I feel like one of the more interesting opportunities for newness in this medium is that it invites the kind of person whose mind is attracted to programming into places like SAIC, where 20 years ago they might not have felt so welcome. Are you one of those people (who I might have actually just made up)? Did art come first for you, or programming?
 
 
Art came first. I first came to SAIC through painting and sculpture. But towards my junior year I started to program in a ‘Web art’ class. I don’t see programming as all that different from other tools to produce work, though. I think it effects the way one makes work, certainly. And the vernacular of programming/tech is very different, which also determines what kind of work is made.
 
 
Do you think it effects who makes it, though? I mean, obviously those without access to computers aren’t going to start making art programs, but even within an art school environment I wonder if it doesn’t attract a type of person very different from a student studying fibers or performance. I guess it’s true of any medium, but I wonder if this new medium has created a new category of artist to the point of creating a new “artist type.” For instance,  I had a German teacher once who said he only got a long with Germans, people who spoke Sanskrit, and computer programmers. His argument was something about how the way these languages structured your mind informed what kind of person you were.
 
It’s an interesting issue, which also has ramifications within the tech community. There has been a lot discussion about rent-a-coder, or artists who hire programmers to do their work, and how that effects the output.

And I think it does have an impact on who makes work. Programming can be a very laborious and frustrating practice, and certainly approaching it as an artist, largely self-taught, there is a great time investment, which perhaps puts a limit on how far you can push certain ideas (formally).
 

Would you equate programming more with painting and sculpture or with writing?
 

It’s tricky. I feel it shares a lot of attributes with all three, which is one of the things that makes it unique. It obviously has a lot in common with writing, but I think a lot of programmers when structuring their thoughts in code think physically — it’s a cliche, but like chiseling away at a large block to refine to the idea
 
I guess even among traditional writers you get a sense that some write “visually” or “physically” — that they are translating these types of thoughts into words — while others seem like they think in fully formed sentences.
 
It’s true. Additionally, different programming languages promote different ways of thinking, e.g. c++ often forces you to be more contemplative, some say philosophical with how you go about writing a program, whereas scripting/web is very quick/one-off and fluid… constantly tweaking then refreshing. In the end I think it can impact the output, in that web/script languages provide for a quicker more casual programming experience which maybe doesn’t get in the way as much as does c++.
 
Switching gears a little, something else I’m curious about in this realm is this: working in this medium as an artist, do you ever feel like you’re in competition and dialogue with for-profit software developers as much as you are with artists proper? Or not even for-profit developers, but with a programming and software development community, as opposed to an artist community. I ask this in relation to an experience I’ll have where I’ll be checking out the iTunes app store or poking around Google Labs, and I’ll see these programs that are very powerfully changing the way people view and relate to the world, that are highly creative and sometimes even legitimately beautiful, and they’re making money but they are certainly not being sold as Art. They could be though. Another example is the game programming culture in LA we talked about when I was in your studio, where these kids getting MFAs in game development are selling their work in the same markets as huge game development companies like Zynga, and are frequently also working for huge companies like Zynga. As an art medium it allows for a radically new platform and market where this heterogeneity and crossbreeding happens pretty unproblematically, and it seems like it’s giving rise to a culture that bridges these worlds with two very different measures of value in a way nothing else has in a quite a while.

Mark Beasley, stills from “Vito Acconci (the Video Game),” 2007.

Totally. I think there are overlaps, but a lot of those apps have to avoid being overly critical of their ecosystem. An interesting interaction happened with Robert [Bills], where he asked if what I was doing was legal. It is, but artworks are granted a bit of that safe harbor of being able to be more antagonistic. I’m not necessarily doing that, but that seems to be one divergent point — things that operate in the for-profit world have to appeal to not only the consumer but obey the rules.

Mark Beasley’s Web site is here. His “Text Map (Map My Submissions)” is currently on view at Robert Bills Contemporary.