Christiaan Hattingh, award winning digital artist

Posted on 29. Jul, 2009 by admin in Personality Profiles

Gita Pather talks to Christiaan about his work, its mediums and meaning …

• You are an engineer but have chosen to redirect your career into multimedia, interactive art and new design. What prompted such a radical change in career?

I am still earning most of my income from engineering. Making a good enough living from digital art in South Africa is generally reserved for those working in the advertising industry, and having done my time in that sector I have made a conscious choice to remain within the engineering field and to focus my art on innovation instead of pleasing the client. I am sure within a very limited niche the expectations of the client and creative innovation may co-exist, but it only happens very rarely in my experience.

 

• Generate-mutate-translate, the title of a work of yours could aptly describe the impulse of a lot of digital art. What did you want to convey with this exhibition/artwork?

I suppose this work is my most successful to date, even though it is quite different from most of my current projects where I focus a lot on real-time interaction. Generate-mutate-translate is a complex work with multiple layers of meaning and engagement, and I would say the title aims at conveying something about this complexity. Firstly, it alludes to a layering of meaning, but also more literally, to a layering of processes within the digital domain. It is not easy to describe a clear-cut intention with this work, quite simply because it has evolved so much from the initial development stages that my intentions had to be flexible enough to keep track of a process that sometimes acquires a life of its own. In short, I would say that for me the work is principally about the relationship between language (which could be simplified as a form of information exchange), the evolutionary process, and even life itself – these are key concepts for understanding the workings of the “information age”. As a subtext one of my intentions could be to reveal the principle of convergence (different types of information on a single channel, different devices merging to form one device, etc) and some of the idiosyncrasies that could result from this phenomenon in the digital domain.



• SA has a plethora of artistes working within multimedia and inter-disciplinary frameworks. What do you find exciting about the current artistic endeavors within these fields?

Quite honestly, in terms of my area of interest I am not too impressed with what I see in SA. Here I am referring mainly to what is shown in the fine art/contemporary art domain and not commercial design as such. By and large I think South African art is burdened by localised political concerns and expectations. Issues such as gender and race seem to be the main source of subject matter for many artists. My focus is definitely one of a more universal nature since I believe bigger issues are also at stake, like the global relationship between humans and technology.

Apart from content or subject matter, I also find that a lot of SA artists still use very “manual” techniques, even if they work digitally. Few venture into the domain of true generative and interactive art. Artificial intelligence, for example, is often imitated rather than actually applied within an artwork. Animators also still key, tween and spend hours on manually creating an animation in a very traditional way (even if it’s 3D). I am interested in animations produced spontaneously through generative techniques, or a sound input which is linked to a motion tracker drawing an unpredictable animation on the screen, for example. I draw inspiration from sites such as generatorx.no, vvvv.org, and theverymany.net, to name a few. Generative modes of art making are virtually non-existent in SA. That is also why I appreciate endeavors such as the WITS School of Digital Arts’ interactive program and the work that Nathaniel Stern did while he was around. In my involvement with part-time teaching at UNISA and UP I try to stir an interest in advanced digital media and some of the student work that has come out of this looks promising.

• For many traditionalists, creative digital manipulation is not art. In your opinion what are the criteria to judge great, innovative/groundbreaking/seminal art forms that use computers to create or display work?

Well, I think this debate is dying a slow death. In art history courses on “new media” art you are typically faced with a mourning of the loss of the crafted object, where the artist’s hand was in contact with the artwork and so forth, but I think a lot of these debates actually originate from a perspective that is not familiar with digital technology. It is a kind of fear of the unknown. With younger generations who are increasingly exposed to digital technology it becomes less of an issue and the medium is accepted more readily.

I don’t necessarily think the criteria for judging digital art are that different from traditional benchmarks. For me, in simple terms, it must be engaging – not only its initial impression, but also the layered meanings that draw you deeper into the work. The danger with screen-based work and digital installation is often that there’s a major wow-factor that’s initially registered. It may look unusual and engaging, but when you get into the work it turns out to be very shallow and disappointing, often actually quite lame.

• Advertising and marketing are still very traditional in its applications. However some agencies do push the envelope. What ad campaign would you single out as reflective of encompassing the vast potential of the virtual world, cyberspace, digital art, like animation and so forth?


Once again I will steer clear from the “traditional” digital. A lot of animation, video and such adhere to a tried and trusted narrative and linearity which is rarely challenged. One of the most interesting campaigns I can think of was part of a BMW expo of some kind in Spain: some links – dotdotdot.it/newdot/?p=399 and vimeo.com/626876. I think purely in terms of an engaging interactive form of advertising it is quite unique.