Communication with the self

An email interview with igor stromajer

The first appearance of igor stromajer was a surprise coup: in the network art competition "extension" the hamburg kunsthalle in 1997 came, saw and won stromajer with his work "0.Html". Although he had hardly atticed in the net art scene, he got the first prize from the booth, and was probably the most beamed by himself.

Communication with the self

Animated gif from igor stromajer.

In the following two years he has on his domain www.Intima.Org a collection of own network works built up to the best designed net.Artworks throughout the internet, even though he himself emphasizes in the following interview, that he does not go to www beauty. His last coarse network opus "b.Old.Icica" but impresses with the simple, almost continuously black-and-wece design at least as well as the spiritual-philosophical dimension, which is made up of just slow. Other work as well as for example "emotion" are sometimes very much reduced, but simultaneously programmed very carefully. All together is the scenic and iconographic stylization.

Animated gif from igor stromajer.

But the artistic work of the 32-year-old slovenia is not limited to web art. In his hometown ljubljana, he last in the urban theater the internet performance "oppera torettikka internetikka" created at the audience, as well as java scripts with a deep voice, he appeared as well as java scripts with a deep voice — a performance that many viewers remembered medieval choral. With its coarse, bald head and his chin beard, he always seems a little bit like a monk or a priest in such appearances. And although he himself highlights the communicative side of his work, for the studied theater director asceticism and isolation is the most important aspect of his grid art. The following interview was guided by email.

Your online name is "intima". Why did you choose him, and what is important for your work?

Igor stromajer: "intima" is an artistic sign, a kind of trademark for everything i do — both in art like in life, because i see a strong connection between one and the other. What interests me especially at the net art is the one viewer who is just a specific net.Art project looks at. There is always an invidualist receptionist sitting at the other end at the computer. She or he are convicted, with the net.Artwork on a very intimate style. If you sit on the computer, you always communicate with yourself. The viewing of network art is therefore also a kind of auto communication, masturbation, which is influenced by the artistic impulses that come from the work. The basis of my work is individuality, and the keywords for all my activities are seclusion and asceticism. Therefore, my artist’s pseudonym "intima", because i believe that net art is the most intimate type of art that has ever given it. And at the same time the most dangerous. Why and for whom would be dangerous when people are isolated in front of their computers?

Igor stromajer: working with the computer is a process of very intensive communication with itself. This type of art makes the user and participants to a vipard of the artwork: mub will be active in this digital environment to survive. If you do nothing, a thing brings in a very dangerous situation: you will pollute, and can not control your position in a work and react to work. This is dangerous. But many artists are not interested in the internet, because it allows them to communicate with themselves, as you say, but because it enables them to communicate potentially with the whole world. What you say seems to apply more on computer art…

Igor stromajer: the possibility to communicate with around the world is, of course, and it also makes spab to be invited to festivals and exhibitions around the world instead of being exhibited at the place only in the gallery. But that’s not the most important thing. On the contrary, many might-like artists can be imagined that they are internationally known. What i mean with active car communication is the intimate process between the user and the net.Kind of work. The interface is just a tool, virtual material. What i feel about is the story, the message. The network communication with others is only surface, in reality everyone speaks with themselves. Even an email entertainment is more of a monologue with delays as a dialogue. If you are with a net.Art project and its dynamic and distributed structure, the signals are translated into body reactions and serve to work with themselves, with their own activities, reactions, fet, yes even with their own bones,. Meat, blood, cum: all we have. At your work, you can use a lot of found material and look like your web pages like digital collages. What has this unpersonal, prefabricated material with car communication to do from which you speak?

Igor stromajer: i am looking for me all this stuff in the net, and look at me more than collectors than as a gossip. Why should you still create something, if everything is already there? I need to look for usual or useless material to combine it to combine your own statement in another environment. For my search missions on the net, i often find material that provokes me, and i want to defend me somehow. I’m admitted that this material is emotional at me, and that’s why i archive this material and attempts to promote other people emotionally. I often wines, and i want to show others that they can also cry. I want to provoke your communication with yourself. But most of these pictures from the network were created for commercial or information purposes. Your purpose is not really to promote us emotionally, and even from technical reasons, such as the low resolution and the bad quality of the pictures, it is also a bit difficult to imagine that. How do you want to achieve that you still touch someone’s cheaper?

Igor stromajer: couple are neither a privilege of living beings, and not of the art. Acuh’s businessmen, superm markets, political propaganda, handie, satellite technology, international corporations, medical devices and the borsen could be full of emotions, and are probably even. Want to say that bad quality eliminates emotions? On the contrary, i see it as a low-tech solution for high-tech art. But emptied the combination of very different pictures in your work not exactly their meaning?

Igor stromajer: in any case, there is a new meaning. It makes me a lot of spab, the meaning of a picture completely to uplift when it pages in the concept of my work. Sometimes i am surprised and shocked by the alternative meaning, which a picture me very aggressively suggests. In the world beyond the internet, it is the same. We consume pictures, and we rebuilt them in different ways. Our brain is able to get the most fantastic combinations, and this is no different — by course with a bible help of the netkundri. When we talk about network art, we ultimately speak of unlimited views and perspectives, in which a picture in conjunction with others basically mean everything we, so the artist together with the user, want. However, pictures in my work are not the most important topic. The net art scene is the first art movement since the second world war, which really exceeds the border between east and western europe. Where do you see yourself as slovene in this context? Do you think that something specific at your work "sight" is? Or do you think these paradigms have no meaning?

Igor stromajer: as well as. I believe in one "baltic seele" and that also plays a role in my art. But that may have more to do with it that i grew up in the east, and less with my concrete projects, because it was very difficult to see my work in this context. It is more a general attitude that is represented by openness, honesty and open-mindedness that is not always very rational. But these qualities are not the exclusive privileges of eastern europe, and it is not my most important interest to search for the border between east and west. I was happy to talk about a certain work of you. Can you add something "b.Old.Icica" say what my knowledge is after your last work…

Igor stromajer: the latest works are "oppera torettikka internetikka — stromajer is singing the theory of internet", a build performance and "zvrst3", a collection of net.Kind.Trash for a festival in rubland. About "b.Old.Icica" to say is very difficult for. The project is dedicated to my dad, because he now lives in "b.Old.Icica". It is the country at the end of the time. The hereafter. And it is very emotional. It is about the relationship between communication and communism. About what is art and what is not an art. Uber uncensored celestial view, over unshest zones, the definition of net.Art, viruse and the last brain game. Not to suffer about it, because every time you go, i die a bib. And about where all the flowers are. That is "b.Alt ica", and that’s what i think about all the time. I have the feel that net art, which is mainly about the design of websites, is no longer important. What do you think where the net art and especially your own work will develop?

Igor stromajer: i am absolutely convinced that there is no netkunst, which is only web design. Because the design is about creating things that look like, but art is generally nothing to do with beauty. The internet will continue to develop as a medium that at some point is all connected with each other, and all, every washing machine, each toaster, each refrigerator, every car, are connected to each other. If one speaks of interaction as one of the basic principles of the grid art, that’s wrong, because what we now have is just the unimportant surface of something we were wanted, wh
ich it is an interaction. But it is not. The real interaction comes only. There will be complex connections between the machines and us and our body. Nano robots will settle in our meat, and every person will become a kind of changing server computer, which communicates, interacts, and combines themselves with everything that surrounds him. The internet as such will disappear or turn into something very personal, intimate and small transformation and as a medium at the same time totally global and huge. It will make a physical and material part of our body if it wants to survive somehow. So, body-triggered handie and gps are the future. Can you introduce the art that arises under such circumstances? (tilman baumgartelto)