Interviewer: video.loss
NYC based visual artist Luke Murphy works with LED Matrix panels to create immersive sculptures using a traditionally 2D medium. Murphy utilises the form of the LED Panel en masse, breaking free from the constraints of the single 16:9 screen we are so used to viewing. By creating these 3D objects, his work becomes entrancing and interactive – a multi sensory experience.
Luke found his beginnings in painting throughout the 1990’s, but began to work as a computer programmer towards the turn of the century. Through combining these two seemingly opposite disciplines, he has created a well informed and provocative display; marrying data and art in an organised array of metal and light.
Luke Murphy [IG:lukemurphy49] has joined #CO
<CO>
What interests you about Digital art?
<LM49>
That unlike traditional media, it mostly requires endless streams of randomness to come alive. The random number generation and consumption in the making of digital art is not an esthetic strategy to undermine the traditional “hand” of the artist, but like so much of our digital life, is the life blood of its existence.
<CO>
How did you begin working with LED Matrix panels as an artistic medium?
<LM49>
I had been doing a number of pieces with projection and screens using radioactive decay as a source of random numbers and just couldn’t bring myself to produce another awkward screen-based piece in a gallery setting. I had been looking at the failures of the lowest end signage for years and thought there was something in the pathos of those forgotten bits of technology, still trying to broadcast out, trying to sell something hopelessly outdated that seemed like a forgotten part of our world – the millions of lines of code written by thousands and thousands of nameless developers all to make a bodega sign – it made sense. I loved the direct simplicity of this ubiquitous tech. At first it was about signage and signage failure, but later become more sculptural.
<CO>
Your work often embodies themes of randomness and unpredictability - where did this concept begin?
<LM49>
For many years I collected Geiger counters. I have also listened to a lot of Country & Western – a lot, too much. The 50’s had a number of songs about radiation and even one about getting rich on Uranium (Warren Smith, Uranium Rock) or the dire consequences – The Louvin Brothers “The Great Atomic Power” – the cultural aftermath of the Atomic Bomb, money and power, the rise of the USA as an Atomic Power, Abstract Expressionism, and Country Music were all inventions of that period from the late 40’s through the 50’s. Collecting Geiger counters was a trip through the hope of America. I started listening to the the clicks from the counters when they were just picking up ambient radiation and realized I was hearing the invisible traces of absolute randomness – at a quantum level, the spontaneous fission of Uranium is completely unpredictable – the ultimate source of randomness – a kind of small tap in to the absolute. So I started hooking the Geiger counters up to animation pieces and letting the randomness drive them. It got quite elaborate and I had a show of those pieces – further inspired by a short video I saw of when Iran announced it had enriched Uranium to weapons grade (20% U235) that involved a dance against a backdrop of doves and atoms.
<CO>
Are there any concepts you continue to revisit with your work?
<LM49>
I keep coming back to the problem of seamlessness in technology – I spent a lot of years building large scale entertainment websites and as you know, ease of use, frictionless interfaces, and seamless experiences are not just the goal, but the foundation of web business. So much effort goes into hiding the materiality of screens and devices that I think it’s good to feel the material nature of these things – they are a kind of apex of human endeavor and are actually quite human things in the end – with lots of failures and fragility.
<CO>
How do you feel the internet and social media affects the way we interact with art?
<LM49>
Without doubt – in fact it’s probably the situation that our interaction with screens is the real experience and art is just the “content” of the experience – I am an old time McLuahnite for sure 😉 Instagram runs the consumption of so much art and I think it’s a situation we barely understand – it’s one thing to spend 30 seconds in front of a painting that took weeks or months to make, it’s another to flick through a stream of works in 30 ms because the scrolling is just so easy. The emphasis on condensed miniaturised images is not so great.
