LOVID: THE NATURE OF EXPERIMENTATION

Tali Hinkis: We met at the benefit party for Wave Farm—then called free103point9—at an underground Brooklyn venue called Rubulad. We both had projects in the puppet show room organized by our friend Carrie Dashow. I showed a video with puppets made out of American candy.

Kyle Lapidus: I did a live paper and cardboard puppet show with our friend, Tanya Bezreh. An audience member held out his arms to become the stage and handed out sandwiches to the audience. The performance ended with fireworks that made it snow indoors.

TH: I was working on a video for a performance at the Knitting Factory with singer Victoria Hanna at the time. After the puppet show, I went to Kyle and asked if I could "film you throwing things in the air and sometimes catching them."

KL: Carrie had a surveillance camera set up in the room, so our first meeting and eye-lock were recorded.

KL: I also told Tali I’d make her a video mixer for the show, but we ended up borrowing one from Madame Chao.

TH: We met, started working together, got married, and had our first child in two years.

TH: I’ve always been an artist. There’s a photo of me at eight months old, drawing, and I never stopped. I grew up in a household that valued art more than anything else, and my parents encouraged me to pursue it professionally. As a teenager in Tel Aviv, I majored in cinema and was a museum nerd, so I’d go to see exhibitions all the time. My favorite place was the art supply store. I moved to Paris to study at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (ENSBA) in 1994 and never had any other career. At ENSBA, I started as a painter and printmaker and quickly switched to focusing on video. I started exhibiting, selling work, and organizing shows while in school, around 1998.

KL: I’ve always had varied interests. While studying neuroscience as an undergraduate at Harvard, I started taking electronic music classes with Ivan Tcherepnin, where I was introduced to modular synthesizers. I also DJed on the Record Hospital at our college radio station and was set up with Zak Sitter from Fat Day. The first time I went to his show to learn from him, he asked what kind of music I liked, and I said I was into lyric-based music. He said, "Tonight, I’m going to play a noise-based set." I was doing expanded music with a heavy performance element when I met Tali. We started out doing mainly live AV performances and touring, but moved more into object making for our first solo show at SOUTHFIRST in 2003.

TH: LoVid is a combination of Lo-Video (a la Low Tech or LoFi) and Loved. Before LoVid we had a VJ project called Viduo and did a tour as Ladies and Gentlemen, Mark Your Doors.

KL: We are so deeply aligned on almost everything, so it can be hard to understand when Tali sees something from a different perspective. Plus, she always claims color superiority.

TH: It’s a challenge that Kyle’s not on Twitter.

KL: In the beginning, we asked ourselves a lot what LoVid was—if a specific project was "LoVid" or if it was something else.

TH: Back then, among other side projects, Kyle had a musical project called ORTHO.

KL: And Tali had a collaboration with Carrie called Cook Sisters.

TH: Cook Sisters was a live video project with Carrie, where she played with various crafty materials like paper and transparencies in front of several cameras, and I mixed all the camera feeds with multiple analogue mixers. We’d also have musicians involved, and a couple of times cooks would make and serve food for the audience; that too was filmed, so the experience was multisensory. It was delicious fun energy; we played in loft spaces and galleries. Tanya actually wrote a review of one of our performances where she coined the term "the new vulnerability" in relation to performing live video. Some of that urgency and fragility are definitely still with me and in my name, LoVid.

KL: ORTHO was a performance noise troupe with Clay Lacefield, Nouri Zander, and Ron Rosenman. We made sound with a lot of contact mics and used costumes and props to create noise fables. We could be astronauts with umbilical connections to our spaceship, angels, animals, or shipwrecked babies.

TH: As we matured as artists, LoVid grew to encompass everything we wanted to make. Instead of fitting the work to the label "LoVid", we stretched the definition of what LoVid is, and it is now our complete artist identity.

LoVid: Now we say we are media artists working primarily in video and textiles. Our roots are in noise music and the media-art scene, which is for us an umbrella term to include anything from AV performances to Net Art. We work primarily, but not exclusively, in abstraction and are always thinking about the human body and human connections, along with electrical connections.

Our careers and lives together are a continuum. We see more connections than differences. Now we have opportunities to be uncompromising in our work, and we continually adopt new tools, collaborators, and partners, but we’ve been working in very similar ways from the beginning.

LoVid: Often we start with a conversation, though this conversation can also be non-verbal, like twisting knobs or twiddling variables. Something sparks or rekindles an idea since we also have a "bank of ideas" that we can always go back to. Often, one body of work leads to the next. In the years that we supported our studio practice with grants, writing the proposals was often where ideas started to take shape. Recently, we usually start with an exhibition opportunity or a commission. And in between the deadlines, we still find time to experiment with materials, colors, composition, and new technologies.

LoVid: For us, probably the biggest change is mobile media (i.e., smartphones). In 2003, we made VideoWear, which are video costumes made with fourteen LCD screens embedded in protective sportswear covered in our fabric and with hundreds of feet of attached cables.

It can be hard to remember what life was like before even iPods were a thing. Now the integration of video into daily lives, public space, and the human body is so ubiquitous and fluid we can forget to notice it. It’s amazing to watch the evolution from VideoWear in 2003 to our NFTs that are in people’s crypto wallets, sometimes on their phones and in their pockets.

LoVid: We’ve been selling media art for decades on VHS tapes, DVDs, records, CDs, etc., and of course, material-based works. NFTs are part of a system that features an active and larger-scale digital market, which provides more immediate feedback. The most interesting part of Web3 for us is the community aspect—being part of something in online spaces but also very much IRL in physical spaces where we engage with collectors, other artists, and many wonderful platforms and curators.

We didn’t expect how it would change our daily lives to have constant conversations with such a large group, and this has been thrilling to experience. There are two economic and social ways of making and sustaining a career as a media artist: one model is based on mass distribution modeled after the film industry and the music industry, and the other model is based on the fine art world through rarity and the sale of unique objects. Since our origins are in music and video, it was natural for us to start our career working with not-for-profit institutions where the focus is accessibility. At that time, that distribution model was mainly how we saw the future of digital art: as public art, collected by museums, supported by public funding, academic institutions, etc.

In recent years, we started working primarily with galleries in the art market space, and when NFTs came along, these distribution mechanisms offered a great way to expand our thinking of digital ownership of unique work that can also be experienced globally and collectively.

LoVid: We always felt very supported by a community of arts organizations. From the beginning, we knew that we were not interested in having everyone like our work; our own taste and influences are aligned with the more marginalized avant-garde history of art.

We have long-term (20+ years) relationships with many not-for-profit organizations and their audiences, and these relationships are particularly salient for us. Places like Wave Farm, Issue Project Room, Harvestworks, Rhizome, EAI, Eyebeam, Smack Mellon, and so many more. That’s what always kept us going. We’re always excited to see what these organizations present—there's lots of great art and music out there.

We have a very clear vision of who we are, what work we are making, and our place in contemporary art. Anything on top of that is gravy; we’re psyched to have expanded our audience to one that is more diverse and international.

LoVid: Absolutely. To start, we wouldn’t be where we are today and wouldn’t have been able to sustain 20+ years of experimental work without the support of numerous not-for-profits around the world.

In 2003, we had our first residency at the Experimental TV Centre (ETC) and became more engaged in the historical community of live video with artist-made tools and synthesizers. Working in the ETC studio was transformational; we got to build audiovisual compositions over days by patching together the various analogue synthesizers. Analogue synthesizers are inherently generative; you start with electric current and create a "patch" that organizes how the electrical signal moves between the modules or devices to create the desired output.

We also loved that ETC was in a small town in upstate New York, and we got to look at the Susquehanna River every day and even bathe in its tributary. This increased our interest in the relationship between electrical and natural environments and led to our building our first analogue audio/video synthesizer during a residency at Eyebeam in 2005. New York State has a history of providing great financial and administrative support for nonprofit organizations that work with video, media, and digital art. That's one of the reasons there are so many important historical and contemporary arts institutions here.

In addition to ETC, there are several other great residencies for analogue video that we worked at and that have long supported our projects, including Signal Culture and the Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) at Alfred University. SouvenirHrz is a collection of images taken from video recordings that were made at Alfred’s IEA using the analogue equipment that is their specialty. One of the best parts of our Art Blocks Curated project TIDE PREDICTOR was that we were able to help fund a new award for artists through another organization with an incredible relationship between electrical and natural environments, Wave Farm, which is located in Acra, NY. We supported the creation of a fund that will give small additional resources to their residents every year, called the Rising Tide Award.

LoVid: The past 20 years haven’t changed in a linear way; we see waves, cycles, and also parallel areas. There are always techno-utopians and techno-skeptics, and our work is positioned in between where we see these positions. While we embrace innovation, we maintain a critical stance as well.

Our experience of the "art and technology" scene in the early 2000s was in DIY spaces and galleries rather than the tech world. It was more political, related to anti-war and anti-capitalism, and in many cases, a response to dot-com culture as well. We wanted to make video and sound that was not laptop music (produced with commercially available gear), but that was in conversation with the various ways artists have historically used technical instruments in live moving image works, from handmade cinema to software art. But our focus was particularly on the hardware and tools we built.

We have seen many cycles where audiences and the broader public have different positions on where technology stands and, often, on what big tech does with it. When we had our first Mac laptop in the early aughts, it had an interchangeable drive that could be an external HD or a DVD player or burner. Back then, Adobe software bootlegs and other tools circulated among artists regularly; shareware and trades were the norm. It’s cliche to talk about dongles and cable connectors, but limiting access to old technology is a design and economic decision that affects the work artists do every day.

In the early days of art and technology, there were no set systems to make the art, so artists all had to do some engineering in their approach and create their own systems. This is the territory we wanted to explore as young artists, and we still love it today. The transformation of the media artist’s studio from racks including homemade and custom-modified equipment to the iPad and other prosumer devices makes technology easier for more people to use but misses out on the sensual materiality that is a key part of our interest in making art. Today, people’s relationship with technology seems extremely fragmented. Lots of new tools in Web3, AI, etc. are available, while at the same time, many people of all ages reject the idea of living online and want real-life experiences, social gatherings, events, exhibitions, and tangible art.

More collectors and art viewers now easily accept digital processes as part of an artist's practice. We are interested in digital spaces and how art is seen within them, as well as in bringing digital space aesthetics and processes to tangible materials and physical experiences.

Technology is widely misunderstood and distrusted, while it is increasingly and thoroughly integrated into everyone’s life.

LoVid: Generally speaking, we are more drawn to the idea of experimentation than innovation. To us, experimentation pushes boundaries and often redefines what art even is and where it exists. It pushes the limits of aesthetics, of hearing, of seeing, and often of understanding art.

When we started working in analogue video in 2003, we received some pushback; people would ask questions like, "Why are you working with technology that was created decades ago?"

We place our work and the works of our peers in connection with the pioneers of video art. For those pioneers, new technology and innovation were critical, particularly in designing new tools that could be used by all artists in emerging fields. In the early 2000s, we were particularly interested in the specific look, feel, and limitations of these machines. Spending time with analogue equipment was a choice, not a necessity. We were aware of resisting trends that push makers towards the newest and figuring out what we wanted to make; our process was or is grounded in ideas of finding beauty in the failures and fragility of technology. Currently, the idea of "glitch" is very mainstream, but when we started performing and screening work in the early days, we often heard questions like, "Is it broken?" The nature of experimentation for us is spending time with materials and exploring the devices and the system. This often includes finding ways to subvert the audience’s expectations of what they are used to when seeing technology-based work. The technology is usually supposed to be invisible, but we like to find ways to draw attention to it and allow our audience to also become intimate with the tools.

We’re always excited by ideas, and we like experimenting with new processes (e.g., wearable sensors, blockchain, or geolocation), but not all innovations fit into our work. The foundation of our practice is actually working with very old technology (analogue video) and, in many cases, resisting the push to adopt the tech trends of the moment. We like the vulnerability and fragility of tools, systems, and abstract thoughts. We love participation and chance, and new technologies offer new vulnerabilities and failings to discover.

LoVid: When we started working as LoVid, we operated exclusively within the noise music scene and then the new media world. Some names that inspired us then were our peers, including Peter B, Nautical Almanac, Lucky Dragons, Forcefield, I Heart Presets, Paul Slocum, Karl Klomp, and many more. These artists built their own instruments from scratch (e.g., Peter B’s touch-controlled synths, or Karl Klomp’s dirty mixer) or through circuit bending and hacking (I♥️Presets’ VTech Vitch device , Paul Slocum’s Commodore 64 mods). These artists, like us, crossed between live performances and installations. We were also inspired by the relationship between craft and media in Lucky Dragons’ (woven cables) and Forcefield’s (knitted costumes) early works.

It is also hard to separate the work we all did at the time from the ways it was presented and seen. House shows, block parties, large screens with loud speakers, crowded rooms, and a deeply engaged audience Coming of age in that era was influential for us, and it informs the work we do to this day. For example, our HUGS ON TAPE series references those colorful community days.

As mentioned, we were also very inspired by the generation of video pioneers from the 1960s and 1970s, including Dan Sandin, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Dave Jones, Matthew Schlanger, and Gary Hill. Of course, the legendary 9 Evenings by EAT (Experiments in Art and Technology) are another significant source of inspiration.

Recently, we have been inspired by works that capture the unique and contemporary experience of life both online and offline. Works that address the multiple overlapping realities and the consciousness of this particular time. Beyond the group of generative artists we engage with on a daily basis, we love artists such as Ryan Trecartin, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Luke Murphy, or Sarah Sze.

We’re also always listening to new music and following textile artists such as musician and amazing performer Victoria Shen (evicshen) and fabric artists Julia Bland and Robin Kang.

LoVid: With some notable exceptions, from our experience, there is great misunderstanding and distrust between the two worlds. We have been able to keep a foot in the fine-art world while expanding our practice into Web3, mostly because we also make material-based work such as fabrics, stained glass, prints, etc.

It is challenging to work within both spaces, primarily because the NFT art world moves at 10X or 100X speed, responding 24/7 to hype cycles every week and being under pressure from "the market". Artists take months or years to develop a piece, and then it’s one "drop" on one day, maybe a week of conversation, and everyone is off thinking and talking about the next thing. It’s great to see some of the magazine culture, like what you do at EXPANDED.ART and also Right Click Save and Outland, who are fostering long-term context and conversations.

We’re excited to see how things take shape long-term, with galleries, funds, and DAOs too, and are excited for more exhibitions of works that are already collected as well as new releases. Exhibitions outside of immediate market concerns will be healthy and interesting and can offer new contexts for the work.

NFTs brought a whole new community into the conversation about art, particularly the tech and finance communities that until recently had otherwise been historically less engaged in their support and enthusiasm for art institutions. It is great to have traditional cultural approval for all the successes and contributions of Web3 art, but we don’t think it is critical for a sustainable and thriving NFT art community and market, which does not need to rely on such external validation.

As the NFT art world grows, it has its own unique logic, mechanisms, and even aesthetics. The conversation around NFTs is mainly happening on Twitter, Discord, and private Slack or Telegram groups. As most of us know, not everyone lives on Twitter, and most people live their lives without thinking about the Internet or using social media all the time. NFTs are for and about a very "online" culture, which is never just about the art; there is always a larger narrative and structure around it, which is fascinating but also difficult to follow for anyone from the outside.

LoVid: In 2003, the most straightforward way to sell digital objects (actually digital captures of stills from analogue video) was as physical prints. For the show at SOUTHFIRST, we sold outputs of these stills as C-prints. It has been a significant breakthrough to have digitally native work sold and appreciated as unique digital objects, editions, and generative collections. We have been excited by the large base of collectors for our generative NFTs (e.g., TIDE PREDICTOR) and also by the more personal group involved with our digitally handmade series, HUGS ON TAPES. This collection includes 18 portraits of people we know who sent us video recordings of them hugging a special person or group in their lives. Each person and hug are unique, so each animation is a 1/1, and human touch is present throughout the creation process.

LoVid: Each piece in the SOUVENIRHRZ collection is one frame from a video recording, deinterlaced to reveal a moment that would otherwise not be experienced by viewers. We use this deinterlacing process frequently.

Since the nature of live video is essentially ephemeral, we have always been interested in preserving or capturing particular moments while maintaining a sense of fluidity. Because each frame is a very ephemeral moment, it makes sense for us to keep it in a very limited edition. We select these frames with a lot of intention; there is improvisation in making the videos and being in the moment, responding to the instruments and to each other. The selection of specific frames is very focused and involves an editing process. Collectors get to have a slice of our lived experience, exploring the analogue tools in the studio to create a composition that includes chance and our artistic contribution.

On-chain generative NFTs provide an exciting way to own digital art since the algorithm is central to the art and the collector is a participant as well as the steward of the work. It’s a very special and thrilling experience to mint or even live mint generative work. We approach it as an extension of our performance work as well as a way to share our lived experience of working with analogue signals and live video. The whole process of uploading the code, seeing the work materialize in its many forms, and then engaging with the collectors in the Web3 community has been a thrilling experience and something that changes how we think of what we can do next. For the future, we are particularly excited about digital ownership, token gating, and long-term engagement.

LoVid: It probably isn’t surprising that it’s hard—nearly impossible—for us to choose three key moments. Every experience leads to something new, and sometimes it takes years or decades to see these connections. These three works have been particularly important for us and also provide a great opportunity to emphasize that an artist never works alone. We have had the great fortune to have a career supported by a system of institutions and friends throughout all these years. In discussing the work, it is critical that we highlight the contributions of these supporters as well:

SYNC ARMONICA
In 2005, we were artists in residency at Eyebeam. With their support, as well as New York State Council on the Arts and ETC, we built our first analog audio/video synthesizer, SYNC ARMONICA. This was a huge undertaking and it was incredible to have space, tools, and guidance from these great institutions.

We were in touch with many of the original engineers who built related instruments, such as Dave Jones, Matthew Schlanger, and Dan Sandin. We had to find components that were already obsolete, print our own boards and assemble them, laser cut our enclosures, etc. Since then, analogue video synthesizers have become a lot more popular, and there are great companies selling modules commercially, like LZX Industries and Dave Jones Design. These help support a resurgence of interest in analogue video aesthetics, which are also popular in the NFT world with their tangible, low-tech, nostalgic look. SYNC ARMONICA was designed as both an instrument and a sculpture. Each component is laser etched and has a partially clear enclosure, so the circuit board and cables are visible.

During our time at Eyebeam, we had several interns, including Stanley Ruiz (an artist and industrial designer) and Rafael Cohen (an artist and art therapist).

iPARADE
From 2010 to 2015, we produced a series of locative media works created as smart-phone apps called iPARADE. iPARADE is a series of locative media works created as smart-phone apps. Video, sound, and texts were accessible only in specific geographic locations based on GPS data. The content was inspired by and recorded in those same locations, blending real and speculative histories. To watch the work in full, visitors needed to physically relocate themselves to access uploaded segments linked to each particular location.

iPARADE focused on mixed reality appreciation of the physical environment, local history, and architecture, providing a unique perspective into the narratives and abstractions of public spaces. This body of work was produced with funding from many organizations over the years, including Rhizome, Franklin Furnace, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and many more. It was very significant at the time to bring our videos to mobile phones and think of digital art as public art. It was also one of our most complicated projects, with many institutional partners as well as collaborating artists and technologists. The apps were built or modified by our close friends Ron Rosenman, Sean Montgomry, and BJ Warshaw. The music for iPARADE #2 was by Maria Chavez, and for iPARADE #3, it was produced in collaboration with the legendary Pauline Oliveros.

HUGS ON TAPE
During the early COVID pandemic lockdown in 2021, we started making the HUGS ON TAPE series. Originally, these were produced as short animations for Instagram and eventually as NFTs, large digital tapestries, and even public artworks. The Hugs are a continuation of what we’ve always done (involving the body and technology and mapping our video signals onto the physical world). At the same time, the gesture of a filmed hug is a captivating package, highlighting human connections, especially during a time when so many of us were feeling isolated.

HUGS ON TAPE has been exhibited in many galleries and exhibitions in the past couple of years, but one of the most notable experiences was our solo show, HOLD ON, at Postmasters Gallery in New York City in March 2022. It was wonderful to have the opportunity to exhibit the fabric works alongside the animations and NFTs. This hybrid digital-material exhibition continues our trajectory of working between these realms and now resonates with people of all backgrounds more than ever before.

LoVid: Most importantly, go to see as many exhibitions as you possibly can. Go to all the galleries and museums. Then pick the galleries you care more about and go to all their openings. Spend time showing up for other artists and doing studio visits with friends. Learn about their work and share your process. The art world runs on social connections, both online and offline.
It’s important for young artists to realize that a career in art is like running a small business. You spend some of your time doing the work, some socializing, and some doing administrative work. It’s not going to just be fun, and accepting failure publicly at times is something to get used to. Money and attention come and go, so you have to build your support system and circle of trust early. You have to be generous and selfish, open-minded and stubborn, confident and humble. Lots of contradictions coexist.

LoVid: What we see now is that there is a wonderful, very loyal community around all the different ways that NFTs are created, distributed, and collected. Unless something major changes, this is going to continue for a long time because now, several years in, people have formed deep new friendships and partnerships.

The more in-person events around NFTs, the better the community will get. There are great new platforms, funds, museums, etc. that have grown. We’re excited to see what direction they all take.