Artist Profile: Jason Harvey
Interview by: SARA TITANIC
Can you talk a little about your upcoming show "FUN" ? What are your inspirations behind it?
"FUN" is going to be a collection of video installations and about 30 or so large scale prints. I've done a lot of static and live video installations in the past but this is the first time where I'm trying to materialize things on a large scale, to make stuff that you can touch and buy. My practice is mostly digital, usually seen through a data projector, a monitor or web browser and I wanted to experiment with ways to bring it into the real world and make a different kind of immersive experience. I'm interested in appropriation, using images, symbols logos, 3d objects etc, taking it all in and kind of vomiting it back out in ways that examine the idea of branding and ownership, kind of taking pieces of things we all see everyday and making it into a little joke just for me. I like this idea of broken humour, trying to create this thing where it's unclear if something is smart or stupid, like a joke that isn't a set up and a punchline, but something that more weird and open ended.
Describe your process of creating a new piece?
Most of the following things inspire me to make new work
•Watching TV almost all of the time
• Techno music
•Yahoo Answers
• Google 3d Warehouse
•teenage toilet graffiti
•bong stores
• youtube 3d animation tutorials given by children
• energy drinks
• face and neck tattoos
• small and large dogs
• huge dogs
•sometimes connecting with other human being in real life
• the sublime beauty of nature
What possessed you to start a Tumblr? And what are some of your favourite Tumblrs/blogs or YouTube videos at the moment?
I started a tumblr because I like the idea of having a place to put all these images and .gifs that I was making, some of which are kind of sketches or pieces of other larger things and some of which are things that just kind of little self-contained thing. I really like the way the tumblr works, where if an image or post is popular it gets reblogged, eventually so much so that you don't even know the originally source. So all of the most popular images are anonymous, and kind of get absorbed back into the creative continuum to get remixed and reiterated by different users. I think that more democratic image making process is really interesting, obviously there’s a lot of crap too, but I think part of what I like about the internet in generally is wading through all of it to find something special.
Here are some youtubes:
I think this is a company that will make videos of you singing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdwZG_WSLiU&list=FLLP-V94SjotP8hunTD0nOBw&index=1&feature=plpp_video
My favourite new robot ToTaLLy tRipPing (sort of)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TphFUYRAx_c
Also a baby who made a Simpsons movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MsC6hfZJ4c&list=FLLP-V94SjotP8hunTD0nOBw&index=62&feature=plpp_video
And some tumblrs I like:
http://risingtensions.tumblr.com/
http://rendering-tools.tumblr.com/
http://powerpoints.tumblr.com/
http://joehamilton.tumblr.com/
When are you most productive?
Definitely during the night time, when there is some sick Wifi, a huge computer and I am also a little bit drunk.
Any last words?
I'm also working on a 3D animated film Called "Avatar 2" which is the unofficial sequel to James Cameron's Avatar, It’s taking forever to make but should come out sometime around the end of the year. Otherwise, I really think FUN will be totally an OK time, you should come and we can all have an OK time together. I am always looking for new people to watch TV and use computers with.
You can look at a bunch of my work here:
http://www.okokokokokok.com/
http://endlesssuffering.tumblr.com/
