Experimental Video, Recording Artist, LoVid Member – The Oberlin Review

Tali Hinkis is a member of the artist duo LoVid. On Wednesday, she came to the Clarence Ward Art Library to give an artist talk about her unconventional practice.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Sound and the examination of hearing are an important part of many of your pieces. How do you think it is possible to use sound to reach an audience in a way that visual means cannot?

I think if you look at popular art forms, music is just more popular than visual art. I think people are naturally drawn to music. Music is something that we seem to have to do in order to hear it. It is an amazing functionality of being human. We can't turn off our ears; We can't close them, so we're always in a sound environment. We can close our eyes. So music is such a powerful device and is obviously used in so many art forms, from live theater to cinema to dance.

Since I'm not a musician, I was just jealous of musicians from a young age. They have this connection with people and seem to create something absolutely necessary: ​​people need music. With visual art, however, you really have to advocate for yourself. It is more difficult. We live in a visual world, so defining where art has its place is another challenge.

On the other hand, a lot of the music LoVid makes is pretty heavy. It is in the experimental noise spectrum; It's not melodic, standard. No traditional instruments are used. Not everyone likes it. In fact, in a way it is designed to be extremely captivating and will attract some people to it, but some people will not be able to tolerate it. However, what we've noticed over the years is that we may have works that have extremely intense visual elements and that are mostly tolerated and enjoyed, but when there are intense audio effects, it's really difficult for people. In an exhibition environment it's just something we have to think about. The sound grabs people's attention as soon as you put it in, but for some it can be really off-putting. We have decided over the years where, when and how it is important to integrate it. There is a kind of relationship with nature and abstraction. The sound kind of goes in and out. Sometimes it's really hard. And this is really a trick to let the audience enjoy more than just the beautiful images.

How did you get into this type of work?

I grew up painting and have identified as an artist my entire life. I studied film in high school, so I wanted to go to traditional cinema as a teenager. I loved photography and camera work. But I quickly realized that I wasn't capable of it. I don't think linearly and I couldn't articulate it at the time, but I realized I'm not a storyteller. I don’t have the structure of storytelling in my mindset. It didn't attract me. It was a real challenge for me. And when I first learned video editing in high school, I had this idea that there was this whole other world of non-narrative, non-linear use of video, but I didn't know that was possible. I was drawn to it from the start. Then I went to school in Paris and also started painting and printing, but then quickly switched to video.

Even in a time-based video you can really push the boundaries of rhythm, and there are no rules – it's a rule-breaking method. So I started in the mid to late 90s. I still used cassette tapes because there were no computer systems. Then in the 90s I started using the computer for digital work and experimenting with early internet stuff.

Recently, your Tide Predictor was added to the permanent collection of the Museum of the Moving Image. What was it like working with JavaScript?

I don't do any programming myself – Kyle, my colleague, works a lot on the analog synth stuff and does some programming. It's all algorithmically generative work, like all the work we've done, but when we bring in these more complex programming systems, we often work with Douglas Repetto. Repetto has been working with us for around 20 years and is intensively involved in the visualization of data samples. Tide Predictor was another time we worked with Douglas on the P5JS program. I don't do math. I'm a visual artist and have to move things in visual space. But I enjoy working with a lot of different technologists.

The relationship between the visual vision for something and the need to then communicate that through language and then collaborate with a programmer or developer is a back and forth. There are so many artists who don't work in a vacuum. These relationships last a long time and are also based on trust and appreciation for the vision of the other artists. With Tide Predictor, our first on-chain device [AI] When doing generative work, it was really interesting to have a relationship with our analog video works from 20 years ago. It was interesting to see at what point the code can match the analog synthesizer, but it wasn't intended to look exactly like that. At some point it separates and somehow disappears. For LoVid, who likes touching things and imperfections, Code is a real challenge because it's designed to give control to the artists. With this system it's a nice game because you have control over some things, but then there are these exits that just do their thing.

Who and what are some of your biggest inspirations?

I would push that back a bit because I have a lot of things that are inspiring. I think that inspiration is actually not the best question to ask artists because everyone is inspired by something. It's never about what inspires you because we all have millions of ideas. Is it really what keeps you going and what keeps you showing up for your work? I think it's more important to think about this because inspiration is too romanticized. The truth is that being a working artist is never about inspiration. It's about doing the hard work of getting something done and how you get it out into the world.

What's next for LoVid?

Soon we will be part of a group doing a public screening in Denver in May. There will be a video piece of a work called “Heart Sleeves.” It's always great to have videos in public spaces – it's a great opportunity to think about architecture and city life, and videos are a very powerful tool. The big thing after that is that we will be showing work from 2006 in a group show called Electric up at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, which will open in the fall and also tour to France. There is definitely work we did 20 years ago that would be more historicized. That's not to say there wasn't interest in it at the time, because it had traveled and been exhibited before, but it's really nice to see it recognized as a historical work of art – both in art history in general and in the history of video art in general Special.