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Lincoln Schatz
As a result, my interest focused on ways to create generative systems that utilize chance to produce variable outcomes. Long central to my work was the desire to merge artistic practice with the everyday experience of life, replete with its compounding accrual of information. Combined with a lifelong pursuit of photography, this led me to my Generative Video Portraits in 2001. A video camera mounted over a screen connects to a computer running custom software that determines which video images are shown onscreen, which are saved to memory, and which are deleted. Chance is the methodology for all selections. Onscreen, the software shows a variant of "real time" mixed with video memory accrued from the start of the piece to the current date. These works collect video from the environment for a minimum of eight years, constantly juxtaposing video memories with real time video onscreen. New possibilities are proposed through a nonlinear assemblage of accrued video and over time, it is statistically improbable that any combination of video would ever repeat. The combinations and re-combinations of video create an infinite number of paths. New ways of seeing emerge. The work functions like a separate being, establishing its own distinct view and memory of its environment. Through this means, I have realized portraits of domestic environments, high-rise tower construction, helicopter flights over Chicago, and large-scale public interaction. My latest project, CUBE, has been commissioned for Esquire's 75th anniversary to create generative portraits of George Clooney, Marc Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Danger Mouse, David Chang, LeBron James and others, and will grow to include dozens of people from every discipline who are laying the foundations of the 21st Century. CUBE was also featured as a special project at PULSE Miami 2007, concurrent with Art Basel Miami Beach. CUBE, a 10’ x 10’ translucent architectural structure, extends from my formal background as a sculptor and draws on my more recent practice in generative video. CUBE is designed with 24 video cameras mounted at varying heights within the structure. During a one-hour sitting, digital capture from each video camera is streamed to a computer that houses the artist’s specially designed software. The resulting portrait is compiled from thousands of randomly selected video files; these infinitely reconfiguring images are presented on a plasma screen powered by a computer. Through this process, 24 cameras generate a 24-hour rendering that extends beyond the historical notions of portraiture as a static image and creates a lasting record that is wholly dynamic in its ability to reconfigure images and reorder time. Recent public art and commissions include: • One Arts Plaza, Dallas, Texas. The Billingsley Company. Two large-scale video walls each retain a separate memory of the same place over time. From Here • Qualcomm, San Diego, California. Generative portrait on four plasma displays of the activity outside the CEO's office and boardroom. • 600 Fairbanks, Chicago, Illinois. A portrait of the Helmut Jahn high-rise under construction. Video was collected from cameras mounted at various points on the tower crane and the adjacent building, and from a handheld video camera. Recording commenced while the construction site was still a surface parking lot and continued through the building’s completion. A preview of the 600 Fairbanks Project was shown at bitforms gallery nyc in January of 2007 and also featuring End of Boom, a single-channel video portrait captured from the camera at the end of the horizontal boom of the tower crane. • Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, Chicago, Illinois. Across Time: Two cameras, one records people as they enter the museum, the other records the construction of their recently completed museum, designed by Krueck and Sexton. Video is combined on screens in the lobby of the new museum. • Blackstone Hotel, Chicago, Illinois. My City displays a panoramic landscape on two plasma screens situated behind the check in desk. A pan/tilt/zoom robotic camera on the northeast corner of the hotel’s roof, 24 floors up, is programmed to move in a complex series of paths, sweeping across and zooming into the vista. “My City” takes in views of Grant Park, Lake Michigan, Monroe Harbor, Millennium Park, Art Institute of Chicago, Navy Pier, Michigan Avenue, Soldier Field, and the shores of Indiana and Michigan, relaying them all to the lobby where they will accrue for a minimum of eight years. • McCormick Place Convention Center, Chicago, Illinois. A three-display triptych at the entrance to the new McCormick Place West Expansion keeps a record of visitors. • Private residence, Lake George, New York: Architect Peter L. Gluck and Partners. Video from inside a new building will mix with video collected from multiple cameras around the property, merging the interior living space with the exterior’s natural surroundings. Schatz has recently exhibited at Sundance Film Festival (January 2007), Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, California (September-December 2007), Think.21 Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (December 2007-February 2008), Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, California (June-July 2007), a solo show at bitforms gallery nyc (January-February 2007) and bitforms Seoul, Korea (June-July 2007), the annual Digital Transitions group show at Gallery Simon, Seoul, Korea (May 2007), and a group show at Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California (November 2006), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (Spring 2006). Schatz’s work was also shown at PULSE Miami, NYC, and London and at ARCO Madrid this season. His work has been featured in many international publications, including: The New York Times, Art & Auction, El Pais, Washington Post, Surface Magazine, ArtReview Magazine, AIArchitect, The San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Crain's Chicago, Crain's New York, WIRED, and Rhizome.org; and is held in numerous public and private collections, including: Cafritz Collection, Washington DC; Fundación Privada Sorigué, Lleida, Spain; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California, Runnnymede Sculpture Farm, Woodside, California; Pearl Lam, Hong Kong; Ernesto Ventos Omedes, Barcelona, Spain; Fidelity Investment, Boston, Massachusetts; and W Hotel, Seoul, Korea. Lincoln Schatz received his BA from Bennington College in 1986 and was the recipient of a CORE fellowship to the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. He lives and works in Chicago. |
My work engages chance as a means of breaking habitual modes of thought. I invite chance in the service of creating something beyond my limitations. Software and interactors (people) are the determinants in this process. It is up to the viewer to provide narrative (order and simplification) or to abandon the rational in favor of a more transcendental experience.
These ideas were fully implemented in my artistic practice in 2000, when I made the transition from sculptural objects to generative video work. 
