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subscribe to style file blog via RSSa whale of a time
January 7, 2008 11:48 am
There’s a famous story, circa the birth of cinema, of early audiences leaping out of the way of a train hurtling toward them on-screen. People tell this story as a way of conveying how foreign the logic of film was at the time. Interfacing with Jonathan Harris’ artwork is a bit like staring down that train. One apprehends the storytelling logic of a new century making its fast approach, ready or not, in award-winning pieces such as “We Feel Fine” and “Lovelines,” (both created in collaboration with Sep Kamvar) use computer programs to continuously cull the Web for snatches of human feeling as it’s expressed on the outward-radiating universe of the Internet. Harris’ work makes buzzwords such as “viral? and “interactive” spring to life: His new piece, “The Whale Hunt,” for example, is only a potential work of art until someone comes to the Web site and starts down one of a nearly infinite number of daisy chains telling the story of Harris’ recent trip to Barrow, Alaska. It’s like Cubist perspective in real time. Here, the almost absurdly genial Harris talks about what computer programming has to do with balloons and penises, finding true love, and whale meat.
The pieces you’re best known for pull from the virtual world. For “The Whale Hunt,” the premise is that you go to Alaska and hunt a whale, which is pretty un-virtual. What inspired the change?
“Un-virtual” was exactly the point. I’ve spent a lot of time these past five years sitting in front of a computer screen and only really engaging with the world through the programs I wrote. But there’s a lot of world out there the Web doesn’t touch.
Why a whale hunt?
I was looking for an epic story, and what’s more epic than a whale hunt? But also, like I was saying, for all the Web’s ubiquity in our lives, there are still parts of the planet the Internet hasn’t reached, and I wanted to go somewhere like that, a place where people were pretty much getting on with their lives the way they always had, and collect those stories.
Did you develop a taste for whale meat?
Uh, no. I did try everything, though. One of the amazing things to me about travel is that you can get used to just about anything, given enough time. Like, I just got back from Bhutan, and I don’t know if you realize this, but the penis is this incredibly important religious symbol for the Bhutanese, and so consequently everywhere you go in Bhutan, there are penises. Penis sculptures, penis ornaments, penises painted on the sides of houses. Eventually, you?re like, well, that’s normal.
What were you doing in Bhutan?
It’s for a project about happiness. You know how in the West, we have the GNP—gross national product? In Bhutan, they measure the gross national happiness. So I went out there to ask people how happy they were.
What did you find out?
In general, they’re pretty happy. I asked people to rate their happiness on a scale of one to ten, and then whatever number they said, I’d give them that many balloons. On average, I gave out seven balloons per person.
I suspect the people of Bhutan have a slightly different philosophical concept of happiness than we do.
Well, yes and no. I guess maybe they err on the side of happiness more than we do; it’s more, something they have, like a balloon, than it is something they endlessly pursue. That trip was definitely a nice respite from the big project I’m working on right now, which is an installation for MoMA about online dating.
Are you doing any online dating for this project?
I am! No true love yet, but I’m hot on the trail.
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