Wolf Lieser from Berlin’s Digital Art Museum [DAM] interviews Eelco Brand for Eyemazing, 2007.
My first encounter with Eelco Brand was at an art fair
where I saw one of his animations. In this black-and-white film, a dog is
waiting beneath a street lamp at night. Trees can be seen in the
background that are illuminated by the lamp so as to suggest the edge of a
forest. The dog is moving his head back and forth from left to right.
Attracted by its light, insects are flying around the street lamp. This
scene has little detail and not much by way of action. Eventually I
realised that this was all there was: nothing whatsoever would
happen. Whatever I thought could
or should happen, didn’t.
Yet this was also what interested me in Eelco Brand’s work: he does just
as much as is needed to get the message across. Moreover, this message is
not a lengthy narrative; it is simply an imaginative stimulus so that
you come up with the story yourself.
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What was your first experience of computer-generated art?
I was using Amiga computers to make simple animations in
the early 1990s. Through this, I discovered the computer’s potential as
a visualisation tool. At that time, computers were also becoming rapidly cheaper and more
powerful, and I used them for years to construct images for my paintings. Although I never
romanticised the process of paint on canvas, I also felt
that 3-D images were simply too cold, too plastic and too flat to be used
for a final image. By using paint and brushes, I regarded myself as being
effectively an organic printer.
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What made you decide to change from painting to working with a computer?
Painting largely consists of adding and removing elements. You work on an image that evolves through its own logic. For me, constructing a 3-D image is the same as painting. But the fascinating thing about working with 3-D constructions is that you can enter the virtual space behind the two-dimensional surface and, more importantly, you also have the possibility of animating a scene. This means that suddenly you can go beyond the static medium of painting, and can add both movement and sound. This has created completely new ways of constructing and presenting works. The scenes I construct as prints or animations are virtual and hand-made. I don't use photographic materials or scanned images.
Not really. I continue to make the same kind of works; all that has changed is that I use a mouse and a screen instead of brushes and canvas.
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Many of your works
deal with nature; is there any specific reason for
this?
Working with nature is challenging because it is virtually
impossible to even begin to approximate its infinite sophistication. Yet
nature and landscapes also involve a universal language and experience.
Curiously, landscape as we see it doesn't actually exist. In reality
it’s simply a collection of randomly located trees, hills and rocks,
which we mentally translate into a landscape. Reality is reconstructed in
the human brain, and this reflection has a similar immaterial quality as
the jumping electrons that create a computer-generated image.
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Up till now, you’ve been using 3-D programs to create your works. Are
you planning to graduate to other advanced tools such as software
interactivity?
At a certain point, I felt that it would be wise to limit
myself to mainly 3-D techniques so as to avoid the situation where you end
up knowing a little bit about dozens of programs. Working with 3-D can be
time consuming, the tools are complex and getting results that go much
beyond the program’s predefined options involves undertaking a great
many steps.