YOUR NAME:

Garrett Lynch

YOUR COUNTRY:

Ireland (currently living in Wales)

1. What was your first experience with digital art/new media? How did that
experience shape your view of the world? Did it inspire you to change you
art/practice?

I don't think there was any first moment as such, nothing I saw made me decide this is what I want to do. Instead it has been a process of defining and refining my artistic practice. New media for my practice is the only option for creating art, a means of expressing as closely as possible the way I think, where medium does not become an obstacle.

2. What books are you reading now? Are they related to digital art and new
media? Are any of those critical books written about new media, digital art,
art theory? If so tell us what you like about these books and what you have
gained from reading them.

Digital Performance by Steve Dixon, The Guttenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan and Marcel Duchamp by Dawn Ades (I like to read many books at once). The first is directly related to new media art (a good history of the field but not terribly critical), the second indirectly (how media changes us etc.) and the third is just out of interest.

3. Describe your personal practice. How does you art/practice relate to other
works/ other people working in your field?

I work with networks within an artistic content; the spaces between artworks, artist and audience as a site, means and location for artistic initiation, creation and discourse. It has strong connections with net.art and conceptual art.

4. What do you believe are the most interesting ideas being investigated in
your field. Tell us how your personal practice integrates, relates or extends
those ideas.

A cross-section of ideas relating to networks, real / virtual, authorship, location, time etc. These are pretty classic ideas / themes but there is still so much to explore in what is such a new form.

5. What are the most negative aspects of new media? If you could create great
change in the field what would you do? How would you like to see new media
develop in the near future.?

The continual encroaching transformation and restriction of networks. Networks are the ability to connect and communicate and should be a basic right for everyone.

6. In the general discourse of contemporary art as it exists today, what
interests you the most? What interests you the least?

A variety of things, I like to be challenged in my way of thinking, to be induced to think about the complexities of the system that the 'art' has employed or created and how it infers this. Yet I also like my senses to be stunned, to feel awed, overwhelmed. Figurative painting interests me the least - I simply don't understand how it continues to exist.

7. If you could alter the course of ideas and practices in contemporary art
what would you do. For example would you create virtual archives? Would you set
up a lottery system to fund artists? Would you start working with sociologists
to expand your practice etc...

I would open a gallery and help good artists who fall out of fashion because they work in a particular field or with particular materials to get exposure.

8. Do you have a question you'd like to ask yourself? Do you have a question
you'd like to ask other people for a future e-terview?

Is everything really connected? Will it all come together?

Garrett(AT)asquare.org
http://www.asquare.org/
http://www.asquare.org/networkresearch/