Interview with Michele Barker

by Anna Munster

Præternatural is an interactive CD-ROM created by Sydney based artist Michele Barker. It is divided into two areas. The first is a genealogy, exploring the role of the monster in Western culture from the 17th century to the middle of the 20th century. The intention is to establish the significance of the monstrous in its relationship to, and perception of the body and paradigms of medicine and science. Its articulation reflects a larger understanding of the body based on a particular belief system – one that is an intermeshing of the cultural, medical and scientific.

The second area of Præternatural addresses a contemporary contextualization of the monstrous, specifically in relation to its absence or phasing out, via genetic screening. Taking further the current relations between science, medicine and the body, it explores not only the absence of the monstrous, but also the absence of the corporeal itself from these contemporary biotechnological discourses and visualisations.


Præternatural

Anna Munster:   Your work has always looked at the popular means and modes through which science disseminates itself in post WWII culture. Early pieces such as Garden of Earthly Delights (part of a type c photographic series from 1992), investigated the aesthetics of popular science fiction representation in the 1950s. More recently you have examined the way in which genetics has become visually popularised through digital imaging technologies but also through forms such as interactivity. Is there a continuing area of interest and interrogation between these earlier and later works? What today do you consider to be the most aesthetically satisfying medium in which to explore scientific imaging?

Michele Barker:   Since I began working with digital imaging processes in the late '80s, I've been increasingly interested in the ways that bodies have been represented visually in relationship to various technological developments. With the earlier works dealing with 1950's schlock science fiction, I was fascinated by the response to the overwhelming technological advances of the industrial-military complex brought about by the Cold War. In popular science fiction this response manifested metaphorically in visions of alien life forms taking over the world. They were the 'other' of the time – to be feared and ultimately destroyed. More recently, we see another manifestation of the 'other', this time in the form of genetics and its desire to abolish all that is deemed biologically unacceptable. So, although the works are aesthetically different, I can see a link between them. As to what I currently find the most satisfying medium in which to explore scientific imaging, I would have to say that this lies somewhere between the still image and the temporality of video. Both allow me to build up an image – or sequences of images, starting with the scientific visualisation in its own terms and then digitally pushing it to a point where it is no longer just a representation of say a DNA sequence but becomes a comment or critique of it.


Altruism

AM:   During the 1990s medical and scientific images started to be appropriated and reworked by digital image, video, and VR/installation artists. Much of this appropriation stopped short of asking about the deeper ethical and cultural implications of imaging and representing medicalised bodies. How do you see your own work on genetic images and biotechnologies within this context?

MB:   It's strange really, when I first started to explore a notion of the medicalised body, I felt I was very much working alone. It was the early '90s, and a sense of a new media arts community had not yet been established (in Australia at any rate). The dissemination of information, in terms of what other people were doing, was not really available. Then suddenly, it seemed there was a digital/genetics/body "boom" in the arts. I really don't know why, but do find it a very interesting phenomenon. For me personally, digital imaging was itself integral to my conceptual concerns. During this period I was responding to the absence of corporeality within digital visualisation and oddly enough within the imaging of the medicalised body. Without being too critical, I felt that a lot of work was merely reproducing what science and medicine were already doing; it had a sense of 'so what?' about it. Of course, this is not a criticism of all new media artists working in this area. I think my work is different for one major reason – I have never believed there is, or ever will be, a direct relationship of translation between the digital and biological code. Many artists, particularly around the time of Ars Electronic in 1994, which had the thematic of Memes, believed the digital/biological hype. They were the same people who thought Richard Dawkins was a cool guy. My work is a kind of visual and cultural critique of this position.


Chromosome Grid

AM:   In many ways your CD-ROM Præternatural has a cinematic quality to it. The aesthetics are closer to time-based art and deliberately steer clear of a digital feel. User interaction triggers filmic sequences in which historically appropriated and reworked images from the history of medicine also appear. Given these aesthetic qualities, why did you choose to make Præternatural an interactive work?

MB:   Although my earlier works were photomedia based, when I moved into an exploration of genetics I chose the medium of interactivity. In retrospect I think it was because it was relatively new and seemingly offered so many possibilities both to the artist and the viewer. I found it a very difficult medium to work in however, as I felt that I was compromising the strong visuals I had in mind for the project. I began working on Præternatural at the time DVD was being debated but unfortunately not resolved, so I had to stick with the CD-ROM platform. I spent a long time creating these beautiful filmic sequences and trying to work out ways of not loosing most of the quality due to compression. The visual elements were very important to me. Over half of the images in Præternatural are from historical sources dating back to the 17th century. I spent many months in many different countries locating precisely the kinds of images I wanted. I love appropriation, but it has to have a meaning, a context to drive it in your own work. For me, as I have said, it was about otherness, so my image research became about exploring periods and places that were visually representing this and then asking the ever important, why? I discovered as the project progressed, I was more interested in this than a notion of interactivity per se. I came to realise out of this process, one of the key issues for Præternatural; interactivity claimed to be about choice, yet as we all know now, it is really just pre-programmed responses to a given situation. In the same way, genetics claims to be about choice, but we are undoubtedly still riding the wave of genetic determinism. So I worked with the paradox of this in the CD-ROM, creating an interactive that deliberately limits the possibilities for interactivity.


Survey

AM:   Many artists are claiming to work collaboratively or at the intersections of art and science. Is this an important aspect of how you will continue to situate your work? Where will your next body of work take you and the viewer conceptually and aesthetically?

MB:   I am still sceptical of this intersection. In many cases of collaboration, I believe this operates more at the level of an artist having an idea and approaching someone within the appropriate realm of science or medicine in order to utilise his or her facilities. I would call this more a co-operative approach, not a collaborative one. For me, although I created a CD-ROM that contextually is very much about the relationship between science, medicine and the body, it was essentially done on the side of art through my own ideas and working with artist programmers and designers. My next project, a video/sound installation and series of photo-based images, will explore the visualisation of neurological disorders. I think it will be a fairly disturbing piece, quite dark, harking back to the 19th century, a time when for anybody unfortunate enough to be suffering any kind of neurological disorder, experimentation and institutions were often the only solution. I am presently negotiating a residency at Eyebeam in New York for early 2004 to work on the project.



Michele Barker is a Sydney based artist who has worked within the area of new media for over a decade. Her work covers the areas of digital photography, digital video, interactivity and web based production, primarily dealing with issues relating to perceptions of identity – molecular and corporeal – and their relationship to technology, science and medicine. She is a lecturer in Photomedia, School of Media Arts, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. She is presently completing a PhD in the area. Contact Michele Barker at: M.Barker@unsw.edu.au

Dr. Anna Munster is an artist and theorist working in sound, video, web and interactive media. Her research focuses upon the relations between technologies aesthetics and embodiment and she is currently completing a book in this area, titled Disturbing the Machine. She is a lecturer in digital media theory in the School of Art History and Theory, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Australia. Contact Anna Munster at: A.Munster@unsw.edu.au