Beth Wexler
beth​wexler​.com
Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island.Beth Wexler plays with tem­po­ral trans­for­ma­tions of pop­u­lar cul­ture. Sam­pling from 80s and 90s tele­vi­sion, the artist manip­u­lates imagery that is fad­ing into obso­les­cence to cre­ate new mean­ing. Her time based pieces add a human­iz­ing touch of spec­ta­cle to pre­vi­ously over scripted nar­ra­tives. Her gen­er­a­tive works are sys­tems that pro­voke the way that we digest media. In both, the artist’s hand is never lost. I catch up with Beth to chat about remix­ing and gen­er­a­tive art.

JP: Your work is a response to our media sat­u­rated cul­ture — With so much raw data being pro­duced and shared con­stantly, how do you digest it all and decide what is rel­e­vant for appropriation?

BW: I think just about any­thing is rel­e­vant to appro­pri­ate. That’s really a reflec­tion of con­tem­po­rary cul­ture. From music to movies to more tra­di­tional fine art. It feels like we’re right in the mid­dle of this era of the remix. It’s been going on for a really long time, but I think within the last 5 to 10 years it’s really exploded, and that’s got so much to do with the inter­net and just net­work­ing in gen­eral. There is so much con­nec­tiv­ity, it’s not won­der there are so many Youtube mash-​ups and the like. When there is so much to digest, it’s kind of unavoid­able that the result of cre­ation would tap into what’s been/​is being consumed.

When I approach my work, I take all of that in, and I think about what has really impacted me. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s and I watched a lot of TV, so typ­i­cally, that’s a pretty good start­ing point. Some­thing about revis­it­ing those pro­grams feels really hon­est. I also have a very dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship to that media than I do to media today. These day’s I tend to do all of my media con­sump­tion online, which is a more active engage­ment than sit­ting in front of a tele­vi­sion set — that’s a more pas­sive activ­ity. I’m still not really sure how this new mode has affected me yet, and some­times think­ing about it can be really over­whelm­ing. So I just stick to what’s famil­iar to me — to what I feel con­fi­dent approaching.

Auto Melt.1 from Beth Wexler on Vimeo.

JP: I see remix­ing every­where, from painters who sam­ple from images in the city, such as Mark Brad­ford to music sets à la Girl Talk. And even the aca­d­e­mics are get­ting “hip to it”. Macus Boon’s “In Praise of Copy­ing.” is a great book about the era of “pas­tiche” as he calls it. What is your approach to remixing?

BW: There’s really so much to be said about remix­ing, and so many dif­fer­ent ways to approach it. Lately, I have been look­ing at it is as a way of decon­struct­ing and recon­struct­ing. I’ve been really into get­ting into the fine details and remix­ing those. In the past, I would make videos and remix chunks of frames, which I think is what most peo­ple asso­ciate with remix, mov­ing whole parts around, and reor­ga­niz­ing them to dis­rupt the ini­tial flow or nar­ra­tive and build some­thing sim­i­larly new. This retains the famil­iar­ity of the source mate­r­ial. But I’ve been try­ing to approach the remix on a more fun­da­men­tal level. So rather than remix chunks of con­tent, I’ve been break­ing each frame down and remix­ing that. I’ll start with a frame of video, and maybe lower the res­o­lu­tion of it, so I don’t have as many pix­els to work with, but ulti­mately, I’m try­ing to reor­ga­nize that frame of pix­els. So it com­pletely changes the con­tent. It’s a dif­fer­ent approach, but at the core, it’s still remixing.

PXLAMBIANCE from Beth Wexler on Vimeo.

JP: And, you do another kind of remix­ing. In “Lorem Ipsum Reduced”, you are abstract­ing text using gen­er­a­tive tools. In this piece, you set up the con­structs or an envi­ron­ment for the remix. How you choose a final prod­uct, if there is one, once you cre­ate this sys­tem… Do you let the tools decide the out­come? Or are there some other forces at play?

BW: I think what draws me to work­ing with gen­er­a­tive processes is inad­ver­tent abstract deci­sion mak­ing. I set up a sys­tem and get it per­form­ing in a man­ner that I’m happy with (this usu­ally comes about through trial and error). Then I just let it do it’s thing. If the result is meant to be time based then I typ­i­cally just let it run. I like set­ting up a series of para­me­ters that change ran­domly which always make for some sur­pris­ing results. If the out­put is meant to be still images for prints, then I have to make more defin­i­tive deci­sions. These are typ­i­cally informed by the con­cept of the project — whichever images best suit the idea — but aes­thet­ics always play a role. I have to like what I’m mak­ing to put it out there.

Beth Wexler is an artist based in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island. Cur­rently, she is a can­di­date for a Mas­ters of Fine Arts in Digital+Media from Rhode Island School of Design. She has a Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts in Art Video from Syra­cuse Uni­ver­sity. For more of the artist’s work go here: Beth​Wexler​.net