Jef­frey Pena: I checked out your pod­cast with Throat Art and appre­ci­ate the hon­est insight into your process. The process is even more trans­par­ent in videos that you pub­lish with major works. The videos also reveal a com­mend­able work ethic… Thank you for that dedication.

Micah Ganske: Thank you Jef­frey! I really believe that art needs to become as open as pos­si­ble. The gen­eral pub­lic dis­trusts fine art because they don’t feel like the motives of artists are always trust­wor­thy. When it comes down to it, I make art about things that I want peo­ple to be excited and inter­ested in, and in order for them to get inter­ested they need to under­stand why I do what I do. The videos were the eas­i­est way to do that.

JP: Your “Tomor­row Land” paint­ings are about ‘casu­al­ties of tech­nol­ogy’. Depicted are aban­doned, toxic or decay­ing sites across the United States. In your Michi­gan Cen­tral sta­tion paint­ing there is a small house depicted that is being used as an art instal­la­tion by a col­lec­tive that cri­tiques sim­i­lar issues regard­ing neglect of the site. I vis­ited last Spring. Catie Newell had a beau­ti­ful instal­la­tion recon­struct­ing a part of the house with charred wood.

MG: That’s a really cool project and some­thing really should be done with Michi­gan Cen­tral because it’s a beau­ti­ful and cul­tural land­mark. I haven’t been to Detroit yet. Even­tu­ally I would like to go on a cross-​country road trip where I rent a Win­nebago and visit all these aban­doned sites. There are also a ton of aban­doned sites that I couldn’t get aer­ial data for that I would like to pho­to­graph. Maybe there’s a grant that I can apply for– I need to do more research.

JP: Cap­tur­ing the mak­ing on video and shar­ing online is an apro­pos way of open­ing up the con­ver­sa­tion to a con­tem­po­rary audi­ence. Our social struc­ture embraces the dig­i­tal more every­day, so its not sur­pris­ing to see these tools change how we think about art. In your work, the dig­i­tal media is still “behind the scenes” so to speak. They aren’t a part of the work, just a ves­sel for car­ry­ing it’s mes­sage. Can you elab­o­rate on the mes­sage that is being delivered?

MG: Well, in addi­tion to what I said before, I want view­ers to under­stand that I care about my projects and the work that I make enough to spend months work­ing on them. I like the idea that a paint­ing, or any other labor inten­sive work of art, is a time cap­sule. It is a period of time, a sig­nif­i­cant period of my life, made phys­i­cal. I like that the videos can help show this and are a good way to com­mu­ni­cate the more spe­cific ideas in the work at the same time. I’m also get­ting bet­ter at the videos. My film­ing process is more in depth now and the next video which will be done in a few weeks is of the last piece that I fin­ished for my show of Cen­tralia, PA. Also, it will be at 3K res­o­lu­tion! I’m wait­ing on a new video card and more ram so that I can prop­erly edit it. While on the sub­ject of under­stand­ing art, I’m also going to be writ­ing a book on a sci­en­tific expla­na­tion of why the con­tem­po­rary art world func­tions the way it does. I lis­ten to a lot of books while in the stu­dio and I real­ized that new under­stand­ings in neu­ro­science and behav­ioral psy­chol­ogy can explain a lot of what makes the art world so frustrating.

JP: You start with dig­i­tal pho­tographs, which are arti­facts them­selves that tend to dis­tort mem­ory. And much of the work fur­ther ref­er­ences a life that is medi­ated through a screen. In the paint­ings you add a human­iz­ing touch by work­ing metic­u­lously for months at a time with dyes that you also make… The image is res­cued from becom­ing a “casu­alty of tech­nol­ogy” itself. Can you explain how you nav­i­gate between the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal world?

MG: I don’t really worry about the dif­fer­ence between the dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal sides of my process because they are both things that are equally impor­tant to me. My entire life has been medi­ated by tech­nol­ogy. I’ve been play­ing video games, using com­put­ers for as long as I can remem­ber. I got my first Atari from a KB Toys fire sale when I was 4. They are both inte­gral parts of the way I have always processed expe­ri­ence. There is some­thing spe­cific that hap­pens when you put brush to mate­r­ial though. I sup­pose the dig­i­tal side of things is def­i­nitely the prag­matic side, while the romance comes from the phys­i­cal, ana­log side. I need a lot more space (and time) to prop­erly fig­ure this out but that’s a good start.

JP: Recently you started mak­ing works on the Maker­Bot, an open source 3D printer. This was an excit­ing depar­ture from the paint­ings where the tech­nol­ogy is mostly ref­er­en­tial. Can you explain the tran­si­tion into using the tech­nol­ogy for production.

MG: I was def­i­nitely over­whelmed at first. My prints also take a crazy long time at 16 to 20 hours so that leads to lots of poten­tial issues that were never con­sid­ered by Maker­bot as far as typ­i­cal use is con­cerned. They like that I abuse my bot and have been really helpful.

I have a back­ground in com­puter ani­ma­tion and mod­el­ing, but it had been a long time since I pushed around any poly­gons. Art­star, an awe­some print com­pany I work with, asked me if I wanted to meet with the Maker­bot guys for their artist in res­i­dence pro­gram but the sec­ond I got there I knew it was going to become part of my pri­mary body of work.

JP: I have always been intrigued by the Maker­Bot and had to buy one after see­ing it at a hack­er­space in Detroit where they were rapid pro­to­typ­ing hard­ware hacks. I was intrigued by how vision­ary the tool itself is, and I’m con­tin­u­ally impressed by the flex­i­bil­ity of its appli­ca­tion. Can you give a fore­cast of where you see the tech­nol­ogy dri­ving us?

MG: I’m going to get really weird and out there now so bear with me. This is the future of every­thing. 3D print­ing is the first step to the repli­ca­tors from Star Trek. I think Ray Kurzweil is overly opti­mistic about a lot of things, but I think he’s also right about a lot of things. In 20 to 30 years, shit is going to be crazy. The sin­gu­lar­ity is not far off, and the age of nano-​machine home-​replicators is not far off. Com­bine that with vir­tual expe­ri­ences that will be pos­si­ble as we fur­ther merge with our tech­nol­ogy and we’re talk­ing about a fun­da­men­tal change to every­thing. Art needs to expand, artists need to evolve past their hangups on 20^th cen­tury ideas in art-​theory. Maker­bot, to me, is the first step and I want to be part of it right there at the beginning.

Micah Ganske received his MFA in paint­ing from the Yale School of Art. He was the recip­i­ent of the Adobe Design Award in Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy for a work that was then dis­played at the Guggen­heim Museum in New York. In Octo­ber 2007 Deitch Projects exhib­ited his first solo exhi­bi­tion. Ganske was rep­re­sented by Deitch Projects until their clos­ing in 2010.

“Tomor­row Land” is on view until Jan­u­ary 13, 2012.

“Tomor­row Land” at RH Gallery
Micah Ganske website