Exhibition View. Courtesy of NOME.
With a strong curiosity towards technology and algorithms the engineer-turned-artist Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, presents his first solo exhibition in Berlin. In his exhibition, the originally familiar images of SpongeBob, Marge Simpson and Mickey Mouse are “remixed,” 3D printed and become only a vague reminder of what we know. The British-Colombian artist tackles the process of making art in a digital world as a response to the limitations involved, creating art that is a critical contemplation of issues regarding intellectual and creative property. We speak to the artist about having squabbles with 3D-machine operators and how retro machines are being reprogrammed to suit our future needs.
Technology and algorithms are often present in your work; which interest did you develop first, art or mathematics?
Matthew Plummer-Fernandez: art first, I loved art, but I also had an aptitude for mathematics so I was always encouraged to pursue a career in engineering. Somehow that path still eventually led me towards art. I definitely took the long route but I guess one that makes my art different, in a good way.
Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, Every Mickey, 2015, SLS polyamide, resin, paint. 50 x 24 x 50 cm. Photo by Bresadola+Freese. Courtesy of NOME.
Could you tell us a little bit about your creative process?
It depends on the project, but in general I do a lot of research, some of which ends up on my blog algopop, which is about how everyday life is increasingly automated with algorithms. I also study contemporary sculpture, ancient culture, and I play a lot with code and 3D modelling software. Somewhere in between these activities more concrete ideas emerge and I quickly sketch them and then try to make them. If it’s a 3D print I’m working on, I can take either days or weeks to get it ready for printing, but after that I don’t have to do much, the prints get made in other places and shipped to me, sometimes I ship them straight to the gallery so I don’t even get to see them. I still find that odd.
At the moment your work plays with the concept of copyright, it’s a very thin line between stealing and borrowing ideas in the arts, what would you say is the biggest problem with the concept of copyright?
My only problem is trying to understand how copyright works and when something is finally free of copyright. It’s not at all clear how far removed from a copyrighted object something needs to be to suddenly achieve “originality”. Creative ideas aren’t isolated things, they all relate. It’s also not clear how culture is meant to develop as a shared experience if you’re not allowed to construct new meaning and ideas out of the existing mass cultural references that we have all been exposed to. Even fan fiction is deemed an infringement of copyright, and yet these people are the core fan base that makes a copyrighted idea profitable.
Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, Digital Natives, 2012. 3D Printed (plaster, ink, adhesive). Courtesy of the Artist.
Which issues regarding infringement have you had to overcome?
No big issues so far. Well there was this one time that the 3D printers refused to print my Mickey Mouse derivatives. I was more surprised than upset, because I hadn’t actually been contacted by the copyright holder but by the machine’s operator who had clearly been asked to screen what was being printed, and somehow my figurine had enough similarity to alarm this person. I then used the printing process as a way to test out different derivatives and see what would be deemed safe. I even cut up a Mickey in separate pieces and sent them in different orders, but they spotted the idea and cancelled all the prints. Strangely the same printing company used one of my images without my permission as a backdrop on their newsletter, and it was of the Mickey piece! Needless to say I no longer use their services.
As a programmer, what do you think about Creative Commons?
CC’s licenses and open source software are crucial to my programming; I can take any piece of code from a repository like Github and use it within my projects freely. Programming is a culture that advances very quickly because it is free to do so, and I think other practices are taking note.
Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, Every Mickey, 2015, Ditone archival pigment print. 100 x 100cm. Photo by Bresadola+Freese. Courtesy of Nome.
In which direction would you like to continue with your work, what comes after 3D printing? Are there new technologies you want to experiment with?
I’m not really bothered about working with newer manufacturing technologies, and 3D printing in itself is constantly being improved and developed so I have plenty of scope to work within it already. I think what is more fascinating than new manufacturing processes emerging is that many older machines are being retrofitted to be programmable and networked much like a 3D printer. In a fabrication laboratory in Germany they’ve just adapted an old Eighties metal milling machine to read 3D files. At a friend’s company, Knyttan, they have adapted some old knitting machines so you can send it knitware designs via their website. I also visited a factory in Telford that have made their plastic injection moulding machines directly programmable via the internet by customers. These are very attractive tools to play with that are existent in the world to come. Seemingly familiar things are becoming highly computerised and networked.
Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, Merge Simpson, SLS polyamide, resin, paint. Photo by Bresadola+Freese Courtesy of NOME.
Interview by Lyubov Sachkova
Matthew Plummer-Fernandez’s “Hard Copy” is at NOME gallery, Berlin until 23 December 2015
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