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Pioneering computer multimedia artist Terri Ferrari follows a unique, well-considered and deeply felt artistic path. With little fanfare, Ferrari has contributed his knowledge, equipment and vision to countless conceptual, performance and computer artists in New York City over the last decade. He is truly an underground force and growing legend. |
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Pioneering computer multimedia artist Terri Ferrari follows a unique, well-considered and deeply felt artistic path. With little fanfare, Ferrari has contributed his knowledge, equipment and vision to countless conceptual, performance and computer artists in New York City over the last decade. He is truly an underground force and growing legend.
Milton Fletcher: Terri, How would you describe your art? How is it related to your life?
Terri Ferrari: In my video work, I try to create moving paintings, which I modulate to produce an alternate reality. These realities have taken the form of ecstatic celebrations of life, to childhood dreams and nightmares, to political propaganda.
While performing at painter Wayne Dobson’s 2002 Christmas party, I became aware of how well my video imagery stood up as still images. Wayne, besides being an outstanding painter, is also an enthusiastic collector of contemporary art. As I projected my video into a vault in his loft, which was not covered with paintings, I was struck by how well my video compared. I immediately began capturing and printing mix downs. I am naturally attracted to brightly saturated colors, something I might have gotten from my father who was a pigment chemist. My first digital video stills resembled oil or acrylic paintings with their bright, saturated colors.
For example, Body is from this first series of prints. My current series “Melee” suggests the use of watercolors with its translucent rendering of the human form. In a way, all my video mixing is foreshadowed by the video still from Hungry Ghosts, which is a hidden self-portrait that I composed in my Canon L-2 Hi8 camcorder on Halloween 1995.
MF: When, why and how did you start creating your art?
TF: In 1995 I started a company, Metal Tiger Technologies, to apply new media technologies to educate the populace about the health benefits of the Taoist Internal Arts of Taijiquan, Baguazhang and Xingyiquan. I first started by working on interactive CDs, but quickly switched my focus to the internet and to streaming media, producing radio shows and specializing in cybercasting live events.
My video art started when I became bored with cybercasting little puppets in the dark and began projecting video on the stage to make the cybercasts more colorful and interesting. I have also been experimenting with 35mm photography for decades and shoot videos for martial arts training. In the last few years, I have produced about dozen instructional videotapes and DVDs for the Wu Tang Physical Culture Association. I have also made found object sculptures with spiritual content, including the first Celtic Taoist sculpture.
I can trace the genesis of my art activities to the first day of freshmen orientation at NYU when I met a friend for life, Jungle Jerry. We were appalled by all the student organizations aggressively trying to recruit us. So, when we found an empty table, we began to chant, “Join the heights freaks” in protest to efforts to categorize and pigeonhole us. So someone yelled, “What about the perverts? Are you discriminating against perverts?” We then began chanting the mantra, “Join the heights freaks and perverts.” Hence the Heights Freaks and/or Perverts were born.
We created numerous centric experiences in the spirit of the Merry Pranksters, like the “Magic Ice,” “Stop the Dragon from Swallowing the Sun,” the “Mind Circus Time Warp” and our infamous annual “Perverts Ball” each Halloween.
MF: Who or what do you consider to be your artistic influences and inspirations?
TF: The “Joshua Light Show” at the Fillmore East. More recently I have to give credit to Feedbuck Galore. Feedbuck and Missy Galore were most generous in helping me get started back in the glory days of Baktun—a sadly defunct art space that used to be in the Meat Packing District of Manhattan.
Zhuang Zi, the Taoist Philosopher, is my spiritual Rosetta Stone. Zhuang Zi’s skepticism of the mental structures that we all create, his innocent awe of nature and humor, provide a compass with which to navigate the cognitive dissonance of our fast-paced, chaotic modern world. Additionally, the Wu Tang Physical Culture Association where I study the Taoist Internal Arts and its director and founder Frank Allen has had a profound influence on me beyond the martial arts and meditation.
MF: What have been some of your favorite performances and why?
TF: I am not really one to pick favorites. In terms of spontaneity and interactivity, I liked The Cynthia Show the best. Cynthia would perform what she called “Spontaneous Libretto,” which was like a combustible channeling of spoken word, singing, dancing and slapstick comedy. To have some pretext of focus, we would give each set a single theme like “Power Animals.” I would prepare video material on each theme that I would then mix with several live cameras and a lot of feedback—analog feedback, digital feedback and optical feedback—in a manner that just made you feel Cynthia’s performance ooze out from her subconscious.
Cynthia would start and the musicians, including Firehorse and Liquid Acrobat on turntables and laptops, would follow her lead while I modulated the video to the music and—to complete the fugue—Cynthia would react to the imagery. The grandest event I undertook was at the 2002 New York Burningman Decompression event at the Lunatarium. There, I curated 34 artists on 17 different displays from roving plasma TVs to old fashion 35mm slides and 8mm film.
MF: What does some of your current work involve?
TF: During the last few years, I have been doing a lot of political shows with the Glass Bead Collective. I met Vlad Teichberg, its founder, at Burningman in 2003. We have done many benefits for Billionaires for Bush, Indy Media and John Kerry. My most recent project is with the Glass Bead Collective. We are using inflatable structures to create an immersive environment where we project video that has been shot in 360 degrees.
MF: Why do you work with younger artists on your projects?
TF: Because they are interested.
MF: What do you hope these younger artists will get from their experience of working with you?
TF: The value of the personal touch; I have apprentices, not interns, for that reason. I fully entertain my apprentices while we work in my loft. I cook and provide liquid refreshments and we feast and party while working on projects.
MF: Where do you see your art going in the future?
TF: My long-term project of implementing Herman Hesse’s Glass Bead Game as a virtual and immersive multimedia environment is approaching gestation. Two inspirations characterize my production. The first inspiration involves the correlation between the Magister Ludi Joseph Knecht’s use of the I-Ching as his breakthrough innovation to the Glass Bead Game with Baguazhang, a Taoist Martial Art that I have studied for the last 20 years. Baguazhang is based on the I Ching. Baguazhang is something you practice by walking in circles.
The forms are the changes in direction called “palm changes.” Each palm change cultivates the energy of its corresponding trigram. Baguazhang was originally a Taoist walking meditation for millennia before it became a martial art about 200 years ago and, accordingly, accumulated the technologies of Qi cultivation and longevity. In fact, my motivation is to promote Baguazhang. The second inspiration is to stage the performance so the internet audience is on the inside and the local audience is on the outside.
Milton Fletcher is director and curator of CyberGallery66.org
