EEPMON was featured as a guest contributor for Applied Arts, Canada’s premier publication for visual communications. In this opinion piece, the discussion focuses on the profound impact of technology on the modern artistic and creative process, examining how digital tools have reshaped the role of the contemporary creator.

Read the full exploration of how technology continues to redefine the boundaries of artistic expression below.

Applied Arts Mag – Editorial – Opinions – Enter Digital Art by Eric Chan

A “digital renaissance” connects artists the world over and makes collaboration easier than ever

Society has witnessed the transformation of an age brought on by the Industrial Revolution into a digital one. Communication is rapid, we can get information in seconds and the ecosystem of binary ones and zeroes continues to proliferate. Sound apocalyptic? Rather, it’s quite the opposite.

Creatively speaking, this couldn’t be a better time for artists. This “digital renaissance” provides new opportunities that traditionally would have been very difficult to achieve, if not impossible.

From Toronto to New York, London to Paris, Tokyo and beyond…

In the past, those associated with the jet-setter subhead above were perceived to be status-wielding globetrotters. Not so much today. As we all know, the Internet allows communication with anyone, anywhere at anytime. This immediacy is empowerment: we can engage a world that was once for the select few at a level playing field.

As a digital artist myself, that is the first thing I understood about the Internet — it is a leapfrog agent. Why only exhibit your art locally when you can exhibit globally? It was evident to me that creating digitally would liberate and allow individuals like myself to take full control of our destinies. I knew early on that everyone would become their own curators, find their own audiences and thus become their own brand ambassadors.

Mistress Amused from the Untitled Series by EEPMON

The Digital Age of Self-Curation

A key factor about creating digitally is that it has low overhead, allowing artists to be very efficient and mobile. Mobile devices today are powerful enough to perform most of your creative and communication needs. Taking advantage of mobility, I started to travel around the world, financed by the projects I worked on. Travelling provided me a constant source of creative inspiration and allowed me to meet people along the way, from the academic to the celebrity.

This is a routine I would repeat every year, and as my eepmon brand awareness grew, so did my exposure and projects. For those not familiar, eepmon is my artist moniker. I am a digital artisan at the intersections of computer programming, graphics and drawing. My multidisciplinary background finds me working on anything from fine art to large installations to video games to fashion.

Mini Cooper × EEPMON

My 2013 collaboration with outerwear brand Canada Goose was no exception to this idea of global reach. Working remotely, I provided design concepts and created exclusive digital artwork for the lining of our Synthesis Parka. Creating digitally streamlined the development process and removed many of the traditional intermediary steps involved in preparing the designs and artwork to hand off to the team. It didn’t matter where I was in the world (I remember Skyping from Tokyo with the Canada Goose crew in Toronto). At the end of the day, what we had in our hands was a work of art — something that only could be created when the handmade meets the digital, and when heritage meets modernity.

The limited-edition parka (only 150 were made) hung at some of world’s coveted retailers, including Colette and Harvey Nichols. It was featured in the press, from the French edition of GQ Magazine to Highsnobiety to Jay-Z’s Life+Times. The Synthesis Parka itself was the exhibition piece and, as news of the collaboration spread virally through the Internet, the promotion became the exhibition itself — quite different than the traditional method of showing art in a gallery space.

Synthesis Parka by Canada Goose × EEPMON

This is exactly what I believe artists of the digital age are all about. There are no rules here. We intersect borders, cross boundaries and disrupt the status quo. We challenge stale solutions and break down barriers. One does not have to look further than what Apple has accomplished. The company has changed the way we look at computers, revolutionalized the entire music industry, and is well on its way into fashion with wearables.

As society continues forging ahead into the digital age, how we view art will also change. I like to think that we are still at the very beginning and, as early adopters, we have the opportunity to be pioneers in this creative movement. The established art world must pay closer attention to the digital ecosystem. Kids growing up today will be more in tune with artwork that isn’t physically in a space. Perhaps it lives on the ‘net, or perhaps it’s created through networks and always changing, visually influenced by open data sources.

Augmented reality will seamlessly integrate with haptic technology to create new forms of artistic expression and performance. Then the question of archiving such art will be the focal point of discussion. How do we establish a standard for archiving art of binary ones and zeroes and maybe even qubits? These are real issues that we’ll need to face sooner rather than later.

Of course, there are some in the art world who are averse to anything digital. But even something that we now consider basic, like photography, was initially shunned by traditionalist painters. This paradigm now applies to net art, digital art, digitalism — whatever you want to call it. The medium is here to stay and we’re just getting started.

Eric Chan, a.k.a. eepmon, is a digital artisan intersecting computer programming, graphics and drawing. He’s collaborated with Canada Goose, Microsoft Xbox and Mini Cooper.

Download the PDF

Project Details:

∙ Publication: Applied Arts Magazine
∙ Subject: Technology and the Creative Process
∙ Theme: The evolution of the Digital Artisan in the 21st century
∙ Perspective: An inquiry into the intersection of coding, art, and traditional design.

In October 2014, EEPMON was invited by Algonquin College to perform a live iteration of his Intersections series on campus at the AC Hub in Ottawa. Over the course of three days, students and faculty were able to witness the “digital artisan” process firsthand as a large-scale physical work was brought to life through a blend of traditional painting and generative concepts.

The final composition was uniquely influenced by the environmental conditions of the performance. With a weather forecast dominated by clouds and rain, the atmosphere of the campus translated into a specific colour palette for Intersections 12, resulting in a piece defined by deep blue and vibrant magenta hues. This live installation allowed for a direct dialogue between the artist and the academic community, highlighting the spontaneous relationship between an artist’s surroundings and their creative output.

Project Details:

∙ Location: Algonquin College (AC Hub), Ottawa, Ontario
∙ Duration: 3-Day Live Painting Performance
∙ Series: Intersections 12
∙ Aesthetic: A reactive colour study influenced by local weather patterns and campus energy.

Size
40 x 60 inches
Medium
Digital projection, weather data, acrylic, volume paint markers on canvas

Intersections performance at HPGRP Gallery New York, 2011
Photos by Tokio Kuniyoshi

Artist-programmer Eric Sze-Lang Chan’s work resides at the intersection of painting and computer-mediated art. Chan’s process evokes a sensibility akin to action painting of the 1960s in the ways that it explores issues related to the body and performance. The artist integrates computer algorithms into his paintings, illustrating contemporary conceptions of the machine as an extension of the body. His process is shaped by chance and certainty, improvisation and script, affect and effect.

Chan obtains real-time data through a weather API service. An event-driven computer program is coded with parameters to translate the weather data into visual and audio formats. The incoming weather conditions are grouped into six categories: cloud, fog, clear, rain, snow and rare (including hurricanes and tornados).

Each category is assigned a corresponding colour theme and environmental sound selected by the artist. Chan then casts the computer-generated visual output onto the canvas, where moving lines, patterns, sounds and swatches of colour guide his gestural brushstrokes. The resulting brightly coloured canvases feature undulating lines, swirls, and patterns dissolving into figurative forms.

A relationship exists between computer vector graphics, the line, and the artist’s brushstrokes. In Intersections, the works take form through Chan’s dynamic act of following the trajectory of the projected lines. In her discussion on computer art and calligraphy, Laura U. Marks describes the line as performative rather than representational. Essentially, the line is time-based and dependent upon movement.

She states, “the relationship between point and line is performative, in that a line is drawn out from a point in duration: this might be the duration of sculpting wet stucco, of writing, of connecting points of light, or the act of following such lines with one’s eyes.”1 Chan’s performance paintings are collaborations between the computer and his body; they bridge concept and corporeality.

– Andrea Fatona, Curator of Contemporary Art (2008-2011)

1 Laura U. Marks, “Taking a line for a Walk, from the Abbasid Caliphate to Vector Graphics,” Third Text 23, no. 3 (May 2009): 229–240.

HPGRP Gallery New York | 2005–2015

Located in the heart of Manhattan’s Chelsea gallery district, HPGRP Gallery New York served as a premier international outpost for the Tokyo-based H.P.FRANCE group. For a decade, the gallery acted as a vital cultural conduit, bridging the Japanese and international art markets by showcasing a curated selection of emerging and mid-career artists.

The gallery’s programming was defined by a cross-cultural aesthetic, often featuring multimedia installations and contemporary works that synthesized traditional Japanese sensibilities with modern concepts. A regular participant in Asia Week New York and major international art fairs, HPGRP was instrumental in fostering a global dialogue between Eastern and Western contemporary art before transitioning its primary operations back to Tokyo in 2015.