Artist Statement

Ethan Young / Artist Statement

            My work consistently surrounds the postmodern concept of the death of the author and subsequent questioning of ownership over an art piece.  I explore the idea that artwork can only exist if a viewer is present to acknowledge and interact with the piece of art.  This plays a major role in the way I have incorporated many scientific concepts into my work as well.  I have focused much of my attention on the art of projection mapping and motion capture technology.  Similar to the way that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA utilizes motion capture technology, I, too, track the viewer’s motion to create interactive installations.  My use of viewer interaction draws from Marcel Duchamp’s idea that the viewer completes the artwork.  I produce works that only truly exist once a viewer is interacting with it, on a very literal and visceral level.  Instead of creating abstract or minimal pieces that simply require the viewer’s imagination to activate it, I choose to create works of art that react to the viewer through scientific concepts such as optical illusion, perception, color theory, and others.

            My most recent painting series (Push/Pull, 2013) features fluorescent airbrushed gradients to create optical illusions that draw the viewer into the work, while simultaneously pushing them away.  This concept of illusion and interacting with the viewer led me to focus my energy towards projection mapping.  I have produced three projection-mapped pieces over the course of 6 months.  My first installation (It’s Smappening, 2014) further explored viewer-activated artwork by creating an optical illusion that plays with the viewer as he/she moves around the installation. Camille Utterback is an immensely large influence in my work, as she has paved the way for motion capture artwork to exist in the gallery.  Utterback, who was featured in the OCMA Triennial in 2013, integrates computer science into her work by writing code to generate visualizations.  After viewing the new episodes of The Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I became infatuated with the idea that every particle that makes up matter on Earth are the same particles that make up the stars.  This idea of interconnectivity plays a role in my work, as I explore the connectivity between my piece and the viewer.

            Art and science used to be viewed synonymously.  With the same approaches in research and methodology, these two disciplines should not be viewed in such different areas of study now.  Both art and science further the discourse of our world.  They are both in pursuit of discovery, whether that is societal, astrological, or psychological.  The more immersed I become in various fields of science, the more connections I draw between I think it is important to address the concept of viewer authorship.  In a world that is riddled with a copy-and-paste attitude, the idea of ownership as a whole begins to fade. By creating artwork that relies on the viewer, I distance myself as the author, and allow the work to exist and evolve on its own.