An Urgent Desire to See Something Realized in the World

EYEO 2022: GOLAN LEVIN

Sometime you read a book and it opens up a totally new way of seeing. Sometimes it’s music. Recently I had this sensation hearing Golan Levin talk about his artistic career at the 2022 Eyeo Festival. He wanted to talk about the new hotness. By which he meant code.

We so often think about code as a mechanic element. Like a piece of wood or a bolt. Something foundational but inert. Levin sees ones and zeros as elements of expression; technology as an instrument of art. Throughout his career, Levin’s work suggests we look or listen again (i.e. Dialtones or Double-Taker), and reconsider our perspective. He was suggesting competitive brand integration (i.e. Free Universal Construction Kit) long before Cannes recognized similar ideas.

Co-written with Tega Brain, Levin’s 2021 handbook, Code as Creative Medium is a brilliant synopsis—it guides us, first and foremost, to consider the why driving creative effort. How can we make what we make meaningful? The book gives those of us who aren’t necessarily coders unique access to computational thinking, to strategies we might leverage towards building generative art.

In his work co-leading the Frank-Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, Levin inspires students in exploring and creating a wealth of cultural instigation, taking forms like playable and biological art, virtual and augmented reality, robotics and various forms of relational interactions. My favorite being their work on the Teenie Harris Archives, built upon 70,000 images by photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris.