Ronen Tanchum is an artist and technologist, who explores the realms of generative art focusing on synthetic nature and the intricate interplay between humans, machines, and the environment. His art, a blend of immersive installations and digital canvases, leverages technology to dissect behavioural patterns, creating a dialogue between digital and physical forms. We spoke to him about the exciting opportunities of working with data, AI and evolving outputs.
1. I would love for you to tell me about your practice and its evolution ?
My practice is constantly evolving. My background is in film, I started creating 3D when I was 19 I worked on commercials and did animations. From there I moved to Vancouver where I studied to create simulations in 3D and effects. I became an effects technical director in the film industry and I worked on many movies like Spider-Man, Wolverine, Transformers and Deadpool. I got to work on some key iconic shots in movies.
My job was dealing with recreating natural phenomena, synthetically in the computer and CGI. I used to work on a second and a half of the movie for 6 months of my life, iterating and iterating and iterating. And in the end, you watch the film and it goes by like that.
After 10 years, I decided that I wanted to experiment more with my own creative ideas and in particular with real time, which gave me immediate feedback from my companion, the computer. Rather than wait and iterate like I did previously, I started working with sensors and interactivity and generativity.
Back then I had a lot of limitations because you couldn't do crazy things with the technology. However, you still had something that is alive and constantly evolving. I was really fascinated by this whole field so I quit the movie business and I opened up my studio.
Now, each project I try to push the boundaries a bit more and incorporate new technologies that I find relevant to what I am trying to achieve conceptually. In the past year and a half, I have been diving into training my own AI models and building workflows and pipelines for creating stuff with AI video. AI is a big thing, you have to stay relevant and stay on top of things. I am trying to always adapt.
2. Your use of data in your work is so clever and the results are beautiful, what is the artistic interest in it?
The transition I made to real time enabled many things, one of them is to work with data. Any kind of data and treatment information like video or sound or light. It's something very powerful that just like AI we can create really deep and meaningful interactions with. That has been something I've been striving to do with my work, to deepen the connection and make it more organic. I embrace the unproductive mindset, in which you basically create a system that creates the art rather than create the art directly, like traditional artists do. I think about my work like systems, and I created these systems, basically the instructions of the final output to the computer.
3. What is the link between the natural world and technology for you?
I find it really interesting the connection between using these new technologies, like neural networks and algorithms and blockchain to engage with nature, they are very similar. They have a lot in common, because it's something that is organically growing, you get all these connections in the blockchain, almost like a city that is getting built slowly in. It is really fascinating the connection, how the digital database of everything is shaping up, like a plant or a root of a plant.
4. What is the biggest opportunity of new technology for artists?
My medium is all about art that is ever changing, ever evolving, art that is alive, rather than art that's still. I feel like this is the greatest opportunity for artists to explore this whole space of unexplored options to do artwork that is alive and not still. This could come in many shapes and forms, it could move once an hour or every second, like a video. But it's up for the artist to decide and to explore and to make art that is changing and also think about its timeline, maybe it evolves through time or maybe just a date where something happens.
In traditional art institutions where there's so much space to create experiences where you step into the art or your influence and play with the art, and that's unexplored in spaces and physical spaces.
How you exhibit these digital works is also a big part of experimentation for artists and to be able to present it in new exciting ways linking the physical to the digital. There are all kinds of possibilities that I feel artists should explore, especially digital artists.
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5. Can you give an example of how you are working with evolving outputs?
I've been programming generative artworks for the web which are very powerful, you can send your art as a link to the web and a render is on your laptop light. The power of creating art with code, purely with code, is that it is very accessible to everyone and it could be played, on any format screen and can adapt to the physical world after you release it.
Recently, we did a project called Eternal Tides, where the oceanic rhythms meet the pulse of the blockchain. It basically sits on the blockchain, and you just type a URL and you get to the algorithm, which is just a web page. This is something I find very powerful, to be able to share and display work in this way, which is just browser-based art.
Every day there is new artwork and every block of BTC there's a new painting, it is really interesting because we released it as one algorithm. So the collector who now owns the piece displays it in his house on a screen and every day he wakes up and he gets a new artwork. The cool thing here is that we treated this whole project as one algorithm rather than individual outputs from an algorithm.
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6. What is the next big technology that you are looking forward to using as a medium?
AI is going to enable so many things we cannot even think about yet and I feel like this is where it's going to get really exciting. But this is also scary as it is so fast, every week there is a new model coming out which you have to learn how to use and you have to experiment with it.
If we look a bit further into the future of how it gets encapsulated and incorporated within society, art is where it gets interesting because a lot of startups think about the usability of it rather than artists who have an incredible chance to take it into unexpected and interesting tangents.
Ronen is the founder of Phenomena Labs, an art studio working on Generative Art, Audio-Visual Performances, Living Data Sculptures, Immersive Realities, and Interactive Installations.
