James Rouvelle
Artist Statement, January ’06

I consider myself to be an artist and experimenter. I am interested in the development of hypotheses and models that often reflect my aesthetic concerns, and their investigation through a hybrid practice that includes scientific methodology (logic, statistics, instrument building), discourse and presentation. Currently, I am Professor of Interactive Media at The Maryland Institute in Baltimore. I am actively developing the curricula for this young department in conjunction with my colleagues Esther Schooler, William Sheppard, Mina Cheon, and Ryan McCabe. I teach courses in Programming, Physical Computing, Networks and Interactive Media.

Earlier in life I was a composer and performer in the classical music world, but found the atmosphere toxic, and moved into the sound installation genre. While there, I learned basic electronics and became interested in micro-controllers, IC's, networks, and robotics. This work, with its material connection to areas of research and experience beyond the world of art, caused me to consider the role of experimentation, abstraction and modeling in a more general context. I believe that we humans are all, essentially, technological experimentalists. We observe our surroundings, analyze our needs, make things that change our environments, observe, adapt, then make more things, observe, adapt, and so on. I think that everything we make is an embodiment of an idea, and the act of making things can be thought of as an act of modeling our thoughts to gain a better perspective on our experience. I believe that better models often reveal unexpected connections that challenge us to change our ideas, and I think that developing better models and learning to accept the act of changing our ideas deepens our understanding of ourselves and our environments and cultivates empathy. Lesser models create a fractured, significantly limited experience of the world and lead to an individuated society of psuedo-specialists. I realize that for some, development is understood solely as advancement towards a narrow goal via severe limitation of possibility. I propose that we may choose to develop along a trajectory of increasingly more accurate models of our experience, in all its complex glory. As an artist, this practice can take the form of an exploration of senses other than the eye and ear, with the intention of developing works that model the experience of these other, less aesthetically developed senses so that we may come to a better understanding of how they contribute to our collective experience.

The more I work and learn, the less interested I am in being able to clearly categorize the things that I build, or, the things you might build, and the more interested I am in creating and experiencing works that come from a genuine, personal interest, that reveal surprising relationships and systems. As an instructor, my intention is to provide tools to my students with which they can locate their own sensibilities, create along their own lines, and make their discoveries and intentions available to others. I encourage those I meet to experiment, discover patterns, and play seriously.