Inverview with Benny Lichtner
Credits
- Jan Virsunen, Lead Researcher
- Kyle Helstowski, Interviewer
- Winnie Wu, Post Production
- Jason Roach, Editor
- Thaddeus Cobb, Web Editor
- Web Design: Sarai Mateo, Cristy Aguilar, Anna Huynh, Rosa Salangsang, Richer Fang, Vanessa Rivera, EJ Gandia, Cameron Chung
Abstract
This article, Interview: Joel Slayton is just that, an interview with CADRE Founder Joel Slayton.
Bio
Benny grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He likes playing, reading Vilém Flusser, roller-blading, and learning about animal behavior and the history of science and technology. He helps new media artists make shapes at New Art City.
Article Body
Kyle Helstowski
Hello, everyone. I'm Kyle Helstowski, and I'm a student for art 104. And today I will be interviewing Benny. So the first question is, please introduce yourself.
Benny Lichtner
Okay. Hi, I'm Benny Lichtner. I'm a new media artist originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico. And now I live in Berlin. And I work on New Art City and I helped co-found a New Art City.
Kyle Helstowski
Second question, what is the earliest memory you have of working with art and or technology?
Benny Lichtner
Earliest memory I have working with art and technology, I think it might be when you had to have like a graphing calculator in school. And then it turned out you could like program those. I don't remember what the language was. I had never programmed anything before. But you could make like, like little text games in the like, very basic programming language on there. I think that's probably the earliest memory I have. But then then I, in like college, I started studying, like literary art, in like a digitally mediated kind of way. So like stories, told through some kind of interactive media.
Kyle Helstowski
That's, that's funny. I'm starting to code this year as well in the digital media art program. So it's similar. Yeah. So prior to work to founding New York City, what is your experience working with web 3d?
Benny Lichtner
By web 3d, you're talking about just anything 3d on the web? Sorry?
Kyle Helstowski
Um, yes, yes. So like, 3D art or digital art?
Benny Lichtner
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Before New Art City, most of my experience was in 2d, and working with texts and storytelling and that way. In 3d, I had a lot of experience with data visualization. Occasionally, people, I would dip into 3d there, although it's kind of it's like a lot harder actually, to communicate simple things in 3d Sometimes, like, oftentimes, like a sketch is a lot easier. But a lot of I guess a lot of my interactions with 3d was in playing video games like playing World of Warcraft, and a lot of World of Warcraft. Yeah.
Kyle Helstowski
I play a lot of video games, too. So I know what you're talking about. All right.
Benny Lichtner
And Counter Strike. And I used to Yeah. Yeah. Going to land parties? For sure. A good one. I don't know if people do that anymore. Or are you like, there's a label would come to your house with like a whole desktop machine? Yeah. And then plug into?
Kyle Helstowski
Oh you play Counter Strike?
Benny Lichtner
I used to Yeah. Yeah. Going to lan parties? For sure. A good one. I don't know if people do that anymore. Or are you like, there's a label would come to your house with like a whole desktop machine and then plug into? Yeah.
Kyle Helstowski
Yeah, they do it now where you have to pay to go to like a place that has a bunch of PCs lined up to play. So all right, New Art City was developed during the early days of the COVID. Lockdown. What was your outlook on existing virtual exhibition spaces at that time? And how does it differ from New Art City today?
Benny Lichtner
So when we started New Art City, Don was in grad school. And he was thinking about, like, how are any of these grad students, I think himself included, going to have a degree show when no one can be in physical proximity with one another. You know, it was right at the beginning of the pandemic. And he showed me this like a prototype he had made where you can just upload some images, and maybe even think of videos at that point, and position them in space. And I was like, Wow, this was really cool. I want to work on this. At the time, there wasn't a lot. I mean, people weren't really talking about it that much. But there was a long history of things like Second Life massively multiplayer online games, all kinds of like, you know, multi user dungeons, all kinds of experiments with art and 3D. It seems like it's always been there's always been some kind of subculture around. Online 3D and digital art and then it has these like waves and I guess COVID was like, something that maybe brought us into another one. But this one seems to be lasting at least a little bit longer.
Maybe because technology today is like, just bad, like, more able to handle it. Like I think those early experiments, you had to have some unusually good machines to do some of that, although, I even think I remember as a kid going to like, some kind of an arcade or like, I don't know, theme park. And even then you like put these big goggles on, although they were like connected to the ceiling in some way. And I remember just being terrified, actually, like I was playing some game. And like a dog, some kind of like, you know, is does zombie dog would like to come to ask you, and you were holding like a lightsaber controller. And I remember like trying to push the like zombie dog away with the lightsaber. But of course you can't because it's all virtual. So I didn't like that experience at all, actually.
Kyle Helstowski
Would you say that you're interested in like your online multiplayer, or ask the online player? Did that spark any interest?
Benny Lichtner
I think my connection got kind of crappy. But you were asking whether the online multiplayer game sparked any interest in what I'm doing now?
Kyle Helstowski
Yeah. Because, like those you have the shared interests of the digital media and three are it's not like one of the professional questions about that. Yeah. That segues nicely.
Benny Lichtner
Definitely. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like, I guess what I loved about online multiplayer game experiences was like, the thrill of playing with people from you had no idea where they were necessarily, they might come from a totally different culture. And yet you can you still get to interact with the same media, or maybe even like, play the same game together. Like share sharing, yeah. Yeah, so I'd like to get to a point in New Art City where that same excitement exists in terms of what you can do when you meet other people in like, an art world, I guess. Yeah, All right.
Kyle Helstowski
Before working on New Art City, what other web 3D platforms or previous iterations of web 3D, were you looking at? How did other web three web 3D iterations influence does that design decisions you made for New Art City?
Benny Lichtner
I remember one, one software I really enjoy. It was also a new software at the time that I really enjoyed was a VR one, I think it was alt space or something. And what was really fun about that was, you could like get into sort of just a blank, empty world with a couple of friends. And you can all go through this library of models. And then like, build a space together. And that could, that was just like a way of hanging out that I did like, every week for a while. And then at the end, you'd look at what everyone did. And it was often really surreal, and really goofy. Like we made like a giant plants, it was called Club Plant. And it was like a plant that you could climb up. And then at the top, there was like club. And there were like big palm trees. But then there were just like lions on the tops like that. So I guess it was inspiring to be able to have because usually, like, if you want to do something, you want to like make space with someone. You have to like pay a lot for that like, like physical space is quite expensive and a lot of places. So it was really exciting to have so much space that you can decorate, however you want, with whoever you want it. I think this was probably one of the things that was exciting about like, even second life or you know, all of these virtual space experiences.
Kyle Helstowski
Was that virtual space you're talking about? Is that something that's recent, or is that kind of old, older technology compared to today? Like is that can I still play that?
Benny Lichtner
I think so. Yeah, I haven't done it in a while but it's quite recent. It's like it came up with like the VR craze. So I think it's on Oculus proudly. Alt Space. Yeah.
Kyle Helstowski
Alt Space. I'll look into that sounds awesome. Yeah. Besides expanding accessibility, what are the benefits of an entirely Virtual Art Gallery? And then a sub question of that is: how do the experience of a virtual gallery differ from the experiences of an in person exhibit?
Benny Lichtner
I think digital art and virtual art is kind of a weird art form compared to I don't know more classic art forms because like with like, painting or sculpture, you make a physical object. And then it lives somewhere in the real world. And then you like, go and visit it in person, and you can walk around it. But it gets like, really tight, it's much more tied to place, whether it's the current gallery or museum where it is, the person's home where you find it, or if it's on the street somewhere, it's much more tied to space. And then the way that you interact with it is by interacting with the space, you can't, you don't really interact with the thing that much usually, you walk around and see it from different perspectives.
And then with digital art, it's like you load it, wherever you happen to have your device, whether that's your room or school computer or a computer in a gallery. So and then it just load it usually like loads on a little rectangle in the room. So in some ways, it's actually really limited compared to classic art, because you don't have control over anything in the surrounding environment. Sometimes, when we are sort of coaching people who are making virtual exhibits for the first time. I definitely like trying to remind them that one of the main ways you can influence the environment is with sound because you play a sound from a space suddenly, like you filled the room wherever the room is that they happen to be, you suddenly, you've totally changed that.
Whereas like anything visual you're doing is going to be confined to just like, this small rectangle in whatever room they're in, probably unless they happen to be projecting it or something like expansive and open digital artists, and it is in a lot of ways. But then in some ways, it's actually really limited and it's a difficult constraint to work with, I think. Yeah, but then the way it's it's expansive or like, yeah, in that little rectangle. It's really dynamic. And you can do all kinds of strange things. And it can change in so many ways and react to your decisions in so many ways that like a painting or a sculpture. We can't really use more and more static.
Kyle Helstowski
How does New Art City situate itself in relation to the term Metaverse?
Benny Lichtner
Um, well, I guess like Metaverse has become kind of a buzzword, which to me means it kind of means that it's like lost a lot of its its meaning I guess it's become like a marketing term that is just sort of like there for flair as opposed to for any kind of like specific semantic content or something. So I don't really think about I'm never thinking about metaverses when I think about New Art City, but I guess I am sometimes thinking about like interconnected virtual spaces, I guess that you might move between, or I'm thinking more about like, what is this new medium that I am thinking about? What is a metaverse? So I'm thinking about like, what kinds of like, interactions can exist today in a virtual space that will produce new kinds of meaning that we haven't seen before, I guess, and maybe will teach us more about ourselves. Yeah.
Kyle Helstowski
Like hoping that Metaverse has improved interactivity, is that kind of what you're thinking? Or you hope?
Benny Lichtner
I'm curious? I'm still curious. I mean, it's been years. Like decades, I guess it's been decades of like, experimentation with virtual worlds. And there still is a sense of excitement about them and possibility. Because I think I mean, I think others are still curious. Like, what can happen here? It seems like there's a lot of there's still a lot of unexplored corners and spaces in terms of like, ways of existing in in virtual space.
Kyle Helstowski
Is there an exhibit on New Art City that stands out to you? Why is that exhibit so memorable for you?
Benny Lichtner
Um, so yeah, so Peter Basma-Lord's looking, Looking Out Looking Over was an interview project with Peter’s mom. And that was one reason that stood out to me was because you, you walk in this very artificial space. And then you see these very intimate personal interviews, all with the same person. And the videos of her are placed, the spaces that Peter made are like, composed of images made of like, Google Maps, screenshots and various other photographs. And then Peter, like recreated sort of, like, architectures out of these photographs in a very minimal but effective way. And this was in the early days of New Art City. So there weren't there wasn't really that much you could do with, with, yeah, what we had made, but they made this very, like, compelling and touching, and important, like, documentary experience. Yeah.
Chelsea Thompto
That's great. And yeah, that actually brings me to another tangential question, as someone you know, who had who has also created a new art city earlier in its process, is there anything that you think kind of typifies, or is a hallmark of how the platform has changed, especially as like, the creator side has improved and gotten improved and gotten more accessible? So is there any way that people are creating now or any thing that's happening now that like, didn't happen in the early days or, you know, ways that the style of rooms or spaces has changed overall? Based Do you think on the, you know, the user interface side for the, for the different creators?
Benny Lichtner
Yeah, I mean, every time we add a new, like, a feature about the add a new feature that gives a new way to like, express yourself or change the space, people like immediately use it in all kinds of creative ways. So at that point in time, we didn't have any kind of like, object behaviors. So unless you were already familiar with Blender, you couldn't do any kind of animation at all with your objects. And now, it's like quite simple to do some very basic animations, or like to make things appear when you get close to them. And pretty much as soon as we released that, people started using it to change their spaces and decorate their spaces. And then we also added text. So again, you could use text before, if you were familiar with how to do it in blender, and then import it. And now you can like natively add text and stories and things like that to spaces. A lot of what we've been working on recently has been, which is kind of like the most thing that we all want to work on the most usually is these like, we call them the category expressivity. And it's like, features for like, you know, making the worlds but sort of the vegetable Don likes to call him the vegetables, it's like the stuff we have to do is like making everything kind of like stable and just good. So one thing I was working on recently was just making videos stream better, which is like, quite boring, because it's not really a new medium at all. But it's really important. Yeah, so yeah, to do some of the vegetables too.
Kyle Helstowski
Next question, you kind of touched on that a little bit. But what new features are you working on right now? I assume that relates to New Art City.
Benny Lichtner
Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I thought of one other thing about like, features that give new city specific style is one of the first features I think Don made was the ability to when you upload an image, you can just render it as like a panel, or you can just with a drop down render it as like a box or a sphere. And so if you ever see like a virtual world that has these like boxes, texture with images, or or, or like many spheres with, like these image textures on them, you can almost be sure it's like a new art city world, because it's so much easier to do that in New Art City than in many other virtual space editors. Yeah, and that's like a really I think it's really cool and amazing how, like, well, one thing I liked about working with Don is he's he just like has a mind for that, like he's always thinking about. I don't know, I don't really have the words to describe or I guess. It's like, things you wouldn't really think of as being, like, powerful or expressive, but are but then you realize they are because they're like, so easy to use and fun to play with, I guess.
Yeah, one new feature I'm really excited about is the project export feature. So this is like the ability to export, everything you've made on New Art City as a zip file of like static assets that can be hosted on your own website somewhere or archived in a library or an archive or museum or something. So it's a way to get your work out of New Art City, and then you have like, a thing that will last forever, or as long as computers exist, essentially. And I'm really excited about this. Because this, I think this should just be a standard, not like a web standard, but like, it should be standard that when you make a thing using an online service, you can get the stuff out of it that you may like, I think it's ridiculous, that they're like places where you can put all your time and energy and make some beautiful personal expression. And then it's like you stop paying them a monthly fee, it's just gone. Or if a company just disappears, suddenly, what you did is gone. It's ridiculous. So I'm excited about this, both for what it will mean to people creating stuff and the fact that like now, everything will really be easily archivable. And for a very long time. Like it will be much easier to archive digital artwork made on new art city than in many other places. And just sort of politically, I think it's like the way things shouldn't be.
Kyle Helstowski
What can viewers expect of New Art Cities development within the next five years?
Benny Lichtner
Oh, damn. Um, I think people can expect a lot of like, exciting new ways to tell stories virtually. And ways of like, structuring the worlds that you're making into stories, I guess, for the viewer. And this is part of about making these experiences more accessible to people that maybe are not as familiar with how to navigate like, maybe they are, they've never played a video game or something. And then a lot of other accessibility features too. I think in the next five years, you're going to start seeing a lot of exhibits that can be experienced purely in audio. So maybe if you can't see, there's going to be all of this content, all of this artwork for you to experience purely in audio. And a lot more presentations by artists working in New Art City and documentation of their process and what it's like to be to be working in this medium.
Kyle Helstowski
Alright. Given your experience with influencing the current art world and digital mediums, what is your vision for the future regarding emerging artists, sorry, emerging artists roles and impacts the next generation?
Benny Lichtner
I think it would be great if people who are curious about it, have a path to learn about how their technology works, learn about how programming works, and a path to like sharing their experiences of the world today. With each other in like, a way that feels like true and meaningful to themselves, I guess. And I think I hope that this just becomes a world where it becomes like standards to share what makes your experience of the world unique and different with like the people that you encounter.
Chelsea Thompto
So before I pause the recording, I just want to say thank you, Benny, for taking the time this has been really enjoyable for me to hear your perspective and to hear about what's coming down the pipeline a little bit for New Art City.
Benny Lichtner
Thank you. Thanks for taking the time to ask me questions.
Kyle Helstowski
Thank you so much. Also, it was a pleasure interviewing you and listening. That was awesome.
References:
Microsoft inc., AltspaceVR, 2022, https://altvr.com/
Peter Basma-Lord, Looking Out, Looking Over, 2022, https://newart.city/show/lookingout-lookingover
New Art City, 2020, https://newart.city/
Media
Video Recording of the Interview with Benny Lichtner, Conducted November 28, 2022
Keywords
Literary Art, Data Visualization, Community, Space (Digital vs Physical Art), Interactivity