INTERVIEW with JARED S. TARBELL by right click save
The iconic creator shares how generative art can unite computation and spirituality with Kate Vass and Alex Estorick
Read the full Interview on RightClickSave.com
Published by www.rightclicksave.com on the 11th of January, 2024
Jared S. Tarbell, Circle inversion, 2023. Set of 5 unique NFTs accompanied by Fine Art Prints. Courtesy of the artist and Kate Vass Galerie
Jared S. Tarbell has been a leading generative artist for 25 years. In the early 2000s, he used an early version of Processing to develop digital works that reconciled nature with mathematics while achieving a balance of simplicity and complexity. He also co-founded Etsy.
Today, the creative principles that originally drove his practice have become fundamental to the movement of generative art that has mushroomed following the rise of NFTs. Recently, he collaborated with Kate Vass Galerie on “Node to Node,” introducing a new series of generative morphologies that seem to reorder the cosmos through elegant code. Here, he reflects on his career so far and shares his excitement about the new age of long-form generative art with Kate Vass and Alex Estorick.
Kate Vass: Jared, what does art mean to you and how do you think your background in mathematics and computer science influences your perspective?
Jared S. Tarbell: For the longest time, I hesitated to call what I did “art.” I thought of writing code and seeing what I could create with it as more of an academic exercise. Now that I’m older, I’ve realized how powerful art can be and how it can change a person’s life in subtle ways.
Art is a means of exploring space, asking questions about the nature of reality, how code and logic fit into all that, and the aesthetics and beauty that we can create. Art is all I want to do these days — creating and sharing it is a source of joy. I’ve never been a very good mathematician or programmer, but I’ve done it long enough that it’s a language that I can speak fluently, especially with Processing thanks to its durability. Not much has changed, [but] I used to sit down with a reference manual and have to look something up every three or four minutes. Now it just flows out of me.
KV: In a 2020 interview, Jason Bailey described you as seeking harmony in your work between the seemingly oppositional forces of the spiritual and the rational. How do you relate to this description, and is it still relevant or even more relevant than before?
JST: There is some reconciliation between computation and spirituality. I view computation as a spaceship to explore these spaces, realities, and spirituality. We’re asking ourselves these questions: what is our purpose? What is the nature of reality? What is consciousness? All of which raise really big ideas about our relationship to other people, other life forms, and the earth. The way I like to explore such ideas is through the fundamental truths of mathematics, geometry, and code. It seems I’m never going to get the answer, but it is a way of gaining perspective and insight.
All artworks from the ‘Node to Node’ series can be found at: https://opensea.io/collection/node-to-node