Artist Focus -- Matthew Richie

Matthew Richie is presented as a highly cerebral artist, creating complex works of art in physical in digital media to reflect structure and classification within the realm in which he is concerned. He has created interactive interfaces able to produce different outcomes based on the different paths taken within the large number of different characters and settings developed. His completed product of this sort is The New Way, a complex system involving 49 characters, broken into 7 groups of 7, able to interact in a likely-infinite number of different paths. The object of this, however, not about the numeric possibilities, but was created to represent "the story of origins, or genesis and fall, as a metaphor for the construction of art" (Richie, 1995).

Is it that simple? Richie describes his actions slightly differently on The Hard Way introduction page, describing the process of its story to represent the "nature of information" and "a model of thought, an algorithm for consciousness" (Richie, 1996). On both the SFMOMA page and the introductory page for The Hard Way, Richie puts his work in the context of the slogan/idea "everything is information." What could be meant by or understood of these conflicting definitions or methods for understanding this work?

My experience of The Hard Way was relatively brief, browsing through the initial plotline and the first initial characters I could choose as my own. Richie introduces the experience as being one of the Watchers, or fallen celestial entities, as they interact with the Watched entities later. The choices of Watchers are represented as blipping shapes, which can be clicked for a profile and chosen or not chosen. The different Watchers are different sections of the brain involved in unique cognition or operative skills. He goes on to embody these brain representations with paintings, elaborate stories one must scroll horizontally to read (I find these difficult to understand the first way through), and so on. In this, he introduces a strange dichotomy of emotion and biology behind art-making and cognition. If this work is about making art, these Watchers must portray the different specific mental functions an artist might choose to work with (rational, irrational, carnal, etc) and the emotional implications therein. A similar concept is true if this is to be interpreted as cognition as a whole.


more thinking to come.