Jim Campbell

Jim Campbell mixes science and techinology with conceptual communication to create art. Often using "hi tech" means to deliver low tech results, his work abstracts and distorts through digital processes seemingly straightforward subjects such as people walking, waves breaking, and rain. These basic elements are flushed through processes that render them much lower resolution than in “real life”, and delivers them in an interesting stylization, usually tied to a form of sculptural representation.

I feel that currently, Jim Campbell is an artist that i can stylistically look up to; I'm also into the low-tech/hi-tech play-off, with an interest in interaction. Jim's work is much more resolved than mine, however, and the hi-tech end of his work, is WAY higher tech than what I can do.

There are moments when I wonder if his work suffers from that however, with people being more interested in the technical process than the conceptual statement. Sometimes, work that's made to address that interplay comes off as disengaged with “real world” issues, and tastes of sterile academic discourse. I feel that while the majority of Jim's work treads that line carefully, it might slip over into sterile technical tricks on occasion.

Artist Biography
Jim Campbell was born in Chicago in 1956 and lives in San Francisco. He received degrees in Mathematics and Engineering from MIT in 1978. He transitioned from filmmaking to interactive video installations in the mid 1980s. His custom electronic sculptures and installations have made him a leading figure in the use of computer technology as an art form.

Excerpt from the essay "Jim Campbell: Working in the Open Sphere" by Marilyn A. Zeitlin from the catalog Jim Campbell: Transforming Time, Electronic Works 1990-99, published by Arizona State University Art Museum:

“By joining physics and metaphysics in a mutual safari into epistemology from assorted scientific, artistic, and spiritual positions, while remaining acutely aware of the limitations to our ability to know, Campbell's work reinforces the skepticism characteristic of the body of theoretical writing loosely collected under the rubric ‘postmodern.’ The perennial human desire to know is paired with a need to know how we know. Campbell's genius, if I may use such a word, is in his skill at bringing us back to that state of relative innocence in which we again ask not only what reality might be but how we can know it when we sense it....”

“Art is the highest form of communication that human beings have,” said Gilbert, who is also a painter. “I'm interested in how humans perceive things.”
Pupa Gilbert, biophysicist, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Where Physics Meets Art”, By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer, February 2010

“His work has a timeless quality in its ideas, its conceptual concision, and its apparent simplicity.”
Marilyn A. Zeitlin, "Jim Campbell: Working in the Open Sphere", Jim Campbell: Transforming Time, Electronic Works 1990-99

Interview with by Julie Henson

Gallery representing artist - Hosfelt Gallery

Artist Website