Lastly, can you tell me a little about your computer art background at SVA and how that got you to your large-scale light installations?

Initially at SVA I focused on screen-based work and also used large-scale projections. After the first year I became more and more interested in larger installation settings driven by computer technology but without the screen as the primary display medium. The transition to purely light-based work came through seeing Fred Sandback's work, [particularly his yarn drawings in space]. I first encountered Sandback's work in an exhibition at the Dia Center in the fall of '97. It was a time of artistic crises for me. I was frustrated with being cornered in the computer art niche, with its techno-centric reputation, despite the fact that technology in general and computer programming in particular had a large influence on my work. Computer programming requires a certain structured and analytical way of thinking within a very minimal(istic) aesthetic computer interface that fascinated me and seemed related to art work that influenced me tremendously, e.g. Sol LeWitt (G 1953), Donald Judd, Mel Bochner, Hanne Darbhoven, etc. (or on the music end of the equation John Cage, Steve Reich and J.S. Bach).

My frustration with my work at the time was based on the fact that I didn't see a way to translate this highly structured language of the binary computer programming world into a corporeal setting. I metaphorically and literally hit my nose on the computer screen. I wanted to be in that abstract world as a body, not just inventing it for pure abstract reasons. And that's when I saw Sandback's work, a total revelation—absolute abstraction, absolute body, absolute space. Every molecule of his exhibition space was charged. And everything [was] done with some simple yarn stretched in abstract geometric shapes. My reaction was immediate. I went to my studio, packed away all my computer gear, started to string thin copper wires from floor to ceiling and soldered little LEDs to those wires. And I haven't done much else since.

Erwin Redl's Whiteout is on view through March 25 at Madison Square Park in New York City.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

For more information on SVA's MFA Computer Arts program, click here.

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Erwin Redl