Mitch Trale
Mitch Trale (b. July 31, 1979) is an American New Media artist from Berkeley, California, who lives and works in Oakland, California. Trale is a Self Taught artist and programmer, with a background in web programming and design, as well as computer graphics programming and writing. Trale uses advanced modes of programming to create interactive animation accessed through the Internet. Through technology he CREATES worlds that transport the viewer to a virtual reality. Trale is noted for using highly advanced modes of programming for purposes that were not intended. His current work addresses both the finite and infinite worlds the Internet presents us with. Mitch Trale is also president and CEO of FOODPROOF , a website AbOUT food.
Philosophy
“I’m working to isolate and model states of personal vision on the web, through the use of new techniques and technologies. The web is a collective medium, in that it subsumes browser windows and Javascript and Flash and PHP and GIFs and everything else that can be digitally rendered. It's this compilation that provides a surfer with their private, experiential Internet. This is in direct contrast to the goals of predictability and reproducibility which guide the underlying programming languages and networking protocols that make up the fabric of the web itself. Everyone has a set of postures which they surf from. These stances—influenced by the quality of a person's computer monitor or phone screen, the available light in their office or bedroom, the compiled attitudes engendered by all of the sites previously surfed in that session, etc—are highly personal, and preclude an image on a web site from being seen in one way by all viewers. This is in opposition to the expressly controlled environments in which art is often displayed, and instead, offers a new freedom of interaction and opportunity for site-specific response.”
Trale explains that the Internet is a projection of what we think the world is like. He explains that his work “Panoramic Dioramas” are environments that do not strictly enforce orientation or perspective. Viewers can move within the space to see new things, or old things differently.
Influences
His work is related by Norbert Weiner’s concepts of cybernetics, as well as artists Char Davies and Jeffery Shaw. He is influenced by Robert Irwin's approach to questioning the character of contextual vision, especially through his work with obscurant scrims. He is also very interested in Yayoi Kusama's mirrored environments—specifically, the spatial demands they make on the viewer, and the qualities of reflection as partially obstructed by oneself.
Exhibitions
Mitch Trale is currently working on Analog Environments which is a web project that is part of the ongoing on-line exhibition Serial Chillers in Paradise curated by jstchillin (Caitlin Denny & Parker Ito). Serial Chillers In Paradise is a yearlong revolving exhibition of two week solo sites with accompanying essays by Caitlin Denny & Parker Ito. Each artist will take over jstchillin.org for two weeks with all new work that pertains to the interests of chillin. The end of the show, Serial Chillers In Paradise, will culminate in a physical exhibition including all participants in a flow of energy on a groundless site.