MAYA MAN: NOTES
Part of a series of articles & interviews released digitally that were first published in the print edition of the Bright Moments Quarterly that was distributed at Bright Moments Paris in Paris, France in February, 2024.
Bright Moments: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview, Maya. Can you tell us a bit more about your history and background? How did you get into digital art and coding?
Maya Man: Of course! I recently created a piece titled tiktok.mov_2010.png, which is inspired by my first experiences with making computer-based art. As a teenager, I loved making videos to pop songs using my Flip Video camera. I’d edit these videos with iMovie on my parents’ Mac and then upload them to YouTube. It was very fun and it felt like my initial introduction to using the computer as a creative tool.
At that point, I still didn’t expect to fully be an artist though. I've always had a strong inclination towards Math and Science. I studied Computer Science in college. During a summer between my first and second years of college, I met Lauren Lee McCarthy, the founder of p5.js. She introduced me to a community where many artists were using code as a part of their practice. That experience was major for me. It felt like a perfect blend of all my interests leading up to that point.
So, regarding your transition from video making to coding, did you feel like you had to give up video making to work with Processing? You started with videos and then moved to coding due to technical challenges. How do you feel about this shift? Did you have to find a new path?
Video making was primarily an outlet for me to control visual output, but coding felt more natural and in line with my preferred working style. When I was younger, I didn't have access to or knowledge about coding, so video was simply the first medium I had access to. I never really developed a dedicated practice as an artist making exclusively video work. The videos I made as a kid were super amateur.
So, transitioning to coding didn't feel like a sacrifice. Instead, it was exciting to discover that code could be a viable medium for an artistic practice. It felt like opening up to a whole new realm of possibilities.
Were you primarily drawn to art or to code? How did you manage to merge both in your work?
In my current practice, I am very conceptually driven. My focus has never been solely on the aesthetics or the feel of a piece, but rather on the message that I want to convey. What truly excited me, particularly when I met Lauren Lee McCarthy, was how her work critically and conceptually engaged with contemporary technology. Seeing her work helped me believe there could be space for the type of work I make now.
Your art is notably text-based, and I find that intriguing. Could you share more about this aspect of your work? It seems very conceptual, but perhaps you can elaborate on your use of text in your artwork.
The text-based direction in my work was initially unexpected for me as well. It evolved naturally. I never consciously decided to start working with text. I found that incorporating text gave me a direct line into my audience's mind. With language, I can be precise about the focus of a piece or the message I want to convey. I'm particularly interested in mainstream pop culture, like advertising and the language used in magazines and media. Mimicking this style of text became a powerful tool for me. It enabled me to echo the voice and tone of the sources I was referencing, while also allowing me to critically twist their messages.
This interest in text is still something I'm exploring. My media studies background, which was heavily theory-oriented and involved a lot of reading and writing, also plays a role. I think my comfort with language, as opposed to pure aesthetics, partly stems from that educational experience.
How do you typically come up with themes for your art? Is it influenced by your current experiences, passions, or something else? Where do your ideas originate?
My process of generating ideas is quite organic; I tend to follow my obsessions. Identifying a theme or a concept has always been the easiest part for me. I have a clear understanding of my interests and am always eager to better understand why they captivate me. The real challenge lies in constructing a piece around these obsessions. It's this second step in my process that requires more effort.
My work is deeply rooted in my lived experiences. I focus on aspects of femininity and pop culture not because I feel detached from them, but because I am deeply immersed in them. I have a genuine love for pop culture, fashion, beauty, and the hyper-feminine. Yet, I maintain a critical perspective on all of these elements of my life as well. In my art, I aim to capture this dichotomy, this tension. It's important to me that my work reflects both my involvement in these cultural elements and my distance from them. I hope to offer a nuanced view.
Moving to the visual aspects of your work, how do you approach the creative, visual part? With text playing a significant role in conveying your message and concept, how important is visual attractiveness in your art?
The visual component is incredibly important in my work. Although the concept often crystallizes more quickly, the visual aspect is crucial. The text I use is drawn from a very specific visual world, be it the internet, advertising, or other mediums. So, it's essential that the visual aspect of my collections or individual pieces reflect and conceptually align with what I'm discussing. It also needs to mirror the design world from which the text is sourced.
The process of developing the visual side is very iterative for me. I undergo many steps and revisions. I have a clear sense of the feeling I want to achieve, but reaching that feeling is often a challenging journey. It involves a lot of experimentation before I get it just right.
Regarding the choice of fonts in your work, do you focus on creating or selecting very specific fonts?
I'm very engaged with using the default fonts of the browser because a lot of my work is browser-based. In many past pieces, I've used what’s available by default – the 'web safe fonts'. This includes the installed serif, sans serif, and cursive fonts, which can vary from one machine to another. I’m fond of these typefaces because they feel very internet native.
Depending on the project, there can be constraints that make it challenging to upload a custom font file or develop a unique typeface. Since I'm not formally trained as a designer, there’s also an accessibility and a kind of layman's appeal to using these default fonts. I enjoy experimenting with them. However, when I do choose a specific typeface, I often go for something unconventional, intentionally contrasting with the more “designer” fonts.
Like Comics sans?
Comic Sans is a good example. I also collaborated with Ann Hirsch last year on a collection called Ugly Bitches, where we used a really odd, grotesque-looking typeface. It really fit what we were going for.
Your work seems to evoke a sense of nostalgia, particularly harking back to the early 2000s internet era. Sometimes it feels almost like a “live laugh love,” WordArt, parody of that time with its quotes and unique style. Could you describe your creative universe in your own words? And is it still evolving? I've noticed your dance moves on TikTok, for instance. Are you keen on maintaining this nostalgic vibe in your practice?
It's interesting that the term “nostalgia” often comes up when people describe my work. To me, it doesn’t feel nostalgic, probably because I wasn't fully aware of that era as it was happening. My work is deeply influenced by my upbringing in a classic American suburban town, far from any big city. My exposure to culture primarily came through magazines, TV shows, and then the internet. As for the “live laugh love” aesthetics and the concept of dancing alone in front of a screen – that's something I've been doing for years, more as a form of entertainment than a nostalgic act.
To me, my work feels more exploratory than nostalgic. While I reference early net art aesthetics from the 90s, I was too young to experience the internet in that era. I'm fascinated by what these bare bone aesthetics mean today in an online world that is over-designed and optimized for very different purposes compared to the internet of the ‘90s.
Thank you for sharing that perspective! My final question is about your project for Bright Moments Paris. Could you tell us more about what you are working on?
Absolutely. The project is called Notes. This collection for Bright Moments Paris revolves around the sensory language used to describe perfumes and their fragrance notes. Perfume descriptions often use vivid, hyper-descriptive language, and I find this fascinating. Scent is a unique experience, especially in the digital realm where you can't actually smell it. When buying perfume online, people rely heavily on the bottle's appearance and the vivid product descriptions to imagine experiencing the fragrance.
My interest in perfume also connects to fashion and France, which, growing up in a small town in central Pennsylvania, always seemed so glamorous and aspirational to me. Paris, especially, represented the pinnacle of fashion. The collection I'm working on for Bright Moments Paris will be an edition of generated scents. Of course, you won't be able to physically smell them, but the idea is to imagine the scents in the same way you would when reading about them on the internet.
