STEVEN SILBERG

About the Artist

Steven H Silberg is an image-influenced, pixel-based cross media artist with a background ranging from photography to book conservation. Working in print, video, and interactive installation, he engages "new media" as a literalist. For him, the pixel and structure of the digital image is as important as the composition and content. By highlighting the construction of the image, Silberg allows his viewers to both engage the work visually and engage with the technology creating it. Created in Baltimore, his work has been enjoyed regionally, at venues including Baltimore’s ArtScape, the University of Maryland, and the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts; nationally, at the University of Texas, Dallas, Missouri State University and Orange Coast College in California; and internationally at the Third Beijing International New Media Arts Exhibition and Symposium. Silberg was selected as the Winner of the Washington Post's 2010 Real Art DC competition and the 2014 IMPRINT artist for Maryland Art Place. Silberg received his MFA from MICA in 2004 and his BFA from the University of Delaware in 1997.

Artist's Statement

My work develops from an interest in materiality as it relates to content. Inspired by the construction of the digital image and time-based media, my explorations have concentrated on the pixel, file data, metadata, the substrate, and the surface. Whether overt or subtle, changes to these elements offer new contexts for interpretation, thereby influencing meaning. Today, we transmit, alter, and receive information with less effort than ever before. We create professional quality images, edit videos, and layout publications with ease—formerly only the realm of the professional. Technology democratizes the ability to create and communicate; yet this comes at the sacrifice of understanding the medium and tools we are using. As we become users of the technology, a disconnect grows between the process and the result. As an image-maker and artist, I choose to take back the process. Rather than relying on traditional means of image making alone, I wish to engage the computer image at its level—the pixel, the data, and the display—making it as tangible as its manifestation. As viewers interact with my installations, watch my videos, and view my images, their awareness of the process of constructing an image grows. At the root of my work is a sense of pedagogy and process. As a pedagogue, I want my audience to gain a deep understating of how things are constructed, where they come from, and how they develop. My installations educate as tools allowing the viewer to become the variable within a rigidly organized system. My images illustrate the image-making experience and deliberately disclose the pixel and image parameters, making the viewer aware of the constructive/deconstructive structure inherent in imaging technologies. Resulting images are then easier to understand as the viewer discovers their structure, leading to a greater connection with and appreciation of the medium and the tools.