Michael Naimark, a former visiting professor of SF State, was the reason that most of the seats in the miniature auditorium of Room 193 of the Fine Arts building were filled on Thursday evening.

His lecture on media art and research consisted of two parts: his art work, or “place representation,” and the attempts he has made to understand the big picture of where technology-based art fits into society. His presentation also included slides and video clips from his projects.

Naimark’s lecture is based on over 25 years of work with his experimentations with such technologies as field cinematograph, interactive systems and immersive projection.

He explained that the motives to his projects are not about recreating reality, but to merely allow individuals to use different media to experience and witness events happening in ways that would be otherwise impossible to achieve.

The media artist created and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in cybernetic systems as an independent major from the University of Michigan in 1974 and received a master’s degree in visual studies and environmental art from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979.

Naimark has several patents and has ties to technological giants such as Atari, Lucasfilm, Apple and Panavision. As an independent media artist from 1980 to 1992, he produced artworks in conjunction with the Paris Metro, the Exploratorium, the ZKM and the Banff Centre for the Arts and was on the original design team for the MIT Media Laboratory.

Currently, Naimark, 52, is a visiting associate professor in the Interactive Media Division at the University of Southern California film school.

During his lecture, Naimark discussed technological projects such as the rotating projector, the moviemap and three-dimensional series of projected panoramic videos.

The idea of the rotating Super8 film projector, Naimark explained, occurred in the late 70s based at MIT. The Super8 moving movie camera would be mounted on a slowly rotating turntable and it explored new ways to represent landscapes and places.

“The movie was also shot on the same turntable (it would be projected on) and when it’s being projected at the same rate, you get this very magical ‘searchlight effect.’”

The project of moviemaps originated at MIT’s Architecture Machine Group in the late 70s.

The first interactive moviemap was produced in Aspen, CO. The group drove down every street with cameras mounted on top of a camera car. A fifth wheel with an encoder triggered the cameras to capture footage every 10 feet.

“In a sense,” Naimark said, “this was a cheap, poor person’s flight simulator or a street simulator, and so we ended up calling them moviemaps.”

Some other projects Naimark discussed were panoramas filmed on a rotating projector, three-dimensional series of ambient, projected public plazas of endangered places as listed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and aerial moviemaps such as footage captured over the Golden Gate Bridge which was filmed on a 10-by-10 mile grid at one mile increments centered at the bridge.

After his 20-year project period, he learned that often a place does not matter, but it often does; individuals cannot represent everything; a camera always affects the environment, especially if the camera is visible; the medium and the message are intermingled in they way they are expressed; and whoever controls representation controls everything.

The second portion of the lecture included his obsession with understanding how an artist can sustain a living and protect the intellectual property they create.

Electronic artists, Naimark said, do not receive the type of support as other artists. Instead of investing in technology, wealthy companies and individuals tend to invest in material goods.

“When I asked a Silicon Valley insider about developing art and technology, ‘How come all these rich people don’t support us in electronic arts. How come they don’t buy art?’ His response was, ‘They buy cars.’”

In comparison to European and Asian countries, the U.S. is “really despicable when it comes to our National Endowment for the Arts and how much money goes to the arts. It’s unique compared to any other country in the world (since other countries) they support the arts.”

Naimark also said that artists can work with not-for-profit sectors, sell their art (originals and editions), public relations (sponsorships), Internet protocol (patents and copyrights) or external services (teach and consult).”

Ellen Marsh, a first year graduate student in textiles/fiber arts, said that it is a struggle for art to exist in a country that does not support the art.

“Artists are not supported in this country the way they should be and the way they are in European countries and how is that going to affect what happens to the creative options in the future,” Marsh said.

“The question that he (Naimark) asked about how artists were going to make a living is something I face personally,” Marsh explained. “If you’re an artist, that’s your life and you’ll never have the freedom you’ll want unless you work for yourself.”

But no matter what road artists take, Naimark wants them to “value their work in their own trench, to dive deeply into something that you are passionate about and obsesses you at the same time, to be cognizant of the big picture and where your work fits in the world.”