Jon Cohrs is a new media artist whose projects have included OMG I'm on.TV, Urban Prospecting, and Backpacking in Brooklyn. Recently I spoke with Cohrs about his artistic influences, working with The Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, and working with Morgan Levy on a salt making project in San Jose. 

DG: How did you first get interested in making art?

JC: I started making larger projects and experimenting with pirate radio in college. It’s been nice that a lot of things I’ve been doing can now be folded into art projects. It’s become the easiest umbrella under which to continue doing what I want.

DG: Who are some of your influences?

JC: While I don’t really dabble in much net.art I do love their aesthetic and sorta punk rock feel especially the stuff from the mid 90’s like jodi.org and Heath Bunting. Heath Bunting's work since then, such as the superweed, has also been pretty great. Younger artists like Cory Arcangel and Steve Lambert are also really exciting and never takes themselves too seriously. I love Laurie Anderson for some of the same reasons, in that she’s always trying out all sorts of methods and formats without ever letting her work get drab.

DG: What is one of your favorite projects by Laurie Anderson? I remember when I first heard "United States" as a teen, the music sounded so strange, yet grew on me the more I listened to it.

JC: I worked for her for two years while in grad school and grew to love her drive, genuineness, and humor in her work. One of my favorite projects of hers was a series of photographs she took in NYC in the 70's. Whenever a male would cat call her or make rude sexist remarks, she would turn around and take a photograph on them. Oftentimes the photo would capture and awkward look or completely off guard. It's a really great social intervention that completely flips the balance of power. Love it.

DG: How would come up with the idea of the Urban Wilderness Action Center?

JC: This was simply an attempt to bring a lot of different projects together for de-centralized festival called Electrosmog. But more specifically it was a way to bring a series of projects that attempt to redefine wilderness in the context of Urban Environments. It increasingly seems silly to differentiate between urban and wild when many urban environments have bizarre but oddly sustainable ecosystems particularly in abandoned industrial sites, and traditional wilderness areas have become overrun with roads, development, etc…

DG: What are some recent developments with the Urban Wilderness Action Center?

JC: A subproject of the Urban Wilderness Action Center was a project call Micro-turf that started together with Myriel Milicevic. We were in Berlin, and for this project we wanted to try to analyze our environment and create an environmental assessment form based purely on highly subjective analysis. While neither of us has a scientific background, together we felt that we could gather valuable information and come up with our own assessment that, while not steeped in hard data, was still important analysis.

DG: Did you and Myriel develop Micro-turf beyond that initial project?

JC: Yes, this was followed up by a several months of research with a core group of four who have backgrounds in arts, design, ecology, and water resource management -- Myriel, Alex Toland, Morgan Levy, and myself. Then we compiled all of our information into a book whose goal is to provide optimistic outlook on succession, and how things could unfold.

DG: What are some things that you really like about Eyebeam?

JC: It's a great place that has a lot of interesting dialogue and discussion. I'm back again as a fellow this time so i'll be around for a full year. 

DG: I enjoyed going to the Eyebeam Road Show event at Columbia College last year -- there were a lot of great presentations of innovative projects. For you, what were some of the tour's highlights?

JC: The best parts of the tour were the workshops and being able to engage with students. During one workshop we went exploring through a whole series of abandoned buildings and rooms, but better than the ruined architecture was the dialogue that happened during the trip.

DG: How did you come up with the idea for OMG I’m on.TV?

JC: In college I was always involved in radio, and ran a small dysfunctional pirate radio station. It seemed sad that the whole era was going to pass. There are obviously a lot of great stuff in other formats now but I wanted to give analog tv one more push and seemed like the best time to do it; when everyone else left the spectrum wide open. It was also a key time to address some bandwidth allocation and copyright issues particularly to the heavy-handed approach of the films and TV industry.

DG: What were some early developments with OMG I’m on.TV, after the switchover from analog to digital happened? Did you find there was a lot of community engagement with the project? 

JC: There was some community engagement, but not enough to create a critical mass to have a real dialog pushing content and issues on the website. Instead there were a lot of people that were fans of the idea, but not engaged much beyond being viewers. We ran into a lot of technical problems along the way so we weren't able reach out to various communities as much as we would have liked.

DG: Did OMG I'm on.TV have any problems from the FCC?

JC: We never ran into any problems with the FCC. I don't think they were terribly interested. Our biggest worry was copyright infringement cases involved in broadcasting random material some of which may have had copyright issues. 

DG: What are some recent developments with OMG I'm on.TV?

JC: We did another version of the project in Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics. It was a lot of fun, and now the station is dormant but will hopefully be active again this fall.

DG: How did things go in Vancouver? 

JC: We were able to set up the antenna on a much higher roof and had larger range of coverage. It was a pretty intense period, because there was such a heavy police presence in Vancouver.

DG: Were there any situations with the Vancouver police?

JC: At one point the police came for a visit with several immigration officers, and heated verbal discussion ensued because it was clearly not the harmless art loving visit they were expecting. We had heard that they were rounding up American artists and activists, and sending them back across the border until the Olympics were over. In the end nothing happened, but we videotaped every interaction to cover our bases.

DG: How was OMG I'm on.TV received differently than how it was received in New York?

JC: I think the audience was larger, and for those two weeks we put out a bunch of content but often with a more activist bent. I think the station works better as purely an entertainment medium rather than to preach. The act of watching it is in a way a statement enough; the content doesn't need to be heavy-handed or preachy.

DG: What's one way you're planning on developing the project? 

JC: Right now I’m compiling the code and hopefully going to drop it on git.hub so that it’s accessible to others to use parts of the code and streaming server for their own projects or TV stations. 

DG: What projects have you been working on lately?

JC: Recently Morgan Levy and I have been working on a project together to make our own salt. This project will be part of the Zero1 Festival in San Jose.

DG: How did you and Morgan come up with the idea for that project?

JC: There is a long tradition of making salt in the San Jose salt flats. This also happens near an output of one of the largest water treatment facilities in California. Over the past few years the levels of anti-depressants in water has risen, along with other pharmaceuticals, so we’re going to process this water and make our own “designer” salt or happy salt. This Re-Uptake Salt will make you both happy and add flavor to your fries or create a soothing bath salt.

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