MIKE TYLER
Lucas Artists Fellow

• RESIDENCY DATES : Dec 1st 2003 to Feb 28th 2004
• PRACTICE : Installation/Film & Video Artist
• FROM : USA

Tyler creates natural environments out of synthetic materials. He studied biology, music, and media-design, and has interests in futuristic science, genetic manipulation, nanotechnology, and terraforming.  Tyler has exhibited widely in Europe and participated in the 49th Venice Biennial in 2001 as a representative of the Netherlands. For a 2003 video project on exobiology, Tyler and the firm NOSTOC researched how life in different atmospheres might be possible.  For this, he shot scenes in Death Valley, casting himself as a terraformer on a space mission alone in a desolate landscape, akin to the surface of Mars. Tyler has exhibited widely in Europe and participated in the 49th Venice Biennial in 2001 as a representative of the Netherlands.

At Montalvo, Mike Tyler is developing an original screenplay with the working title 'The Gun." It explores the tensions within an evangelical christian family living in rural California. A repeated and unexplainable disappearance of the family handgun from the gun cabinet leads to an inquiry into the nature of helplessness and the limits of faith.

Mike has also recently begun working together with Kreysler and Associates (www.kreysler.com) in American Canyon, CA. on tests with soy and corn based plastics. This is a continuation of the computer designed, room-filling "sets" which Mike worked on in 2001 -2; elements of which were seen at the Venice Biennial in 2001, and the Centre pour l'image contemporain, Geneva, in 2002. The experiments at Kreysler will involve the CNC milling of Mike's "Nostoc Set" modules in combinations of several new materials, including recycled wood products, textile industry scrap and bioplastics.