SAN FRANCISCO -- Jochem Hendricks is an artist, but he has no use for a pencil, marker or paintbrush. Nor does he utilize clay, chalk or any sort of material found in a typical art supply store.
This is because he has no need to employ his extremities to create art. For his contribution to SFMOMA's exhibit, "Art in Technological Times," Hendricks uses only one part of his body to produce his work: his eyes.
With the help of a helmet-like scanner that records eye movements, Hendricks is able to literally "draw" with his eyes. The scanner than converts the data to actual lines, which then can be printed. A collection of his drawings, as well as a piece depicting the reading of the arts section of the San Jose Mercury News, is now on display.
"An old dream of artists is to be able to draw without their hands," said Hendricks, who lives in Frankfurt, Germany, and was in San Francisco for the opening of the exhibit. "The intake then becomes an image right away."
Hendricks' latest project commissioned for the exhibit stemmed from a 1996 installation for the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art. Using an eye scanner, Hendricks read the entire issue of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's major papers. The data files recording him reading were then printed by the presses of the newspaper. Copies were then sold at the museum.
When John Weber, curator of education and public programs, went to Germany and saw Hendricks' work at the museum, he believed the artist could create a similar work involving one of SFMOMA's media sponsors for "010101."
"(Hendricks) gave me a couple of copies of the (German) newspaper, and when I returned home, I brought them into (SFMOMA)," Weber said. "When I showed it to people, everyone was like, 'That's it. He's in.'"
Because the San Jose Mercury News was an existing print sponsor for the exhibition, the union between the two entities "seemed like a really perfect fit," said Cara Storm, marketing manager for SFMOMA. Furthermore, the particular section in the paper Hendricks was to read was the arts and entertainment supplement, aptly named Eye.
The selected edition of Eye for Hendricks to read was the Jan. 1, 2001 issue -- the issue to correspond directly with the "010101" exhibit.
But reading an English-speaking newspaper was a challenge for Hendricks, who spent 10 days reading the 52-page supplement. The process took its toll on him physically, because to receive proper data for the piece, Hendricks had to keep his or her head completely stationary. He said this can cause the head and chin (which rests on a platform to reduce head movement) to fall asleep.
Difficult process or not, Hendricks was pleased with the final outcome. Copies of Hendricks' Eye are on sale at SFMOMA for $5 apiece.
"Compared to the German paper I did, Eye has a very trashy feel to it," Hendricks said. "With all the photos and graphics, and because the quality of the paper and printing is cheaper, the piece looks really dramatic."
Reproducing the digital eye scans of Eye into an actual newspaper format was difficult and time-consuming, said Gianna Tabuena-Frolli, digital ad imaging specialist for the San Jose Mercury News.
"I'm pretty much used to formats," Tabuena-Frolli said, "But when the files came in as auto cad drawings, and I set them up the first time (in the lay-out program), I couldn't tell which way was up."
Tabuena-Frolli said she created the entire mock-up without seeing the specific Eye section that Hendricks read. But when she did see the issue that corresponded with his work, "that was the really fun part of it."
At that point, it was time to take the mock-up to have it printed on the presses. The people who worked in the pressroom were dumbfounded when they saw what was supposed to be reproduced.
"One of them walked up to me and said, 'Are you in charge of this project? What are we looking at?'" she said. "When I showed them the issue that Jochem read, and that he could draw with his eyes, they were like, 'That's so cool!"
Hendricks first learned about eye scanning in the early 1990s when his companion began creating eye scanners. He learned that the tool was used for psychology research, and became fascinated with how it could be used for art purposes. He wanted to explore the idea of taking something that is invisible, and making it visible.
Hendricks is currently working on another eye scanning project in which he looks directly into a light bulb for ten minutes, and then looks away. The data will show what lines his eye is experiencing. Hendricks said it creates a sort of "firework effect" on the page.
Along with the Eye supplement, pictures of a hand, a face and other designs made by eye scanning, are also on display.
Besides eye scanning, Hendricks works in a variety of different mediums, such as sand, aluminum and gold. From large Ping-Pong ball models of viral structures depicting such diseases as AIDS, cancer and herpes, to an exact silicon replica of Hendricks' brain, the artist's canvas is vast.
"He's a really interesting artist," Weber said. "He's very smart, and wonderful to work with."
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