Bio
Mark McCoin is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sound-based performance and installation with integrated technologies. He holds the position of Associate Professor in the School of Art at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Selected works include The Feral Piano, an expansive evening-length performance; Uprising, an interactive sculpture installation for Sculpture Month Houston; and a prize-winning Piano Car performance at the Houston Art Car Parade. In 2022, McCoin unveiled Roz (Robotic Resonance), an evolving art experiment blending sound performance and gestural robotics, with backing from the Luminaria Artist Foundation. 2023 features Roz at the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe, NM, the Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) meeting in San Antonio, and as a guest performer at the The Fragmented Figure show for Sculpture Month Houston. In recognition of his accomplishments in art and technology, McCoin was honored with a prestigious 2023 George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation research fellowship from Brown University to support the continuation of his work.
Research Statement
My work explores the merging of interdisciplinary arts and technologies, while considering all the possible ramifications that come from this integration. Of primary importance is how to seamlessly blend multiple disciplines with technologies into consolidated and coherent artistic works. The compositional outcome does not arrive through any individual discipline itself, but through the combination and resulting gestalt of the individual elements into a unified concept. My focus is guided by the premise that in an interdisciplinary art installation or performance, the connective relationships among the various disciplines are often more important to the result than the historical modalities, tendencies, references, and aesthetics that govern the individual disciplines themselves. In order to fully explore and expand the possibilities of interdisciplinary works, one must practice letting go of the standard and historical modes of operation for each individual discipline in order to focus on the alchemical result.
This interdisciplinary approach to making creative work is widespread in the contemporary world, and is being innovatively developed and exhibited internationally in both virtual and material platforms. New intermedia forms are being utilized and collaged in all manner of contemporary arts, entertainment, communications, and media, with more and more insistency into our everyday lives. My art reflects and critically comments on these happenings, while also filtering through my own contextual personal history and psychological filter set. Being able to develop art in this way allows me to consider personally and culturally expressive ideas, while exploring beyond genre-specific constraints.