Mark McCoin
Biography
Mark McCoin is a sound and interdisciplinary artist working in 4D performance and installation with integrated technologies. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. In 2020, McCoin was chosen as the Rick Liberto Visual Art grantee by the Luminaria Artist Foundation. Works include the evening length performance, The Feral Piano; Uprising, an interactive sculpture installation for Sculpture Month Houston; and a prize-winning Piano Car performance at the Houston Art Car Parade. In 2022, he premiered Robotic Resonance, a developing art experiment combining sound performance with gestural robotics which will also be featured at the Currents New Media Festival in June 2023. He has been awarded a 2023 research Fellowship from the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation for the continuation of this work. McCoin has composed and produced sound scores for dance, theater, film, radio, and for television (Animal Planet, Food Network). He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Merce Cunningham Studio, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, ruin sites in Peru, and villages in Bali, Indonesia.
Research
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.