The intersection between art, technology and innovation

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Rob and Carolyn Martens share a unique gift for innovation and visual art, but they express it very differently. Rob is chief innovation and design officer at Allegion and president of Allegion Ventures, while Carolyn is a professional visual artist and education advocate, whose work spans fine art, corporate and public art and managing out-of-home advertising for a major bank. They met at college, where they were both Division 1 varsity athletes; they have been married for 28 years and have three children, ranging in age from 15 to 18.

Doshia Stewart, co-founder of Allegion Ventures and vice president of global corporate communications for Allegion, sat down with Rob and Carolyn to discuss the intersection of art, technology and innovation.

DS: Rob, you’re known by many as an expert on corporate venture investments and information technology and a global futurist helping people understand how different technologies and the Internet of Things impact safety and security. Many don’t know that you are also an artist. How have art and technology come together for you?

Rob: It is a great question with a simple answer in my case: I don’t think art and technology ever separated for me. My undergraduate focus area was in sculpture and installation work. Another way to describe it would be the relationship of objects and people in a shared space. That course of study was a great primer for the exploration on how the physical and digital world could come together in a more functional, secure and beautiful way. I see it in the thought we put behind the user experience: Consider the way software, industrial design, user interface design, touchless operators and behavioral data come together for a single seamless experience of entering a smart building; it feels like an orchestrated dance, tactile experience and visual art all rolled into one – and it’s a pairing of art and science that happens millions of times every day!

DS: Carolyn, I have one of your pieces, a beautiful landscape. In the range of your work I see light and texture, representational art and also magical realism. Can you tell us how you leverage innovation and exploration in your work?

Carolyn: Oil painting has been used for centuries but I would still call it “innovative” because it allows me to change and pivot directions as I work through a painting. I can apply light washes like a watercolor but then slather on thick impasto strokes like an acrylic. I can build the color depth with layers upon layers of thin paint - all of these techniques within the same painting!

With every painting, I encounter problems to solve. Maybe the colors aren’t living well with each other or the perspective is off. I have to innovate using all my years of experience to solve those problem areas with techniques I’ve picked up along the way. I know modern non-representational art is very popular these days, but I prefer to work in layers of content and meaning in my more representational work. For this, I need to have an appreciation and knowledge of cultural references that many can pick up on. I do a lot of research and exploration into concepts before I ever pick up a paintbrush. For example, for the City of Carmel’s Rain on Main event during the early pandemic months of 2020, my rain barrel featured a Renaissance post-plague scene with birds and flowers that were both historically associated with health and rebirth and with native wildflowers and birds found in Indiana. I look at every completed painting as an innovation because it is a map of a unique journey the artist took to arrive at what is on the canvas. No other person could replicate it exactly.

DS: I had never considered the underlying problem-solving and research skills behind your work, and how important (and difficult) it is to convey meaning to a viewer that you will never meet – that’s fascinating and powerful, Carolyn!

Rob’s passion for experimenting with technology must make home life interesting. I’m curious to hear from both of you how technology influences your approach to life, family and art.

Carolyn: Yes, we always joke that Rob is the futurist and I’m the historian. He always tries out the latest and greatest tech in our house, like having all high-tech lightbulbs that can be turned on and off from his phone. But every night we also have old-fashioned candlelit family dinners away from screens or newfangled lightbulbs of any kind. It’s a good balance. For art, as you can imagine, we have lots of paintings from many different artists, but we also have an interactive geometric light piece that is controlled from his phone.

Carolyn shows off her art supplies

Rob: I make Carolyn and the kids a bit nuts. There are frequently new gadgets all around the house. The good news is that it is never boring, because as soon as you get used to one, there is a newer version to replace it. I am a huge believer that things should be functional and beautiful. When you can integrate the decorative element(s) of an object to have a functional and practical purpose, it can contribute to magical experiences. There is a lot of painful experimentation getting to that point, though. Did I mention that my family is very patient?

Packaging is a thing in our house. As a member of the breakfast cereal generation, I love a well-packaged thing. I am fascinated in the creative ways that products are represented, and ultimately delivered into our hands. Carolyn and my kids, on the other hand, are not packaging fans. Case in point would be the legacy ice cream box. In the Martens household, you had better be ready to eat the entire contents because there is no way that ice cream container is getting sealed again once someone tears into it.

With that kind of audience in tow, the Martens house does not subscribe to “technology for technology’s sake” type of solutions or products. If it works well, it stays. If not… it is gone quickly. It does bend my mind, though, as I count the number of subscription services and digital products that we have adopted over the last few years.

DS: Your sanitation crew must have a great chuckle when they visit your house on trash pick-up day! Carolyn, how do you see technology changing the future of visual arts?

Carolyn: Now people can take a photo of a landscape and apply a painter app to it, so the photo resembles a Van Gogh. They can have it digitally printed on a large canvas. I think artists will really need to emphasize the physical aspects of paint to make textures and glosses that can’t be replicated digitally. They’ll need to mix styles and content in fresh ways.

DS: Rob, what piece of advice would you give to someone early in their career who might want to cultivate an intersection between art, innovation and technology?

Rob: There are elements of art that are innate within each of us. They can be identified and improved through the hard work of practice and the teaching and coaching of a mentor. That said, we are all very different, and the key to blending art, innovation and technology starts with the individual. What is your vision? How is it unique or somehow different than others? What interrelationships do you see between your art and the technology? It is important to be balanced and respectful in your approach. Art and innovation without an equivalent ability to execute will leave many frustrated. Last but not least, always keep in mind that failure is the fuel of innovation and experimentation, and a necessary part of any growth.

DS: Thank you, Carolyn and Rob! This has been a fascinating discussion on the intersection of art, technology and innovation, and we look forward to seeing what’s next from each of you.