Here is an unpublished, unfinished, un-edited, two-way interview between Margaret Penney ( http://dream7.com ) and me in August, 2001. It showed up last night in a hard drive search for "xanadu."
————–
Margaret Penney: What were you doing when the Internet hit?
Or when was the first time you heard about, thought seriously about
the Internet, and what did you think about it?
Curt Cloninger: I don't remember the actual time I first became aware. It
probably was in relation to geeks at the college computer lab. I
wasn't into computers at all at the time, and I just thought,
"another geek thing. they are making it sound like it will be
revolutionary for everybody, but it probably is just something that
will be revolutionary for geeks."
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C: Why do you use bright colors in your work? Is is an intentional
decision, or do you just do it?
M: Well I suppose I try and give the pieces a feeling of being
hyper-real. I think bright clashing vibrating colors give a sense of
unreality, like technicolor, like a very vivid dream. Remember that
scene in Wizard of Oz with all the dancing munchkins with their
bright green outfits and fluorescant hair? Those are the kinds of
colors I like. Also dream7 is supposed to be a strange yet
ultimately positive experience, using brighter colors makes the site
more wheeeeeeeee! positive.
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M: When you are writing or creating net art do you ever experience
the creative term called flow? Describe one of your favorite creative
flow moments.
C: I get in the ZONE, sister!!! Just joking. The writing "zone" is
different than the site designing "zone." After the writing zone, I
talk to my wife and I'm using words like "sentient" in normal
conversation, I don't ever say "um," and I speak in complete
sentences. My mind is ahead of my mouth.
After a quality stint in the experimental site designing zone, I just
feel like I've sort of shared a secret experience with God, like I've
been lifted up on top of a building where just a few other people
have been, and I've seen things from that perspective, and now I'm
just walking around again with that new knowledge, half-fearing that
I'll never be able to make it back up there again.
After a quality stint in the untilitarian/commercial site designing
zone, I'm just real quiet and peaceful, like everything is in its
right place. After a crappy stint in the utilitarian/commercial site
design zone, I'm frustrated as crap about everything and I really have
to settle down.
The zones have this in common – you don't fumble at the next step.
You don't waste too much time making the connections. Even your
accidents are good and lead to better solutions. You are
self-confident. You trust yourself. You feel your "special purpose"
(as Steve Martin says in the Jerk), and you know you are doing
something GOOD.
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C: List all the places you have you lived in your life, and try to
talk about how living in all those places has affected your work
(maybe not place by place, but just in general). More specifically,
your recent work, starting with that octaganol thing with the
duodecimal audio, seems different than your old stuff. That piece
seems to be a sort of demarcation point. How come it's different?
Is it because of new tech? Did it happen because of a move? Have
you noticed the difference yourself?
M:
Born in Beirut, Lebanon
Cairo, Egypt (2 years)
Northern Virginia, USA (3 years)
Algiers, Algeria (4 years)
Chicago, USA (6 mo. evacuation)
Cairo, Egypt (2 years)
Northern Virginia, USA (7 years)
Baltimore, Maryland, USA (4 years)
New York City, USA (5 years)
Hong Kong (2 years)
Madrid, Spain (4 mos.)
Places I've traveled to:
Luxor
Paris
Rome
Tunis
Bonn
London
Bali
Tokyo
Kyoto
Macau
Bangkok
Bilbao
Barcelona
Brussels
next week: Tangiers
Yeah, that's a really right on question. It's very true that my work
has been influenced by the styles I've seen by living and traveling
to other places. And yeah, I do recognize the difference between
work I've done in one place or another. I guess I could say that I
have a personality in some ways like a sieve, I soak up my
surroundings, conciously or unconsciously, I am very impressionable,
and it comes out in my work to a great degree.
You can see a little figuration of me right here:
http://www.dream7.com/ghomeit.htm (click pic)
The octagonal thing was done in the States right after my move from
Hong Kong. I think it is different because of that, (I know I got
the Octagon in part from some transitional effect I saw in the movie
Xanadu) but its also different because I was using flash more which
has a definitely different feel than the crispness of images in html
and javascript-based animations.
Here's a rundown of where I see obvious influences:
In Algeria I had my first taste for geometric patterning, like that
which can be found on turkish tiles and glasswork. Another influence
was islamic arts & crafts and architecture, Sultan Suleyman is one of
my favorites for this ornate, luxurious style. Lately I have been
using a lot of masking in my flash work that is like the lattice
windows of some Mosques. The stylistic lettering of arabic script
has always been something I find incredibly beautiful, I wonder why
it isn't explored more in contemporary art and design. I look at
graffiti as being like arabic lettering in some ways, for its
fluidity and stylistic quality. Here is an example of a kind of
Turkish islamic influence http://www.dream7.com/hello/drop.htm
In my figurative work though, I see an influence from Egyptian
hieroglyphics and reliefs. The Valley of the Kings in Egypt I
remember as being a mark on me when I was young. Nefertiti with her
elongated neck, roman nose, and thin angled arms and legs comes to
mind. I like flat, stylistic drawings of people, you will never find
me doing 3d character work because of this, using a lot of shadowing,
or creating spaces with depth, I am just less interested in that.
Here is a very flat figurative Nefertiti-esque example
http://www.dream7.com/people/nefertitigirl/nefertitigirl.htm
For the most part I made the site when I was in Hong Kong though, so
there is much of that in the site too. I don't think I would have
used the color red so much, or bits of gold if it had not been for
the fact that I was in Hong Kong. Also, there is a ghostly, delicate
quality which I liked in some things I found in Hong Kong. For
instance, I have these hair ties from there which are these delicate
puffs of pink plasticene strips, you can see how they influenced me
here. http://www.dream7.com/ouh_h.htm
Also, this piece was derived from leaving my tape recorder on in my
daily taxi ride to work, I was fascinated by the taxi drivers
talking, partially because when you cannot understand a language, it
can sound a bit like rhythmn, like music, I enjoyed listening.
http://www.dream7.com/hello/ch.htm
Eh, I could go on forever. Basicly it is safe to assume that
practially every piece on dream7 is influenced in part by something I
drew upon from some place or another. dream7 is like a cultural
clearinghouse. With that said, I will just describe the most
influential place so far, and where I am now.
Although I did not live in Japan I would have to say my visit there,
to Tokyo first, and then Kyoto is where I drew the most inspiration.
The inspiration for the most part was not necessarily from the
proliferation of design flyers and mags, and record shops etc in
Tokyo, but probably more from the more traditional arts and crafts
which I just found so perfect. It may be a generality but the
Japanse aesthetic sense I felt was the most beautiful I had seen
anywhere. I was constantly oohing and aahing over things I saw
there, from the patterned paper walls of palaces in Kyoto, to the
orderly way the colorful laundry was hung, to the pretty candies and
sweets. All in all it was the fineness of everything..What attention
to craft! Now if I could just learn to draw on the side of a grain
of rice.
In an antiquary shop in Kyoto where they sell prints of ancient
shoguns and royalties I found a box in the corner with kimono
patterns. What struck me about them was that the patterning looked
so modern, almost futuristic with its bright clean blues, grids of
white dots and flashes of orange. I bought so many of these like a
typical tourist. One of the kimono patterns had a large pink sun,
and the suns ray's were drawn as small squares with stick lines
splaying out around them, very unusual I thought. You can see that
influence here, although I would have liked to do more with it.
http://www.dream7.com/vizpoetry/eyesout_retraction.htm
Now I am in Madrid, with the Prado, and on the streets, loud posters
in polka dots like Flamenco dancers dresses, and graffiti shouting
Anarchista! My work lately has had a freedom to it, a boldness in
color, and patterning like the Peruvian textiles I see in the shops
here, go figure…
Two last things, the character Dodeva is in fact an Every(wo)man, she
is both Spanish and Chinese, with a bit of Romanian I think. She is
also based in part on the clowngirl character in this movie Santa
Sangre, which is South American.
http://www.dream7.com/dodeva/box.htm
And you can see what I found in Paris here.
http://www.dream7.com/helloiamfrom.htm
For the most part though when I am creating things the output is
relatively unconcious I do not say oh, I am going to make something
kind of with a Spanish feel. I sit down to work and I make what I
like, and then after is when I look at it and go, hey that looks like
that boarded-up window I saw yesterday, or that kid's t-shirt. Its
the memes, man. I think most creatives are like that.
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M: Tell me how pop music has affected the way you interpret
on-offline art. Describe your favorite bands and tell me what
meaning they have to you, specific lyrics, etc.. And tell me what
band you would be, synaesthetically.
C: Pop music is at least my ice cream; more often than I'd like to
admit it is my meat and two veg. Throughout college, reading Chaucer
and Derrida and studying El Greco and Goya blah blah blah – at night
I dressed up in flowered tights and played speed metal versions of
old Black Sabbath songs at drunken frat parties. So rock/pop was
always sort of the visceral/emotional touchstone in the midst of all
the intellectual crap. Later I realized that most of the great
visual artists were more like rockers in their day. Only later did
the art historians intellectualize them.
So when I started expressing myself online visually or multi-medially
or whatever, I wanted it to be from the heart. And pop music has
always been and continues to be sort of the emotional soundtrack of
my life. Probably this is true of anybody who listens to music.
It's just not everybody lets their album collection bleed over into
their work.
A lot of times at playdamage, I'll know what audio loop I want to use
days before I know what the rest of the page is going to be like.
Usually, those playdamage pages just arise out of the emotions that
those songs make me feel.
To describe favorite bands, I would just be here all day. Right now,
I'm really into that Sigur Ros CD with the winged baby on the cover.
It's like the best CD since My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless," and
that was back in 1991. All the words are in Icelandic, so it's just
total audio melancholia.
I've been listening to an anthology of american folk music that my
friend sent me. Lyrically, a lot of those old time ballads are
brilliant in terms of their succinctness and abstraction and visceral
profundity.
Kimpy let your hair roll down
Kimpy let your hair roll down
Let your hair roll down and your bangs curl around
Oh Kimpy let your hair roll down
Then you've got stuff like T.Rex, just goofy glam rock stuff, but the
lyrics will be very profound in that titanic/naive Neil Young way.
O God
High in your fields above earth
Come and be real for us
You with your mind
Oh yes you are
Beautifully fine
I like taking pop lyrics and recontextualizing them to make them seem
as important as they are to me:
neil young's "sedan delivery":
http://www.playdamage.org/at/
Carole King's "You Make Me Fell Like a Natural Woman":
http://www.playdamage.org/12.html
lyrics from a bluegrass song called "Blue Ridge":
http://anygivenname.org/today_redesign/contents_htm/lab404.htm
So in the Carole King song, it's a woman singing to her lover, but
it's really what I would like to say to Jesus. And in the bluegrass
song, it says "Blue Ridge, do you call to all your children…" But
I've made it to where it reads like God is calling. And the neil
young lyric, well, it's just a stupid rock lyric. You can't win them
all.
Lots of simple things in the world are very profound. Everyone is so
cynical and removed these days. So part of art for me is taking
those beautiful simple things that would otherwise get mocked as
sappy, and causing people to view them as profound.
I do make music, so if I were a band, I would be myself. But if you
mean what band would my net art be – probably Captain Beefheart and
His Magic Band. I'd love to say it would be like early Verve or
Flying Saucer Attack, but I can't escape the glitchy psychedelia.
++++++++
C: I am down with the arabic letters also. They couldn't draw
figures of people or animals lest it be deemed idolatrous, so they
got real abstract and ornate with the fonts themselves. Which does
seem like graf, and like some experimental web design work, making
art out of abstract shapes and fonts.
Is that Eduardo Katz, or however you spell it (the glowing rabbit
guy) in the paris link? I think that is the only photograph I have
ever seen in your work (and it is still a photograph of a drawing).
Why no photographs? My guess is that it's too objective; it kills
the suggestive. Is it an intentional decision? I know you have a
camera, so that can't be it.
M: I guess a photograph to me is too literal, yes it kills the
suggestive. I like my work to have that vague trailing off of
meaning, as you would say ´into the murk´. I also like flatness and
to be in control of layout and form, so I tend to, if I use photos
put all sorts of flat vector images over them or slice them up a lot
so that they become just a part of a larger composition, I don´t like
them to be too strong, because then they are taken literally as
themselves and not as part of the larger piece, also in dream7 if
they aren´t like that then they look wrong to me, like they dont
belong, sure people dream in television or photographic images,
but..eh.. yes too literal.. I need have puppy feet over top of them.
I don´t know who that is in the photo actually, the posters were
political campaign style posters though.
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M: You mention that you like to take simple or "sappy" things and
recontextualize them in your work, this reminds me of when I was in
writng school a huge debate over whether "sentimental writing" was
any good. I´ve often wondered since then why the sappy has gotten
such a bad rap, what happened do you think, why is it so important to
be cynical or removed these days for people who are pursuing an
artistic direction, is it just very postmodern of them or boring?
C: I think romanticism was sort of the last real "sappy" writing
period, and then everything since has tended away from that on the
whole. Even to call it "sentimental" and "sappy" is pejorative.
When such writing works, it is epic and titanic. Blake's "Nurse's
Song" is a classic example. If that poem "misses you," you're left
going, "what the heck?" But if it conncets with you, it totally
floors you. I have always admired those able to get right up to the
"corny" line without going over it, because I think that's where all
the profundity and cathartic stuff lies. Like the first Rocky. That
is in my top 10 films because it totally works for me.
I think cynical and removed writing is both postmodern and boring.
There are more things to be gained by a sense of wonder than by
doubting everything. When I die, I would rather say, "I experienced
wonder," than say, "I never got duped." Really, by not allowing
yourself to be subsumed by the wonder, you do get duped into a sort
of safe intellectual coma. The world is already full of frigidity
and fear. Art is supposed to counteract all that with passion. When
a culture's art itself gets frigid and fearful, then you have a
problem.
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C: I'm curious about your creative process. Do you start
with a well-formed idea, and then discover a few incidental
unexpected twists along the way? Or do you start with a very vague
idea, and then discover the majority of your good stuff in the actual
"making" process? Or does it just depend on the piece? Where do you
think of your ideas – dreaming, walking around, in conversation with
others, reading? How long do you "nurse" an idea before you start
actually working on it?
Also, in terms of scope, what is your ideal project size? Your
dream7 additions seem to come in related spurts, several "pages" at a
time. Do you do your best work a page/screen at a time (like
superbad), or would you rather work on a larger conceptual project
like say a k10k edition or a kubrick.org piece?
M: I try to experiment with the way I create pieces, I´d say that I
have developed since I began dream7 so I am able to tackle larger
more formulated style of work and less a page at a time. Still
though I am not sure the results of working on a more large scale
conceptual piece are necessarily better though, they are just
different. I think its best when I combine both modes of working:
abstract play with more thought-out large scale style pieces.
For the most part I get my ideas usually late at night right before I
go to sleep, or early in the morning upon waking up.
The ideas at night come from my brain which should be sleeping, when
I am tired I tend to in some ways dream when I am awake, because of
this I have my most inspired results around 3 a.m.
The ideas I get in the morning are usually really clear and sharp, I
usually write them in a book instantly, and some I feel such an
urgency to do that I start exploring them immediately. These are
also usually pieces which are self-contained one-pagers or ones I
feel I have all the materials to start on immediately, whereas others
like GlobalHome and a new Dodeva piece (both which are purely flash)
take me longer to develop and gather materials.
For the longer pieces, I usually storyboard the piece and write the
dialogue or text that will go along with it. Then I write a lists of
materials I may need for it: new illustrations, character animation,
patterning, objects, and I go about doing those, or retrieving
elements I may need like stock photos online, or researching specific
kinds of scripting.
The quicker pieces, usually come from something I already have done
in a raw file. When I am playing, I spend a lot of time
experimenting in Freehand, Swift3D, or with Illustrator effects to
come up with unusual ways of illustrationg objects and characters.
These unfinished parts go in a raw illustration bin, which I will
pick through from time to time, or keep on my mind, then at night or
in the morning, I think of ways in which to put them in a piece. But
I also use these raw files in larger storyboarded pieces, and
sometimes re-use them, some of the ones I use a lot start to become a
style, and a way to tie the diverse pieces together on dream7.
For instance, a larger piece I am working on right now, DreamLog, I
am using a lot from my raw bin for, the project is large and somehow,
almost all of my raw files finds a place in it. I am always suprised
by the fact tht I am am able to use almost everything I have done,
even when I was just messing around. Everything tends to fit
together sooner or later.
Overall, the process reminds me of the writing process, fiction for
instance, when you start a story, or have a new idea, you have say
two characters in a cafe, you write a paragraph about it and then you
leave it, not sure what to do. Later, when you are writing something
else, these characters come back into the mind, and become part of
this new story, and by adding their scene, of two characters in a
cafe, to the new work, the new work is given more layers and
intricacy. It is the same for the visual work.
If I did not have the raw bin, the ideas that I storyboard or plan
out would be less layered with meanings. Without the raw work,
everything would be less rich. Conversely with only the raw bin, the
pieces would be only experiments in form with no real substantive
quality, sometimes too abstract.
Like I said though, as I grow as an artist I tend to use both methods
together more, I have the stamina to last an eight page storyboarded
project now, althought the other one-pager is still fun, I am able to
mix both modes of working to come up with something more
well-developed, intricate.
Finally, I am usually working on about four pieces at a time, this is
how I stave off procrastination and artistic block. If I get sick of
one style of working, or a project, I immediately switch to another
one and start working on it. Usually through working on the other, I
somehow find a solution for the first. And this is why pieces go up
in batches on dream7. I finish about 4 at the same time because I am
constantly cycling between all four at the same time. And then these
four pieces, because I work on them together, usually share elements
(color, style, objects) and so they tend to thematically relate.
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M: I am really liking this community driven, on the fly
hackivist work you did at Dreamless. I think its some of your best
work. I want to know A. How you did it literally, CSS hacking etc.
B. How you thought of it C. What it means to you, what its all
about D. What kinds of responses you got to the work, since it was so
community-oriented E. Where you are going to hit next?
C: Those dreamless hacks just arose from me being bored with
dreamless. The original open dhtml battle forum at dreamless was
called ascii chaos I think, but people were just using it to do these
tight photoshop battles. One thread was a bunch of designers just
posting pictures of their faces. It was all these lurkers who never
post, all of a sudden posting their mug. The thread got so big, they
started a second one, and I just thought, "this is so stupid and
unimaginative, like a teen chat room or something." So I basically
tweaked the CSS in the thread so that everybody's picture got
scrunched. Having done that, I started messing with the CSS some
more to make the whole thing a bit more aesthetically pleasing. Then
I just basically hijacked any thread after that which tried to be
part 2 of the first faces thread.
The unexpected thing was, people started joining me in the tweaking.
So it became sort of like sketchzilla, but with a lot more control of
the page layout. Once the smoke settled and everybody agreed that it
was a legitimate form of expression in the community (actually, not
everybody agreed, but anyway) more colabs happened. I was amazed at
what you could do. Some people were actually rewriting posts,
controlling entire threads. The cool thing was, I had my own tech
that allowed me tweak certain visual aspects, and other people
(nifkin, chris from placenamehere) had their own tech that allowed
them to tweak entirely different visual elements. And Josh was punk
enough and knew enough code not to be afraid of what we were doing,
so he could allow it (and promote it). He even staged one event
boardwide by shutting all other forums down and turning on html in
the main forum.
As far as the tech of it, there are lots of different techniques, but
my favorite way was to make these prefab stylesheets, host them on my
site, and then call them into the thread by posting a link to them.
Then, if I ever wanted to tweak anything, I could just tweak the
external stylesheets without having to edit my posts or repost. A
lot of the style sheets are still at http://www.lab404.com/misc/ And
of course I would add the flash audio loops.
In regards to where it will happen next, it has already happened
apart from me on a couple of other boards. I found out about the
first one from my logs, where somebody was calling in one of my
stylesheets on an Guns N Roses fan club board (no kidding). So I link
from my logs to this Guns N Roses board, and it looks more or less like
one of my hacks at dreamless. The cool thing is, with the CSS, I can
call in images from other people's sites. So here are 2 or 3
animations from various design sites, arranged by my stylesheet, and
called into a board I know nothing about by some guy I don't even
know. It happened again recently at a smaller design board, but they
didn't link directly to my style sheet. They just linked
http://www.playdamage.org/mouchette-has-a-posse/ as an
explanation/justification of what they were doing.
Dreamless will come back up, and I'm sure the hacks/colabs will
happen again. It is more fun to do it in a community of people who
have their own riffs and licks. It's kind of like jamming in a band.
You don't just want to play solo, or play with a bunch of people who
don't know what they're doing.
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C: Speaking of "the network" and all that stuff, you are probably
more enmeshed/enmired now in the "net art" community than you ever
have been, yes? You are part of the current hell.com roster, and
hell's founder has publicly said "hell is not about art, it's not
about design, it just is what it is." Does that sort of fit where
you are coming from in terms of your personal work, or not? What is
your stance toward the rhizome/nettime/gallery/digital.arts.festival
scene? I realize that's a broad categorization, and a pretty open
quesiton. Maybe this is better – who are your favorite net artists
right now? Who are your favorite web designers? Are there any types
of net art and web design you dislike, what are they, and why don't
you like them?
M: I like Hell because it is what it is. That´s it. I am not really
enmeshed in any community too much though, I tend to keep a critical
distance on things like that. I have learned a lot about cliques
since 3rd grade, and I´ve never been much of a total joiner. Online
I love the individual artist´s work.
I love Redsmoke, c404, Entropy8Zuper, SleepySandwich, LessRain. e13..
I tend to like Nettime quite a bit.
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M: If you were an animal what animal would you be and why?
C: I would be an eagle or a hawk. John Denver best explains why in
his brilliant anthem, "The Eagle and the Hawk":
I am the Eagle,
I live in high country
In rocky cathedrals
That reach to the sky
I am the hawk
And there's blood on my feathers
But time is still turning
They soon will dry
And all those who see me
And all who believe in me
Share in the freedom
I feel when I fly
Come dance with the West wind
And touch on the mountain tops
Sail o'er the canyons
And up to the stars
And reach for the heavens
And hope for the future
And all that we can be
And not what we are
Admittedly, that is an example of a lyric that has crossed well over
the cornball line, but coupled with the music, it freaking rocks.
You may think I'm joking, but I assure you, I'm not.
M: I know you´re not joking, but i like it, the lyrics have meaning,
MEANING! Damn, how do you write so quick?
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C: You've mentioned before that you are doing these VJ-ing
gigs. Explain a little more about how all that came about, what it
entails, what hardware/software you use, and how it compares to your
online work. Some people born in the web start to dig other forms of
expression and wind up abandoning the web. Are you soon to be one of
those folks?
M: Basicly I joined the group no-such which is like a subsidiary of
HELL. They do VJ type work as an alternate outlet to Net Art, some
of them do it for a living, some of them dabble in it, etc. I am
invited to do something at the Benicassim Festival with them in
Barcelona. It is the exact opposite from Net Art in that with Net
Art the only notion you have of an audience are the numbers in your
Stats report, whereas showing work at a festival is all about your
audience, the crowd, and you aren´t hidden behind some website
address, you´re propped up in fron of your monitor, projecting your
1024X768 bitsy work on a screen larger than your last apartment…
Creating the work is really the same process as for the web, except
you have to think of it as BIG.
I created some work for the Sound Designers I work with Duodecimo,
for one of their shows at the Spitz in Londonlast winter, so I talked
to them at the time about what they would need on a big screen.
The work I created for them was this one:
http://www.dream7.com/inthepark.htm
With the pieces for this festival I sort of worked off of this piece
in style, but there is a lot more ANIMATION in the work for
Benicassim. I am interested in doing a SHOW this time, really doing
something with rhythmn and tempo mostly. Something also that will
give people some spirit and love and get them jumping. That´s why
the piece is for the most part animations of people jumping and
bobbing around, I am liking it, its fun and also like ART at the same
time! It has an infectious quality to it, I think its going to be a
giggler.
The differing technology issues will all come in when our computers
are all networked together so we can show our work on the screen. I
know though a lot are showing more video work, there are NTSC PAL
issues here in Europe for that, I know there are mixers, and slide
trays and all sorts of things I will have to deal with when I get
there. I would look up all the equipment from another email but it
would take me an hour to list the different aspects.
Anyway, I am interested in digital media, and most media forms. You
know, like our man Marshall. In the future I could see myself doing
work for large displays, LCD screens, video, television broadcast,
who knows.. No I am not stuck in one transmission method. I want to
send my memes in all sorts of ways…
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M: You wrote a huge book last year, you are involved in numerous
communities online, you have an art site, and you have a freelance
job. How do you manage your time doing all you do, and still keep
time to enjoy your life at home with your family?
C: I don't know. I sort of work in spurts. I can get on a roll and
accomplish a lot of stuff. I stay up a lot. Saturday is my sabbath,
so we usually go to the beach then, or outside somewhere. I don't
allow myself to do anything on Saturday for which I'll get paid.
Sometimes I have to take a break from surfing the web and reading
lists and bulletin boards, just because it's too tangential. I don't
watch TV or read newspapers. Sometimes I watch movies. I do read
books.
Maybe the fact that I have no real social life apart from my family
and church is the key. I am going to see the new Planet of the Apes
movie tomorrow at the theatre though. I might even go with friends!
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C: You describe your new jumping piece as infectious and giggly.
Your sense of humor and levity are definite hallmarks of dream7.
Have you ever formulated a reason for why you make your work? Is it
mostly just a cathartic/fun thing for you? Or is there something you
want to "say" to your audience? When people leave your no-such VJ
performance, how do you want them to have been effected? What
specific memes are you hoping to send?
I make the work for a number of reasons. #1 is i want to connect with people on a different level than what is the norm. I am talking through these pieces about murky things, as you have noted before. #2 It may sound silly but I want to uplift people, not that I have any answers, but I think that creating an experience for people, one wants to uplift them. I am not interested in artwork that does not speak to me, so I try and do the same, speak to people. I say a number of things. Relax. I´m nice and silly, my site is weird, but thats okay because its silly weird. Don´t be afraid. Okay be afraid. Isn´t that weird. You are dreaming here. You are free here.
I use humor because I feel it uplifts. It makes people relax. If you see a picture of someone dancing funny on a huge screen above a band, it might make you think, look at the way their dancing, its so silly, then maybe people would be less self conscious and they would feel comfortable dancing however they want to. I´m into people doing what is natural to them. Like when they were children maybe..When people feel natural they can really feel a state of exstacy…dancing or singing, yelling… running around like maniacs…
So I make dream7 this weird place, I try to give them a feeling of suprise or wonder, and its my way of saying, look at this weird stuff, look at how silly and weird something can be, isn´t that cool. Be yourself.
Well I don´t know if I say those things in dream7, maybe I say them to myself, the artwork is its own thing as well. It´s just I make it, and those are the kinds of things I think in general.
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M: So Curt, what´s your mission? Where do you see yourself in the cosmos? What are you here to do?
2001 interview: playdamage vs. dream7
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Type: discussion