INTERVIEW:
Question 1
What was your first meeting with technology like and how has it developed in the last
fifteen years?
Answer
When I first started using technology as a multimedia artist, all you had to do was know a
little bit about film, a little about tape recording, a little about lights. Now you need
to know so many different kinds of computer programmes and Midi and Breeze, technical
languages and a lot about visual and audio systems. So, I am planning to be in the
avant-garde of the backlash, as far as the technology is concerned and to go back to using
simpler things. What do you do when there is so much technology around? How do you use it?
That is a big question for me to answer, as an artist.
Question 2
Do you feel that all this technology is giving freedom or is it putting people into
boundaries?
Answer
It is doing both. I like the fact that a lot of people have the capabilities to make music
and play with it. Of course, the cliché is that now that you have the tools, we can all
be musicians. This is the kind of world I would like to live in where everyone is an
artist. In my opinion, you cannot have more fun that making things. That is the most fun
in the world. But it is hard to make music and think of images, and so sometimes if the
tools are not very sophisticated, then it is almost like you're pretending to make music.
Question 3
Technological progress has always implied the innovation of traditional forms of artistic
expression, even in past centuries, so what is the future of artistic languages in
relation to the new technology and the new media that are developing today? In other
words, how can art change now that we have these machines?
Answer
I don't think art will change. I think machines will change. I think technology is often
changed in response to what filmmakers want to do - they want a better image, something
more beautiful - and so that pushes that along. Maybe I'm wrong though, because now there
are some new software systems that in fact nobody really needs, but they are making them,
so they have to tell you that you really have to have them. Do you need them? Well, maybe
some specialists do. Yesterday somebody talked about Italy and technology. Negroponte said
you should be careful because Italy could become the digital homeless. That made me angry.
It's a good sound bite: the "digital homeless" sounds scary and exciting. I
think it is dangerous to ask everybody to continue to keep up. Each culture and each city
and each person needs to think: What could I use that for? Would that help me? Or would
that just be more stuff?
Question 4
In the past, machines were extensions of the body, now people are thinking of computers
and the network as an extension of the brain. Do you think that something has changed in
the relationship between man and machine?
Answer
II think machines will continue to be refinements of the body, extensions of our bodies as
much as our minds. For example, I read an article about some designers who asked some
children what they thought micromachines would be used for in the future. You are going to
live into the 21st century, what do you want them to do? The kids said they would like
little micromachines that would crawl up the ends of your hair and repair the split ends
or little tiny flying machines that would go and cross-pollinate the particularly shy
flowers. So, I think that people will think of really crazy things for machines to do, and
particularly in the realm of the very, very small, and of course of the very large in
extending our senses further. As far as changing our brains, I am not so sure. I think it
is going to take a lot longer for a machine to have anything like the subtlety of our
minds. I think it's going to be hundreds of years before we can teach them to think and to
feel things. This is going to be wild.
Question 5
In an essay of 1936 Benjamin talked about the technical repeatability of a work of art, in
the sense that once works of art were unique and they were sacred but now you can
replicate them. Andy Warhol worked on this, too, replicating objects. But now with the
digital, you can not only replicate but you can even change them. Do you think this
implies a loss of sacredness in art?
Answer
No. I think it will make artists pursue things that cannot be replicated. And there are
plenty of things you can do. Just because we have a digital world doesn't mean that
everything has to be done inside it. It has made me want to make things in which the scale
is very important. For example, right now I have a show in the Guggenheim Museum in New
York. It is created with a lot of computers and it is digital stuff, but you can't really
get a good picture of it on a screen, and that was my intention. Some of the pieces are
very small, and so you relate to them that way and you have to do it that way. I think
that it will make people think of scale in a different way. I think people will just get
tired of looking at little boxes. Not everything fits in this box as much as they try to
tell you. My reaction is to try to use computers but to make things that are on a
radically different scale.
Question 6
So you don't think that technological artists or digital artists, are the artists of the
future?
Answer
Sure they are. Everyone's the artist, this is the thing. I will be very glad when the year
2000 comes and there are no more futurists; we just go into the next century and forget
about predicting what the future will be. Nobody knows. Sure, digital artists will make
art and people will do pencil sketches and who cares? I don't see a hierarchy really. To
get back to your question of replication, which is very interesting one. I think
Benjamin's era is finished now because we have only really replicate works of art for 100
years, in a sense. In terms of music, you record a specific performance and people buy the
CD because they want that conductor's version of that symphony. I think that sound and
image will go back to becoming very flexible and have the aspect of performance again in
them and it will be also somewhat in the hands of the listener and the viewer so that you
can listen to a symphony with only the flutes and you can mix it. Is that a good thing or
a bad thing? It's just another thing. I don't know if it is good or bad but I think that
the mutability of music is going to be a very important aspect of the music that's
developed using computers. You don't always have to have that same performance. In fact, I
was just judging a digital art contest and I was not looking forward to doing it but I saw
a lot of really beautiful pieces. And they would change all the time. Every time you put
it up, it would be different. It was fabulous. It didn't mean that there wasn't an
aesthetic with rules that the artist had made and a real vision. But you could change it.
When I would look at video after that, I would think: that feels canned, silly. You can't
change anything. It just sits there. It is just out of a can. I was surprised at that
reaction because I like a lot of my records and treasure them because they're the same.
Each time I listen to them they don't start changing around inside their boxes. But I
think artists who start using these systems will have both ways of listening.
Question 7
Does the possibility of having some kind of interaction with the people interest you?
Answer
Yes, it interests me. I try not to use this word "interactive" because it's
another one of those buzzwords. But the first sculpture that I made was really dependent
on the listener; there were a lot of audio pieces, so I am used to that. There is no way
to say whether that is a good or bad thing. It depends on whether the artist's work is
strong enough and clear enough, then it can survive. I think there are many other ways to
make things. I made a writing programme for the Net called "Hear", using only
the 100 most used words in the English language. There are various templates so you can
take these words and move them around and it is not art, but I think of it as a kind of
template for writing. Possibly something could come out of it, maybe stories or poems or
something, but it's a way to focus. When you write, sometimes a blank piece of paper can
be really terrifying. So I like to put a lot of words on the paper and then just take them
away and then see what happens. It's a method that Michelangelo used: get a big stone and
then you take things away. You don't start from thin air.
Question 8
It seems like the people in music who developed the possibilities of technological
advancements are sort of a small intelligentsia - Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, in part
Peter Gabriel, David Byrne. Of course, you collaborated. What do you feel is the tie
between these people?
Answer
I think in some ways it's that we are part cyborg. Can you hear the kind of mechanical
part of me and these other people as well? Sometimes you identify when you work with
machines so much, you start talking with them. When you think of David Bowie, the way he
speaks, it's like a machine. The same with David Byrne. We got it from our grandfather,
William Burroughs, who is like a machine in a way. He once wrote about the difference
between North Americans and South Americans. He says that South Americans think that when
they die, they'll turn into blood and mud and disappear. And North Americans think that
they will gradually get faster and better and turn into machines, eventually. That this is
in this sense the goal. I think it's something from that. Some real deep love for machines
and for their precision and you can hear it in some of the language. Unfortunately, you
can hear it in a lot of the language now. People in banks speak that way. They learn
English from machines. So you ask them something, and they go: I cannot tell you what is
in your account. And you go: Come on, talk to me! No, I cannot tell you. So computers are
teaching us just as much as we're trying to teach them and unfortunately they're teaching
us some pretty stiff rules. They're not very funny. They have no sense of humour. Big
drawback.
Question 9
On the other side, there's a small elite, that is very interested - and it shows from all
of your albums -in primitivism, ethnic music, music of other parts of the world which are
not necessarily pop and rock'n'roll and Great Britain. This is another common thing among
you. Why the future and the past?
Answer
It's an antidote to living in an electronic world. It's a way to escape. It's the reason
I'm going to Africa next week. Just to be in a place that has no technology and is quiet.
I want to be in a place that's really quiet. This is going to be great because if you have
to communicate, you have to send a runner, three days running. No telephones at all. So
yes, I think technology can make you sick. It can make you really nervous and just too
speedy and it can make you think, Oh we have to do this faster; this has to be faster, and
you think for what? It's an illness.
Question 10
What is your relationship with the Internet? It seems like you got used to the Net and
started using it a long time ago, and now you feel like it's a supermarket. What is your
reaction?
Answer
I occasionally use it, and I think it's wonderful for certain kinds of things. But I don't
see many great conversations on the Net. I see some interesting information occasionally.
I hate generalisations. I'm on song groups where we talk about things that are quite
interesting and it's quite fast. But I would really prefer to talk to someone in person.
This is why I do live events. It would be very easy for me to just make digital art, put
things on the Net, make CDs, make CD-ROMs, ship them out, package them, never see people.
That would be very convenient. It's not very convenient to pack up your stuff and try to
make it work, take it to the theatre. But I like that, I trust it and I need to see actual
human beings. So shoot me. Just old-fashioned..
Question 11
What is the course that Laurie Anderson and video clips have made from those first
beginnings with "Superman"?
Answer
Well, I think very quickly video clips became sheer advertisement and that was all it was.
Just: does the artist look cool? Nothing wrong with that. But at the very beginning, I
thought these could be interesting little movies or something. And once in a while you see
an interesting visual idea, but mostly they're ads. And that's been the same progress that
I've seen on the Net as well. Most websites are ads for the organisation or for the person
or they tell you what's happening and where and when and how much money. It's really not
the original library model at all.
Question 12
What changes has digital technology, technology at large, introduced into the process and
the creativity, especially of making music from a conceptual point of view?
Answer
The very first computer I got was really huge and expensive. And every couple of weeks
they would ask if I wanted to update this computer because it was already a little bit out
of date. But you would have to pay a huge amount of money to do this. And I really enjoyed
working with this system. But then gradually what happened is things got smaller and
smaller and easier for artists and composers and musicians to use them. Now that was
mostly in terms of digital processing. Now with computers, of course, the same thing
happened. At first, the computers were enormous and really expensive. Now they're getting
smaller and smaller and people are getting a little better at using them. But we're not
very good at using them yet. So, I always think of it in terms of film. The very first
films were not great. But then D. W. Griffith came along and the quality improved
dramatically. Right now I'm not that interested in work made for the Net or digital work.
I think that it will become much more interesting; it's just beginning. I'm an advisor for
some young artists at a university in New York where you can now get your degree in Net
art, so you can be a Net artist. It's interesting because most of the Net artists are
women and I think it is going to be very interesting to see if women can continue to do
this. I think it has a lot to do with the phone. Most of this information is going through
the phone and is about layers of information. And women are very good on the phone. We can
talk on the phone for hours and, in fact, when I first made my CD-ROM, I thought:
"here's a medium that includes images, sound and electronics and I can mix
them". In fact, what was really interesting about it was that this kind of digital
art making is very much the way my mind works, which is not in a narrative line but is
about how things relate to each other. How can you look at this compared to that, compared
to that: it's not about a story line or a beginning or an end or whatever. It doesn't have
this push. So I thought I had found a medium that I really liked because it's never
ending. It's very circular and very much about points along the way. I think that many
people are beginning to think more along those lines. It is also a bit of a problem. One
of the things that William Gibson hates about CD-ROMs is how do you know that the hunt
going to be worth it? You're looking. You're typing. How do you know when you find a
jewel, the end, the point? I love stories about the hunt. I don't even care if they find
anything at the end. I just like the travel. If it is interesting enough, I don't care
about getting there.
|
 |
