Is that okay? Should we do that again?
Did that sound annoying?
I think we-- let's try another [inaudible]
I'm constantly stressed about things disappearing
and that's like a lot of what I'm doing now
is just like playing preservation
preserving things in culture which have disappeared
or bringing digital things back to life
I'm jumping between all these different things
and at a certain point
I just stopped trying to glue them all together
or even understand what the relationship was
or what the through line is
I think for somebody looking at the outside of what I do
probably material is the one thing that would be the easiest
to kind of grasp onto
While, it's usually digital and there is a kind of computer element
it's a kind of chaos, it's just always kind of swirling around
and I'm sometimes the last to even know
or understand the relationships between the things
I like the idea of trying to run a super tight artist studio
that is organized like a tiny, tiny, tiny little corporation
I dreamt about having a video conference
weirdly, and specifically the microphone for years
My dream for my studio would just be like cubicles
and people typing on computers in a conference room
with like two of these
and a water cooler
and you wouldn't even know that you're in an artist's studio
You would think you're in some, I don't know,
some software company somewhere
For me it's like all these things are just floating by in culture
It's like a stream and things are moving so fast
and people just get kind of pulled along
myself included
What I'm trying to do is just pull things out
and to kind of take them into a space where people can reconsider them
Usually I'll spend a lot of time trying to figure out something
that has no purpose
Easiest way to explain it, it's like a digital signage unit
So, like, when you go to McDonald's or Burger King now
all the menus are basically LCD screens
and they can change and the hamburger is like--
there's a pan-in on a hamburger
These are the machines that power digital menus
You could have a think piece about AI and the possibilities of digital
and that's interesting but at the same time
it's also interesting to go to a Dunkin' Donuts
and order a donut while looking at a Linux computer basically
That's what this stuff is being used for
and so it's just interesting to me
and so I have these around the office
and me and my team have been playing with them
to try to figure what could be interesting to do with them
This has been sitting around my office for probably four years
Sometimes I buy these things
because I think, oh, there's something interesting there
It's like about surveillance, and it's about privacy
like all the kind of things that people are trying to wrap their heads around
I think are kind of smashed into these baby monitor devices
and it's unopened which tells you that I haven't yet figured out
what to do with it
I'm always doing things that are usually kind of useless or pointless
When I have a programming problem and I'm trying to do something
that hasn't been done before, and not because it's amazingly great
It hasn't been done before because it's like so stupid
that nobody would be willing to have taken the time
But maybe myself playing video games where I worked with an engineer
to make a little computer chip
that would kind of play these games in real time
I'm always at the edge of these programming forums
I mean, well, I can't quite find the solution because noboby's done this
'cause it's so dumb-- that's the place that I kind of like to be
I take it really seriously but at the same time
it is like fun, you know