TO WHAT EXTEND TO YOU BUILD YOUR OWN HARDWARE?

I design my own hardware for most of my projects unless I use a computer. I don't build it usually myself any more.


WHAT MICROPROCESSORS DO YOU USE? WHAT ELSE IS IN YOUR TOOLBOX?

I don't use microprocessors. I use FPGAs Field Programmable Gate Arrays. Essentially they are configurable hardware. One uses software to design the hardware with this technology. The Hardware Description Language HDL that I use is called verilog.


WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST TECHNICAL PROBLEM YOU SOLVED? (ARTISTIC CONTEXT)

Probably the first work I did called Interactive Hallucination in 1988. For that work I needed to pick people out of a video image without a blue screen background. I came up with the idea of a difference keyer where a still-stored image of the empty was compared with the live image.

YOUR WORK IS OFTEN ENTITLED "ELECTRONIC SCULPTURE." TO YOU SEE THIS EMPHASIS ON THE SPATIAL MANIFESTATION JUSTIFIED?

I do use the phrase electronic art and electronic artist a lot, not really sculpture as in most of my work the image is the important thing not the physicality of its presentation.


IF YOU HAD THE LUXURY TO HAVE AN AUDIENCE THAT HAS AN ATTENTION SPAN OF MORE THAN THE TYPICAL 2-5 MINUTES HOW WOULD YOU CHANGE THE PRESENTATION OF YOUR CONCEPT? WHICH PARTS OF YOUR PIECES WOULD YOU REFER TO AS THE ESSENCE?

No I wouldn't change things. I don't really think about that. You'd have to be more specific on which works, but as I said above it's usually an image of sorts.


MANY OF YOUR WORKS PRESENT PATTERNS ON THE THRESHOLD OF PERCEPTIBILITY. HOW WOULD YOU EXPLAIN THAT THE REDUCTION OF INFORMATION ALSO LOWERS THAT THRESHOLD?

Once you turn an image into information which digitizing it does, then reducing the information content is analogous in some ways to making the image smaller or even more primitively moving it further away from the viewer. Obviously our human vision system has a finite resolution so the further away something is the harder it is to see it. What's been interesting for me about the system that I use is that the images have the resolution characteristics of being far away, but they are not. This is why when you do get far away from them they look normal.


WHICH PART IN YOUR "FORMULA FOR COMPUTER ART" DO YOU CONSIDER DECISIVE? DO YOU ALSO HAVE A FORMULA FOR THE "ALGORITHM BOX"?

That diagram is more of a criticism of my own work and the field right now than anything else. Decisive ?? The algorithm box is usually pretty empty.


WITH THE ADVANCES IN NANO-TECHNOLOGY THE HEISENBERG PRICIPLE SEEMS TO PUSH FORWARD INTO OUR DAILY LIVES. WHAT OPPORTUNITIES/DUTIES DO YOU SEE FOR THE ARTISTS?

No Answer other than opportunities and duties in technology work are usually self contradicting in the exploitive sense.

HOW WOULD YOU CHARACTERIZE YOUR PERSONAL ART MAKING TOOLKIT. WHAT IS YOUR "HAMMER" AND WHAT YOUR "CHISEL"?

On a good day the hammer is a concept. On a typical day the hammer is my programming language verilog. And on a bad day my hammer is an oscilloscope.


WHEN YOU ARE USING C, HOW EXPRESSIVE DO YOU CONSIDER THE PROCESS OF WRITING THE CODE? DID YOU EVER CONSIDER YOUR CODE MORE ESSENTIAL THAN THE ACTUAL OBJECTS?

Not in my case. I think in hardware, not software. Or I think in concepts and "block diagrams"; I guess which is not that different than software. My code is non-essential.


HOW DO THE ALGORITHMS IN YOUR PIECES RELATE TO THE ASTETHICIZED REPRESENTATION OF YOUR ARTEFACTS?

In some of my works the relationship is the piece, for example, in my series titled Memory Works. Others have no algorithms, but are really more about processes.


HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH IDEAS FOR YOUR WORK? INTUITIVELY OR SYSTEMATICALLY?

Sometimes they are technology driven and sometimes they are conceptually driven and sometimes they are content driven. And every once in a long while they are all three.


DO YOU SEE "DEFAULT HARDWARE" SIMILARLY PROBLEMATIC AS "DEFAULT SOFTWARE"?

With Computers NO, as they are really defined by the limited software that is put into them. But with sensors YES, I do see it as a problem. Often the sensors used define the aesthetics of a work and there is usually multiple ways of measuring things.