Sean Alday talks to Irina Protopopescu of Slag Gallery.

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IP: I finished school and had a degree in art, but later I went back to school. This time it was dental school, so I have a doctorate degree and I worked as a dentist for some time. I lived in Paris, Italy, New York. Wherever I was I was attending shows.

That was how I met the artists I show now, that and people I knew from graduate school in my country.

56B: And where are you originally from?

IP: Romania.

After all of that time in school and as a dentist, I decided to open a gallery. Prior to moving to New York I spent one final year in Italy and then toured Europe going to all these shows and biennials and wonderful things. So after that year was over I moved and opened the gallery.

Which was an ordeal in itself, I went to the Lower East Side and I went to Chelsea and opened one on 27th street. It was around the time of the crisis but I kept on going and ended up moving here.

56B: When did you relocate to this building?

IP: I moved here in February from Chelsea. I was on the ground floor of a building full of galleries.

I was just looking for another space. I looked first in Chelsea and the Lower East Side. I looked here, knowing so many artists in the area. One of my artists was in a Momenta show which is how I met everyone here. Finally we exchanged emails, I came out and checked out the space. I liked the energy and I really felt that it was a good fit.

56B: How have your shows gone thus far?

IP: From a general perspective: Things are going well.

Each day there are different challenges. I tend to welcome them [laughs]. I enjoy this new type of struggle. I am able to do the shows that I want to do.

56B: Briefly, what are the guiding principles for your gallery?

IP: Basically the guiding principle is pleasure.

I want to keep myself open to finding something new that will instantly grab my attention and imagination. When I choose the works from an artist’s studio, I want to tell a story based on the concept of the show. I install all of the work by myself. I can turn things around in the last minute. I do this so that I have freedom. I need freedom.

56B: How much freedom do you have here compared to your other gallery ventures?

IP: Basically the same amount but I pay less for this… I am able to send the artists to different shows here for example. It’s good both for them and for me, let’s not pretend that this exchange is completely altruistic.

But that is the same as with Bushwick Open Studios. It’s wonderful for the artists and if it’s wonderful for the artist then it’s wonderful for me.

56B: What is your main goal?

IP: Main goal? Hmm… well, I can’t say… it’s not really a business because it’s all pleasure. This is part of a bigger goal, a life goal. I take it day by day trying to make every single moment worth it.

Waking up in the morning and it’s not to an alarm, it’s a reaction to the desire and curiosity to keep going. I don’t even have to be excited to do so, even when I’m sad the curiosity is there.
 

Sean Alday talks to Nathaniel Lieb in his studio.

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56B: Tell me about yourself.

NL: I’m an artist.

I started off studying biology in school and moved on to art. I’ve been a working artist since I moved to New York in ’84 or ’85.

I started off in the Bronx and moved a few times between the Lower East Side, Williamsburg and SoHo and then to Greenpoint where I am now.

My studio in Long Island City was there for a while. It didn’t have an address; it was right off the Newtown Creek. One day I saw people taking soil samples and next thing I knew, the building was sold. So that sent me searching for a new space again.

I looked at this building in 2004 or ’05. At that time the landlord was offering half of the floor for lease. But I couln’t get anyone to go in with me, so it wasn’t something that I could swing then. When I had to move from LIC, I came back here and this studio is what I got. Things had changed, prices had changed; Bushwick became interesting for artists to come to because it was the easiest place to get to with affordable rents.

When I did move in, around ’07 I rented two spaces and sublet one out, after the crash I had to let it go. I think that the landlord had rented the third floor to the guys who run Brooklyn Fireproof, and saw that it worked so he decided to do the same thing himself. This was of course between when I first looked and when I finally moved in. He saw the writing on the wall and went from hat makers to art studios.

56B: What were your initial thoughts when galleries started popping up?

NL: Well, I was one of the first people who put on a gallery show in this building. It’s not well known, but the story behind it was a grad-thesis show.

I went to grad school later in my life, so for my thesis show I turned one of the spaces downstairs into a pop up gallery. It showed the landlord that the possibility was there to have an art gallery in the building.

Subsequently, other people rented it for the same purpose. Never for more than a month at a time but it was a nice space.

NURTUREart was looking at the building at the same time that I was looking, they went elsewhere obviously, but ended up downstairs eventually.

I like the feel of the galleries around here… but now that there are so many in this building I find it irritating.

56B: What’s irritating about it?

NL: I feel like I’m posing in my own studio. I’m in an art building now. It feels less like a working building and more like a display.

Granted, they’re on the ground floor and I’m on the fourth floor. I do like NURTUREart, Momenta Art, and Interstate. I think those are good galleries and I like the work that they show.

I think that Interstate is doing the most exciting stuff.

56B: What about the neighborhood art scene outside the building?

NL: What’s most interesting about the Bushwick Renaissance is that multiple generations run the galleries. Younger people are opening spaces and older people are opening spaces. We get a mix of people looking at the work.

For example, the Lower East Side always felt like a young hip scene. I don’t know that I want to be a part of a young hip scene. But out here, the lines are crossing. The energy is good.

56B: Tell me about your work.

NL: A breakthrough piece is hanging on the wall over my editing station. I was doing a hand-eye coordination piece, where I tried to make a perfect cube in six cuts. And at one point I was working with a handsaw, the piece on the wall is made up of a lot of scraps that I just left on the floor for a while. I tripped over them until I moved them.

As I moved them I looked at it and realized that I could put them back together like a jigsaw. I pulled all the pieces that I could find, and put it back together with glue and a clamp.

Afterwards, I found myself running down the hall to tell my neighbors. I kind of realized that I don’t really do that with my work. I realized that that was important, that excitement. It wasn’t about refining it to a beautiful little piece; it was more about completing a feat. For me the feat became important, because that’s what I was making when I conceived it, not a refined and polished piece.

The work has become more about what it’s like being a human with my particular traits. We all have pride, we keep track of things, we share experiences, and we perceive time differently. In the midst of all this I’m doodling, playing games like children would.

I like to make things.

Hold on for a moment, [he picks up a large glassy stone].  This is obsidian. It’s part of my new work in progress. I want to develop different skill sets and document the process. I’m going to start by making stone tools because that’s when man became man. And I’m a little intimidated to make the first strike [laughs].

I’ll probably tape it.

56B: Will you use the tools that you make, to create more work?

NL: It’s not so much that I want to employ the tools. Obsidian is really too soft anyway, also I’m not a survivalist but the further you go, the more you learn.

56B: If there’s anything that you could teach or impart to the art world, what would that be?

NL: Stop thinking and just make… I teach art school so I’m part of the problem [laughs].

Listen to yourself running down the hallway excited to share something you made that may be kind of stupid or naive. It’s not that you’re proud of it because it’s artwork, you’re proud of yourself and want to share it. That’s a good place to be.

Sean Alday talks with Eric Heist of Momenta Art.

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As I walked into Momenta Art’s gallery space I saw Eric Heist on the ground installing a piece of drywall for a new exhibition. I waited for him to get it into place before asking if he was ready for an interview.

56B: What brought Momenta Art to 56 Bogart?

EH: This is where the artists were going. My friends from Williamsburg were relocating their studios here too.

56B: How many spaces were open here when you moved in?

EH: Interstate Projects. I believe that was it.

56B: What is Momenta’s relationship to the other spaces?

EH: Peter [of the Bogart Salon] has been on the advisory board for many years.

The model that we worked with when we opened in Philadelphia in 1986 was, we rented more space than we needed and then we sublet studio space to artists. In Philadelphia we rented an entire 5 story building and sublet the four stories above us.

We rented extra space here to sublet also. Each space we sublet is roughly 650 square feet and our space is 1,200 square feet. So we sublet to Studio 10 and an artist’s studio. The benefit isn’t as drastic as our original location, though it does allow us to have a larger space than we had on Bedford Avenue.

Which in turn gives more freedom to the artists we show.

56B: When did you move from Philadelphia to New York?

EH: 1992. I went to Hunter College for graduate school and was working with Momenta at the same time. We started doing nomadic shows in SoHo when the galleries were moving out. We funded that by doing raffles somewhat similar to the benefits we host now.

We were later able to rent a space in SoHo. And after that it was off to Williamsburg in ’95.

56B: When did you move to this building from Williamsburg?

EH: We opened in September of 2011.

56B: What’s the biggest difference between here and Philly?

EH: People come out after the opening is over. It was pretty sparse after the opening, but those were and continue to be successful.

56B: Who do you feel is Momenta Art’s main audience is?

EH: Artists.

56B: You just hosted your spring benefit. Can you give me your feelings about that went?

EH: For me personally… It was a blur [laughs]. I try to blend in and make things run as smoothly as possibly.

We had a lot of artists and a lot of ticket holders. It was a lot to keep track of.

56B: What kind of feedback did you get, both from the artists and the ticket holders?

EH: Everything I heard from the artists was positive. Everyone understands that it’s charity. I definitely understand that there’s a lot of anticipation surrounding getting your ticket called. I think that people come because they know that it’s done to support the artists.

56B: What galleries have you visited in the neighborhood?

EH: Not enough. Let’s see… I’ve been to Regina Rex. I went to Luhring Augustine’s opening. I go to English Kills pretty often. Factory Fresh. Storefront.

56B: Could you pick a favorite show that you’ve seen in the neighborhood?

EH: I really liked Stephen Truax’s works [at Storefront]. I had never seen his work presented that way. I thought it was really nice.

56B: What do you think Momenta’s relationship is to the larger Bushwick community? The arts community in particular.

EH: Well… This building has definitely become a hub. We’re pleased with that, we get an audience that we didn’t have on Bedford Avenue.

I know it creates some friction with some spaces that were already here.

56B: What’s been your gut reaction to the attention that you receive? You were definitely thought of as a big fish after relocating, along with Nurture Art.

EH: We showed up before Luhring Augustine, but they are certainly the biggest fish now.

56B: Do you read what people write or do you measure it in inches?

EH: I do care about what they say. I would like to see real criticism about the work being shown.

I want to know what people are thinking, what their ideas are. What’s the point of making art?

What I saw happen in Williamsburg was an emphasis on the entrepreneurship. I didn’t like that dialogue.

56B: What would like to demystify about this whole thing?

EH: That there’s some specific aesthetic to Bushwick art. That line came out of Williamsburg too, that there was a funky aesthetic to it.

This is where artists are going and they bring their practices with them. They don’t suddenly arrive here and find trash on the street and start making collages out of found objects. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s not how it is. It’s a container for all different types of work.

56B: What’s the future of Momenta?

EH: It’s gotten to the point where it needs to become a bigger organization. One component of that will be an artist-run area, which I will be working within.

I need to keep pushing Momenta to take risks.

56B: Do you think that the move allowed it to take more risks?

EH: I think that the danger is that we will stop taking risks. I have to mess it up a little bit in my role.

There’s an element of chaos that is important in any creative endeavor. Finding a balance in that chaos is the key to success.
 

Sean Alday speaks with Peter Hopkins of the Bogart Salon.

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Peter Hopkins is the gallery director of the Bogart Salon. A concept and content driven art space which gives home to exhibitions, lectures, life drawing events, and panel discussions. I caught him mid-thought one afternoon while construction was giving new life to the decrepit parking lot behind the building.

PH: It was ’86 or ’87, from Tompkins Square all the way across the bridge. The highest crime rates were in that time period, late 80’s maybe into the early 90’s. But I never felt that there was this specific moment, or that it was clear that something had happened. Bedford was always going on, and you sensed it on Berry… But I don’t know, maybe it was as late as 2005 when those towers were built on the water that it seemed as though it had been ratified.

I think that that was when Bushwick started on a trajectory. When Williamsburg was ratified, you felt it: “Time is up”.

That’s when any scene loses its allure: When the early adapters feel that there’s no longer any part for them.

Every square inch is now a restaurant or a boutique or monetized in some way.

It seems to me that there isn’t the density here. In Williamsburg, towards the river, there was always something happening. 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th Streets, it’s every square block, literally every one, is… Something. It used to be like a main street, now it’s a big box.

My thoughts regarding Bushwick are that when the next 2-3 big galleries come, from Chelsea most likely, and define where the edges are, then that area will be the box. I sense that it’s Jefferson, Flushing. I guess it’s a block away from here towards Roberta’s, and Johnson on the other side of this building.

56B: What do you think that portends for those who are outside the box? Ridgewood, Dekalb to Halsey, the J Line?

PH: I think that Ridgewood is next up.

As for Bushwick, it’s the million-dollar question. It’s difficult to say it, because by saying it, it’s almost the same as predicting it. I don’t want this, but I’ll predict it:

There will be people who adapt, and there will be people who won’t.

I saw it in Williamsburg. In theory, I should have adapted, but I really didn’t. I didn’t do what I should have done when there was time to do so. Then I looked up and this thing we now know as Williamsburg was built. It was too late.

I don’t want to make that mistake again. If you’re older or have done this a few times, then you sense that there is a moment when things are happening and people can still buy in. After that moment, it’s outside your reach. It’s about real estate brokers then.

There’s a rapidly dissolving moment when early adapters can still get in at a decent price. It won’t be long though.

My sense is that if Williamsburg had this protracted moment, where people realized that the moment was happening and there was still time to buy in, say ’98 to ’06. Bushwick’s run is four years in and we’re getting close to the end if we aren’t already there. It really started happening in ’08 with that year’s Bushwick Open Studios and a few other events around that time.

I think people assume that it’s only the beginning because the content is only arriving. But the ownership has already been decided. People own the buildings. They aren’t just waiting to flip them.

It’s like the art world adage, by the time you know something, it’s too late. Once something becomes part of the public consciousness, it’s been percolating for three years.

If you were talking real estate, the time to have been here would have been ’08-’10. 2012 is probably a matter of the edges, there may be some things floating around, but the blocks have been decided. So I think that what you’ll see for a while, will be the people who own, will develop.

56B: What do you think will go up?

PH: I don’t know [laughs]. I know what I want, and what I want to have happen. I’ll do my best to be a culture creator in this environment. I don’t want to be forced to adapt to what other people are doing. I’m trying to be proactive out here.

There’s the sense that a lot of people feel about this place, that this influx is pushing out the older inhabitants. My response has been largely “Don’t get mad at me for doing what I’m doing. Come do what you think should be done. Then let’s see if we can’t help each other.”

It’s the opposite of a zero-sum game. The difference is that we will never do the same things. Nor should we. I know the 27 year-olds who should do this, and I’ve talked to them directly.

The issue, that a lot of people deal with, in this, is that it will become their whole lives. It’s not a three-year project. You will wake up thirty years from now and have been doing this thing for thirty years. But the time is now.

Sean Alday interviews artist James George

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James George holding a victim from the Free Fall High Score game. Now available for your portable, droppable device.

JG: My name is James George and I am a media artist and computer programmer. I work mostly with computer graphics, open source software, and inter-activity in the realm of applying newer technology to making art.

56B: For how long?

JG: I’ve been using computers to make art since I was 8 years old. But I suppose doing it in the capacity that I’m doing it in now and the community that I’m a part of, I would say it’s been about three years. I moved to Brooklyn because I wanted to contribute to the scene here. There are a lot of people doing this kind of work here.

56B: I think the most interesting work of yours to me is the subway portrait series. You explained it to me, but I still don’t completely understand; how did you get the portraits?

JG: We took those portraits ourselves. That project was borne out of a cultural explosion that occurred when the Kinect camera came out. Microsoft released this video game controller that the open-source and hardware-hacking communities quickly re-appropriated to their needs. I’ve been interested in using code to generate images and explore new types of cinema or photography. So, up until that point I had been creating algorithms to generate images. I was excited to use that camera because it creates very lush and interesting 3-dimensional images of the world. The intention of the technology was to use it with interactive video games, but I was interested in the material as an image.

We took a DSLR still camera for higher resolution images and rubber-banded one of the Kinect Cameras to the bottom of it. My collaborator Alexander Porter was taking photos and had a computer in his backpack and I was controlling the software from a Bluetooth mouse. So when he would take a photograph, I would click the mouse and it would save images off the camera at the same time. Then we went back to stitch them together and line them up. Every photograph is like a video game level, in that you can view it from multiple angles, and so we visualized this data using our software to make these portraits of people standing on the subway.

I was interested in the subway locations because I had just read an article about the surveillance systems regarding this debacle between Lockheed Martin and the MTA. Basically, Lockheed Martin had promised to create almost a science-fiction style surveillance system and completely failed to deliver. It resulted in lawsuits and all these unused surveillance cameras on the subway system. The art was a playful reimagining of what it would look like to be perceived by machines. But also, because these cameras are coming out, to know this is the way these cameras perceive you. To me it’s important because I write software against these machines and I have the ability to extract the imagery from them, so contextualizing them and making art with them changes the way the public perceives that technology and may make them more comfortable with and aware of these things that are all around us.

56B: How do you feel personally about surveillance?

JG: I don’t think about it that much. I think that for people often think about surveillance first when they think of marrying art and technology. As in, “How does your art deal with surveillance?”

In the broader context of systems around us, I think open-source software and art-and-technology helps people to become more comfortable with surveillance. A lot of the cameras we use day to day were developed with surveillance and military purposes in mind because there’s a lot of research money there.

Being a media artist and working with technology, I want to take that and make it playful with room for human expression. Sharing it enables other people to reclaim this technological landscape back for the people.

56B: Do you think you’re really reclaiming it? You don’t have to be a Luddite to be disgusted with Google or Facebook, I ask because I think of those as the most powerful surveillance tools.

JG: I don’t think it’s about being disgusted by it. I think that you’re talking about is privacy.

56B: Well, a lot of surveillance borders on being an invasion of privacy.

JG: They are related. In a lot of ways, it’s a concern, but it’s not a focus of my work. I don’t find it inspiring to think about addressing privacy issues.

Personally, I do think about it a lot, but I’m of two opinions on it:

The bigger problem with privacy issues is that because everything has become public - It’s not that you can’t hide the things that you’d otherwise do surreptitiously, or the classic privacy war cry “How could you start a revolution if there’s no privacy?” – it’s more that it dilutes our behavior so that, because you know everything is being seen, you do things that are only acceptable in the public context. The problem is that you no longer do things that you’d like to hide, not than you can’t hide the things that you’d otherwise do.

The other thing is we’re all starting to lead more public lives. That affects your behavior in every way. Whatever you do, there are photographs being taken. You’re constantly aware that that information is going to come back and become part of your representation online. Which is becoming a more and more important part of you in your entirety.

56B: To go back to Google and Facebook for a minute, do you think that the notion of privacy and being tracked puts people in amorphous demographics more so than it actually affects individuals?

JG: I think algorithms in general have a way of doing that. A way of indexing your view of the world because it has to fit into a number of slots. As you become a set of metrics that this algorithm understands, and because that informs what is suggested to you, all these things we become actually dictates what we discover. So the act of discovery becomes limited to the perception of that algorithm of what we are. The furthering of narrowing oneself is self-fulfilling in a way because we become what we discover.

I could see that as a danger. But I think that those algorithms are also good in a way. They’re actually doing us a huge service in providing this way of thinking and supporting thought and discovery to searching, categorization and filtering. It’s about awareness.

For example, when you get an email from someone and then a bunch of targeted ads pop up around that. A lot people find that concerning, as in “You’re reading my email.” But they’re not, not in the sense of a person reading each email. The emails are just moving through these filters and those are pulling things out.

Sure, it’s a double-edge sword but everyone needs to learn a little bit about how software works. If for no other reason than to gain some intuition about what’s going on behind this magic surface.

56B: Do you promote open-source software because it allows people to learn directly and also mold what they’re learning about?

JG: Yeah, that’s one or two reasons among many. It serves two purposes, it creates community and allows individuals to achieve greater things because all the individuals are achieving things together and sharing them.

Then it also serves to put forth the notion that you can do it too. You could write a search engine if you wanted. These things aren’t handed to you from above. And open-source software promotes that mindset.

56B: Are you actually in control, or is that the illusion? Is it the human eye or the machine that dictates what is seen?

JG: [Laughs] You’re at the whim of what comes at you. It’s sort of an existential question right? Who’s really in control?

I just read a really good book that helps me think about these things. The book is “Towards the Philosophy of Photography” by Vilem Flusser. He’s a media arts theorist from the 80’s. In this book, he talks about cameras and photography. His philosophy is that the manufacturers give cameras to the people, so the cameras control the images and therefore the manufacturer is responsible for the images. The people taking the pictures are a mechanism in that because they are following the rules of the camera. They fulfill the “intended use” of the camera and the camera company makes up that “intended use”. In that sense, the camera controls the people.

But in the book he discusses experimental photographers who are breaking cameras in interesting ways and making something outside the “intended use”. So in that way, you are not controlled. Or, you are making room for human expression in a place that is otherwise controlled by these larger apparatuses and systems.

Of course, you are still responding to these systems. I can’t go mine ore and make the hardware from raw material, and I wouldn’t want to do that [laughs]. So, I am definitely controlled to a degree by what is out there, but I’m also not taking the technology at face value. I, and the open-source community, do re-appropriate the technology. If the public and everyday people take the same tack then that will be what influences the companies to create moldable interfaces and create changes in what directions technology takes.

In that way you can regain some sort of control and shift things toward what you think is useful.

56B: Do you put any stock in the notion of the singularity?

JG: Oh gosh [laughs] it’s funny, I just did an interview* with the media artist Golan Levin and he was asked exactly the same question.

My immediate response is to give the same response he gave. But I’ll say it in my own words.

I don’t believe in it in the sense that machines will exceed human intelligence and essentially destroy us. I think that what will happen is much more interesting.

Take Twitter for example, Twitter is as close to the singularity as we’ve ever seen, in the way in which it will actually happen; unless there actually is a big-bang-type of moment.

What’s happening is that humans are organizing themselves in much more complex, large-scale structures than we’ve ever seen before. So that results in a new system. It’s an incredibly complex system that’s an amalgamation of a lot of people fulfilling individualized roles in that system. It’s akin to the neuron to brain analogy, where each person on Twitter is becoming a conduit for input of information, feeding and receiving things that they’ve conditioned themselves to want to hear, and they consider themselves a contributor to. That information is going to other nodes that listen to them because they respect their opinion or curation or ideas or output.

So we are becoming channels for information where things move by jumping from node to node. It’s directed by decisions of the individuals, but on a larger scale it feeds the system that all this information is flowing through. I think that what ends up happening is as an individual you’re compelled through your own value system to continue that cycle. It’s rewarding in so many ways and especially in a social sense. We lock in and continue contributing because it feels greater than ourselves.

I think that the singularity will be more like that. When we are all interacting as a larger unit. It deemphasizes the importance of a single person in some ways, but it also makes each person feel more important.

56B: Would you consider that an evolution or a form of devolving?

JG: I don’t know…

56B: It sounds like what you are describing is that humans will act as an ant colony. That is, each ant leaves a trail of pheromones to let the others know where there’s food or if part of the bed needs rebuilding. It’s very decentralized, and I’m wondering if you think that humans are moving towards a decentralized thought pattern?

JG: Yes, I do. But I think that it’s something that has been happening for all of time. I think that many things from families to cities represent this. I also think of it more in terms of ecosystems than I do genetics, but in an evolutionary sense I don’t think that we’re changing that much. All of these things are happening within the capacity of the current brain and we’re not able to predict the evolutionary implications of this.

However, talking about culture, I think it is an upgrade. It’s something that we desire; on a deep level it’s very human.

I think that the risk is homogeneity. Ecosystems in isolation become unique, creating diversity, which is unquestionably the richness of life. So if we have this uniform thought system that the majority participates in, that thought system becomes more homogenous. Which would make the world less interesting to live in.

The challenge is: How do we have this system in which everyone is communicating, without drawing everyone to the same or similar conclusions?

How do we keep unique languages and cultures? We are losing a lot of culture as we used to know it, but you know what? We are gaining a lot of new types of culture, that are powered by a social strata decoupled from geographic locations. Maybe it’s a more natural fit, because it isn’t regulated by where you live. You’re given the ability to go find where things are happening anywhere in the world.

The openFrameworks community was just in Detroit for a conference. People were brought in from all over the world and they all contributed to this one thing, this concept. Being somewhere is still important, being in a room with someone, somewhere is still important, but the discovery of different culture can happen without that now also. The cultivation of fairly esoteric bits of culture can happen at a greater scale with that ability.

56B: What you’re saying reminds me of the scene in “Encounters at the End of the World” when Herzog says something like “The tree-huggers and whale-huggers have more sway on culture than the fact that one or more spoken languages die out everyday.”

As progress progresses, are we creating history faster than we can transmit it?

JG: Yeah.

For one thing, I do feel like we live in a digital dark age right now. The majority of the work that we are doing will be lost to time. I fear that people will look back and say, “There was some crazy stuff going on, but we don’t really know what they were doing.”

The evidence of the work, especially the media arts, disappears. I can’t find certain net-art projects that I love from four years ago, for reasons such as not having that version of a browser, or the site has been taken down. Because it exists only in that ephemeral state, it gets lost and you can’t retrieve it.

Not only do we lose knowledge of older history, we’re also failing to create history. It’s really scary.

I think that when our generation comes of old age and we’re dealing with the issues of the elder class, our issues are going to be self-preservation based. How do we archive these avatar versions of ourselves?

56B: Not only “how do we” but “do we archive these things?” Our generation is dealing with preservation issues right now. A lot of people can’t feed themselves.

JG: That’s a different kind of self-preservation.

56B: But maybe we are preparing ourselves for that future. It’s like what you just said; maybe we are creating new things without creating a history.

Many languages can’t be read to this day. [Some] People can read hieroglyphics because someone happened across a rock thousands of years after the culture that created them disappeared.

Meanwhile the Library of Alexandria housed thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and all it took was a group of angry people to run in there with torches a few times before the Egyptians essentially gave up on that.

JG: That becomes the mythology and folklore of our learned history. And we aren’t aware of the gaps in that history. We don’t know many amazing societies could have come and gone without leaving a trace. It’s sad and poignant but it’s good to talk about these things.

I know that lately I’ve felt very strong and focused on where I want my work to contribute, how it and I fight into the arts and technology community. But zooming out to these larger social issues, will be the next step. When you grow comfortable in the smaller thing, you can start applying what you’ve learned to the larger issues. And then you have to be confident in your manner of executing projects and talking about things. As well as testing the social relevance of what you’re doing. As you get older, you can possibly even make a difference in whatever your calling is.

[A few moments of silence ensue.]

56B: Ok, final question. I’m really curious: PC or Mac?

JG: I’ve become agnostic. I believe in choosing your tools for the ecosystem in which you are working, not on principal or preference.

*The interview, filmed by James on his Kinect Camera device.