ART Habens Byron Rich of physicality, you seem to suggest the necessity of going beyond symbolic strategies to examinate the relationship between reality and perception, but that we should focus on the medium itself in order to understand the way it offers a translation of reality. Do you agree with this analysis? Moreover, I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion, personal experience is absolutely indispensable as part of the creative process? Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?
I do agree with your analysis. I think I should start with the genesis of the project. It came about through conversations with my collaborator Alex Derwick( www. alexderwick. com) about the ways in which science fiction is an incredible catalyst for the creation and development of new technologies. This is not a new notion by any means. Jules Verne in 2001: A Space Odyssey outlined staged rockets for space exploration, Start Trek: TNG envisioned something similar to an iPad, but for us it was Robocop and the autonomous drones that patrolled the city. Alex is a film buff like no other, and he began showing me all these different renditions of similar drones in movies
from the mid-late 20 th century. Only now the science has caught up with the fiction and the possibility of“ ethical algorithms” has begun to be realized.
We wanted to demonstrate how terrifying it is that amateurs, artists in this case, could develop a simple way to make judgment calls on individuals and perceive their threat level and systematically target them. We laid out sketch after sketch, settling on an aesthetic and scale. The final project was much smaller than what we envisioned, but I’ ll touch on that in a minute.
I met Ian F. Thomas( www. ianfthomas. com) a few months later and told him about the idea. He seemed intrigued, and had a unique vision in how to actually accomplish it. He brought with him an immense knowledge of craft, and an enormous capability for refining the aesthetic into something that could be playful, but terrifying. Ian has a very unique perspective. His thoughts are dark and dystopian often, but tempered by a sense of play a wonder. His mind works like no one else I know. He’ s a grown child with a deep understanding of geopolitics, and critical theory. Somehow he hasn’ t been weighed down by this often heady knowledge, and it manifests in his work as playful, but often frightening contemplations on contemporary culture.
Alex and Ian really deserve much of the credit for the project. Both share a very unique filter for societal trends and translate them into unexpectedly playful forms with dark subtexts is really remarkable. If I had done this project alone I think it would have been too overt a gesture, imposing and generally quite bleak. Their fun-loving-in-the-face-of-terrible-odds personalities elevated the project.
We set out to build APS out of metal, and make it look as militarized as possible, while having a sense of playfulness. We were to present it at ISEA 2014 in Dubai, but then we started to get a series of emails trying to persuade us to limit the militaristic-vibe that we were going for to be more respectful of the culture in the UAE. We debated on whether we were sacrificing artistic integrity is we catered to their desires, ultimately deciding that the discussion that would be possible by pandering to our hosts was ultimately interesting in and of itself, so APS in its current form was born. We programmed it to track skin color. At ISEA it was targeting people with lighter skin tones. I think the meaning is pretty obvious given the context.
The project was intended to kind of hit you over the head with its message, and give you room to find more nuance if you wanted to search it out. The piece became a terrifying game. People wanted to interact with it, and see how the piece“ felt” about them. Some
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