Aline Borges, The Florist

The power of composition, and the importance of community

Liam speaks with Aline Borges, a Zürich-based floral designer who’s made the leap from fashion coordination for magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar to independent floral design and installations. The conversation covers what it’s like to move between different creative fields (and countries), how to think about composition to tackle almost any creative challenge, and the courage it takes to start on a new venture.

---

Liam: Aline, welcome to Design Notes.

Aline: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank for the invitation.

Liam: Sure. Um, to dive right in, I want to know a little bit about your current work and the whole journey that led you there.

Aline: Wow, that's (laughs), that's already one podcast just for that (laughs)-

Liam: (Laughs).

Aline: ... but, no. Um... So, I'm a florist, I come from a background of fashion. I was working 15 years in fashion in Brazil as, uh, executive producer, creative director, fashion coordinator for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire and other, um, important, um, magazines. And what I used to do is I used to take care of all the images and all the editorials in the magazines. And, uh, when I decided to move to Switzerland six years ago, I thought would be also a great opportunity to change career as I was changing my whole set up. I used to grow up with my grandmother that had a huge garden with lot of flowers and she, she told me a lot about how to take care of the flowers, how they are, what they like, but of course that was in Brazil, that's another weather and environment. Um, so I came to here and I decided to do that and I went to the UK for a year to study floristry there before starting the business and it worked. So, I'm happy.

Liam: I have a lot of questions-

Aline: (Laughs).

Liam: ... I wanna follow up on. First, I would like to n-, understand what it was like for you to make the jump between two creative fields that, you know, at first glance feel quite distinct from one another.

Aline: Yeah. That's a interesting question because in my view they are not so distinguished as you may think. Because when I work with photography I wasn't like a-, any specific, um, um, person as a photographer or a stylist, or a makeup artist. I saw... I was the coordinator of the project, I was the creative director. So, I was seeing the, the whole picture as one. So, I learned a lot, um, over the years and I, I t-, I say that because I didn't do any, um, important university or I don't have a, um, MBA or anything like that. I learnt doing it. So, I start my career being a photographer, uh, a assistant photographer, then I was assistant for a stylist, then I was a model, then I was... So, I, I learned a little bit of each of the, the steps then I became what I became to see the whole thing.

When you see the whole image as one, you start to understand where you can get better and how to, um, decode the, the, the image that you're seeing. And florist is more or less like that. You need to understand what you are working with and then you need to understand what is it that you are seeing. So, it's about texture, it's about colors, is about depth, it's about, um, length and it's about, um, how do you, um, see the whole information that the flower is giving to you altogether, how they combine together. So, it was not that difficult a jump. Once I understood that, um... Because my specialty is not, um, doing small things, is doing, uh, installations and, um, uh, whole set ups for, for events, for weddings, uh, um, installations in, in museums and, and galleries. So, you see the space that you have to work with and you understand how can you work in that f-, m-, space that you have.

So, you put what you have, uh, available at the time. So, I, I don't think was that difficult. I- it's quite interesting actually.

Liam: Right. It strikes me as you're talking also that in both cases you're working with living subjects who are dynamic (laughs) entities.

Aline: Y- yeah. Yeah, yeah. Most of the time... Th- th- the flowers are, I would say, are a bit more sensitive because they just die (laughs)-

Liam: (Laughs).

Aline: ... really fast. So, you need to pay attention in more on th-, uh, how warm or how dry the d-, the space that you are working with, uh, will be and how can you make sure that they will be comfortable in the space that they will be and so on, so.

Liam: How did you make the decision to specifically pursue the floral arts? How did you l-, reconnect with that kind of interest?

Aline: Yeah. So, it sounds a little bit like crazy but I was really doing researches when I moved in here. I took kind of like a sabbatic time, um, to understand a little bit the environment that I was in and to make a research of the city and the country because I moved to Switzerland... Like I didn't know Switzerland at all. I know, I knew from Brazil but I never been here before. So, I came and visit and a-, in the three days that I was here decided, "Okay, I'm moving in." So, when I was here I needed to, you know, understand where I was and what is it that the city, in my opinion, was missing. And one thing... I always thought as myself, "What is it that I would like to have that I cannot see it here?"

So, I thought as, as a client and I said, "Oh, I would love to see, you know, to have a nice, um, store that I can buy beautiful flowers like in the English style," because in my opinion, this is the style that I, I could consider the most free style that leaves a little bit th- th- the flowers the way they are in the nature. So, it's, it's more, um... It's like you bring your garden inside of the house. So, this is what I wanted to see and I tried to find out this in Switzerland and I could not. So, I decided to do that. But it was a huge research of other fields as well. And one day I just w- woke up and I said, "I... You know what? I would try this. I would do this course in the UK and see how it goes." Because, you know, the flowers are very sensitive, so you need to have the hand for that. Is not that, "Oh, I wanna..." You know, probably had a plant in your house that you tried-

Liam: Mm-hmm.

Aline: ... and it died. So, they very sensitive, so you need to see as well if you are good working with them and if they allow you to, to do this with them. So, I just decided and I w-, I pursued and, and it worked for me. So, yeah, that, that's pretty much how was it.

Liam: Yeah.

Aline: (Laughs).

Liam: I'm (laughs) really interested to dig into the, the program that you completed to learn this art-

Aline: Yeah.

Liam: ... and what you learned there. I mean, you mentioned like knowing all the qualities of the flowers, that they are living entities, so those qualities are changing, they're different from flower to flower even in the same species. Like-

Aline: Mm-hmm.

Liam: ... how was that? How did you learn those qualities?

Aline: Yeah. So, what I learned with my grandma, it was a living garden, so that's a completely different thing to work with cut flowers. Um, so the school I did unfortunately... One of the schools I did doesn't exist anymore because after COVID they shut down, unfortunately because they're really nice. This school is, is not specific for how to learn the techniques in flower, floristry. They teach you as well about, um, things that are, I already knew a little bit from the fashion field, which is color palette and, um, texture, how to work them together, and they were, uh, very focused on installations. So, when you work, uh, uh, an installation you need to really understand the technique because 90% of the installation is regarding the pre, um, structure that you do to receive the flowers in. So, that's the most important part of the installation. Because, um, when you understand the difference of the spaces that you have and you build an installation ready for that kind of, um, flowers that you wanna receive.

But, anyway, so the flo-... Th- th- th- the school, um, it was in, during a year and you learned how to take care of the flowers, how the seasons of the flowers are, what flowers are in, in which season, the names of the flowers and what flowers do you have are not so important. So, you, you need to understand the base of the flower is. If it's soft base, if it's a hard base, if it's made of wood, if it's like, um, um, a-, one that is chewy like for example the, the tulips. They, they, they have one specific type of, um, um, base and, uh, um, as a hydrangea for example that is h-, a little bit woody and you need to cut it. So, they teach you how to take care of each of these type of flowers instead of like, "Okay, let's look at the tulips. How do we take care of tulips?" No. So, so it, it was a really nice school. Um, and then it was interesting because I was there for let's say five days a month, then they left, uh, leaved us to, to do some homework. And then we came back with the pictures of what we trained at home, uh, like homework and then we came back and went to a next, n-, next level. So... And I had a teacher, he was amazing and he used to say, "You know, the best part about learning the rules is to break them."

Liam: Mm-hmm.

Aline: Once you understand the rules and you understand why is it that you need to understand that rule, you can work in a way boarder way than just, you know, being inside of the rule. So, that was something that always stick in my head like, "Okay, I can do this with the flower but what else can I do with it?" So... Yeah. So, it's really, it was really amazing school.

Liam: Can you tell me about a project where you broke the rules creatively?

Aline: Well... Yeah, I ca-... I have some. I did, uh, an installation in a, uh, uh, um, brand called COS in Hauptbahnhof, in, in Bahnhofstrasse-

Liam: Mm-hmm.

Aline: ... here in Zurich. It was a b-, huge installation on the top of the ceiling that I needed to work with, um, uh, baby breath which is a little, tiny flower. Uh, so, b-, my intention was to be build like clouds, uh, look like installation. So, I was working with the, I would say, 3,500 stems of it, um, and while I was working it I had, I learned how to do that installation in a way in the school but then I arrived there and I had, I would say one and half hours to finish everything. Because they... The flowers were alive and it was a project that we were doing with, with, with the brand and they said, "Look, you need to do on the say because we just have this window for you to do the, the installation. And after that this door will be open for the public. And you need to be here to tell the people what is it that you did and everything." I was like, "Okay, that's not going to work. I cannot work with this structure."

So, I needed to change everything in my head and think like super fast what is it that I could do to make it work. So, I just did a completely n-, other technique that I would do for hand-tie bouquet for example. So, this kind of situations it's, uh, happens a lot, so.

Liam: When you're talking about building these installations, I'm always really curious what the stuff is that designers and artists are working with, what is the other stuff that you're working with besides the flowers that, that helps these spaces and installations kind of come together.

Aline: Well, it really depends on the project I would say. I have a right arm person what I work with that understand my way of working. So, when a project come in we kind of have a, a chat and she gave her point of view and I have mine. But it really depends on the how much weight do we need to carry, where is it that it will be, how long we will have to, to, to make the installation. This will define the size of the crew. But it's not a 100% florists, um, it's, it can be, you know, hands-on people, people that wanna learn as well. Because I am a person that I learned everything doing, so I do believe that people that wanna learn things they wanna learn doing as well. So, I get really a lot of people that just wanna, you know... I s-, I received a lot of CVs and people, "Oh, I would just love to just to, you know, be part of one day of one installation that to do to understand what is it that you're doing." I, I, I invite these people sometime but, uh, of course we have the professional people and, uh, sometimes even companies to build the structures depending on the size of, and what we are talking about if it's a huge project or if it's just a store, or... Yeah, it depends.

But it's all kind of people, it's not, I'm not in a box with that at all.

Liam: Yeah. And still thinking about how the flowers are alive and the kinds of design constraints that that places on you, um, as well as the fact that, like you said, you prefer to, to work with the flowers like they would be in nature and, you know, you grew up learning in, in a living garden. How do you think about the ways that you're kind of recontextualizing the flowers, like the natural world into the built environment or into some other situation where you wouldn't normally see them? How does that influence the work?

Aline: I think that the flowers, they speak to you. So, um, when I'm doing something, I look at them and I, I let them speak to me, what is it that they are telling me on that space. So, when you see a garden, even if you see for example, um, a natural garden like a, a, a wild garden, that's the word, um, you see for example little bit of pu-, roses here, you see some, some other flowers there, some hydrangeas in the other side. You don't see them all like mixed around, you know. They, they all come a little bit together in bunches. So, the things I wanna always think about is how I would see them in the nature and how I would see them put together in a way that they look like that they were in the nature. So, try to put the same stems of the same flower together with the others and, um... I heard this from a friend once, it's like organized mess.

Liam: Mm.

Aline: Um, because it is. But also, the space that the flowers will be. When I know the space, they influence a lot. So, it really depends on the day as well, the mood, the season that we are in. It's really an organic, uh, work. So, for example, I prefer to choose my flowers, uh, that I will work with looking at them, um, and not just buying some, some flowers randomly. I choose them, they speak to me in that time. Th- the ones that I will work in that period of, of time which is two days because they, they cannot be more than that, um... It's, it's all connected to each other, it's very organic. And sometimes it could be that first thing that they do is that... Okay, we will have the focus flower, and then we get the, the secondary ones but then we have so many beautiful flowers together then we wanna put them all together. It works as well because w- w- what we learn in school is that we need to have a focus flower which will be your main flower that you will work with and then you need to h-, work with the around flowers on this first flower. But I don't think this is nice. Is like all the flowers are important, why do we need to have the secondary flowers? Why w-, why wouldn't put them all as important ones-

Liam: Mm-hmm.

Aline: ... because that's how they are in the garden? So, that's more or less how I, I think in my head. But it really depends. I can, I... It doesn't have a formula for that.

Liam: I'm also thinking about, um, you know, the, the work that I've seen from your studio. I, I guess I am thinking about the relationship of the work to the specific place where it's happening. So, in this case, we're in Zurich.

Aline: Yeah.

Liam: I feel like a lot of your work I've seen flowers that, um... You know, Switzerland has a lot of wild flowers (laughs). But I'm seeing ones that, that I might not necessarily be exposed to any other way and I'm curious how you think about that, like the flowers that you're bringing into the environment.

Aline: Is a symbiosis connection. It's a, it's more like a visual, um, connection to me than a thinking process. And I also believe that when you think too much it doesn't work. You need to see it and you need to feel it at the moment. I don't know how s-, to explain that. I think creatives understand what-

Liam: Yeah.

Aline: ... I'm talking about. It's more like a, "Okay, I like this. I don't know why and I, I don't know if it will, will work but I would try it out." And in the beginning was a lot of trying and some errors, of course, but, um, after a while, it just becomes something very organic, very automatic. A- a- a-, n-... I can't explain it.

Liam: Yeah. It makes intuitive-

Aline: (Laughs).

Liam: ... sense. Um, I'm also realizing many... You know, on this show I talk to a lot of folks who do all kinds of creative practices, design practices, art, but I'm realizing that your specific art has something that can probably never be expressed in other disciplines which is fragrance.

Aline: Oh, yeah.

Liam: I'm thinking about the fact that flowers beyond all of the visual qualities that we've talked about also have a fragrance.

Aline: Yes.

Liam: And a-, I wonder if, if that's part of, part of your thinking, how you feel out the flowers, what impact that has.

Aline: The good thing about cut flowers is that they don't have much fragrances and we normally try to avoid the fragrances because people have normally allergy of the pollen because-

Liam: Mm-hmm.

Aline: ... the scent comes out of the center of the flower. I work with small forms and of course big ones because, um, when you work with cut flowers you need to go for quality and to go for quality you need to, to go for professional, uh, farmers that work with cut flowers. So, they already developed the flowers without scents because of people that don't like the scents and it's... As my bouquets are normally... You cannot choose the flowers that you are working with and my clients needs to trust and, in what I'm doing, I try to make as best as I can to of course not give them something that will give them allergy or fragrance.

But I had, uh, situations that I worked for example with a lot of roses together, and it could be challenging. And, um, I think the fragrance, uh, subject it's, it's something really interesting because we are not there yet to decode fragrances and smells as we are with images for how it's pleasant to everyone. So, I think will be very interesting in the future to see how it will be developed but we don't try to work with the scents as much as we can to be honest.

Liam: It's like a whole other dimension of the flower.

Aline: Yeah. Yeah.

Liam: And has-

Aline: Because it's, it's, it;s very sensitive. It's like perfume. You don't have one perfume that everybody likes. It's like even the flowers, you don't have one flower that everybody loves.

Liam: Yeah.

Aline: I mean, peonies I would say is the, the most loved one. But even though they can have a scent, it's a very strong one when, when is it there. So, it can be disturbing actually.

Liam: I think there's an aspect of your work that certainly as someone who worked as a freelancer at one time, and I'm sure many of our listeners as well (laughs) will, will be wondering like how you successfully entered this new field, and set up the business, and, uh, you know are able to market it and, in my opinion, be really successful about that. I mean, we were speaking before the show about your website and how the aesthetic of it is so tight because again, you have so much experience developing these aesthetics and managing all the different parts of an installation which, you know, in the German language I think metaphorically the internet is like a room that we walk into, so I would consider a website to be a space as well (laughs). Um-

Aline: That's, that's true.

Liam: What, what was that like and, and how do you do that? Just on a more practical side I think-

Aline: Hmm.

Liam: ... people would like to know.

Aline: Yeah. That's a interesting question. It's, it's just... I mean, people ask me over and over, "How, how did you do it?" I mean, first thing I really think is that I wasn't afraid at all. It doesn't, it didn't really matter for me if I would be successful or not, I was doing what I, I really believed that could work. That was the first thing I, I really went through. Second of all, if I knew that build, build a business in, in Switzerland would be a little bit complicated, I wouldn't have done it. So, I just didn't know how difficult h-, it could be. I just, you know, went for it. I jumped in with my head and, you know, the only thing that could happen wrong is it couldn't work, but it did. So, you need to leave the fear aside and you really need to believe that you can do it. That's the first thing I believe. And I start my career as freelancer, doing everything you can imagine, as I told you in the beginning.

So, you need to learn a little bit from the experts. And I, I really believe in, in self-learning and everything I wanna learn to be honest I just google it and a-, it's there. You can learn absolutely anything you want nowadays in the internet. So, I would do it more research before starting something, and of course I have this aesthetic sense I think since always. Since I'm a little girl I used to, to choose my, my outfits and I always had a great sense of, um, color and, uh, and, and space, and texture, um, so it, of course this helped me a lot. But I think learn, learn, read, uh, research. This is really, really important for you to even understand what is it that you wanna do that what is it that you like because in the beginning for me for example, in my career in fashion, executive production, it doesn't have a course that you go... At least not... I'm 43, so 25 years ago it didn't have any course that I could do that would teach me how to do what I did back then.

So, it really was me being curious, being fearless that helped me to do that. And changing the field, of course I was a little bit like, "Oh my God, what I'm doing? Aline-

Liam: Mm.

Aline: ... are you crazy? You have such a successful career in fashion, what are you doing becoming a florist?" And also, I received a lot of critics. People saying to me like, "Are you sure you wanna do that in Zurich? Like this will not give you any money," "Are you crazy? You have plenty of florists out there." Is just... You cannot listen to these people because if they were, you know, knowing what they were saying, they would, they would be doing-

Liam: Sure.

Aline: ... as well, but they are not. They are all like working for some companies that they are not happy with w-, you know, whatever. But I just didn't listen, and I went fearless, and I did it. And when I started, um, one thing I realized is of course I'm a English speaking person in Switzerland-

Liam: Mm-hmm.

Aline: ... and this is... It's not easy, especially in the start because I didn't know anyone, I didn't had any friend and, uh, I just thought about reaching out the women group of people that I was admiring when I moved in here. Because, um, I had this, this time I said to you, uh, that I had like a, kind of like sabbatic to try to understand. So, I, I, I saw a lot of women in this, um, city that I s-, "Oh, she's doing something really nice. She's an artist, she's great in this," and I said, "Hi, I'm Aline." I sent messages in, in Instagram and, uh... Because I'm, I'm very imagetic person, so Instagram was my platform five years ago, so, I was reaching them and saying like, "Oh hi, how are you? And, uh, I'm doing this. Would you like to collaborate?" And that's how it started. And then Zurich has an incredible community of women that are doing and pursuing what they love, so I think I was embraced pretty much in the beginning. So, I really appreciate that, it helped me a lot. And that's how it started. Yeah.

Liam: That's fantastic.

Aline: (Laughs).

Liam: I think that's a great notes to close on.

Aline: Yeah. Thank you.

Liam: Thank you again for joining me today.

Aline: Oh, thank you for the invitation, was a lovely talk.

GMUNK

GMUNK on the psychedelic origins of his aesthetic and the importance of discomfort

In this episode, Liam speaks with Bradley Munkowitz, also known as designer/director GMUNK, unpacking Munkowitz’s scintillating psychedelic aesthetic — inspired by actual psychedelic experiences — and why it’s important as a designer to continually challenge and be challenged, maintaining a healthy discomfort with one’s own work.

---

Liam Spradlin: All right, we’re recording. Welcome to Design Notes.

Bradley Munkowitz (GMUNK): Thank you. So you didn’t get all that ASMR talk we just had? That wasn’t recording?

Liam: No, but we can get back around to it.

GMUNK: (laughs) Revisit it later?

Liam: Yeah, yeah.

GMUNK: Okay, we’ll revisit it later on.

Liam: So, to start out with, I wanna know what brought you to your current work. And also how your journey there has influenced the type of things that you’re making.

GMUNK: I was always a creative. As a kid, I was playing Dungeons and Dragons, and like… illustrating stories of my characters. And I went to school at Humboldt State in northern California. State college, didn’t have a ton of money. And just like… it was a playground for psychedelic exploration. Cannabis and psychedelics were a huge part of my college creative explosion. I came from Minneapolis, and then my whole family moved to San Francisco when I was 18. And so, you know, I kind of found myself in Humboldt County. And, uh, just took over the film and graphic design departments and just, you know, flash was a huge one back then. Back in the late ‘90’s. It was like, flash and 16 millimeter film, and Photoshop work, and illustration. Like, traditional illustration was my fine art track. And combining all those into a language… and that was kind of the breakout.

And then once I got into the industry, my ethos was just being curious and learning. Started off as kind of a web animator filmmaker, but then that took me into experiential, and commercial, and design work, and UI, UX. Installation, sculpture, robotics, projection… you know, anything with light and material. You know, and then as I got older, it was always going more into narrative and themes. And, and telling stories. You know, telling stories of identity and, I’m, I’m really into the metaphysical and… which is, you kind of go back to the psychedelic foundation in a lot of ways. ’Cause psychedelics cause you to question your subconscious. You question reality in a way. Because you lose track of where your body is. You lose track of what you are.

And you go where it’s just you and your mind on a rocket ship somewhere else. For a while. And in that time, you have to learn not to panic. (laughs) You know, and to just accept that this is all in your subconscious, and this is your reality. This is what’s inside you. At least that’s what I believe. I believe it’s not fake. I believe it’s actually your subconscious showing you a different reality that you should accept because it’s within you.

And that has guided my creative path. Aesthetically, conceptually… so I struggle with finding the balance of like, how do I make a living doing commercials? Do I really wanna just be making advertisements all my life? For brands, like that’s a really tough gig. You know, so it’s like, what is that balance?

To answer your question, I think that it’s all about just staying curious, and learning, and collaborating. Working with people that take you outside of your comfort zone so you experiment in new mediums. And that causes a lot of inspiration. ’Cause anytime you start over, or start new on anything, it’s always the most inspiring phase of that discovery, ’cause it’s new.

Liam: Right.

GMUNK: And I think sometimes the only way you can get anywhere is through collaboration. Because how else are you gonna learn? You can’t just go to school for everything, you know? If I didn’t have my collaborators, I’d be nowhere. And I know that. And I will openly admit that. That’s just the way it is.

Liam: Yeah. There’s so much in there that I want to unpack. But I want to start with this connection that you drew between your experiences with psychedelics and the aesthetic that you’ve developed, because it strikes me that the aesthetic of your work is one that is extremely strong, and also extremely dynamic. But you use a lot of practical effects in your work. So I wanna know how you approach translating these ideas of other realities, or manipulating the reality that we have using the tools of our everyday reality.

GMUNK: And that’s a good question. I’m a big fan of the Mars Ones, and the Alex Grays, the psychedelic artists who I love. I mean, Mario Mars One is a good friend, and my favorite. You know, my favorite style. Because it’s warpy, and it has lensing in it. Where there’s a distortion in his images that I feel is very psychedelic and very camera related, which I’m obsessed with cameras and lenses.

But for me, I don’t see that stuff. I don’t see the traditional psychedelic world when I go in. Mine is almost a little bit more science fiction, and it’s about light and material and texture, and refraction and distortion. And sometimes it’s character based, and I don’t believe these characters to be aliens, or some other interstellar communication. I believe it’s my whimsical mind assaulting my brain. There’s like, things that emerge out, and they’re like these ever-evolving transforming kind of tube creatures. Kind of like weird, tentacle-y, you know, lots of eyes, lots of tongues, lots of multiplication and geometric shapes, but they’re definitely beings. And they always are tearing my head apart, and like opening it up, and showing me new portals inside.

And it’s actually a very cartoony style. And I’m more interested in where that cartoony style exists, which is in this brilliantly detailed refractive geometric world. And so my work explores that. ’Cause I’m not really a character animator, and someday I will collaborate on the character side, and just take a two week retreat to Sedona, and just hug a rock and do psychedelics for two weeks, and then be like, okay this is exactly what we’re gonna make, you know? But right now, I’m really inspired by lensing, and lens distortion, and fish eyes. And then putting through that system of distortion and lens distortion, materials. Materiality and, and illumination. And how all three of those elements work together.

And sometimes I’ll make graphic design out of this. And I’ll make it in 3D so I get the lens distortion in there. And sometimes I’ll do it practically, where we’ll get a bunch of mirrors, and a bunch of lights, and a bunch of lasers. And get cameras, and lenses, and fish eyes, and just do it in camera. And sometimes I’ll do it in CG with, uh, the FX company. Like, the mill, or frame store. And we’ll say, ‘hey.’ You know, ‘we’re gonna go in this light world.’ You know, sometimes data related, sometimes light related. Sometimes it’s data as light. You know, I made an Audi commercial that was really psychedelic. And somehow it got approved by Audi Global in Germany. They were all about it actually, which was great. It’s not usually like that. And, and, and, and then that branches out into textural work. My photography is all about texture. And I don’t go to an expanse and just take a wide angle landscape shot of it. I don’t do that. I get in it, and I find compositions… for either from the air or the ground that are about depth and texture. Where I wanna feel like I’m submerged in this world, and it’s a little bit claustrophobic.

And then I shoot with medium format digital cameras, and then I just nerd out on the texture, and the sharpness, and, and just the detail of everything. Which in itself becomes psychedelic. Because if you have so much detail and such high fidelity in it, you just lose yourself in it. And then you find yourself kind of tripping. Which is the goal. And then there’s, you know, the infrared photography, which is taking that even a step further, where you’re seeing a light spectrum that you can’t even see with your naked eye. So you need a special camera that sees the invisible. You know, sees the unseen. And that in itself is also very psychedelic, ’cause like, it’s that uncovering that you go back to in, in the deep dives into your subconscious. You’re seeing something that can’t be seen. With a special camera, and I love that shit.

And then the color palettes, and the compositions, and the tonal range is all very limited, and goes back to almost graphic design in a way.

Liam: When you say that Audi was really into the commercial, but it’s not always like that. I imagine that maybe it’s challenging to bring this aesthetic into everyday reality in a way that is approachable and consumable by other people.

GMUNK: One of the things I’ve decided in the end… and this isn’t in all commercial work, but it’s a lot of it. Is, I’m just gonna pitch stuff that I love, and that I really wanna make, and that resonates with that inner being that wants to push this aesthetic. And that’s just kind of my style. And if people, you know… That’s what fine artists do. Fine artists say, ‘this is my style. If you want my style, you can buy it.’

And as a commercial artist, I kind of want to do the same thing. Where it’s… and I’m not only a commercial artist, but in the commercial realm, you know, I wanna say like, okay, this is the GMUNK treatment. You know, and it’s gonna be psychedelic, and it’s gonna be kind of with that approach. And most of the times I fail. Most of the time, they don’t buy it. And then I say okay, well do I wanna do something kind of bright and neutral that isn’t really a part of my repertoire? And it’s like, well, you know, maybe ten percent? Fifteen, I’ll be like, ‘yeah. I need some money. I want to buy a new camera.’ You know?

Liam: (laughs)

GMUNK: We’ll do it. And I think with client work, it’s all about the client. You can’t be too selfish, but in a way, they’re hiring you for a reason. You know, so you kind of have to be selfish in a way. ’Cause they’re hiring you for that reason. They want that treatment.

Liam: You also describe yourself as, besides being a commercial artist, a designer and a director. And I’m interested, given all of the different things you’ve done, and all the collaborations that you’ve done through your work, what each of those roles means to you.

GMUNK: Yeah, I consider myself a designer first, because it’s in my blood. Not like, genetically. My dad was an actuary, uh, so it’s a mathematician. But he had a very structured mind. And my mom was a, a wild creative writer teacher. So mixing those two together gave me this creative yet structured mind. And when I was in college, I took an oceanography course. ’Cause I love the physics of the ocean. I love the waves, I love the movement. And I thought that it would be very creative.

So I took an oceanography course. It was hard for me, ’cause you go out in the freezing cold in your boots and the mud, and you’re collecting crab sediment. And then you bring it back, and you study this sediment in the mud. Looking for crab refuse or whatever, right? And my charts and my diagrams of that research were so structured, and so organized, and so designed, you know… I’d hand draw everything. And my teacher was like, dude, you just need to take a graphic design class. This is not normal. No scientist should do this.

Liam: (laughs)

GMUNK: Like, this is not for you. You need to take a graphic design class. You know, and then I took graphic design in college, and it was literally like, one of the worst programs ever. It was like all old school, everything practical and just like, hands on. Like, cutting type out. And it’s just like, so not where it was going. You know, it was principles, but it was kind of old school. But out of college, my first job was at a, a company in London. And I was the only American in a studio of 25. And my two roommates were Danish and Swedish. Basically, it was dot com money. You know, I graduated in 2000. So basically, they were putting together some of the best web artists in the world to go work at one company. And somehow I got picked because I was doing really experimental work that was just so different. Because it was personal. It was almost anti-establishment psychedelic… but absurdist at the same time. It’s like, who would actually put this kind of stuff out?

So that’s why I think I got selected to be a part of this super team, but the other people in it were some of the world’s best Scandinavian, German, Dutch, and English designers. So I went to the studio, and that’s where I learned. Like, real shit. Like real graphic design. From these guys for two years. Just every day. Beat down. You know, beat down. And from there, you know, went on to do UI work, and tons of grid work, you know, so when you’re doing work in Flash, you know, I have a one-pixel border on my five-pixel high fonts. You know, it’s just like so detailed. And that work and that style has stayed with me forever.

Where now, if you look at my computer, there’s literally nothing on the desktop. I have fifty thousand notes documents that are all designed perfectly, you know, typography, underlines, grids. You know, spent two and a half years doing really hardcore UI work for feature films. Oblivion and Tron Legacy, and a bunch of others. We just designed the new Top Gun Maverick UI in there, and… so, make a long story short. I mean, that design sensibility of grids, typography, organization, beauty, that goes to my closets, that goes to my organization, the way I… Everything is a design. So it’s not that I do a ton of design work anymore, but I’m a designer. And I’ll always be a designer forever. Because it’s the way I live.

And a director is mostly how I make my work now. I’m 43 years old. I’m not as inspired anymore to just like, go into Illustrator and smash out a fifty layer gridded out UI, or like, go into Photoshop and do a fifty layer composite of something. You know, so I direct. I direct designers, I direct animators, I direct, you know, cinematographers, editors, and so that’s how I do my work now. That’s my profession. I’m a professional director. And creative director, design director, live action director, experiential interactive director. I talk a lot, and I inspire people, and I run teams. And, you know, when you’re a director, it’s a vibe.

It’s a collaborative energy where you’ve gotta get people to buy in to your idea, and the way you want to execute it. And you have to just inspire people to rally around you to make something. And all of us want to make something. It makes us happy. You know, so many people, as long as you have something inspiring for them to do, they’ll get on board. And make something. And you have to let people have a say, and a voice… you can’t dominate a collaboration. You have to just assist it, and cultivate it, and nurture it.

I’m a chill dude. I don’t have any sort of ego, I’m a lover. I’m a collaborator, and a stoner. And stoners are kind of chill. You know, we’re chill. And there’s not a ton of anxiety in stoners. Or psychedelic warriors. There’s not… there’s not a lot of anxiety, and so I bring a very calming, but collaborative, energetic… so, I think that answers your question.

Liam: Yeah.

GMUNK: ’Cause I am a director, and then the Galactic Crusader, the psychedelic warrior, that kind of informs my approach.

Liam: Do you think that your relationship to the work is different being a director versus opening up Illustrator and just doing it yourself?

GMUNK: Yes. It does, because it’s not as personal. Because you didn’t make it with your hands, but I realize that. And so, as I’ve been getting older, I’ve looked at it. You know, like I said, I come from a design background, so I’m look… I always like, assess and look. And study. And so I’m really big on having a website that spans all of my work from the beginning. And I look at the grid. And I say, okay, what do I need to do now? What do I do to update the grid? I live by the grid. I’m obsessed with the grid. And so my personal work is hands on. My photography is hands on, I’m grading all the photos, I’m going into Photoshop and retouching all that shit. And then I make a lot of psychedelic art. So that’s all done in Maya, you know, these are huge prints that are over four feet wide by four feet tall. They’re big. I do them in Maya so I can do the lensing and the camera. So I’m still making stuff. You know, and if a brand wants me to make one of those illustrations? All about it. You know, that’s great. But, you know, some hands on animation for something? I, I’ll source that shit. I’ll get… I have a whole crew of collaborators that I work with, and stuff.

And so I, I think that sometimes… a, as a director, you are, you know, writing the story or collaborating with the screenplay writer or, you know, other treatment writers. It is always the animus, that spark within you that kind of propagates the whole thing. It is yours in a way, but then you just build your team around you to make it with. So I have both. You know, the directorial work, I can’t do by myself. And to be honest, I’m just posting a new project on my website right now, and I’m looking at it, and I don’t like it. And it was a huge opportunity. And it was a good budget, and a great shoot with a great team.

About 85 percent of the work that I do, I’m not crazy about. And I only see the flaws, and I think about, you know… I really, really study it, and I make notes about what I could do better, what I would change in my approach. Because sometimes when you do work and you have to work fast, you just pick a direction and you go. All hands on deck, and you just go. And it’s fast, and happens in three weeks, a month. And usually that direction is picked within a couple days. And it’s just like, okay we’ve chosen, and we’re going down this path. All hands on deck, here we go. And sometimes in hindsight, you’re like, ‘I should have picked a different direction, I should have changed the edit. You know, I should have done this, I should have done that. And that happens a lot.

And my trajectory, my story, my creative story, isn’t ending now. It’s ending in 25 years. And hopefully in 25 years, my work is at a way higher level than it is now, and my work now is at a much higher level than it was ten years ago. But I’m always gonna be improving. I don’t think I’m going to plateau, and then go back down. It’s just an upward climb, and as long as I’m really hard on myself and really rough on the work, and never satisfied, I’ll get better.

And my friends are rough with me, too. Like, just relentless. Relentless in the feedback, and kind of, uh, questioning. And nobody’s defensive, we’re all just kind of able to take it. And it’s so important. ’Cause like, the second you start loving your work, and you’re just like, oh, I’ve done it. Like, what else can I do? This is it.

Liam: (laughs)

GMUNK: You, you’re finished. And then you plateau, and then you go back down. And it’s like, you can’t do that. And the more you do this, the longer you do it, the more humble you become. So many people who are young and start out and do something great… they’re like, ‘I’m the shit. I’m the hottest shit.’

Liam: (laughs)

GMUNK: And that’s trouble. And you’ll always find that like, the best people are always the most humble. Because they know where they’re going. Like, they know where the end game is, and they’re nowhere near where they wanna go.

Liam: Yeah. And, like we were discussing before the interview, there’s… there’s a certain level of discomfort in creative work that becomes productive and pushes you forward like that.

GMUNK: I think you need to be uncomfortable. Constantly. And that’s why, for me personally, I’m always throwing myself in new industries. Where I don’t know anything. You know, I know a little bit. And I collaborate with people, and I go in there and I don’t know shit. I just learn. And I’m totally uncomfortable. Like, intensely uncomfortable. But I don’t show it. You know, I go in there as confident as could be. You know, just faking it. Just completely faking it. And it’s wild that you could do that. But that’s the only way to get yourself an opportunity. Like, everything is about the opportunity. As long as you’re not over promising, that’s the key. You can’t overpromise, but you can kind of fake that you’re comfortable. So you stand as a leader, even if you’re uncomfortable. Kind of just fake that. And that’s okay. But you can’t promise the world and then default on the promises. That’s the strategy part. And, and that’s where the producers come in. That’s where the producers come in and say okay, you know, this is what we’re going to promise. This is how much it’s gonna cost.

I’m terrible at that shit. But I think once you’re comfortable, and you slow down, and you go through the motions of repetition, it’s bad. It’s over. Everything becomes repetitive, and you’re kind of doing the same things every day. Talking to the same people, doing the same shit, hiding behind meetings. Where your day is just meetings and phone calls, and you don’t do any work whatsoever. Until five or six o’clock, and that just becomes the reality. You need to change that shit. You know, you need to change that shit and get other people to handle your calls, and say look, I’m a creative, man. I’m not just like… ’cause if you just talk, and talk, and talk on calls, but you don’t actually put pen to paper and be creative, you’ll lose it. You’ll lose the spark.

So for me, like my lifestyle as a freelancer. Because you’re always uncomfortable. There’s no repetition whatsoever. Every day is different, you’re in different places doing different things, different locales, and there’s just constant stimulation from everywhere, but that makes you uncomfortable. And then, you know, as a freelancer, you’re able to collaborate with whomever you want as well. Whenever you want. There’s nobody managing your time but yourself, which is kind of how it needs to be. At least for me. I’ll freak out if someone else is managing my time. You know, like, time is literally one of your most valuable assets. And how you structure your time. And you can’t just like, flip a switch and, ‘I’m creative now!’ You know, it’s-

Liam: (laughs)

GMUNK: … by the time to be creative. I have two hours. Ready, set, go. You know, ideas happen in the most unexpected places. A lot of my ideas come in the shower. A lot of my ideas come on the treadmill, when I’m just drawing under a tree. Listening to music and walking outside. Rarely does an idea come from the computer. I’ll look at reference, and take something from it, but like, what it means, and what it’s trying to say, and like how it fits into the bigger picture… that all happens outside of the computer, man. That doesn’t, that doesn’t happen at my standing desk with my headphones on, you know? It has to happen in a dinner conversation. You know, drawing on a napkin. And on a hike. For some reason, water and me… like, the shower is always the spark, you know? Swimming. I love baths. Dunking in the bath and just like, thinking. Looking out the window, you know.

Liam: Shifting back to some of the specifics of your work, it seems like a lot of your work crosses these axes of different types of experiences. You have audio visual pieces that I think are mainly consumed on a screen, and speakers, and things like that. And you also have experiential pieces that involve, like, physical spaces. I’m interested in what each of those things uniquely affords to the viewer, or the visitor in terms of experience.

GMUNK: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think one of the most rewarding parts of doing creative work is watching people experience it. Because you’re always surprised. There’s always an unexpected reaction or engagement. And experiential work for me is kind of my favorite type of work right now, because of that. You do work for the television. You make a commercial on TV. Someone’s just going to sit on their fucking couch and not want to watch it. There’s no engagement. People want to skip the commercials. You know, fast forward on their DVR, you know? People watch something on YouTube on their computer with their headphones, they’re half there. They’re like, kinda not focused on it, there’s someone in their ear, their tea just arrived at the table, you know. It’s just like, there’s always shit going on. They’re in a studio, someone’s tapping their shoulder. There’s a dog sleeping at their feet, you know. There’s just never one hundred percent engagement.

What I love about, for instance, VR, is you put that headset on, you’re gone. There is nothing else that matters. There’s no phone, there’s nobody talking to you. You are in that world. That’s full immersion. I love that shit, right? And I wish that, you know, I really hope that VR finds its groove. Because it’s fucking cool. It’s just like, you take off the headset after you’ve done something, and you’re like, where did I just go? It’s very much like a psychedelic experience in a way. It’s like I’m smoking DMT or something. Just lose yourself. So experiential artwork like that, when there’s scale, and immersion, and storytelling within an environment where you don’t care about distractions. You’re just in it. Like immersive sculpture, that’s what we’re doing with the robot stuff, for instance. Like, with [inaudible 00:25:06] that’s like immersive sculpture. Where you go into a room, and there’s 15-foot tall robots swinging lights, and shadow, and material, and sound, and reflections. And the only thing you really wanna do is watch it and take pictures of it. The only two things you’re thinking about. It’s like, holy fuck this thing’s huge and loud. Is it gonna kill me? What are they doing? What is the meaning behind this? What are they communicating? How am I a part of it? Are they gonna kill me?

Um-

Liam: (laughs)

GMUNK: … that’s all you’re thinking about.

Liam: Just to be clear, are they going to kill me?

GMUNK: They’re not.

Liam: Yeah.

GMUNK: You know, they’re totally not interested in killing anybody. They’re interested in making beauty and sculpture, but owning a space, right? And Box, which was a projection mapping piece, it’s only purpose was to create illusions where you see that, and you’re like, ‘what the fuck is happening?’ Like, how is this happening? I don’t understand how this is happening. This is an illusion of depth. Where there is no depth. That’s why we’re calling it Box, ’cause it’s a flat screen, and all of a sudden it’s a box with all sorts of shit going on in, inside the box. And so it’s an illusion. And when you see an illusion, you are engaged. You’re immersed. And you’re immersed in that illusion. Trying to figure out how it happens. Like, you see a magic trick, same thing. It’s like, how the fuck did you do that? You have my attention.

And I saw a speech recently that was really interesting about engagement and attention. Where if something’s wrong… this dude gave a speech. His name’s Alex Cornell. And he basically gave a speech where he recorded a 45 minute video of him talking to himself. So it’s all cued up. And he’s conversing with himself about the concept of an idea. Like, the, you know, the inception of an idea. And he intentionally in this recording throws the time off a little bit, so you realize that there was a mistake. So you engage more, but he did it intentionally. Which is so fucking tight. Like, it’s so cool. And, and it worked. I was like, oh, Alex, you know, on that one part you were a little-

Liam: (laughs)

GMUNK: … you know, it took a little long to respond to yourself. And he’s like, ‘oh yeah, I did that intentionally.’ I was just like, man.

Liam: (laughs)

GMUNK: You know? Like, and but that’s the kind of thing, right? You, you find out what people pay attention to and you use it to your advantage to get people more engaged. So that’s what I love about experiential work. Is it takes you off the screen. And it, there could be screens. But it’s in a dynamic environment.

And so, I’ve been thinking long and hard, man, about how do I make a living as a creative? Like, what’s the best way to do this? Is it about making, a Maytag commercial for refrigerators with a funny guy and a dog on the floor? Is that my path? Working with ad agencies who are going to change everything and I’m gonna get pissed off? Or is it about creating experiences where people can go in and I know that there’s an engagement there? That there’s an appreciation and, and, an immersion, and a curiosity to the work that they can actually move through it.

You know, and, and the answer actually is both. You know, I do want to make the commercials because I love live action. I love filmmaking. I love telling stories. I love shooting, I love cameras, lensing. And that’s why I work in so many different disciplines, because I love a lot of different things. I love making psychedelic prints, because I feel like it’s personal. You know, I feel like it’s things that I see, or that I feel that I need to get out. And then I print ’em giant, you know. Large format printing. Hang ’em on a wall and let people look at ’em. And, and then they kind of have a piece of my mind. And it feels personal. And it feels like I have a personal connection with them. That’s experiential. Or the photography is personal because it’s a story. It’s a memory. Every photo that you take is a memory, because you remember exactly where you were, how you felt. Was the backpack heavy? Was it cold? Was I thirsty? What was the feeling like when I saw this vista in [inaudible 00:28:45] in Iceland, and like, how did that feel when I was shooting it? And what was I thinking about?

You know, it’s just… it’s such an experience for yourself. So, I don’t know. I, I don’t have the answer for like, what is the secret for being a successful creative? Other than just, you’ve gotta stay on it. You’ve gotta be kind of relentless in your pursuit. And what you’re pursuing is a lot of different things. It’s a lot of learning, it’s a lot of personal expression, it’s a lot of engaging with your audience. It’s a lot of satisfaction with improvement, with growth, and you have to pursue all of that all the time. You know, and if you stop pursuing that, and if you get comfortable, you’re gonna lose it. You’re gonna lose that fire. And then you’re not gonna succeed.

Liam: Yeah. I think that’s a really good note to close on.

GMUNK: Oh, wow, we’re done!

Liam: (laughs) Yeah.

GMUNK: Okay. Oh, that was good.

Liam: Thank you again for joining me.

GMUNK: Yeah. No problem.

Qianqian Ye, Artist and Creative Coder

Exploring our shared vulnerabilities — and shared futures — in ink and code

In this episode, Liam speaks with interdisciplinary artist and creative coder Qianqian Ye in her San Francisco studio. The duo traces her journey from wielding calligraphy brushes to building a hand-holding glove, unpacking the vulnerabilities we all share as humans, how creative intent is communicated, and the importance of imagining other futures.

---

Liam Spradlin: Qianqian, welcome to Design Notes.

Qianqian Ye: Hi, thank you.

Liam: To start off, I want to know about what brought you to your current work and how has that journey influenced the things that you’re making?

Qianqian: So, it has been a very interesting journey but I think it all starts with calligraphy ink and brushes. So, when I was a kid, my parents sent me to calligraphy school, because I was not a very quiet kid. So, I had my calligraphy s- practice for 10 years, but I know that I really hated. I, you know, had a lot of struggle with that but I guess that has embedded in my, my blood, literally.

And then, uh, I went to architecture school and for my Master I studied landscape architecture. At that time, I had this, like, kind of dream that I felt designing space for people is something I’m very interested in. And then I realized this kind of social interaction in groups is a main thing that I’m interested in. The form of the beauty, the material, or, you know, the o- other very architectural things I actually know are really my focus. I realized people is the thing I’m most curious about.

Then, uh, I moved to Bay Area. At that time I was working a Danish urban design company. The fact that I was leaving Silicon Valley really changed a lot of my life path. So, then I started to do more of technology-related design. Coding, those sort of things. And, you know, such a moment of my life, I start to go back to ink and water, and brushes. And I start to make paintings with them. And all the paintings that actually are talking about the vulnerability in human actions. And along that journey, I was making different, other type of works, but pretty much most of them are talking about the same issue. About how people are vulnerable and awkward, but still trying.

Liam: So, you mentioned that a theme of your work, kind of thing that you’re really interested in is the complexity of human social interaction, and I’m interested in the ways that that theme has emerged in all of the other media that you’ve worked with.

Qianqian: Yes. So, I think back in architecture school, when I was designing spaces, I always am thinking about, like, what kind of social story would happen here? Will people come here to break up with their partners? Will they come bring their grandparents? Like, what that is kind of potential social stories change the way I design a space. And last few years, I’ve been spending more time doing creative coding, community building. And that’s a huge people project for me. And it really opened a window for me to understand what does a group mean, what does community mean? What does human interaction even mean in a, in a group like that?

So, I feel like along the journey, my understanding of how human and humans work have been changing a lot. And I’m very curious to see how this exploration is gonna take me to.

Liam: So, focusing for a moment on a specific work of yours, I’m interested in the origin and the meaning behind the Alone, Not Alone works.

Qianqian: So, Alone, Not Alone project, actually it contains a lot of different part. It start with, actually, a set of robotic installations that I was working on. So, that was a set of installation includes a robotic hand that will hold your hand, and a robotic arm that will give you a hug. And those robotic hand and arms were designed to put into, like, a glove and a scarf. Um, so that was a project that I was thinking a lot about how humans are lonely, or not lonely with a companion of technology.

So, that was like the view one of Alone, Not Alone. While I was working that, I started to make a lot of paintings to discuss about the loneliness, um, and the awkwardness, and vulnerability in that sort of human, human, human technology, or human the world relationships. Um, so that kind of was a story of how Alone, Not Alone got started, and how it developed to a set of ink paintings that you see on the walls.

Liam: In a piece in The Offing, you mentioned that the minimal nature of these pieces combined with the narrative titles that you came up with let viewers make up their own stories. And I’m interested in how you think about that, and how it changes the interaction viewers have with the work.

Qianqian: So, I think vulnerability is something I talk a lot about in my work. I think it’s universal, but the story behind why you are vulnerable on certain things is different for everybody. So, when the show Alone, Not Alone was up, the curator asked me, “Who do you think will buy your paintings?” And I was like, “Maybe someone who’s awkward and lonely, and, you know, vulnerable.” And then she said, “Oh, you mean everybody?”

So, I was like, “Ah, okay.” So, that was time I was like how this thing, when I thought it’s like, uh, a personal character is actually so universal. But when I was thinking about how do the viewers embed their personal story into the work, there was one example that I remember really vividly.

So, that was one buyer, and she contacted me on social media. She said, “Hey, I really like your work. But your paintings, uh, the show just, uh, finished. Can I come to your studio and buy some work?” And I was like, “Oh, sure.” So, she came, and she bought three pieces. And I asked her, I was like, “Oh, why did you buy these three?” And the reason was, she, the reason she gave me was completely different from my intention behind those works. That was a moment that gave me a lot of feelings. There was some feelings of, ah, as an artist, I’m not ready to sell my work. Because when I sell this, they will belong to other people. The narrative will belong to them. And then I was feeling like, I am glad that the narrative of my work is not that narrow. It could be translated to a lot of different feelings.

So, in one of the pieces that she bought was, was just me drawing three people, that I called that as, um, three is half of the infinity. Because it’s kind of half of the infinity sign. So, that was actually a project that I was exploring about, uh, polyamory, or, you know, open relationship thinking. Like, what does it mean to have a regular relationship? Can we think about different type of relationship interactions? So, that was actually my intention behind that work. And then I ask her, “Why do you buy that piece?” And she said, “I have three kids. This totally reminds me of them.” And I was like, “Okay!” Of course, I didn’t share with her about my intention behind it, because, and the title itself, I think, works for me and worked for her, both ways. So, that was a moment that I remembered that really, really vividly.

Liam: And do you think that that’s changed how you relate to the work? This kind of balance between, like, the intent that you’re putting into it, and the way that it’s received.

Qianqian: Yeah. I think that’s sort of like, when I start to sell my work, and start to hear people’s understanding of it, that was a time I realized I need to do more internal work to make sure that I’m making the pieces for myself. Because sometimes, I know that the buyers or collectors opinion will affect the way I do things, and I know you will, I will probably get affected. But I really want to protect my inner self that I don’t want to make work actually for other people right now. I think a lot of work I have to do is just like, I need to let them out. And I really don’t care if it’s going to get sold or not.

Liam: Within this work, how you harnessed the interaction of the materials that you’re using, so ink, water, and paper, in shaping these pieces, and there’s, I would say, maybe like a slightly unpredictable nature about that sometimes, and I’m interested in the unique interactions that might be afforded by the other media that you’ve worked with, particularly the digital or technological ones.

Qianqian: Yeah. I think ink and water, paper, this combo is really organic. It’s really unpredictable. Which is something I really like about it. And the technology, or digital medium have something that is always so precise. So, I was always being thinking about how can I combine these two things. So, there is one project with a science fiction book illustration that I did for a museum in China. They commissioned me to use ink and water to pain a dystopian future of a Chinese city when technology takes over, and when people are really lonely and isolated. So, that was the one time that I discovered this power of ink and water in the futuristic and technology technical context.

Another experiment that I been done with ink plus water and other technologies were, there was one piece on my to-do list that I want to go back to China and collect some smog to make some ink, and then using that ink to paint some works about the environmental issues. So, that’s kind of like alter the ink element in this sort of work using technology.

And some other type of work that I have done is using, alter their water element in this combo. So, for instance, I did a work that using ice instead of water to produce work. So, water is really unpredictable when I work with it, but actually, ice is even more unpredictable. And that has been fun, like, exploring different mediums. But I know there’s some other type of explorations that I want to do, that bring this kind of Chinese-ness and the future-ness together in some sort of format.

Liam: Yeah. And speaking of that, we were talking earlier about your work on Other Futures. For the listeners, I’m interested in what is that project, and also what was the motivation behind that?

Qianqian: So, Other Futures is an event that I’m producing right now at the Gray Area of Grand Center in San Francisco, California. So, that is a night of audio visual performance, include a piece by Chinese artist duo, Miao Jing and Jason Hou, called Zep Tepi. Zep Tepi means first occasion in Egyptian creation mythology. That piece talk a lot about what is the type of alternative future we can create using mythological and, uh, historical figures. And, that piece itself was the reason why I actually started producing this event. So, when I saw that piece, I realized, wow, I really want to bring that to the Bay Area. Because that piece currently is touring right now in China, and I felt that kind of future narrative is something I really want to add to the conversation we’re having in the Bay Area right now. Especially in the electronic music scene.

So, when I go to audio visual nights in SF or in Bay Area, I was seeing this very Western, minimal, geometry style. Then, when I saw this very mythological, oriental images from the Zep Tepi piece, I was like, I want to bring that here. Because when we talk about the future, when we talk about music, electronic music, can we have some other voices? Can we bring the otherness there? And then I’m working together with three local artists as well. Their work are talking about how can we challenge the mainstream future narrative using some non-western music and visual. Or, even some other piece a-about, like, can we imagine a future that’s 100,000 years from now? How could that be?

So, discussing the otherness in the future, or other futures, are something I’m very curious to explore right now. And I want to bring more of this kind of conversation to Bay Area.

Liam: In your conceptualization of these futures, do you think that otherness continues to be a concept?

Qianqian: I think, uh, otherness, or futures, the, the parole is something I’m heavily believed in. Because I don’t want to see a singular future. I don’t want to see a future that’s pictured by one group of people. I want to bring different voices at least to that conversation.

Liam: Going back to talking about the fact that your work touches a lot of different media, in an interview with Forth Magazine you said that the medium doesn’t necessarily matter, and that the important thing is the message, or the story you want to tell. And because your work expands many different media, I’m curious about your process for deciding which medium, or which tool is right for the story that you want to tell.

Qianqian: Yeah. I think it’s really a interesting question, because I’ve been asking this to myself a lot as well. And, I think sometimes it depends on what is the story I want to tell. The story, usually, is more important than the medium itself. So, I was making a lot of ink paintings. And at that time, I was actually working on a creative coding library called P5.js, the translation for it. So, I was helping a fellow that year called Kenneth Lim, to translate that library to Chinese. And then the creator of P5.js, Lauren McCarthy, was like, “Hi, Qia, can you actually make some work that we can feature on the home page?” And I was like, “Okay.” And then she was like, “You, you did some ink work. Can you just use P5 to maybe do something about ink?” And I was like, “Mm, interesting. I never thought about it.” Then, I was [inaudible 00:15:57] for her encouragement, and then I made a piece that just, very simple, 50 lines of code, to just draw a inky landscape, that code Shan Shui, using P5.js.

So, that was an example that how different medias got translated, or transformed in a way. The other main story that I’m thinking about, regardless of the media, is, like, what I mentioned before, is I’m just so curious about the vulnerability of people, the soft side of them. Because I think I’m, in general, slightly, or pretty much socially awkward. And I’m very curious about that part of myself, and I want to go dig more. When I meet people who are kind of awkward and vulnerable, I just find this kind of comfort. So, I kind of just want to render that sort of story in different dimension.

So, I have done, like, these sort of stories using ink and water, and using, you know, robot installations. And even using, you know, just HTML, and JavaScript. So, I think a lot of times, stories comes in first, and then the media will come, and a lot of times the media actually will just, you know, they are fluid. You can transform from the ink work to web work sometimes.

Liam: Yeah. I’m interested in that idea of differences and similarities between the kind of unpredictable, organic nature of the ink work, and the very structured, and structural nature of code. You mentioned in that same interview that technology could just be another way to create art. But I’m interested in those differences, like, what might make technology unique among this pure media. Does it provide new capabilities for expression, and if so, how do you think about that?

Qianqian: Yeah. I think the fact that I’m leaving Silicon Valley make me a really tech savvy person. So, technology for me, I think, really brings the accessibility and scalability to works. So, for instance, the ink that I painted on the web, uh, bad joke, that actually can be accessed by my parents in China. They can go see the interactive work in the website. Like, when you move around, the mountain moves and stuff. So, they were, like, impressed by that. But they were not really impressed by any of my ink work on paper. Because they can’t really see them, they don’t know how [inaudible 00:18:31]. So, the fact that technology really helped to, to make a lot of works really accessible is very magical moments.

So, there was this project that I was working on, it’s called Portrait of City. So, because of my background in architecture and urban design field, I’m always very curious about how a city could look like. So, I was working to collect a lot of influencer images in certain cities. And ironically, a lot of them look very similar. So, I was trying to use [inaudible 00:19:03] to train the machine to draw how the city could look like if we’re all using that set of influence images. Like, will we be able to generate a portrait of the city using that sort of database? So, this is something I felt like I’m so grateful that there’s a lot of open library out there that I can use, and give me this potential to think about a new way of giving a city a portrait.

Liam: You mentioned that technology can make your works a lot more accessible in the sense that the things that you’ve created for the web can be accessed by just about anyone, and experienced that way. But, that your ink works may not be the same, in the sense that someone can’t, like, really see it physically and understand how it feels. So, is there still something that technology can’t capture in that case? Is it the physicality of the work? Or, I guess I’m interested in the gap there.

Qianqian: Yeah. I think the physical and di-digital relationship is something I’ve been thinking a lot. With some of my work, uh, very primitive, and physical, and some of my work, uh, really digital. And, currently, I felt those other elements sometimes can transform. So, for instance, the ink paintings, after I did a lot of ink paintings, I can’t resist the urge to start to paint them in 3D. So, I used VR sculpting tool to start to paint, like, when I was doing ink on paper. So, I produced a set of my very blobby, lonely people in VR. And I then exported them, and 3D printed them. And then, of course, I did render, and, uh, the 3D printing, so that was a set of work that I have the ink painting, that in 2D, on paper, and I have this virtual sculpture that I made in VR, and did the 3D printed version of that.

So, that entire process, it kind of like a ritual for myself of, how can I transform the vulnerability or awkwardness from the paper to the physical world? And you will see, actually, that some people, there’s some of the sculpture that I did afterwards. So it always feel like this sort of different media can assist each other in a way, and create a flow of work, and then maybe on the flow, you would see different potentials of new type of work. But right now, a lot of this work has to account in their prototype, or experimental stage.

Liam: Yeah. But, something new was perhaps revealed by the process of translating something from 2 dimensions to 3.

Qianqian: And, or to physical world to digital world.

Liam: Yeah.

Qianqian: Yeah. It’s some question that I keep asking myself. But, maybe I can answer that question with a observation my friend told me. She told me, “You know, your work actually really resonated with a lot of people in Silicon Valley particularly. Because here, you know, technology is so advanced that everybody is talking about [inaudible 00:22:15], and AI, and, you know, self-driving car. Then you work about, oh, actually, if you were vulnerable on Friday night home alone, petting cats.” So, that capture actually really resonate with a lot of people.

So, that kind of vulnerability that I express in the physical work resonate with a lot of people who spend a lot of time in the digital technology world, in a way.

Liam: Yeah. So, although we always have Friday morning, and Friday afternoon with the technology that’s shaping our lives, there is still Friday night.

Qianqian: Yeah.

Liam: I want to close by asking about the future. I’m interested in how you see your work and your pursuits continuing to evolve as technology continues to change, and perhaps as human vulnerability continues to stay the same.

Qianqian: Yeah. I think alternative futures are something that I’ve been thinking about a lot, particularly single futurism. Like, because I think the fact that at least you’re trying to figure out why did I pick up my ink and a brush in the first place, and second place. So, I’ve been thinking about how does that affect where I am right now in my life. And I think the Chinese-ness of the ink, the water, the paper, is something so embedded in me, and I really want to understand more about my root, meanwhile, understand more about how this root will guide me to the future.

I can share some books that I’ve been reading a lot. One of them is called Techno-Orientalism. It’s about alternative future in the oriental world with a lot of science fiction and futuristic writings. So, this sort of future reconstruction is something that I find very interesting. Meanwhile, in the future of my work, I know that I want to do a lot of things about China, about technology over there, about social justice over there, about gender inequality over there, about how I am as just one single human being in that grander narrative.

Liam: And what are your plans for that?

Qianqian: Um, so, right now I’m working as a fellow at Processing Foundation. So, my project is about to make P5.js, which is a library that I mentioned earlier, more accessible in China, particularly in the under presented woman and non-binary group. The reason why I want to do that, is because most of the education resources in the Western world are not very accessible in China, because most of the social medias and, uh, video sites, are not accessible there. So, the fact that I learned coding by myself watching YouTube videos is actually a huge privilege compared to a lot of my friends back in China.

So, in that project I am working on right now, I am recording myself teaching quick coding in Chinese, and I’m going to release some on Chinese website so everybody can have access to that. So, my goal of that project, like, my personal goal for that project, is to teach my mom how to code. She doesn’t speak English. She has never seen anything from YouTube, so I’m wondering if there’s something that I can teach her to do. And I always felt if I can teach my mom to code, I can probably teach a lot of people how to do that. So, this is one of the project that I felt like I’m working right now about the key words China, technology, feminism, woman, new type of future. Yeah. Thank you.

Liam: All right, well thank you again for joining me.

Qianqian: Thank you for having me.

Harvey Moon, New Media Artist

On getting to know your tools and the art only technology can create

In this episode, Liam speaks with new media artist Harvey Moon in his San Francisco studio. The duo discuss how Moon’s work reveals unseen properties of the world around us, the process of creating one’s own creative tools, and the kind of art that’s only made possible through collaboration with machines.

---

Liam Spradlin: Harvey, welcome to Design Notes.

Harvey Moon: Good to be here.

Liam: So, to start off with, I’m going to ask what brought you to your current work. And also, how do you think the journey there influences the kind of things that you make?

Harvey: I think the journey started in the dark room. My father was a photographer. And when I was growing up, he built a dark room for my sister and I in the basement. And I use to spend hours and hours in there. And I feel like there was a lot of freedom and constraints in that tool, in that process, and I really fell in love with it. All of the techniques that you could experiment with and all of the different types of cameras and really the history of photography really excited me.

And as it started to evolve and digital became a lot more prevalent, the process and the art evolved with it. And so, the way I thought about photography in the dark room was very different than how I started thinking about photography digitally and how I started working with photographs using a computer and not a dark room.

And so, there was some organic growth. And as different things started fading in and out of my interests, it would combine in different interesting ways and kind of produce a new trajectory. And so, I don’t think I ever really had an intention of the work I would make today. It all sort of happened piece by piece just following different passions and putting them together. Um, but I think photography is really the, the beginning and the core of where, you know, a, a lot of my love for technology, and tool making and that process of making a final product really started.

Liam: So, you describe your work as being centered on the ways that technology can mediate how we perceive the world. And I want to start by getting in to what you mean by that.

Harvey: Yeah. I mean, it’s a big one. So, I think if you trace back a lot of the pivotal inventions that we’ve relied on, they’ve really extended or changed our understanding of the world. We can go back to photography and think about Muybridge and how he would use photography as a way of seeing things that we could never have seen otherwise. And now we kind of take that for granted. We know in our mind what a slow motion video looks like or what a horse looks like as it’s running.

But we couldn’t have known that unless those techniques had been invented. And through that, we were able to see beyond our own potential. You know, I, I was really driven to photography for that reason that you could perceive time in a different way. You could freeze time. You could use it in a sequence in creating animation and changed your duration of your experience of time.

You know, Henri Cartier-Bresson would talk about the decisive moment. There was always this one special second that you could only capture with a photograph. A photograph now is so drastically different than the way we can perceive the world, but we’re so accustomed to this that we have a, a really understanding of what a freeze frame is.

Liam: So, as you mentioned, there’s the idea that technology has historically been about extending our capabilities or unlocking new potential for us as humans. And I’m interested in how we can remain aware of those influences.

Harvey: I think it’s really important to recognize that everything we do has some impact on us. It’s kind of a collaboration where you collaborate with the tool or the machine, and then the tool sort of teaches you what it’s capable of. And we all have this relationship with a camera, or with a pencil, or a, a paintbrush, or if you’re a writer, a typewriter. We have … We learn how to use it. We learn how to type. We learn how to change your f-stop. We understand, you know, what pressure to give on your, on your paintbrush. We learn those things over time, and we learn what a tool can do and can’t do with those abilities.

And we kind of get this relationship. You have a favorite camera and you know just intuitively how it works, and it becomes a part of you. Your eye can just see through the lens. And at a certain point when you’re good at typing, your thoughts can just extend into the page.

So, I think we have this constant relationship to our tools that we kind of ignore and forget about, but all of those tools end up influencing how we use them. There’s only way to use a pencil, and you can’t go sideways. And you only have a certain number of letters to work with in language. And I think these sort of tools have constraints built into them that we should recognize when we are using them.

You know, a typewriter or the keyboard we see today was made to be slower because of how typewriters would jam if you type too quickly. And so, nowadays, we’re maybe limited by how our history of this invention has dictated our use of it. Whereas, we know there’s other faster ways of inputting text, but we’re kind of at the mercy of these technologies that have become so pervasive.

And I think it’s a really difficult question, because it’s really impossible to see how people will respond once they become accustom to it. And that’s why some things like cameras, which have been around for so long, have morphed into this tool that we’re really comfortable with. It fits your hand. It didn’t use to. It had to be done over years and years of experiment, and practice and trying. There’s no way that the original photographers could have imagined that a camera would be in everyone’s pocket.

So, it’s impossible to know what effect these technologies will have ten or 20 years down the future. But it’s important to recognize what impact we currently are having with these, at least to think about ten or 20 years down how it will impact everyone. And I think it’s hard to be aware of the momentum that can happen when something becomes so ubiquitous and the good or bad side effects of how those sort of technologies will start mediating the world. Probably an important topic for Google to consider. You know?

Liam: Absolutely (laughs).

Harvey: Like, these sort of tools are extremely powerful, and decisions that are made today will definitely have a lot of consequences, good and bad, ten years down the line. And it’s impossible to know, like, how the world will respond and reflect on these technologies.

Liam: You talked about the evolution of the camera and how it went from this, like, very manual large thing into something that fits quite naturally into your hand and seems like a natural extension of your expressive capabilities in some ways. I think we think about taking a picture as capturing something accurate when in fact it’s like a representation of something accurate. I guess I’m wondering how you think about, uh, the way that our relationship and understanding of the thing that we’re creating with the tool has changed because of how we’ve changed the tool, if that make sense.

Harvey: Oh, what is the feedback loop.

Liam: Yeah. Since cameras have become so easy to use, maybe we’ve lost sight of the fact that you can create something with a camera that is unique and cannot be captured in another way.

Harvey: Well, I think there is a couple points there. I definitely notice a different value to images. Before when I would work in the dark room and you were shooting 35 shots to a roll, you had some sense of value with each shot, you know, actual monetary value because this shot would cost money for film, and processing, and, uh, chemicals. And so, you knew that each picture you took was limited, and ephemeral, and, you know, it was on something physical. And that, in a sense, gave it a different weight of value. There was only negative that could exist.

Once we went digital, it really shifted our perception of these images and, and this sort of media into something that was a lot more readily available. So, I think, uh, you know, when we’ve shifted to a digital realm, we’ve taken accessibility and ubiquity over the individual, the physical, the tangible.

Liam: What do you think the implications are of that?

Harvey: Well, I think there’s, there’s a couple things. I think it’s a natural growth. I think there’s always going to be a time that we become accustom to our technologies, our tools, and then we can grow from that. And it extends our understanding of the world, and then we push you even farther.

It’s similar to, uh, photography. Telescopes have been a really great way of, of us to extend our vision beyond what we were capable of. And so, once we get an understanding of what’s possible and what’s up there in the sky, then our understanding, we reach this level of, “Okay, well, there’s a universe we’re in. You know, there’s a black hole in the center.” And now we’re able to photograph black holes. So, I think there’s some really interesting growth that we just have where we will become accustom to it, and then we just yearn more and we’re always growing and evolving with these tools. As I said before, like, digital technology has made us value these images less, but it’s made it a lot more accessible.

Liam: Yeah. Totally.

Harvey: But, yeah. I mean, I think who am I to say what is, like, a good outcome or a bad outcome based on these technologies. I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to grow and incorporate these tools into our lives and then add more and extend our ability even further. And I think we’re never going to be satisfied with our current level of understanding our reality. We’re always going to push our abilities and our senses farther into the universe.

Liam: (laughs) Speaking of the universe, (laughs) it strikes me that your work also deals a lot with our relationship to more fundamental aspects of existence like time and space. In particular, the slow scan project seems to be concerned with how we experience time and place and also using technology to, again, expose to a way of looking at these fundamental mechanics in a way that we couldn’t before. So, first for listeners, I’d like to get a description of what slow scan is.

Harvey: It’s a software-based video work that continuously grabs from security cameras around the world. It takes 12 hours of historical imagery and it collapse it into a single frame. So, what you see in the photograph is a bunch of interspersed slices, each one a different moment that consecutively creates one photograph. And in that image, you’ll see both sunrise and sunsets simultaneously.

And in the live version, which I have a couple on the wall you can see, it will continuously update throughout the day. And so, you’ll never have the same image twice. And that image is constantly flipping through hours of the day. So, I think with our understanding of time, we can only really perceive it in one way. We can only perceive time linearly. And there’s no other way that we know how without the help of tools to experience time or flash back in time. And we can never go in the future.

I was thinking about new ways that we could use tools to extend our ability of sensing time and existing by putting time together and making new layers of time that shows how things can change and adjust in a way that we couldn’t perceive before. There’s another piece that, that’s kind of similar to that. I had … I don’t know if you’re familiar with The Drawing Machine Project. Did you see some of that?

Liam: Oh, yeah.

Harvey: So, these are all robot created drawings. And so, one of the more recent drawing machines I had was a robot installed in Antwerp. And it was in a six month installation in a museum where the robot would be hanging on the wall and drawing one line per day. And each line was about five meters long, and it was sensing the amount of light that came into the space. And so, over the course of six months, you would see the seasons adjust the length of the day represented by this line. You couldn’t see the pen moving. If you walked up to it, it was moving so slow that for any of us to look at it, it would look like it wasn’t moving at all.

But I don’t think the piece was for that experience. It was for you to come back a few weeks, a few months later and to see that progress and to recognize that we could not make a work like this. This work could only be built in a six month continuous drawing 24/7. And that level of existence of time is way beyond our understanding or our perception but in a very simple poetic way.

Liam: There’s something in there about, like, in contrast to using technology to augment our own skills. In some cases we allow technology to take on its own skill by itself.

Harvey: Yeah, so I think, you know, people have asked me this a lot with my work, especially with The Drawing Machine Project is, am I trying to put artists, you know, out of business. Am I trying to build tools and machines that make art obsolete? And I think I mean to do quite the opposite. I intend to show what we’re capable of in relation to what a machine might be capable of and how we might approach the same issue in a completely different way.

And through seeing those differences, we can start to recognize and appreciate the sort of things that we’re really good at. Uh, and I think we can continuously see that. I think with … especially with a lot of this AI machine learning algorithms we’re seeing today, there’s always some uncanny valley of what it’s able to do and what we’re able to understand. And it further accentuates our differences and what our abilities are in relation.

So, I think there’s a lot of fear these days about, you know, like is our technology taking over our skills and abilities and what we’re good at. And I think there’s always going to be room for us to show our strengths and to recognize what a machine isn’t correct for, isn’t good for, or what are some things that technology can teach us about ourselves or how we interact with it. I think there’s more lessons to be learned than existential dread to be gained out of the technologies that we have in our world.

Liam: Sure. Perhaps by creating a robot that creates art, we might discover something new that we can do. And there’s also, like, a question about who did create the art. You know?

Harvey: Yeah. I’ve really liked that question. I don’t want to answer that question.

Liam: (laughs)

Harvey: I’d rather that question be open. And, and I’ll say that the way I think about it is like a collaboration. So, you know, when I build a, a machine that draws, there’s a lot of trial and error and changing to my code and my algorithms. And I feel like the intention and the idea is never … it’s never something that I completely know. I, I always have to leave something up to the machine. And there’s always some play that I’ve built in so that something unexpected will trigger another insight or another interesting element.

So, I’m never trying to build something that’s perfect. You know, if I was thinking about that, I’d be building printers. I’m, I’m building a drawing machine in, in the way that I want it to be drawing and producing something as it, as it builds. So, for me, I always see this as, like, a partnership where I kind of embed my idea. I’m the architect of what should happen. But once it’s released and once I start it, I’m hands off and I let the machine run its course and fulfill the algorithm as best it chooses. Sometimes that takes months to complete a drawing. Sometimes it’s just a few weeks. And it’s sometimes hard for me to know how long it’ll take. But I really like that sort of anticipation that it’s not all me controlling everything that’s going on.

And I, I like to kind of relate it to the work of Sol LeWitt who use to make these wall drawings. And the wall drawings were a really interesting conceptual project where he would write the instructions for what the artwork would be and he would send them to the museum, and it was up to the museums installers to interpret those instructions and create the work. And he would create a detachment between the idea and what the work ended up being.

And I feel that relationship is really prominent in software generated art where the idea becomes the machine that makes the art, in his own words, where the idea is the code and, and the algorithm that starts it. And the work that comes out is, is kind of the epitaph of that process.

Liam: So, do you believe that the code and the machine are art themselves?

Harvey: Absolutely. The way I, I like to think about it is the machine is enacting a performance. So, in a gallery or in a museum, you can come in, watch it create the work and perform its action. And so, in that case, it’s a sculpture. It’s performing the work. And then the drawing is really just an artifact. It’s a representation of what happened.

Um, so there’s layers to it. There’s the process. I want to be more transparent, and I want to reveal what created that piece. And I think one of the really important things about it being a drawing is that you’re embedding a space and time into the piece. So, whereas a digital piece can exist indefinitely and infinitely, a drawing can only exist in one place at one time. And it took time to create. And I like to make sure that each piece is embedding a little sense of its own place and time of where it was created. That might mean incorporating data sets of what’s happening around, whether it’s light, or radio frequency waves, or some sort of external input that informs the drawing and embeds that sort of sight specific time and space into the piece. So, each drawing ends up being completely unique and based off of where and when it was made.

Liam: We’re recording here in your studio, and behind you on the wall is a drawing that you pointed to earlier that’s composed of a lot of lines and curves. And I want to get a little bit better idea of how that was made and what it’s made out of.

Harvey: Sure. So, that project is called Sinew, and it was series of drawings that was made using a software defined radio. So, a software defined radio is a fancy car radio that you connect your computer. And instead of hearing audio, it listens to the digital signals transmitted through the airwaves. And you’re able to tune it not just to the radio frequencies but also to GPS, or wifi, or Bluetooth, or GSM or all sorts of different radio waves that permeate through our world.

And they’re completely invisible. And all of these technologies and all of these frequencies that we rely on are flowing through us and through our world constantly. And the project was an aim to visualize those invisible muscle structures or the invisible sinew that kind of makes up our world. And the project grabs this data set wherever it is and in real time converts it into a line drawing.

Harvey: We’re actually taking that data and interpreting it into an abstract representation of that data. So, you’re not going to be able to look at it and say, “Okay, that’s a wifi and that’s a radio.” But it is informing the line work and how these lines are put together. And so, what you see is this very unique formation of the current spectrum in that area. And here in San Francisco, there’s a lot of activity. So, everywhere I do this piece, you get a very different result. And I think there’s something really interesting about the time and place of those invisible frequencies embedded into this project into this final drawing.

Liam: We talked about how when you approach a tool, like a paintbrush or a typewriter or something like that, that over time through your experience with that tool, you learn certain things about its behavior, and capabilities, and how you can use it to create things. And I’m interested, again, we’re sitting in your studio and there’s all sorts of things around like moving and blinking. And it strikes me that you work with a number of different tools. And I’m interested in what you’ve learned from these unique tools that you choose to work with.

Harvey: Well, that’s a big one. I think it becomes a bigger question, because more and more things are being invented every day that I have to keep an eye on-

Liam: (laughs)

Harvey: … (laughs) and keep note of. I think I’ve always considered the tool as a means to produce an idea or to fulfill a project. And so, it’s always been conceptually based initially. And then I’ll try and find or invent a tool that fills that need. So, I try to be a little more proactive about what best fits what I need to convey. And that starts an entire process of creating, and learning, and generating this tool and working with it. And it might take years before I get to where I feel like the idea has come to fruition.

And, you know, part of me really likes the slow process. But it’s really picking and choosing different pieces that eventually grow and become something. I’m never thinking about the tool first and saying like, “Okay, well what does this do? How does this change how I interact with it?” It’s more so like, “Okay, I’m going to make something new and see what happens when I play with this,” or, “I’m going to see what comes out because I made this change.”

Case in point, there’s an electronic drum set that I built behind you. I used to play drums for a number of years, and once you switch to an electric drum set it’s really a different instrument. Same thing with photography. The way in which you use it ends up really changing, and you don’t know until you start playing with it. And it’s not something that you come into expecting. You, you sit down and you, you start playing and you feel this totally different emotion about it, and you play differently.

So, I think it’s always kind of an unexpected. You have to be open to being playful. And, and especially if you’re making your own tools, you have to be open to failing with them. And, you know, I, I think there’s a lot of freedom when you’re making your own tools or software or hardware that you can kind of shape it based on your experiences with it. Um, if you can’t tell, I’m, I’m kind of a stickler for DIY. Like, I prefer to have that control. If I use someone else’s something, there’s always a little bit that I would wish I could change. And there’s always something that through using it, I feel like I could do a little differently. So, I end up sort of making my own tools for everything,-

Liam: Yeah.

Harvey: … everything that I do.

Liam: So, it sounds like you almost approach the interaction with the tool from the opposite perspective where you might say, like, if you were envisioning what we would call a painting, you might think, “I need something to deposit paint on a surface.”

Harvey: Yeah. And I think it’s much more, like, starting from a conceptual standpoint of, like, “Okay, I want to think about this, this process of painting as, you know, what does it take to make a gesture on a piece of paper?” And I’ve done experiments with, with painting machines. And I think it starts with like, “Okay, well what are the sort of physical influences that we put into a brush and how we hold it that I might want to see about emulating?”, or like, “What sorts of things can we, can we do really well that I might want to try with a machine and watch it fail or learn from that?”

Um, the painting machine was not a, a great painter, but it really kind of taught me a lot of, like, what it takes to be gentle with a brush or what it takes to understand the physicality of it. And you can see that sort of inhumanness in the paintings. It doesn’t have that sort of gentle touch that we do.

Liam: So, understanding that as humans we will never be satisfied, uh, by the amount of technology we have and the impact that we have made on our own skills and the world around us. As we move into a future where we have this constantly expanding set of technological capabilities, how do you see the concepts behind your work evolving?

Harvey: It’s important that we’re more conscious of how these tools influence us, because they’re only becoming more ubiquitous. The rate in which these technologies are becoming, you know, coming into our lives is only accelerating. And I don’t think people are spending enough time considering their effects or how much it’s changing our world and how rapidly. I think that formulation in my work is only going to become stronger. The value of being introspective about our technology is only going to be stronger.

I feel like, uh, I’m very excited about taking this approach with my work. And it’s really exciting that what I’ve been passionate about is only accelerating and continuing. And may-maybe a little daunting as well to keep up with the changes that are happening, but I think the statement and the intention behind my work is only becoming more powerful.

Liam: Do you think that our experience of the world is already being informed by the influences that these new technologies like AI and machine learning have?

Harvey: Absolutely (laughs). I mean, it’s naïve to think that we live outside of them. I think it’s … You know, I understand that maybe for some people they feel like it’s not influencing them-

Liam: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Harvey: … or it’s not impacting their daily life, but what’s happening behind the scenes that we don’t acknowledge is so huge. And without having that understanding or without having the intellectual curiosity of understanding or, or doing your research, it’s really impossible to see behind, you know, the curtain of, you know, what a, what a cloud really is. What is it that your data does when you pick up your phone.

I think it’s vitally important that people start understanding this a bit more, because we are so reliant on these tools that we’re really forgetting how important they are to our lives. And I, I think that’s a big part of what I want to do with my work is, like, recognize there, there’s a lot of invisible infrastructure that we rely on, we, we exist on. So, I think it’s vitally important that we are paying attention to the systems that dictate our world. And at least personally for me as an artist, I find it to be, I find it to be a social responsibility to make work about the systems that dictate the world we live in.

Liam: All right. Well, thank you again for joining me, Harvey.

Harvey: All right. Thanks for having me.