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<TITLE>Blair Ewing Interview with Ebon Fisher</TITLE>
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___________<BR>
<BR>
<FONT SIZE="5"> Blair Ewing: Interview with Ebon Fisher </FONT> <BR>
<FONT SIZE="4"> _________<BR>
<BR>
<FONT SIZE="3"> ARTICULATE Magazine, 1997 <BR>
</FONT> <FONT SIZE="3">(Washington/Baltimore/Philadelphia) </FONT> <BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<FONT SIZE="4"> BE: Exactly how would you describe yourself? A multimedia
artist? A propagandist for a post-cybernetic reality? <BR>
<BR>
EF: You can put me on the shelf labeled "media artist," but over the years
I've realized that I'm more like a zookeeper. My animals are media organisms
and living media worlds. I don't like the label "artist" because it's so
exclusive and old-world. It conjures up the image of purple spew gurgling
up from some snob's ever-so-esoteric gut. That wizardry is pretty much a
holdover from priest-dominated religions and monarchies which placed the
male soul in the center of the universe. That's not to say I don't have
a tenderness towards mystery, but I sense that we create soul collaboratively
with the world. It's a communal process. We nurture spirit into being like
an ecologist who has to cooperate with animal life in order to sustain it.
In fact, in direct connection with zoology, the whole ecological paradigm
is an intense source of inspiration for me. I've been breeding my manifesto,
"Wigglism," in the ecology of the internet, for instance. I send out a draft
and wait for feedback. Change it. Send it back out. The method and the content
of "Wigglism" is a living process. <BR>
<BR>
Me and my friends here in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, have developed street
and community projects in a similar way. Nurturing that which seems alive
-artificial, social, or otherwise -is the basic idea. We did this huge multimedia
warehouse party in 1993 called "Organism" which applied such principles.
Over 2,000 people entered into the life-blood of our organism, integrating
into its pockets of interactive systems, and, well, we danced our butts
off for 14 hours. It received a lot of support from the rave culture, although
I emphasized that the thing was a "Web Jam." That was before the world wide
web, but it was meant to suggest overlapping webs of both nature and technology.
A social/ecological cyborg. <BR>
<BR>
BE: Explain your recent project, "The AlulA Dimension." You once mentioned
that you had been working on it for four years. <BR>
<BR>
EF: "The Alula Dimension" is an alternate world to which I've been feeding
a lot of sweat. It is growing slowly but surely in the form of a little
model, props, photoshop studies, a comic strip, a number of screenplays,
mailings of images, "bionic codes," and in the last 12 months, a life-sized
Alulian chamber. The chamber completely fills my studio. When I first built
it I had to crawl through it and around it to get to my bed. I've been conducting
Alulian media rituals in the chamber with actors and a gaggle of friends.
We use bizarre little biomorphic props, a well filled with real Brooklyn
tap water, and various annoying costumes. With all these things and some
hot sake heated in an Alulian kettle, we conducted a 'slurm" ritual not
too long ago. I've been producing a pilot video about the Alulians with
a cinematographer, Carlton Bright, and a couple of really sweet actors,
Ruthie Austen, Cynthia de Moss, and Frank Senger. A couple of other very
special people, including Amy Shapiro, and Todd Le Felt, have been helping
to manage things. A German filmmaker, Martin Meyer, started making a documentary
about the making of the Alula Dimension. <BR>
<BR>
Anyway, the thing about The Alula Dimension is that it lives in all these
different modes and mediums. It's not just a fantasy, but a living monster
which I am incubating in the worlds of flesh and media. There are many new
virtual worlds being divised right now, but most of them are strictly in
the form of computer games and they have a kind of perfect remove from this
world. The Alula Dimension, however, is intrinsically accessable. It is
entered in the fictional sense via Brooklyn through a tail emerging from
Alula's nest of chambers. It can be entered more physically through my studio
which is also in Brooklyn. But it is also possible to participate in the
Alula Dimension by staring at its codes which are available on the World
Wide Web, on T-shirts, a computer animation, and stickers. <BR>
<BR>
Although Alula's stated dimension is simultaneously fact and fiction, all
of us live in one kind of virtual world or another. But I think it is important
not to get too precious about our separate zones. I think the considerate
thing to do is admit we're all idiots and that all worlds are fantasy constructions.
The marxists called such fantasies "ideologies' but they fell short of realizing
how even class-sensitive sociology is also an ideology. There's certainly
something of value in class consciousness, as there is something liberating
in the skateboard scene, or delightful in virtual Multi-User Dungeons and
bird-lover societies, but these points of view are only vital in connection
to the surrounding worlds. All worlds, like organisms, share a kind of ecology.
Their truths are only half-truths with a tendency to correlate with other
half-truths. It seems to me that since communication is really a stream
of feedback loops predicated on a shared context, or worldview, that the
very act of sharing inspiration between worlds necessitates an actual merger
of the two. It's like sex. <BR>
<BR>
BE: Can we expect a new set of "Bionic Codes" from you in 1997? <BR>
<BR>
EF: I've now been incubating over 35 basic codes in the media in a variety
of ways, some of which I have no real control over. Numerous websites, from
museums to biotech research groups, have linked to my site. They've popped
up in Wired Magazine, London's Mute Magazine, an automotive systems journal,
an underground college magazine, six or seven museums and galleries, and
the shoulder of a Canadian biker who found my Bionic Codes on the web. Just
a few weeks ago he sent me a photo of his tattoo code, "ORBIT PROBES VIA
MUTUAL SPIN." As to whether I develop new ones -I think there is a point
of diminishing returns. What I want to do now is explore the use of the
codes within a specific social context such as the AlulA Dimension. The
characters in AlulA conduct rituals based on the codes -they're almost like
dance guidelines. Moral dances. <BR>
<BR>
It hasn"t escaped my mind that entering a dialogue on moral structures is
kind of crucial at this moment in our sublimely fucked-up zeitgeist. The
avantgarde as an aesthetic stance is just plainly suicidal right now. I
really detested "Natural Born Killers' and had to walk out on "Pulp Fiction"
because I could feel my innocence being tortured. Instead of "pushing the
boundaries of culture" we really need a healing process. Changing geers
from manufacturing shock art to nurturing new lifeforms would be a good
step. It actually requires a reconsideration of the importance of structure.
Inherent to lifeforms is their coherence, their structures. But it's crucial
to point out that such structures are incredibly flexible. They wiggle.
It's a property inherent to the realm of software and artificial intelligence,
something which most artists have been afraid to dirty their fingertips
with. I've found the company of hackers far more interesting as a result.
They're in the thick of the new culture. I can"t say I feel sorry for the
artists. Many of them have exhibited such closed minds they hardly deserve
their own anachronistic label. <BR>
<BR>
Anyway, the last thing I want to happen is for people to associate my interest
in virtual morality with the Republicans. But with codes like "equalize
fucking," I'm not exactly in bed with the Mormons. Actually, if you want
to know, my ancestors were Quakers. A real Utopian crowd -still are in large
measure, if you can find them. In regards to the bionic codes, I must say
right out that they're not meant to function as rules. They work best as
optional technologies of the spirit. Used in various combinations they have
a lot of flexibility. Besides, as a media zoologist, I'm interested in systems
that have liquid coherence. <BR>
<BR>
BE: You are listed on your letterhead as the Director of Nerve Circle Creations.
What kind of shop is it? <BR>
<BR>
EF: Nerve Circle is my production logo. I've used it since 1987 when I started
a multimedia rock band in Boston. After studying and teaching media at MIT's
Media Lab, I moved away from academia and began testing my theories out
on the real world. I rented a large loft with some roommates in Boston's
old industrial district, and began rehearsing and performing these snarling
tributes to biological evolution. I was earning my living as a scientific
illustrator at the time. Unfortunately in 1989, after throwing a big Nerve
Circle performance, I got thrown out of my own loft by the police. The eviction
notice from our landlord a week later pretty much told me it was time to
move to New York where experimental culture is more tolerated. <BR>
<BR>
BE: What can we look for in the more distant future from Ebon Fisher? <BR>
<BR>
EF: For now, I am completely happy developing The Alula Dimension, and propagating
Bionic Codes. The two kind of interlock into a meme-complex. It's taking
a long time to launch AlulA in the fullest media sense, but I'm taking one
of my cues from Stanley Kubrick who's been known to take over 5 years per
film. But I love the process. All the various attributes of theatre, media
experiments, writing, and hanging out with a thumping group of people are
there. The Alulian world I am trying to induce lies somewhere between The
Monkees' clubhouse and Vaclav Havel's underground theatre. Throw in some
Star Trek, a little Alice in Wonderland, a dash of Dr. Seuss and a clove
of Patti Smith -and stir it all together in a sauce of love and bionic banter.
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