this way?
This is a ringer question.
What is this?
Do we set you up?
Where did you get your suit, James?
No.
Hey, guys.
So if Loosly Fatlab was founded with this idea to seed maybe open source and different
ideals into the mainstream via cool, catchy projects, and now we're five years in looking
back like, what are some examples?
Did we do it?
Did we fail?
Have you seen some cool examples?
Do you think people out there, the big audience you're talking about, think differently?
Did we do it?
What do you think, Bennett?
There's like five of you.
You guys could talk about clever things you saw on the internet.
Darn it, I just got dragged into this.
Your friend who said that she had been encouraged from a long time ago.
Yeah.
I just recently got a message on Facebook from a girl I've met a couple years ago.
She saw our work online and thought that it was really cool and a couple of us met with
her at conferences randomly.
A week ago, two weeks ago, I got a message from her and she was like, yeah, thank you
so much, guys.
You basically really influenced my life.
I was really down and I saw your works and it was really inspiring.
Now I'm studying, I think she sent like an article to, a link to an article where she's
being interviewed because she's like a really good student and I forgot actually what she's
studying now.
Computer science.
It's computer science, yeah.
So she got into computer science because of us, well, successful.
And for every one of those emails we get, there's 10,000 nasty comments on the internet.
We just filter those directly to Greg's account.
Other questions.
FATLAB has this phrase, release early often with rap music.
I wondered if you could talk about the release early part and what is early and do you think
you lose anything in that process of releasing things too soon or how long does it take to
cook?
Maybe this is partially for Aram and the rest of you.
Yeah, well, I think, Evan, you should, I mean, this is part of the Linux philosophy.
But you better explain it.
I can talk about maybe in the beginning what I was, some of the thinking behind that was
just being like, we were in the open love, especially James and I and there's all these
people around, everyone's throwing all these ideas out and nobody was hitting publish.
Nobody was putting these things online and part of it is because there's some pressure
when you put things online.
You're putting yourself out there in a way that, especially pre-Twitter, even making
a blog post, you're putting it out there for comment and I think FAT was part of the idea
of making it this early and often thing is giving people this place where they can post
things where it wasn't their own website.
I remember Theo said really early on, he was like, I would never post this on my own website
but it's good enough for FAT and it really hurt when he said that but then like two minutes
later I realized that Theo got it.
That was the whole reason the site works is because Theo would post these amazing things
like the smiley project and he would never put that on his own website and so that the
early and often thing was it was really almost selfish in the beginning where we just wanted
our friends to be publishing more and giving us a sort of a view into their working process
and the rap music was, sometimes we were really doing that and putting rap music over videos
as a way just to like make people watch them but of course it's not the case, it's almost
like a metaphor for how we work.
There was another question over there?
Yeah, well you partially answered it earlier but I was kind of wondering about the use
of tactical media I suppose and oh you know when you use Facebook and Google and all that
and how do you feel about in a way that you somehow advertise when you try to maybe comment
on it.
This is why it was hard to answer the question of is it working or not because I think we're
constantly wrestling ourselves whether we're really working or really failing like when
we're driving around with the Google car, right?
The Google car has always been like a really, like a viral marketing campaign for Google
and it's how it kind of functions.
I mean you know for us I don't know that there's a super big plan there for us, I mean there
is like a stupid plan like let's make Google like ridicule them and crash the bike, you
know crash into a bike and have this little setup scene where people are like oh my god
the Google car just, the robot hit this dude and he's standing on the street corner saying
it's not my fault it's the car you know I didn't do it and you know but very few people
see this or they see these skits and they know them as skits you know because the web
ends up being really a good like bullshit detector because there's so many people looking
at it.
Yeah but we definitely advertise for Google and we're sponsored.
Yeah somehow we like we think about I mean I think about like that Joey Skag's quote
where he's like you know why do you think the things you do you know what do you think
why do you think them why don't you question you know how have you been brought up not
to do this sort of practice you know sometimes I think that's the hope and we get a lot of
that and that people you know you do see as many people who say well maybe 25% of people
say that's clearly not the Google car it happens a lot more often in Brooklyn than Manhattan
Manhattan people are like that Google car is amazing and then in Brooklyn they're like
that's a PVC you know like why would the Google car have PVC like don't they have some metal
structure that they put up there so you know we don't fool everybody and then we do we
do make the car look stupid you know like in that course way of there's always middle
fingers up and we're talking to people on the street and like Mike said earlier you know
he was talking to a taxi cab driver he's like you like the Google car and the guy's like
no and Mike's like oh yeah because it's gonna take your job you know and so if that if that
conversation happens you know where people are like huh this company that saw the web
as kind of their wildness to tame and they did tame it and they tamed it so well we we
actually can't even see them on this you know on the surface anymore we just build our houses
and so now they're moving into the streets with these vehicles and glass and that same
mentality that I mean well don't worry about it I'll build it all for you and then you
can come live here sort of process is happening you know so you know we could rail against
them like a tirelessly argue that they should be you know come more a public asset unless
a private corporation or a public corporation or we could just make this car have fun goofing
around in it and maybe make 10 or 20 different people on the street laugh and maybe one or
two of them start to tell their friends like this is fucked up the Google car just like
it ran into some garbage cans you know clearly it's gonna run into some garbage cans I don't
know no answer to that question either but we I think we did this similar project how
many years ago now in Berlin it was like three or so and I remember when we did it there
we ran into this problem where we found it was really really hard to go far enough like
no matter what we did and be drinking and driving or like James would be peeing on a
pole or something and like people would just be so happy the whole time remember that feeling
it was like really kind of hard to get over and we had to push it as far as we could and
then maybe I've been out of New York too long but like we came back here and James was driving
around with an Osama bin Laden mask with both hands out the window and people were just
non-vexed we just drive by and they'd be like whatever you know it's like it's getting
harder any other questions no okay all right so I've seen a lot of contemporary art and
normally no one really asked them is this art and they never really feel the need to
explain hey I've made art why do you think as like people who make this sort of stuff
were constantly asked or feel the need even to like explain oh I'm an artist and a hacker
you know here here well I think one of the big issues is that this work and this is bigger
than than hacking I think or the particular work that that fat lab is doing but it applies
to a lot of new media art it's still really questioned so many of the mechanisms of the
art world that it's very difficult for for people to position it which is a good thing
in and of itself but I was asked for the I think for the first 10 years almost after
net art quote unquote was officially born why is it art was always the first question
that every you know basically reporter would ask me and it got so boring and boring and
I remember Geffrich Stocker the director of ours Electronica saying well we got over that
point five years ago you know you're a little behind in the US you know but the question
has not gone away ultimately and I think it's the nature of the medium not necessarily hacking
but this blurring of the boundaries between the functioning tool the activists work the
open access questioning the role of the artist of the audience of the art object that leads
to this question again and again and again and to the need for justification for better
or worse you know but at the same at the same time also like I don't know there's there's
art students from I don't know painting classes they paint or yeah that's pieces you see out
there painted Facebook pages or YouTube pages like I mean internet and whatever all the social
networks became everything became so much mainstream compared to 10 20 years ago that
also the much broader field of artists is in this or other way kind of yeah trying to
deal with these topics so I mean it doesn't really help your question Randy but it's coming
from the other side or there's a lot of media art and fairs not made by like classic media
artists but it's like it's happening right well also don't I mean we we ask that too
sometimes I mean don't you ask that question like when you know when Timothy Burners Lee
or you know processing when a Nica we're like no like that's not fair like there were people
that were up for honorary mention or whatever the same year that Timothy Burners Lee won
the Nica you know I've talked to some of my friends who are in that crew and they're just
like oh Jesus Christ like it's like you gave it to the guy who invented WWW instead like
I can't top that but you know are they really playing in that same world I'm also not you
know going to like architects are very bad about this they just want to play in everybody's
game you know they're like I'm a designer I'm an engineer but I'm also I can be an artist
and you know sometimes I'm like hey hey guys I have a question about like sort of this
community aspect of the group and I remember like back in the GRL days like James and Evan
were really encouraging different cities to start their own graffiti research labs or
you know really supporting in different means and and then fat lab is I mean was there some
learning from that experience to starting a fat lab and like just how you manage your
community and also inspire other communities and like how you relate to other collectives
because like few years ago there's a really funny like almost viral video of you guys
like beefing with NYC resistor which nobody actually believes right so I thought that
was sort of a funny like encounters we have a we have a new program coming up it's called
fat X and you can like find your own fat X group in your city so stay tuned for that
but it's a very tough yeah fat X it's a very tough process to sign up there's lots of rules
about it and cost a lot of money so I think there were like community development things
we learned from going through graffiti research lab that we didn't necessarily that we learned
from but didn't necessarily duplicate one-to-one moving into fat right I mean it's so funny
to think of like you saying we learned community development things you know I think our community
development team really learned a lot from their mistakes in the graffiti research lab
you know like associating with just pretty much a hundred percent criminals all the
time cut down on the people that want to be in the membership of your club yeah nobody
you know like GRL was totally it wasn't there was no centralized we didn't feed out information
to everybody and we all collected in one space and so we didn't develop very strong bonds
and we were a little bit more controlling over the way we published on the blog too
yeah I mean other people couldn't post on the GRL site like our graffiti research
lab site other people but there were points where the GRL site was down and other GRL
sites were up right like you couldn't be found on Google anymore because the blog was hacked
and yeah there was that other other GRLs took over the commissions yeah but then you know
fat labs not really like that in that you know everyone's on a common list we all talk with
each other this is the only difference probably fundamentally and then so we developed these
bonds over distance and then we want to see each other and we have some I did what we're
working on and we share resources better and you know things like that so it was the yeah
we had we made a user accounts on wordpress and also made an internal listserv that was
a community development team suggestion I also I mean when I'm approached by people
like they when they say oh I want to join GRL and I say oh go join your own GRL they
still that's still happening but it doesn't work that way with fat for some reason like
I'm like oh you want to be in fat why don't you know why don't you start up a local chapter
and you're like no I just want to like be in the fat you know there's fat Japan still
right yeah what happened to the fat Japan I don't know I haven't seen in a long time
hey guys quick question just you know from your experience as hackers would you say
the corporations are winning and hackers should just quit right now like or do you feel like
hacking is actually gonna you know how do you feel about that stuff I mean every day
of the pirate bay is still online I have hope for the future you know and again like I mean
those are corporations those are particular corporations who are fighting against the
things that we do there are certainly corporations that don't fight against it you know there's
people that that contribute to it awkwardly and somehow by force to I mean you know who
would have thought a company like Microsoft would just be convinced by you know a groundswell
of popular opinion to do something good you know I mean like with the connect system which
was quite you know I mean it changed a lot of people and brought a lot of capabilities
that we didn't have before so I mean you know there were I don't know there was never so
much a fight I mean there were some clear arguments you know with corporations and particular
corporations that GRL had a little an argument with because we had a personal kind of beef
with them or you know fatlabs somehow gets in arguments sometimes with companies because
we take things from them or still parts of their identity and they don't seem to approach
it as a war either I mean they understand that the reverberations bounce back towards
them as much as they bounce towards our target too I mean we're making noise I always like
the way Ben Cervini you know he said things used to be like people thought of these types
of network activity as neuronal you know it's like your brain these synapses they're all
connected together and he said and now it seems like people are realizing it's different
it's more metabolic or it's like hormones or something we're all just oozing out ideas
in every direction and the corporations pick it up and some of the corporations don't pick
it up and some of the ooze burns them and then the good guys get it and they pick it
up but the good guys also pick up some of the things we meant for the corporations and
you know like we're all sharing in the same juice of opportunities and mistakes.
I think there always will be validity to hacking just because true innovation and I don't mean
that in the corporately branded way comes from radically breaking and reconfiguring
things and that's not what the R&D and development departments of corporations traditionally do
you know that's what hackers do.
You know what I mean I'm not allowed to talk about a lot of this stuff but like if you
go to a product development team at any company in anywhere in the world you will find a lot
of the competitors products on tables taken apart you know taken apart and dissected and
every part and component and you know what does it do that's the way I mean we all learned
it's the way they learn to get into school so I mean they're hacking they're hacking
too.
But they're also saying that some of the best art has been created in you know corporate
R&D departments and has never seen the light of day you know that happens too that is simply
not what is coming out as product on the market.
I think really the beauty of hacking and open source is that it's not about continually
recreating the wheel I think with corporations they're always continually recreating the
wheels because everyone's got an NDA but with open source and hacking it's really about
you look at the wheel and you make a new version and then you iterate and iterate and someone
else makes a new version of the wheel and pretty soon you've got this crazy carbon fiber
thing instead of a rock which is what you started with.
Has anyone ever thought about the fact that you know the electronic art and technology
group eat that we're like practicing some similar type of thing to media art you know
what 30 40 years ago you know eat fat like eat their corporate model they were they were
a corporately funded you know they were making they were working directly with companies
like you know Xerox park and they were making interesting technology art projects and that
if you do that enough you get fat I always thought that was quite interesting theoretical
but we did not on purpose or anything and and fat is kind of representative of that
now we're just a bloated with corporations we can't talk about anything else you know
there there doesn't seem to even be any subject matter that's left that's personal or something
we are not living from DARPA money right that's that's something what Geraldine will talk
about now like with that question because there's many hackerspaces getting funded
by DARPA and it's like this whole complex of military money and state money so yeah
this so it's fat the obese children of experiments in art and technology hey I had I had one more
question so I already asked the looking back question so now we look forward we're five
years in five years from now I mean we're all like between 27 and 50 or like are you
probably picking it up really far for me is it so the communications well yeah okay we're
all between like 27 and however old James is but like the communications department at
fat lab wants to know like what are our goals for the next five years how are we gonna frickin
stay relevant like we got to get some new kids in here like what are we gonna do what
are we gonna be saying at you know fat platinum or whatever the tenure anniversary is it was
never a plan five years ago should we have one now is it time for a plan we don't not
a plan but I would love to hear a future visions from you guys dreams do I would like to direct
this towards the moderator what would you like to see fat do the next five years and
the worst person to ask you know but definitely you know keep doing what you're doing with
the next technologies yeah I think there's a lot of need for you know radical hacking
particularly in the age of web 2.0 and there will be 3.0 you know so a whole new playing
field something that I personally think is really respectable about fat lab is that not
only are you exploring these ideas artistically but a lot of you are involved in startups
or doing this in your day jobs and you really believe these things so much that you're actually
putting them into action and I I just love the idea of the fact that you guys are in
Silicon Valley you're in all these different spaces and you're actually enacting change
and I no one asked my opinion but that's what I hope you continue to do is to infiltrate
those systems and to have an impact in those in those spaces too.
Good note to end on I think okay thank you very much thank you.
Hey alright thanks for coming and stick around if you want there's another talk coming up
just in a few minutes Ben Sisto is going to present his talk Hulet.
