THIS WEEK, the third 01SJ Art Biennial unfolds throughout downtown San Jose (see page 16). For me, this global art and technology festival functions like a mirror reflecting back my own life experiences.
Being a native, I somehow grew up right alongside the personal-computer revolution here in Silicon Valley and never managed to move anywhere else. The 01SJ Biennial, especially in the way that how it brings together artists and technologists from all over the world, motivated me to re-examine a few elements of my own story—”Build your own world,” as the theme goes.
When I was a kid in the late ’70s to early ’80s, my dad was a programmer. One positive influence he provided was introducing me to personal computers. We owned a Commodore VIC-20 and then a Commodore 64, which had the best music chip of any personal computer circa 1982. In junior high school, I was programming in BASIC on the C64, with endless poke and peek commands. It was pretty easy. One could create notes and sounds without that much effort.
Unfortunately, I went through periods of high activity followed by periods of no activity, and I often just switched interests. Due to an otherwise miserable family situation, I had no guidance in life, so my interest in computers didn’t re-emerge until I got to SJSU.
Since I was always a piano player, I wound up pursuing a music degree with a concentration in electroacoustics. We learned about synthesizer architecture, new musical interfaces and music programming languages and studied works by 20th- century troublemakers like John Cage, Edgard Varese or anyone who utilized electronic sounds and/or technology in their work.
Even though music was my major, I read just as many art books, especially stuff on Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, the Italian Futurists, the Situationists and essentially anyone who caused problems.
During the time I studied music and in the years immediately following the completion of my degree, I also spent much time at what was then called the CADRE Institute for New Media in the School of Art and Design. It was like a safe house for all the refugees from other creative disciplines, a place for imaginative types who didn’t assimilate with the compartmentalized nature of academia.
There I found renegade artists, OpenGL hackers, disgruntled IT professionals, network engineers and all sorts of riffraff from other SJSU programs. Everyone collaborated on projects and contributed their respective talents. It just felt like the right place to be.
From what I remember, as early as 1994, people at CADRE were already philosophizing about a global art-and-technology event in Silicon Valley. It just seemed silly for all of these different creative academic disciplines and private sectors to exist separately from one another. It was obvious, at least to me, that they should be more interconnected.
Then the World Wide Web happened, and everything changed. Academic conferences emerged all over the globe, mostly dealing with critical theory, new media art, late capitalism and the advantages and disadvantages of how everything was intersecting.
I continued to lurk in the shadows at CADRE while working out of the Music Department with Allen Strange, my adviser, drinking pal and overall inspiration. He became president of the International Computer Music Association, and I became the administrative assistant, traveling to their international conference each year from ’94 to ’99. Like CADRE, the association’s mission was also to bring art and science together. Through that job, I met and drank with interesting folks all over the world—composers, music professors, computer scientists, video artists and audio engineers.
All of those endeavors collectively imploded at the end of 1999—the end of the century—and I realized that the best way to make use of the zonked variety of my life experiences would be to write about everything.
Journalism chose me, not the other way around. In 2006, I was excited to write a cover story for Metro on the first 01SJ Biennial, since it didn’t seem like anyone else in San Jose knew what it was. I guess it was my way of giving back. And I was thrilled to repeat that endeavor in 2008. Now my life has come full circle. Here we are in 2010, and the Biennial is upon us for the third time. I don’t need to build my own world. It’s already built.
01SJ Biennial
Sept. 16–19
All over San Jose
