"There is a creepy utopianism developing with Airworld that is no
accident." –Jennifer McCoy

Interview: Jennifer and Kevin McCoy
By Josephine Bosma

Airworld (http://www.airworld.net) is a new project by Jennifer and
Kevin McCoy, commissioned by Gallery 9/Walker Art Center with funding
from the Jerome Foundation. Josephine Bosma interviewed the McCoys via
email in July 1999 for Gallery 9.

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Josephine Bosma: What got you started in electronic art? Were you doing
any other kind of artwork before it, and if so, was a shift to
electronic art necessary in the development of your work, or was it a
new direction for you?

Jennifer McCoy: Both of us come from experimental filmmaking. Kevin also
had a lot of background in computers and with music, so using electronic
media was a way to handle all these concerns in an integrated way. Both
of us have made interactive performances and installations as well as
single-channel videotapes. When we started making work together, about
1990, video seemed like a way to really dive into the image formally in
terms of the image-processing tools that were available. Also, we are
both interested in conceptual projects, and the way video began in the
United States seemed to fit more with conceptual work than anything
going on in the film world.

Kevin McCoy: We studied a lot of critical theory, too. I first studied
philosophy.

JB: Are new media the most interesting choices for conceptual artwork
today? If yes, why is this so for you? What are the specific qualities
of electronic media that make it useful for conceptual artwork?

Kevin: I have always felt an affinity for working electronically because
it is such a fast way of working. Speed is the essential thing; working
with images/sounds at the same speed that you think about them. There is
an instantaneousness of the electronic image that echoes the
instantaneousness of thinking. For me, this is what makes electronics
good ground for concept-based work–it is a different kind of conceptual
art than the conceptual art of the '60s, but I still think it is an apt
description for it.

JB: How would Airworld be perceived by, say, an audience that goes to
your exhibition, but also surfs the Web?

Kevin: The piece intentionally adopts a very designed look. For the
non-art viewer who happens by, there will be little initially to suggest
it is not a commercial site. But then the poppy sound loop starts; the
voice starts reading texts that don't make much sense; crappy images of
products and businesspeople move by, intercut with images of people in
strange suits making cryptic gestures. . . . People will be confused.
Since the only user-driven functionality is to either move between
categories or hit the "reinvent" button, people will realize quickly
that they can regenerate new nonsensical messages at will. We like how
this positions the viewer toward that commercial culture, and I think it
will make for a good experience.

For the show [Airworld] up at Gallery 9/Walker Art Center, there is no
other part of the project beyond the banner ads and the website, but in
developing these ideas they have expanded to a number of different
forms. These forms will be presented in other "versions" of Airworld at
other exhibition spaces. We have made a videotape (called Airworld
Probe) that will be shown at a screening here in New York City in
August, and we are working on a performance that will happen in
September.

JB: Your work seems to have a strong performance aspect. Your text about
Airworld reads a bit like a description of a play. It reminded me of JET
LAG, by Diller + Scofidio and the Builders Association, which dealt with
the effect of endless air travel on human life. (JET LAG was shown at
the 1998 Dutch Electronic Art Festival.) Could Airworld be compared to
theater? What time span does it cover? And is Airworld in any way an
extension of your previous work?

Jenn: Airworld is really a new project and is under development on the
Web, in video work, and in some sculptural projects that involve the
fashion design we've done for the project. We see it, at this point, as
open-ended. What began as a mock company is turning into a real
organization from which we can critique global economy and feel more
agency as artists than we have felt working independently in the past.
We've involved a wide range of talented friends and electronic neighbors
in this project.

As we told Steve Dietz, we are interested in what will happen with
merging video and the Net. We are both interested in ways in which the
Net can provide new and more successful distribution for video projects.

Kevin: The most important part of the work is the searching and the
combining of algorithms. The results of this process are presented
within a smooth, slick (corporate) frame. The time of the piece is the
real time of the Internet. The idea of working in real time has been
important to our work since the earliest days. It is another tie-in to
performance.

JB: What do you mean when you say, "The most important part of the work
is the searching and the combining of algorithms"?

Kevin: As artists, we are providing two things to the audience through
Airworld . I would call the one a frame and the other a "curation." The
Airworld frame is the evocation of a corporate presence through language
and graphic layout. This "sets the stage." Subsequently, the most
important things are the texts/images/sounds that pass through that
frame. All of this "content" in Airworld is generated dynamically. It is
the product of software that searches, collects, and collages based on
parameters that we have defined. The tone, the feel, and the resonance
of the work comes from these montages. In this way, we are functioning
like curators and it is here that the "artist's hand" comes in. The
basic structure of these combinatory possibilities is what we control.
This is the primary question for the artist in interactive art: What
kinds of combinatory possibilities did the artist create, and what is
the tone and implication of those possibilities?

JB: I always get a bit uncomfortable when people say they want to use
the Web for distribution. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to put the
exploration of video in the Internet/World Wide Web environment first?

Jenn: We agree completely! "Distribution" is perhaps a tough word. The
point is this: With the Web there are new possibilities for creating and
transmitting work (distributing, if you will). We have no interest is
using the Web to send out preset videos. Instead, there are other things
to explore. Airworld is an example of that. The video that each person
sees is edited on the fly from a collection of basic sequences. They are
not pre-edited in any way. They are dynamically generated. We are not
even providing much of the material. Most of the images come to Airworld
through a search engine, just like the texts do. In this way, Airworld
samples the current, banal state of business on the Internet. This is
possible only by using the Internet. It is completely specific to the
medium and represents a new model for creating and transmitting work.

JB: With Airworld you choose the atmosphere and style of corporate
business. This has a tradition in net art. There was the American
Express site and list by Heath Bunting; the 7-11 site and list by Jodi,
Bunting, Alexei Shulgin, and others; and groups like RTMARK, which uses
a complete corporate structure (to name just a few). The difference
between these projects and yours seems to be that whereas they use
corporate style as a mask or mockery, something that is outside the
artists' world, you express the fear that we are already silently
"incorporated" ourselves. Aren't you placing doom over your head with
such an assumption?

Jenn: I think we are incorporated and it is naive to think otherwise. If
we weren't there'd be no way to really understand the situation.
Practically speaking, I think most net artists in the United States work
within the corporate world to earn a living; they use its tools and
benefit symbiotically from technological advances made there. Doom,
however, is not on our minds too much.

There is a creepy utopianism developing with Airworld that is no
accident. We shot a lot of footage at the World Trade Center in New York
City and at La Defense in Paris trying to capture a bit of the zest and
excitement of progress that inspired these (OK, doomed) projects. On a
larger level, we love being artists but admit that, in the United
States, artists occupy a highly marginal place in society. Opinions
about social change are not generally solicited from artists, who are,
oddly, usually content to push from the "outside." As I said before,
creating our Airworld network of people allowed us access to the
excitement of the "start-up" without the baggage of money and success.

Kevin: I don't think there is as much distance between them and us as
you are suggesting. If we really believed that we were all fully
"incorporated" already we wouldn't be doing art; we'd be working and
trying to make a bunch of money at some Internet start-up! But I do
agree with the statement that we are already "incorporated" in the sense
that it is difficult to escape the predominant economic models. The easy
adoption of mockery doesn't really set one apart from anything. I am
struck by how thoroughly the corporate world has adopted previously
"avant-garde" attitudes. Mockery and masking are now basic modes of
operation at most media corporations. You have to be a lot more
sophisticated now. As a result, our stance is very subtle. In our net
art projects we don't announce anything. We try to present the material
in an unassuming manner. Playing it straight. But what we present I
think then leads to confusion. Confusion is the real weapon against the
corporate world. Brand identity is king in the marketplace today–brand
confusion must be avoided at all costs! We like confusion. Jodi is
confusing, but people know right away that it is something strange. The
strangeness of Airworld sneaks up on them.

JB: With your banner ads you perform a kind of counter-contamination,
but from a sick body. You act from the role of the oppressed rather than
the attacking party.

Jenn: I think the banners are funny and motivational in a kind of
self-help way. That's why I like that you said "sick body." "Sick
building." All those ways in which oppression happens silently. We have
a studio residency in the World Trade Center now and I think of that all
the time. I guess it isn't an overt attack … it's pressure.

Kevin: The banner ads are intentionally very ambiguous and obscure. We
could have opted for a "Barbara Kruger" approach and made the ads with
clear, confrontational messages. Instead, our messages are strange: "Are
you lost? Reorganize" "Option: business as usual" "Welcome, we are air."

I imagine people will be confused, but this confusion is an interruption
in the monologue of the market. Because they are banner ads, they will
turn up only in places that accept banner ads–that is, places that are
already commercialized. So I don't think that they are coming from an
oppressed position.

I think our net art is most related to RTMARK, but with a difference of
intention. The RTMARK creators are activists. When they copy the Shell
Oil site, they use it as a vehicle for presenting real
counter-information; the same with their gwbush.com site. They draw
attention to the powerful presence that the corporate world has in the
democratic process, the environment, etc. We would agree with them about
the power of the corporate sphere, but we are not activists in the same
sense. Rather than present tactical counter-information, we just try to
show that the corporate media sphere is not a seamless entity, that
there are cracks and interruptions there.

Our idea is that personal freedom is in those cracks and interruptions.
So presenting strange, confusing messages under the guise of a corporate
model suggests that there is a sphere outside of the corporate world. At
this time, this is an important idea. I suppose we could be critiqued as
being not overtly political enough, but I don't agree. And I certainly
see our projects in solidarity with those more overt political projects
such as RTMARK or floodnet/e.d.t.

JB: Another quote from your text: "The use of banner ads to distribute
Airworld across the network will not constitute the only Web presence of
the project. The Airworld website itself will also use formal devices to
underscore conceptual issues of content. The site will be composed of
several sections, mirroring the usual corporate site architecture." With
this in mind, where does the most important part of your work take
place?

Jenn: In the language/jargon of the site and in the implication of
another layer of business (the sci-fi expert team scenario).

Kevin: All of the text in the site and in the banner ads is created
automatically. For the banners we have a phrase generator that combines
basic words that we find to be "power words" used in
business/motivational contexts. The text at Airworld.net comes from the
business sites that host the ads, but it's cut up and combined. The
breakups and nonsense of the text are crucial as they are the
"interruption" of the corporate monologue.

The text in the demo, which you viewed, was made early on. At that point
we weren't collaging the text very much at all. We realized that it was
too clean, not ironic enough. We are implementing these changes in the
new version of the "jargon machine" (that's what we call the perl script
that harvests and mixes the texts). This idea of automatic content
creation is a very important idea for us.

JB: Why is it so important?

Kevin: This is just starting to come into the horizon of our thoughts
and work, but it is becoming more and more important. The idea of
automatic content creation is the next problem brought on by global,
real-time computer networks. The speed and capacity of these networks
are outstripping the human ability to provide material to supply them.
This happened to the general economy before it happened to the media.
For the economy to continue to grow at expected rates, mechanisms for
buying and selling had to become automated, abstracted, and accelerated.
The sophistication of electronic trading networks matured well before
the Internet. Now the net, as the vehicle for the information economy,
is catching up. There is a real need on the part of media businesses to
create abstract, machine-driven algorithms that can produce material
that is readable and meaningful to humans. It is cheaper, faster, and
more efficient for business. The media are the last refuge of the craft
trades: Writers, editors, artists, musicians, and filmmakers are like
the blacksmiths, carpenters, potters, etc., of previous centuries.

They are manufacturing the basic raw materials of the economy, and for
that economy to continue to grow, the processes need to be automated. I
am just outlining a certain line of analysis here. I am not in any way
in support of this trend, but I do see it fast approaching–even if we
are in the earliest stages of automated content creation. It is another
facet of the post-human world we are entering (the most avant-garde
stance to take today is to be a humanist). As an artist I want to
explore this trend. By trying to create such systems I feel like I am
showing their limitations and, at the same time, putting myself in this
future world in order to report back on what it is like.

Jenn: Airworld.net will recombine playlists of video and audio on the
fly from a database of images we've made and appropriated. It's harder
than we thought.

JB: What is harder than you thought?

Kevin: First, I think Jenn's comment was technical here. It is really
hard right now to dynamically generate playlists. It is taking some time
and effort to make this thing work the way we had envisioned.

But more important, the reason we are concerning ourselves with
corporate culture at all is the fact that, at the level of language,
there is an incredible leveling-out and equalization happening there.
The fact that you can sample from so many spheres of business and it all
more or less sounds the same is a disturbing trend. Why is it that you
can talk about finance, travel, computer technology, and fashion all in
the same way?

In some ways it's like what Orwell pointed out in 1984–by controlling
the language, reducing the amount of words, making a "low resolution
language," you are taking away a lot of options for resistance. We want
to fight that.

Jenn: As it is developing, Airworld will be a living site that will
process and handle as much content as is available from the sites it
feeds on. It will combine text from other sites, video from us, and
images pulled by using search terms like "networks," "lines of flight,"
"distribution," "hubs," "soft architecture," and "global capital." As
the piece has come along, we have become much more interested in simply
putting these words together with their net representations to see what
the machine creates.

Kevin: Airworld is evolving to be a series of small projects: The banner
ads, the website, a videotape, an interactive video installation,
probably a photo project, too. We have consistently worked across
several mediums during our artistic lives.

As usual with our work, our ideas are boiled down to a small, dense soup!

[First published by Gallery 9/Walker Art Center for Airworld by Jennifer
and Kevin McCoy. Copyright 1999 by Josephine Bosma.]