1. SO... WHO ARE YOU? TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF! SOME CORE OF TRUTH WOULD BE NICE, BUT PLEASE FEEL FREE TO BE COLOURFUL...
Adrian Greville-Giddings, Imprint 27 (for purposes of any kind of digital authorship), Kevin (for reasons of my own). MA Book Arts, BA Graphic Design/Sculpture for what they're worth (increasingly useful, strangely). Sometime bar manager, cigar merchant and butcher. Very Bald. Founded the CUNABULA Press as an Imprint to publish my book works which along with membership of POLIS led to www.cunabulapress.com - the space where I try to collect my thoughts and a selection of my work.
2. WHAT DOES POLIS MEAN TO YOU, IF ANYTHING? GO ON, GUESS, EXTRAPOLATE...
see - polis.cunabulapress.com/polis_def.html
3. DO YOU HAVE ANY PARTICULAR INTEREST IN VIRTUAL REALITY/VIRTUAL WORLDS, OR GENERAL THEMES/DEPICTIONS OF URBAN SPACE?
Yes, especially working in and modeling conceptual spaces. Have recently begun working with a neologism 'Gebrauchsrealität' or 'Utility Reality' (GR) a way of communicating subjective reality (the space of imagination) using a synthesis of VRML, image and text. I see GR spaces not as simulations but just as real as objective reality.
4. DO YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE AN ARTIST, EITHER PRINCIPALLY OR AMONG OTHER THINGS?
No. Well, sort of, I got a lot of stick for this answer from Amon Zero and sent him an email saying I thought of myself as a publisher of 'communication structures' which I still hold to.
When I was on my BA we had to categorize ourselves in an essay quite early on and I decided on the term Artificer - 1. One who makes by art or skill; esp. a craftsman ... 3. gen. Maker, manufacturer 4. transf. Contriver, inventor. (Cf. Architect.) 5. One who practices any art; a savant. 6. An artful person; a fraud.
Both are kind of useful ideas but the way I work and what I work on are always changing, Artist will have to do I guess, for simplicity's sake (don't say I told you so).
5. IF YOU ARE AN ARTIST, DO YOU HAVE ANY PLANS FOR ART WORKS (OBJECTS, ACTIONS, WHATEVER) THAT WOULD EXPLORE POLIS THEMES OR IDEAS?
Check out the node - polis.cunabulapress.com/index - for current projects. Working on a City design project ATM - part VRML interface, part structural musing
6. WHAT ARTFORMS DO YOU CONSIDER MIGHT BE RELEVANT OR OF INTEREST TO POLIS?
All of them.
7. WHAT IDEAS FROM ANY NON-"ART" FIELD DO YOU THINK MIGHT BE RELEVANT OR OF INTEREST TO POLIS?
Deconstructivist architecture, Cut-ups, looping, sampling, linking, hypertext/narrative...
8. DO YOU KNOW THE DADA, FLUXUS, OR BEAT MOVEMENTS DO YOU SEE ANY PARALLELS BETWEEN THOSE AND WHAT POLIS MIGHT BECOME, OR ANY INTERESTED LESSONS THEY MIGHT HAVE TO TEACH US?
Yes, yes and yes; some elements; Large Glass doesn't necessarily mean pint, Yoko Ono does serve a useful purpose, heroin is a creative resource.
9. ANY OTHER MOVEMENTS WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT? THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE "ART" MOVEMENTS...
Bowel movements? (sorry, couldn't help it), Neue Sachlichkeit.
10. IN YOUR OPINION, WHAT PLACE DOES ORGANIZED LINEAR MUSIC HAVE IN POLIS SOUNDSCAPES, IF ANY?
I think as a starting point OLM is very important but with advances in technology the ability (or maybe necessity) to move on from there is clear. For instance VRML allows you to have simultaneous tracks playing from different locations in the scene (proximity to the location of the sound increases volume) so you could have an environment where a new track is mixed by the three dimensional position of your Avatar in relation to these sound sources in real time.
11. WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IN THE POLIS MANIFESTO? DO YOU THINK THE MANIFESTO SHOULD BE TEXT ONLY? MULTIMEDIA? SUGGESTIVE OR EXPLICIT?
The three we have on the hub are good - they flesh out different ways of seeing the ongoing project.
12. NAME ONE THINKER (OR DOER) WHO YOU FEEL SHOULD BE OF PARTICULAR INTEREST TO POLIS? HELL, NAME A BUNCH OF THEM IF YOU LIKE...
Georges Perec, author etc. A Void, Life A Users Manual... tomato design group www.tomato.co.uk - you'll need shockwave but it's worth it just for the menu!
13. DOES POLITICS HAVE ANY PLACE IN POLIS?
Not party politics but I think that politics in one form or another inevitably has a place in everything.
14. DO YOU THINK THERE SHOULD BE A DEDICATED POLIS WEBSITE, OR A DISTRIBUTED NET? OR BOTH? OR SOME OTHER ALTERNATIVE?
I think we should keep the present structure of the hub with individual nodes linked to it and add links from node to node if appropriate. I also think each node should have a link back to the hub - not just the back button.
15. DO YOU KNOW ANY PROGRAMMING/SCRIPTING LANGUAGES PARTICULARLY JAVA OR VRML? IF NOT, WOULD YOU LIKE SUPPORT IN LEARNING FROM MEMBERS OF POLIS?
I let software do the bulk of my writing for me, learning VRML as we speak.
16. DO WE CARE ABOUT THINGS LIKE HACKING, AS A GROUP? SHOULD WE BE ENCRYPTED FOR ANY REASON?
I don't care about hacking it would be annoying, but also, I think, flattering in a way. As long as we all keep up to date archives of our sites it shouldn't be a problem. I don't feel we should be encrypted.
17. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN TRANSHUMANISM, OR EVEN KNOW OR CARE WHAT IT IS?
Having read Greg Egan especially Schild's Ladder running an acorporeal version or two of myself does have its appeals
18. DO YOU KNOW ANY OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE INTELLIGENT, CREATIVE, AND MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN JOINING THE POLIS GROUP? IF SO, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO TELL THEM ABOUT US, TELL US ABOUT THEM, FORWARD THIS MAIL, WHATEVER SEEMS APPROPRIATE...
a.) Yes, b.) Yes c.)Not at the moment - but will pass the word to likely candidates.
19. HAVE YOU SEEN "EVENT CITIES" 1 OR 2 BY BERNARD TSCHUMI (THEY'RE OBLIQUE ARCHITECTURE COFFEE-TABLE ART BOOKS)
Yes, saw them at college - nice! Also of interest - "mmm... skyscraper i love you" by Karl Hyde and John Warwicker from Tomato, part of the development for Underworld's "dubnobasswithmyheadman"
20. ANY OTHER THOUGHTS, ANYTHING YOU'D LIKE TO ADD?
Been looking into Sir Karl Popper's theory of three domains: World 1 (the world of physical objects and processes), World 2 (our psychological states), and World 3 (the world of abstract products of the mind that are not reducible to our psychology). As soon as I can get hold of a copy of Objective Thought I'll be able to tell if it has any bearing on my ideas about GR.