FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

User Preferences: Tech Q&A With Nullsleep

Each week we chat about the tools of the trade with one outstanding creative to find out exactly how they do what they do.

Each week we chat about the tools of the trade with one outstanding creative to find out exactly how they do what they do. The questions are always the same, the answers, not so much. This week: Nullsleep.

The Creators Project: Who are you and what do you do?
Nullsleep: My name is _____________Jeremiah Johnson.///. I’m a computer musician and artist based in Brooklyn, NY producing and performing under the name Nullsleep. In 1999, while an undergrad at Columbia University, I founded 8bitpeoples, a low-tech music/art collective ██████████████ █████ ███████. I studied at the Columbia Computer Music Center from 2006-2007 before entering New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program where I recently obtained my Masters, and now have a position as a Resident Researcher. Since 2006 ████, I have been a Founding Partner and Co-Curator of Blip Festival, an annual, international music festival which showcases chip musicians and visualists from around the world.

Advertisement

My work embraces the politics of appropriation, destructive processes, failure, and the tension between order and chaos. I explore this through the use / misuse / abuse of obsolete consumer electronics and by employing the native languages used by early-generation Internet users, such as ASCII art and animated GIFs. As a musician, I primarily use 8-bit videogame consoles, ████████████ ██████ ██ ██████████████████████ working with these devices gives me more direct &&_ complete control than I would have using their modern counterparts, at the cost of higher chances of ////// , . ,,; ,,,, FAILURE## should they be pushed beyond their more limited technical resources.

The man-machine interface, specifically its shortcomings and moments of failure, and the ways in which it impacts communications1q `, is of interest to me. Failure is important because it breaks us from our expected trajectories to provide us with altered perspectives and moments of clarity. The true nature of things is revealed in their disintegration ..,, . ;., ░▒▓▁▆▇%;⍀⌿⌞⍀__ \\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\ ,_________//___ ||| ████████████████ ████ ██ ████████ ███████████████████.,; /. ░▒▓ ⌜⍀_▁▂▆▅▁⌿= ___________ ‘,-’,,,.‘\’\_..,, . ;., ░▒▓▁▆▇%;⍀⌿⌞⍀_ .-⌞⌢⌣⌜\ \ – : /

What kind of hardware do you use?
For music projects and performances, I use Nintendo Game Boys running LSDJ along with an MFB-503 drumcomputer and a Korg Monotron ████████████. I've created interactive video works for the Nintendo Entertainment System as well, such as EAT SHIT (2008) and DATA SPILLS (2009), which are based on themes of data corruption and destruction, respectively. These required an EPROM programmer to write code to the memory chips inside of existing game cartridges. For BLACK BOX (2010), a video installation that displays the last words collected from cockpit voice recordings on flights that crashed between 1962 and 2009, I utilized an Arduino combined with a video-output shield. ██████████████████████ ███████████ ███ ██████ ████████████ I accumulate monitors. CRTs are preferable over LCDs for displaying video works because of the intrinsic characteristics of the images that they produce: the visible scanlines and the glow of the phosphor.

Advertisement

What kind of software do you use?
LSDJ / TEXT EDITORS / HEX EDITORS / COMPILERS / ████████ / EMULATORS / █████ PHOTOSHOP / IRC CLIENTS / ███████ FIREFOX / ██████ CHROME / █████ MAIL / PERL SCRIPTS / USENET READERS / BITTORRENT CLIENTS / MP3 ENCODERS / COMPRESSION ALGORITHMS

What piece of equipment can you simply not live without?
This question implies a sort of fetishization of the object and I think that idea deserves more attention >> the psychology of our \/-dependence-/\ on technological devices. We exist within a flood~///``` of information that is filtered either [for] or [by] us. On ███████, there are patterns and trends which emerge that might direct or influence my creative path from day-to-day. Additionally, my projection into that space creates a form of feedback where my input may be picked up, shared and recycled back into the collective flow. My work is communication-centric. It's about the information that's passed along and ██ ███████ that's lost in the process of transmission. ████ ██ ████████ █████ ████████████ might be the only sound ███████.

We've become so accustomed to the conveniences of modern technology, the smartph_ne in particular, (()) ____ and our always-on connectivity. A new technological inequality is being bred, one in which we have two choices: either embrace the convergence fully or forcibly remove ourselves from the societal structure in which it exists.

Advertisement

"My mother was a restorer, she repaired broken things. I don't do that. I destroy things. I cannot go the straight line. I must destroy, rebuild, destroy again. My rhythm is not the same. My mother moved in a straight line: I go from one extreme to the other."
– Louise Bourgeois

The more time you spend with a piece of equipment, the more attached you become to it and come to understand the ways in which it works, but your process can also become so shaped by it that you can lose perspective. I’ve spent so long working with the Game Boy as a tool for musical composition that, in some ways █████ ████████, I think that tearing myself away from it could be the best thing I could possibly do for myself, creatively.

If money were no object, how would you change your current set up?
//
\\\
///// What does ████████ <><>
SOURCES>> look like? ///////////////////////_____
_____///
\\
/////
\\\
███████████
████████████████████████████████
████████████████████have t // // ,. .. █
███████sitting around ████████████████████████████
███████████████████████ (( ___//___, .. ████████more time.
██████ ___ /? Disr///upt the path of packets thru the net|||||w||o|||r||||| |||k||| | | / / \ | ?

███████████ / /THOUGHT EXPERIMENT FOR CREATING NEW WORKS ///
I would poison the routing tables on the Internet, just throw it into complete chaos. Do it continuously. URL requests would return unexpected results, different each time. You'd send off your packet from node.A toward node.B and the moment it hits a router it would just head for node.999999.9_9&T^//,;;___))). Out onto The Network, direction dictated by RANDom_functions();

Advertisement

No rationale for navigating the connections on the Internet.

We are living more and more of our lives through our digital presence, this scenario would be the equivalent of being thrown into a total blackout, shouting and hoping to get a response from someone you know, but ending up interacting with people and things you would otherwise never have come into contact with. Progress through
/// detachment /// __________________________ and continual adaptation, but without any ability to accumulate history, constantly exposed to new experiences, unable to establish relationships because co/nnections are ephemeral,, .\\. The Network becoming a truly collective organism as identity is rendered meaningless and the individual is annihilated entirely.

“There are eyes everywhere. No blind spot left. What shall we dream of when everything becomes visible? We’ll dream of being blind.”
— Paul Virilio

Is there any piece of technology that inspired you to take the path you did?
Computer music was very present during my formative period – ringing out from consoles such as the Atari /|\ 2600, the NES [?], and Game Boys +.. // S_o_m_e_t_h_i_n_g about those raw digital sounds, a different language, the music of the machines. I wanted to speak——-through——>them but I didn't have access to the tools or the knowledge I needed. The Internet gave me the means. I was able to find others with similar interests && explore the ways in_which a person could comm.unicate with a m4chine, take the voice of the machine and imbue it with human qualities. I think of it as less of a user/tool relationship &&* more of a man/machine collaboration.

Early --_ digital =_—-_ hardware is unique because the sounds are so stripped down and bare, the unmasked voice of the electron, ████. Music produced on modern hardware doesn't belong to The Machine anymore – it has lost its identity, it is too far removed from the Original_Signal. My desire to give voice to The Machine is born out of recognition of the impending convergence. Our networked mobile devices have already become like prosthetics for us. They fill the role of an organ that we haven't yet biologically evolved on our own. My work seeks to give voice to this new form, embracing the union.

What is your favorite piece of technology from your childhood?
QBASIC / AOHELL / NES / CASIO SK-1 / RC CARS / LEGOS / THE VCR / SEGA CD ///_____///// / ███████ / ███ /_█████████████████__ ______ _; ,, /

What fantasy piece of technology would you like to see invented?
Teleportation devices. I think we're actually close to accomplishing this, but not in the way that it's typically presented in sci-fi with our atoms being disassembled here[ . ] and then instantly reassembled there[ . ] ////// Instead we have sidestepped the issue of transporting mass, while focusing instead on the transmission of energy and [[[presence]]] via telecommunications technologies. We can now project our presence across vast distances virtually instantly, and even exist in multiple disparate locations simultaneously within the same moment. The next level involves increasing the ubiquity of the (.((()))networked cameras/mics/screens) and simulating the physicality of this experience with tactile feedback arrays or neural stimulation schemes.

photo © Declan Kuch 2010