DIY_Destruction

Chiptography: When was your first experience with Chiptune? 

DIY_Destruction: I was in high school and I was really into Super Metroid so I was listening to these OG remixes and I really liked it. I never really knew they did shows or things like that. Then I went to college for two years and when I started working in computers someone at work was like “Oh can you do a memory virus where it like shifts memory in RAM and makes it all messed up?" and I was like "Oh, so like bit shifting?" and they were like "Yeah!" I googled that and I came across Bit Shifter. I listened to the music and I was like "Holy shit, ok, this is phenomenal."

Chiptography: Where were you living at the time?

DIY_Destruction: Hicksville, Long Island with my parents. The first show was the Tank on a boat. Nullsleep, Bit Shifter, and Anamanaguchi played. It was one of those party cruise things that goes around the Statue of Liberty.

Chiptography: And that was your first show?

DIY_Destruction: That was my first show and I fell on top of Josh going down the stairs. He was very nice about it. I met Tony Ness that night too. The boat starts to rock back and forth like crazy during Anamanaguchi's set.

Bit Shifter performing at DIY_Destruction’s first chip show, the Chiptune Cruise on September 14th, 2007.

Chiptography: I remember that!

DIY_Destruction: I grabbed onto him and he just grabbed onto me and he's like, "I don't know man, I might have to hold onto you but if you go overboard you can grab onto me. It was nice. I got to know his mom a lot. 

Chiptography: Oh yeah?

DIY_Destruction: Yeah, he was always using my phone to call her. After Pulsewave he would forget to call her sometimes that he's coming home so on the way home I would get a phone call and it would be her, and I'm like, "Oh yeah, Tony's on his way. Don't worry.” She’s like, "Anthony never takes this long!" And then he would come through the door and she's said, "Oh- here he is!" They would play World of Warcraft together. I don't know if you knew that. 

Chiptography: No!

DIY_Destruction: Yeah, so they would play World of Warcraft together in separate rooms on headsets. Yeah... When his mom passed away, that was rough for him. 

Chiptography: He was really upset…. heartbroken.

DIY_Destruction: Yeah. And then he was living with his aunt and uncle I think. He was a fighter though. And it was quick so. 

Chiptography: I miss Tony. We were lucky to know him. 

Wall detail with polaroid of DIY_Destruction with friends, Bit Shifter and Hedonism Bit.

DIY_Destruction: I started going to Pulsewave regularly after that. Then I met Chris Burke (Glomag) when he did a Portal cover with Kris Keyser. He tried to crowd surf but it was in the basement of The Tank so his feet hit the roof and then hit me in the head. That was how Chris and I met.

Chiptography: When was it that you started participating in the shows and started making visuals?

DIY_Destruction: Oh man, it was I think one of the first shows was Disassembler and it was at this place in Brooklyn. It was this dark bar and I don't remember the name of it. 

Chiptography: And you were creating visuals under the name Invaderbacca.

DIY_Destruction: Yeah, I was really into Invader Zim.

Chiptography: And that's where it came from?

DIY_Destruction: My name in high school was "Jewbacca" and I was like, there's no way I can use that as a name. And then in gaming I always had the call sign "Invaderbacca" and I was like, you know that's kind of fun. It's a little ominous. So I did that for a while. 

Chiptography: You went by that moniker for many years. I was actually looking at the photographs I've taken of you and I was wondering why my photos didn’t go back further. Then I remembered you were Invaderbacca. When did you change it and why?

DIY_Destruction’s circuit-bent NES.

DIY_Destruction: A lot of the ideas for Invaderbacca just came from grungy video clips, a lot of which I was taking from other people's work, like other people's video's clips, other's style, movies and things like that. It's a lot of fun and there's a place in the scene and in art for it but I could never really do the effects really that well and the machines you need to really run stuff like that professionally are so high powered. I wanted to change the type of workflow and I started to use the NES and circuit bending. A lot of it was becoming just all DIY. I couldn't afford an Edirol Mixer. I was like, "You know what? I think it has feedback effects, a multiplier, and you can fade between inputs. I can probably just code that. I can just do it myself." And I did. I did it in pure data with help from Paris and at that point, it was just so different from what I had been doing so I had to come up with some type of name. I was taking other ideas, other pieces of hardware, things that I want to buy and I just couldn't. I was just figuring out a way to code it. I just thought, "Do It Yourself Destruction." It's very basic but that's where it came from. 

Chiptography: I love it. I've always been such a fan of your work. I really enjoy the layers and the color and it just really excites my brain. 

DIY_Destruction: A lot of times with visuals, people focus on having audio cues and making sure everything is right to the tempo, beat by beat, and I've noticed if like, you keep things quick enough and have patterns in different sections of it, people will look at it and create their own pattern. They'll look at that red thing that comes up every 4th beat and they'll connect to that. The same way that they'll connect to a chorus line from a song or connect to a solo. 

Chiptography: At the moment, you live in Brooklyn. You used to live in Manhattan, in the East Village. Where were you before that?

DIY_Destruction: Queens and then before that, Ronkonkoma. An hour and a half into the city each way. 

Chiptography: Wow. 

DIY_Destruction: Yeah, I went through a lot of anime and movies. That was kind of like where some of the love interest for Invaderbacca died down from the relationship I was in and from there I moved back in with my parents and that, yeah, that threw me into a whole... 

Chiptography: That was a really dark time for you. 

DIY_Destruction: Yeah, I was unemployed for two years. Reversed my whole sleeping schedule. It was weird. I think I went through every single Star Trek, every season of the new Doctor Who, all the Stargate TV shows, every sci-fi thing I've ever wanted to watch. I digested crazy ideas and stories. I don't regret it though. It was a fucked up time.

Chiptography: Sometimes those hard times in your life, they're really painful but once you get through them you can learn a lot about yourself.

DIY_Destruction: Yeah. Something I've been learning recently is owning who you are which is has been something new. 

Chiptography: How so? 

DIY_Destruction: I've spent so much time in relationships with people and you start to build your own personality around that person and your habits and the life that you build with them. You start to forget who you are. I think I've done that with every single person I've ever been with which is why I think all of it has failed. 

Chiptography: I think a lot of people can relate to that. Finding that balance is extremely difficult. 

DIY_Destruction: Well the thing is you know, people love people and they never want to admit that there was something wrong with them. They want to see that it was themselves. So that's what that is.

Incense and whiskey.

Chiptography: I wanted to ask you about your experience being adopted. Were you a baby or older?

DIY_Destruction: Mine was right at birth. I think it was just a circumstance of either couldn't have the kid or didn't want to. There's no documentation or if there is I never really asked. That's where my relationship with adoption really stopped. I never was bothered by it. I thought it was amazing. I have the general ignorance to be able to say, my habit is developed because of me. It's not my father's habit. I don't do this because my mom does. I don't get angry in the mornings because my grandpa was like that. I don't know those things. Everything that is me is my own. That's incredibly freeing and awful to deal with. My grandma told my brother that he was originally from Florida because he was adopted as well. And I'm from a woman in New Jersey which is very weird for me. When my brother told me, he didn't really give me an option. I was helping him build this play treehouse for his kid and he's like, "Hey yeah, Nanny told me. You wanna know?"  I was like "eh, not really 'cause you know, it's like this whole freedom thing" and he's like, "Yeah you're from a hairdresser in Jersey!" I'm like, "God, you're such a piece of shit!" Like what the fuck? I am happy he told me but I still don't care. It's one of those things where the person didn't wrong me. 

Chiptography: No, they actually did something really good for you. 

DIY_Destruction: Yeah! I don't feel there's a thank you needed. They were in a position. They had a choice. They made the choice and they live and do their own thing. And me, a result of that choice, I'm doing my own thing. That's really my relationship with it. I think adoption is a great thing. I still feel that it's a woman's choice. The idea of anything child-related and another person being involved, if they aren't half of DNA of that child, they have no say in anything. My family's a little different about it. They like, "You were a gift from God. We adopted you because you were abandoned." I don't know man. It might have just been another family. 

Bedroom detail with my 2020 Chiptography Calendar on the wall showcasing a photo of gwEm performing with visuals by DIY_Destruction.

Chiptography: Where do you see the chiptune community in 30 years? 

DIY_Destruction: I think at that point, wouldn't chiptune music be made on Macbook Pro chips? 

Chiptography: Or something that hasn't even been invented yet. 

 DIY_Destruction: I think the chip music community will be really interesting at that point ‘cause in 30 years realistically a lot of this hardware might just really start to fall apart. 

Chiptography: Well, it's funny you say that because a lot of musicians are creating compositions on "instruments" that are 30 years old. 

 DIY_Destruction: Yeah, but we don't have electronics from 70 years ago that are functioning and being used so we really don't know where it's going to go. Ideally, I see people taking the schematics and not doing those crazy improved ones but I see somebody taking the original NES schematics and just building it true to form. I think that's what's going to happen. NESs are going to be really hard to find. Or like Gameboys, well I don't know if the Gameboy will ever be hard to find. I don't even make music and I have six so I really don't think those are going to be hard to find ever. But Commodores and shit like that, and retro computers- that's where I think a lot of the music is going to die. Like the old retro computers that Carl does, OxygenStar and whatnot. He's gotta hold onto that ‘cause that stuff is getting thrown out or recycled or burned. There's a facility in Texas that's 5 acres large and the lease expired or they couldn't pay it anymore and all these people from around the country started going there trying to pick stuff up. It was a 5 acre sized warehouse with tractor-trailers just parked all next to each other, like 30 of them, filled with computers. The guy just kept collecting them and then the state started dumping them there. That stuff is going to be gone forever. The same shit's happening with like chipmusic things, at least in America. In Europe and Japan, they're a little bit better at preserving these things but here.... But I think chip music itself will still be here. No one is going to stop playing the games.

Chiptography: I wonder what it will sound like then.

DIY_Destruction: I went into Turntable Lab to pick up some records. I bought the Drab Majesty album and the guy was like, "Oh, if you like Drab Majesty, you'll love Korine." And I was like, "Yeah if you like Korine, you should totally listen to Trey Frey cause it's completely different." That's where I think a lot of chip music is going. I love seeing chip musicians progress and grow into newer things. Like Wet Mango, has this whole project now, Tree Skeleton. It's this interpretive dance beautiful show that she does and it is so far away from the other things that she's done and I love that. When my friends start making new things that's when I get really impressed. We can all make the same things after a while but every time someone makes something new they get so excited about it. It’s great to be able to be excited with them and validate it ‘cause that's all we're looking for. We get it from chip music easily through a lot of the culture and the connections that people have with it but then when you create that connection with them and then do something different that they're not used to and then getting the support from those same people, it is unbelievable. I've done visuals for other shows that aren't chip. This pop group, Gillian, they're awesome. It is just this nice pop-rock stuff and I and when I started to do visuals for them it was through, Kris Keyser. 

Chiptography: Oh wow! That’s so cool!

DIY_Destruction: He was friends with them and they were looking for someone to do video and step it up a notch but not have cliche type things and he suggested me. Doing visuals for them has now opened me up to working with different studios like this audio recording studio, King Killer. They want to build a visualist area to be able to have a place for the visualist to set their shit up, run the right cabling, have all the right connections which is taking the stuff that I do for my job and putting it into my art and passion.

Chiptography: Tell me about your professional career. 

DIY_Destruction: I'm working for The Mill, a subsidiary of Technicolor. I'm a systems engineer and I go from doing basic break-fix work (I can't log in/ my password's not working) to setting up 40 machines in the span of two days so they can be ready on Monday. 

Chiptography: What does The Mill do? What type of company is it?

DIY_Destruction: Post-production, VFX work, a lot of 2D and 3D work, some comp work. No sound- really just all video work. 

Chiptography: You're not doing any of the video work, right? You're just doing the IT support type of roles. 

DIY_Destruction: Yeah. I love that stuff and I want to learn more of it but that's more so my passion and I'm good at supporting the technology and those things. I'm good at that. 

Chiptography: You don't want to transition over to the creative side at some point? 

DIY_Destruction: Not really. I don't want to work with clients. I don't want to come up with a great vision and have a client be like, "That's great but no." I don't really take criticism like that very well so I don't feel like I would have a very long life span in that career. 

Chiptography:  I understand that a lot. I think that's part of why I moved to freelance event photography. 

DIY_Destruction: The thing that's nice is I'm the primary engineer for Mill East. They handle all the immersive technology, the VR stations they set up for Comic Con and the premiere for Watchmen. They did an augmented reality thing with hallow lenses and I got to help them with that which was a lot of fun. It's fly by the seat of your pants. One day it's "hey, fix my password" and then it's "We need to create an entire external network for us and we need it now." 

Chiptography: It sounds really challenging and intense but in a way that excites you. I've known you for a long time so I've seen you go through a lot of different phases in your professional life. I want to ask you about your experience now that you're in a job that is very fulfilling on so many levels. It's steady, you're financially comfortable, you're living in NYC and it gives you the freedom and flexibility to travel and pursue your own artistic career. That's the dream but this isn't where you've been all the time. 

DIY_Destruction: This is new. I feel greedy. 

Chiptography: Why? 

DIY_Destruction: It feels like a lot because people are finally respecting what I have to say. That's why I feel greedy. I feel like I should be doing something as a thank you.  

Chiptography: Do you feel guilty that you have happiness? 

DIY_Destruction: There's always guilt. I have a lot of guilt from past relationships and past things. 

Chiptography: You have this job. However, you got to it whether it was through your hard work or.... 

DIY_Destruction: It was hard work. I do know it was hard work. I know I'm good at what I do. It's just hard to take a compliment sometimes. It comes very easy. I've just been doing it for so long and it comes very easy to me.

Chiptography: When you work in a career that you're passionate about and you're genuinely interested in it, it doesn't feel like work. 

DIY_Destruction: That's the thing. It does not feel like work. 

Chiptography: But you don't have to feel guilty about that. 

DIY_Destruction: Yeah, I just know a lot of people have a lot of tougher jobs and they go through so much more, especially in the chipmusic community. 

Chiptography: I totally agree with that. I think everyone has their own path and their own journey. When you have something that's a blessing in your life you shouldn't feel guilty about it because you want that for everyone else. 

DIY_Destruction: Yeah, that's the thing. 

Chiptography: You mentioned you went to college. Did you graduate? 

DIY_Destruction: It was a two-year degree. I got associates in computer technology. It's an applied science degree, that's all. It's the only thing I did for two years there. It's just all computers. My dad had a friend that owned a computer company and I met with him briefly and he offered me a job the day after I graduated. That worked out pretty well. 

Chiptography: What was that job? 

DIY_Destruction: Shipping and receiving. I was handling UPS packages. 

Chiptography: You've come so far from working in shipping and receiving to where you are now. 

DIY_Destruction: There's still a lot I want to do though. 

Chiptography: Of course there is, but between then and now, you had a winding road of being employed, being unemployed, living with girlfriends, moving back home, moving out on your own.

DIY_Destruction: Yeah. It wasn't easy. 

Chiptography: I understand why you feel guilty but you deserve to be proud of where you are at this point in your life. Do you think that for you being in a relationship means you have to give up your own identity or compromise on your own identity? 

DIY_Destruction: No. I wasn't in a healthy relationship. I think people get into relationships with the best of intentions. That's the golden line but it's true. We all say we're going to support that person with the life that they're living now and we'll live a life together. Sometimes it doesn't get lost but sometimes it does. And that's what happened. My passions fell to the wayside because I felt responsible for taking care of people. Fixing things. Constantly fixing. I was trying to fix things that weren't necessarily broken but they just didn't exist. You can't fix something that's not there in the first place. 

Chiptography: What does that mean? What didn't exist? 

DIY_Destruction: Mutual respect for each other's passions. Interest in each other's passions. The person I was with wasn't into the things that I was and vice versa. How can you say to your partner, I don't want you going because you're not going to be supportive without starting a fight? That's what it came down to. You start to stop yourself from saying things. You start censoring yourself and from that, your artwork and your passions start to dwindle because you're censoring more and more and more. Eventually, you're just a highlight sheet of personality traits of what you once were. 

Chiptography: I think even in the best relationships, especially in the beginning, it's tricky to find that balance where you don't give up your own autonomy and you don't compromise on your own passions and pursuits. You're excited by the person. You want to spend every minute with them. You want to do what makes them happy and then months go by, sometimes years go by and you realize, oh crap I haven't even seen my own friends. I haven't even gone to see a concert of a band that I like because they're not into it and I'd rather just do something that they want to do. When you get in a committed relationship your priorities shift. It's part of life but I'd like to think there is a way to still remain who you are. I think for an artist especially, it's important to try to remain who you are.  

DIY_Destruction: To make it actually work, I think the most important part of it is to shift priorities but both people have to shift priorities. It's a give and take. The majority of my previous relationship issues was a lot of giving from me. My last relationship should have been over a long time ago. I just put a vice grip on it and didn't want to let go. I wanted to make sure the dogs were ok. I wasn't really sure if she could take care of the rent and things like that without me. 

Chiptography: As much as it sucked, It was also a comfortable, well- familiar situation for you. You’ve been brought up in a culture of “fixing” things. It started with your family dynamic when you were young and living in suburban Long Island. It was reinforced by the expectations of your friends and girlfriends in your adolescence and even now, as an adult, you have cultivated a career around fixing things, finding solutions, and taking care of other people. It’s so ingrained in your psyche that you feel guilty at the thought of having someone take care of you. Your art is the only place in your world where you don’t have to take care of anyone or anything. Your visuals allow you to explore technology and create visuals in a way that doesn’t fix anything. It allows you to be emotional. I really connect with your visuals because I also grew up with a family life where I was the fixer and when I look at your work, especially the abstract work, it taps into an emotional place within me. Do you see yourself as an artist?

Desk detail.

DIY_Destruction: I think art is something that people find and create. It's either an idea or it's an impression or it's a concept that somebody can take and make real. If you can take something that no one has done before that will make someone look at things differently, to me that can be art. Everyone can be an artist. It doesn't particularly make sense but I think that calling myself an artist is stupid because there are people who have really spent time going to school to like pursue that as a profession. My passion is art. My profession is computers and things like that. I want to get paid to do that. I don't want to necessarily want to get rich off of art. I like doing it.

Chiptography: You're equating money to success. 

DIY_Destruction: Well a lot of people do. I think that there's a lot the stuff in art that I just avoid. I feel like if I start calling myself an artist I'm going to start doing different things and looking at people's different projects which isn't bad but there's a lot of shit out there. If I spend my own time just creating, I really don't have to look at that really bad shit cause it depresses me. Everyone's art deserves being seen but a lot of people call themselves artists. 

Chiptography: A lot of people call themselves photographers too. 

DIY_Destruction: Oh my God, yeah. Actually... 

Chiptography: I'm taking some online photography courses and I'm looking at the edits that they're doing I think they’re awful! I really don't like their post-processing choices but you have to take it with a grain of salt. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder to some extent. The art I like is when I get a message from the artist about the world we live in or if it's something that brings me joy or it's something that is moving. I'm not very good at expressing myself with words but I do spend a lot of time looking at other people's artwork. I love going to museums. I love taking my time with it and reading about it and reading other people's perspectives on it. 

DIY_Destruction: Yeah, that aspect... I think I've just had too much exposure to pretentious art. I think that's a lot of the issue nowadays. 

Chiptography: You have a real talent for taking technology and using it to creating abstract visual imagery. I love abstract work so I think that someone who is more into realism may not appreciate it but from my perspective, I really do enjoy it. 

DIY_Destruction performing at Pulsewave Open Mic, July 2013.

DIY_Destruction: Well that's the thing. My abstract work is, out of lack of for a better word, talent to create things that I want to. I like creating abstract things but I've had a ton of ideas. If I could just draw, it would have been awesome. I have a tablet in my closet. I tried doing it. I can't do it. I tried creating music. I have a Gameboy and a nanoloop cartridge. I started doing that and it literally turned into Invaderbacca with his video clips. I did one open mic and I was like, "NOPE!" I'm just envious of people who are able to take a blank sheet of paper and create something beautiful that way. I do not have that ability. 

Chiptography: But art isn't about that. I think it's about being able to change someone's perception of the world. To make something where someone else will come along and see it differently. 

DIY_Destruction: That's part of what I really try to get. Specifically, I like using the circuit-bent NES. I like to take something that someone's familiar with and give it this dismorphication that they may not be comfortable with and then blending that with other video elements. I don't like putting something on the screen that someone is familiar with. I don't want them to feel like they are in a familiar place. I want them to be somewhere different. You came out to a show to see something different. I'm going to put you somewhere different. I've been going through a lot of my files recently and trying to organize shit just ‘cause I keep thinking of it more and more. It's 10 years of just data. I'm looking at a lot of the video clips and I'll use them sometimes, glitch it, make it abstract, do my thing. But they're from 2009! And I'm like, "Mike! You can't use this shit anymore." So I'm picking up my Nintendo again and I'm like, shit, I need to start doing more analog stuff. Not necessarily all analog, but use the tools I have. I don't need a laptop. It goes back to the idea of like everyone is a photographer now but some people feel like they don't need a camera sometimes per se. But that also goes right back into chip music where you're working within your own restrictions. I think that is art. Working within restrictions whether it be analog, digital, emotional, environmental. 

Chiptography:  I think that's a very natural experience for an artist. You have to try new things and figure out what you like and perhaps more importantly, what you don’t like. I look back at the work that I've done even in my first book and I can't look at it without cringing. I hate all the pictures that I've taken in that era of my life but you grow, you change, you get better at your craft. Your artistry is that it's you. It's not only the limitations because you can take the same exact equipment and take another individual with the same exact knowledge and you'll get a different result. 

DIY_Destruction: Well yeah but that's people. You put a person in a corner and they're going to fight a different way. That's what it is. 

View DIY_Destruction’s projects and archive of live performances.

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Photos by Chiptography © 2019.