2xAA

Chiptography: I'm sitting in London with Sam Wray, who is a chiptune musician under the name 2xAA and also visual artist under the name NO_SIGNAL. How did chiptune find you? 

2xAA: It's a funny story really. I moved between primary and secondary school, like age 11/12, so I had to get into a new friend group in the new school. That took a while initially, so I spent a lot of my lunchtimes and breaks in the computer rooms on the internet. I think when I was age 13 or 14 I stumbled across chip music online. I saw a video or something and I was like, "Ah, that's a sound that I don't really recognize. That sounds cool." It wasn't video game music, it was chiptune. I never had an old 8-bit console when I was a kid. My first console was a Game Boy Advance when I was 12. I delved deeper and found 8bitpeoples, then I found more communities online. I stumbled across it by accident really. I took my mp3 player which had a slide-out usb connector and plugged it in the school computers, downloaded all the chip music and listened to it on my way home and to school and just all the time really. 

Chiptography: Do you remember some of the first artists you were listening to? 

2xAA: The first one that ever stood out to me was gwEm actually. I really liked Green Day and My Chemical Romance when I was in my early teens so gwEm stood out to me 'cause he's got a really punky vibe. It was actually "Live From Hell" with him and Counter Reset. If you haven't heard it, it's really good. Years later I spoke to gwEm backstage at Superbyte 2012 and said to him, "That's the album that got me into chiptune. It's so cool that we can finally talk." He said, "That was a university project from one of my friends." I was like, "What do you mean?" He was like, "All of the crowd is completely fake on that." That blew my mind because at age 13/14, I listened to this album and I thought, "Wow- that's chiptune. This roaring crowd- wow!" 

Chiptography: You had this image in your mind with gwEm playing to this big crowd but it was all digitized and fabricated. 

2xAA: Absolutely. Coupling that with Blip Festival videos and the larger festivals around that time, I thought that's how it goes. That's chiptune. I hadn't been to a proper chiptune gig before Superbyte 2012. That was my first big one. 

Chiptography:  When did you start making music? 

2xAA: I was around 14 or 15 years old. I got into it quite quickly. I was fiddling around with stuff from the DS, some homebrew applications like NitroTracker. I bugged my parents, "Can I get this LSDj cartridge for my birthday?" My dad was like, "No, I don't know what that is. It looks dodgy." We didn't have broadband at home so my parents were very much, “let's not buy stuff from online.” I convinced them and got a cartridge. 

Left: White-shelled Game Boy modded by Joe Bleeps. Right: Glass Game Boy diorama, a specially commissioned graduation present from Sam’s mum.

Chiptography: Were you playing music before that? Did you study instruments?

2xAA: I was studying guitar from age 9 and keyboard from even earlier than that. I was in a youth music group of about 80 people in my hometown. It's a charity funded local council-run thing called Plymouth Musical Activities Club, PMAC for short. I did that from age 9-18 and stayed on as staff afterward when I got to be too old to be in the group. 

Chiptography: Were you doing your own compositions as well? 

2xAA: Not really until I got into trackers and the Game Boy stuff. It has a low barrier of entry. At the time, Game Boys weren't too hard to find or that expensive to buy. They're still not too expensive but I think I probably picked up my first Game Boy to use as a musical instrument for £20 or maybe less. One with a case and all the accessories, that might be harder to find now. I put in the pro-sound mod myself, so it was relatively inexpensive to get a portable music tracker. My parents would drive me around quite a lot for school or if we're going away somewhere. We were always in the car. Having a portable music workstation in the back of the car when you don't have to think about where you're going, you can just go for it. That's how I started writing stuff.

Chiptography: When did you get into doing visuals? 

2xAA: This one is quite a different story. I started doing visuals in a hack week for young people across the UK, called Young Rewired State. It was a small, week-long hackathon across the UK. If you're between ages 9 and 18, you were either mentored or worked with people that were designers or software engineers and over the week learn to code or build something within a team. At the end of that week, everybody gathered at one main center and presented their work. It was a bit of a competition, very fun. I was a participant in 2012 and then I went back the following two years as a mentor. The second year, they asked me to put on a gig at the end of the week in the main center, which was my hometown, Plymouth. They wanted some music Friday night when everyone was arriving. I organized the gig and realized there was a projection screen but we didn't have any visuals. At the time, I didn't know any visualist that would be able to get down to Plymouth on short notice so I started experimenting during the week and hacked together my own visual software, just in the browser. 

Chiptography: Was this the birth of your software, modV? 

2xAA: Pretty much, yes. It definitely got me inspired to use the browser as a medium to create a platform for audio reactive visuals. There’s a video online somewhere where I say to “watch out for the web for generative art” as I thought it was going to be big. Another big influence was seeing Dario, as Lazersausage, perform his visuals at AnalogAttack in London, also in 2014.

Chiptography: What made you think to include visuals? 

2xAA: They sent me the specifications of the stage and they had a really nice projection screen. One of the acts that I booked was one of my lecturers at university, Mike Blow and his wife, Kayoko. I knew they were going to do an AV performance and I thought well, we don't have any visuals for the rest of it and I'd see people do visuals before. It can't be that hard. 

Chiptography: I love that attitude, honestly! 

2xAA: I used the technologies that I knew and started throwing some stuff together. In the end, it turned out to be something more actually. I thought that the young people may not be into the music. They’d had a really long week meeting new people, hacking together and they've traveled a long way to Plymouth. Plymouth is not easy to get to. It's in the southwest and the only way to get there cheaply is by bus. There's one train line but it was the furthest point away from the rest of the centers during the hack week. Everyone was tired when they got there. I thought, let's make a little remote control for the visuals so they can interact with the gig. If you connect with your phone, every 30 seconds or so, someone else would have control of the visuals. The visuals were still audio-reactive but you could change what was going on the screen. It was in a big hall and loads of kids sat down, chatted with their friends, worked on their projects or ate food. They didn't really want to get up and dance. They were too tired but a lot of them were on their phone messing with the visuals. They were still part of the event and it didn't seem like, “oh there's something going on over there but I'm not really part of that.” They could still interact with it and be included. 

Chiptography: Was the music electronic or chiptune? 

2xAA: The first act was an experimental AV piece but the rest was chiptune stuff. I called upon my chiptune friends because the event also was paying for accommodation and travel for all the artists. That's the dream- have money and put on a show. That was the first show that I put on so that was the gold standard right there. That was awesome. We had MizKai, J3WEL, The Virus Empire and myself. 

2xAA in his London neighborhood.

Chiptography: Since then, you’ve performed quite a lot, haven’t you? 

2xAA: Actually, I have a list on my music website. 

Chiptography: Are these all chip shows?

2xAA: These are anywhere that I've played music or done visuals so far but I'm probably going to move the visuals to a separate site at some point. I kind of split the 2xAA and NO_SIGNAL up a bit. 

Chiptography: When did that happen? 

2xAA: Just recently actually. This past year (2019), I wanted to keep them a bit more separate. I put out two albums on Data Airlines in the past couple of years. They asked me if I had anything. That was before I was doing any of the new Nanoloop stuff or any of the heavier bits. I was doing some LSDj stuff but in my opinion, it was just ok. There were much more interesting artists out there doing much cooler stuff. I was just kind of plodding along doing whatever I wanted with music stuff. But then Data Airlines was like, "We think you can do something. Send some stuff over when you have it." That was a nice vote of confidence. I pretty much love every single artist this label works with and it was a really nice thing that they did, asking me to send something. They pushed me along. I put out two albums with them and I'm very happy with those two. I kind of want to keep the 2xAA just music because that was what it was for a long time. The visuals came along and I feel it's a different project now. 

Chiptography: Tell me more about your visual software, modV. Is it available for artists to use? Would you recommend it for people who are just beginning to get into visuals or is it for advanced users?

2xAA: modV is free and open source, meaning people can see how I built it and can contribute changes back. It’s probably okay for people who know their way around a command-line but I’m working to fix that. That’s the biggest stumbling block with it right now. But, once you’re in the software, I think it’s pretty straightforward for beginners or advanced users. I’ve let people at shows have a go on it, held a workshop this year (2019) and I’ve had great feedback so far.

Chiptography: Tell me about the story behind the name 2xAA. 

2xAA: It's just batteries. 2 “AA” batteries. I might have had a Game Boy color before I had an Advance. I'm not sure but... What the name is about- just batteries. 

Chiptography: What?!? That's cool! I love it! What's the story behind NO_SIGNAL? 

2xAA: You know when you haven't plugged anything into a projector and it comes up with "no signal"? That's it. 

Chiptography: Both of your artist names have something to do with power and connection. 

2xAA: I hadn't really thought of that. I just thought NO_SIGNAL was really funny actually. I played Hypernight, a small show in London. It was nothing chiptune at all. It's kind of an anime-inspired kind of music gig. The projector there just kept cutting out the whole time. The HDMI cable wasn't long enough and it was bent out of shape so it wasn't connecting properly. The projector kept displaying in huge letters, "NO SIGNAL" and I was the only person doing visuals all night. People were just shouting at me, “NO SIGNAL!” I joked about it saying I was going to change my name, and then I did. 

The first time I photographed 2xAA at the SuperByte 2015 Preparty.

Chiptography: There you go. I think that’s the first time a shotty cable made history! When we met at SuperByte 2015, you were about to go to University. What did you study? 

2xAA: I studied a course called "Digital Arts and Technology" which is a combination of computer science and art theory. It had a lot of interactive programming, interactive installations, and a lot of thinking about where technology will take us in the future. I studied how fictional works impact our daily lives as in how it pushes us to create those works of fiction in real life. For example, one which we weren't allowed to talk about ever because it came up so often was Minority Report with the crazy panels and stuff like that. Those are a thing now. Another one which came up a lot was the PADDs in Star Trek. We have phones and iPads now. We looked at transhumanism and how technology will affect biology as well. It was very much an art and technology course because we had the programing parts but we always had to link it to the theory somehow and make sure one complimented the other. 

Chiptography: It makes me think of the movie, Her. It was about the future of technology but also about the future of human relationships and mental health and our relationship to technology. That ties in a lot with what you were studying. 

2xAA: Absolutely, I love that film. I have a Google Home upstairs. When I say, "Hey Google, I'm leaving," it's like "Have a good day!" It's really weird, you kind of get into a relationship. It's a daily routine just talking to this object. 

Chiptography: Now that I'm traveling, I miss Alexa because she kept me posted on the weather, current events and she told me jokes. I could always ask her something if I was lonely and I love her sense of humor. It’s as if she has a genuine personality and mind of her own. Tell me about your current job. What are you up to these days?

2xAA: I'm an experience technologist at an agency called POKE. I work with creative technology and installations. They’re usually quite large projects. I can't talk about the details of my current project but it’s been intense and we've made really good progress towards our deadline. 

Chiptography: It sounds interesting because you get to work on different projects and exercise your brain since it's not the same kind of tasks every day. You're using so many of the skills you developed in university to execute these different projects but there's still a lot of creativity and research involved. 

2xAA: Totally. I pull a lot from what I studied because we were always looking to future technologies and edge technologies. There's a lot of planning and trying to find the right people as well to get it all done in by the deadline. There's only two experience technologist in our agency at the moment. We're looking to grow the team but the thing is we can't build all the things all the time. If there's a huge build we'll probably work with someone else to get it done but we still need to build an internal prototype, do the research to make sure that we can actually do this in the time that we have and be able to sell that to our clients. If someone comes to us and they say, "Can you make this in-store hologram which people can interact with using controllers in another store across the UK?" Yeah, we probably can but we need a bit of research time and then we'll figure out how we do this. We'll still do it and take control over the project and make it work but we might have to bring in extra people just ‘cause we have other stuff going on at the same time. 

Chiptography: This blows my mind.  

2xAA: Thank you. This is the job that I've been looking for since graduating in 2016. 

Chiptography: So this is your dream job? 

2xAA: Pretty much. The only way it could get better would be if we could work with clients that helped people instead of just developing something to promote the client even further. They're mostly brands which don't require any extra recognition. Not to say the work isn’t fun, I’m learning a lot and the team is absolutely fantastic! It satisfies my urge to learn and create experiences.

Chiptography: There may be an opportunity at some point in the future to engage your company in giving back by working with the community. I’m so happy you already have an eye out for that. It sounds like a challenging job but I feel like you need that because ever since you were a kid you were exploring things on the internet, researching and taking it to the next level. You found chiptune and all of a sudden you were making chiptune and then you were playing shows and then you were organizing shows. You are someone who sees something, gets intensely involved and then just blows it up. So you grew up in Plymouth. Were you born there? 

2xAA: Yeah. 

Chiptography: One of your parents actually bought a photograph of mine. 

2xAA: It was my mum. I actually have that upstairs. My mum framed it up. 

My photograph that 2xAA’s mum printed and framed for him.

Chiptography: Do your parents still live in Plymouth? 

2xAA: My mum does. So my parents split up when I was 9 and my dad died when I was 15. I'm pretty open about it these days. It was around the time that I got into chiptune and I think a lot of that carried me on with chiptune 'cause they both happened around the same time. 

Chiptography: I don't know what it feels like to lose a parent but I have experience with friends and family members who have and it seems completely… devastating isn't even the right word because the world is different. 

2xAA: That's a good way to put it, the world is different. I understood what was going on but your mind does a few tricks to get you through stuff, to block stuff out and make sure that you're ok. 

Chiptography: You were also very young. You don't really expect it, as a teenager. It's a constant that your parents are there. 

2xAA: My mum and dad only split up a few years before. There was a lot of change around that time because that was final exam time in school as well. I kind of switched off around that time in terms of school. I wasn't super into school anyway and I just got into programming and music. Looking back, obviously it's a sad time but at the same point I feel like I have some really good skills now. It's a real double-edged sword. It's something that I thought about quite a lot and I talked to a lot of people about.

Chiptography: It's very natural for people to get deeper into their work when they're coping with an emotional state of pain. I've had that experience when I had severe depression as a teenager and throughout college and even today. There's a lot of insecurities that go with that. 

2xAA: It's hard to kind of, like justify it in a way. I don't know. It's odd. It's very odd. 

Chiptography: It's an odd experience because it can be so uncomfortable and it's something that you don't necessarily want to talk about or share with the world. When I'm going through a rough patch I turn off. It seems like Marjorie's just doing her normal thing but... 

2xAA: There are times where I close up completely. Even now if I'm going through a very busy period or I'm stressed or something, I close off quite heavily sometimes. It's one of those things in which you learn and try not to do. 

Chiptography: It takes time to get to that point. Thank you for sharing that with me. 

2xAA: It's just cool that I'm at a point where I can talk about it comfortably. 

Chiptography: Do you have a chiptune story as far as something that happened at a show or with an artist that made an impact on you? 

2xAA: It was 2015. I went on a three-day tour in Russia with Henry Homesweet. He was booked already and Forest Booking, the people in Russia doing tours there, were looking to get another artist. I met Tom, Henry Homesweet, at SuperByte that year when I did some visuals. He was quite impressed because he does web development and all of my visual software is in the browser. He asked if they could get me along for the Russia tour as well. That was my first time traveling alone. It was really a scary kind of thing since I was 21. 

Chiptography: I can imagine!

2xAA’s Gameboy Advance and Nanoloop cartridge.

2xAA: That was the first time I saw him play live properly. At the time I was using LSDj with my Game Boy and then I saw him play his nanoloop set on the Game Boy Advance. I heard the sound and was like, "Wow- that is incredible. How do you do that?" He said, "yeah, it's just nanoloop two." I saved up money over a few months and bought a Nanoloop One cartridge and a Nanoloop Two cartridge. I barely touched Nanoloop One. It's literally in that drawer there. It's underneath all this stuff. For the kind of dancy, more house stuff that I've been getting into, the nanoloop two software and the way that it handles audio is really cool. He changed my whole workflow for making music just from seeing him play a couple of gigs. I've told him that as well and he's like, "oh yeah, I didn't do that." And I'm like, "yes you did." 

Chiptography: Incredible. Tell me more about your Russia tour.

2xAA: I flew into Moscow and then I traveled to St. Petersburg. We played a gig there and then went back to Moscow together to play a gig. We then went to a town south of Moscow called Tula. The three venues were very different actually. The one in St. Petersburg felt like more of a standard music venue. There was this backstage area that was triangular-shaped. It literally went into a corner. It had a toilet on one side and then a shower hanging off the wall on the other side. 

Chiptography: What was that about?

2xAA: I don't know. It was just really funny. For some reason that stuck out to me. I think all the walls were painted black as well. The rest of the venue was totally fine, it was just that one room. When everything else feels very normal and one thing sticks out, that's the one thing you're going to remember. The venue was cool but it had a weird bathroom. The crowd there was pretty nice but I think they were expecting more general music kind of stuff rather than chiptune. The Moscow gig, they were expecting chiptune there for sure and that was like a pub kind of situation with multiple levels. The bar was upstairs and there was a balcony which you can see down onto the stage. The stage was in this middle area. There wasn't a middle area where you could sit though. There was only a downwards area. People would be below the stage and the stage would be in the middle of the bottom and the top levels. 

Chiptography: So the stage itself was on its own level?

2xAA: Yeah, and there were stairs on one side which you could get to the stage. If you weren't doing anything on the stage you continue down into the lower area. That was a weird layout but it actually worked really well. That was a cool gig. I met BalloonBear for the first time there. If you don't know BalloonBear he's a chiptune artist from Russia. The Tula one for me that was the best one because people were really into the show. The age range there was ridiculous. There must have been people from like age 13 to whatever age, it doesn't matter. There were a few older people in the crowd. It felt like a pop up space for gigs. The walls were painted and I think they plastered over the walls before we got there as well so it was really fresh. They dressed up this whole hall. They made this giant space invader cardboard cutout in front of this light and there was a controller for the light behind it on the side. It looked really cool! There was a little area before that with cardboard cut out video game characters. There was a Pacman, there was a Super Mario photo booth with a red hat and you could get behind these pipes. They painted everything just for the gig, just for one day. It was really cool. Everyone I met, they were also really nice people. I did a little video documentary as we were going through it.

The last day of the Henry Homesweet & 2xAA Russian tour in Tula! Perfomers in order: Gamegate - https://gamegate.bandcamp.com/ 2xAA (me) - https://2xAA.bandc...

Chiptography: It sounds like a really big party! 

2xAA: Yeah it was! I don't know how many people were there, probably 150 at least. That gig was funny though 'cause one of the organizers, Alex from Forest Bookings, he's quite a well built kind of guy.  I was doing the visuals on the side for Henry Homesweet and he just picked me up at some point. He's like "Yeah, you're going in the crowd." He literally picked me up and threw me into the crowd. I grabbed my camera literally off the side, hit record, and recorded myself on top of the crowd. It was really fun. It was probably some of the best bigs I ever played actually. Going to Russia was quite the experience. That was the first time I played internationally. I feel really good about that. It was awesome. Every time I see Tom, Henry Homesweet, we're like, "Wasn't Russia kind of crazy?" but in a good way. 

Chiptography: We're going to walk down to the River Thames in a bit. Why do you want to be photographed there?

2xAA: I grew up around water. Plymouth is called the "Ocean City." It's in the southwest and it faces the channel. We have the Plymouth Sound which is a big cove with a tiny island in the middle. Most of my time, especially as a teenager hanging out with friends, we would go to the waterfront. We would sit there and talk and hang out and look out into the sea. It just reminds me of a calm place to be, hanging out with friends and looking back on those moments. This area that I live in now is Popular and it's part of the docklands in East London, so there's actually quite a lot of different pockets of water around here. I live pretty close to the Thames. The Thames is a tidal river so it's got a little bit of the sea in there at least, but it’s not really the same. Occasionally, if I have the time, I'll go down to the waterfront and walk along the Thames and it reminds me a lot of being calm and close to home. It's a nice place to be. 

Chiptography: I remember that when we met at SuperByte you gave me a µCollective (Micro Collective) pin. What is µCollective and what’s going on with it since then?

2xAA: µCollective was an online community for chiptune artists, very much like chipmusic.org. It's an online forum where you can talk about chip music or chiptune, the topics around it and share information, music and image uploads. It was very much in the vein of 8-bit Collective. I used to be a forum admin for 8-bit Collective in it's later years. The guy that ran it kind of just let it die basically. I'm not entirely sure of the exact circumstances but I think it was either money or time or effort or something. I think 8-bit Collective was around for about 7 years so that's a lot of content to lose. I don't know if there's a back up of all of the forums, wikiposts, image uploads, music uploads. Having that community online was super special. This was before facebook groups were a real big thing. I think people used reddit a lot but for what the scene needed to do, sharing music and ideas and to be able to find those in an accessible way, (searching a forum or a wiki) 8-bit Collective was invaluable. When it died, I was still an active admin and I was a bit annoyed really that there were no backups of seven years of content. I think there were over four thousand users or something. It's just like, "Wow, where did all this stuff go?" I come from an archival background as well. I worked in a film archive for a long time and I like the preservation and conservation of ideas and media.

Chiptography: A lot of online interaction like social media is about this moment. It's about now. Every once in a while you'll scroll through someone's Instagram feed and look at their old pictures but for the most part you see what's new, what's fresh. As a photo documentarian I also really agree with you that there is a lot of value in saving things for posterity. 

2xAA: Especially when it's a whole community.

Chiptography: It's culture. It's history.

2xAA: Yeah, it is history. Anyway, I just got a bit annoyed really, I think pissed off would be the right term, at the guy running the thing. He probably had a good reason why it collapsed or didn't have time to back it up. Around the same time I was learning to code websites. I was really getting into it so I thought I would build my own forum and online community called µCollective to replace the void that 8-bit Collective left. It went through a couple of iterations for a few years. I got asked by SuperByte to put a big advertisement on the front page to let people know that SuperByte was happening. I ran a competition on the site where you could submit a poster design, or a pin design or a piece of music and I’d get them made. There was a voting system where you had to log in and vote them up. Whoever got the highest vote on the pin design, the poster design and the music upload would all be included and printed, we made a CD also. I really wanted to make this a big community thing and drive people's creativity. But that was before getting into university. University took a lot of my time and then µCollective stagnated a bit as I had different projects coming up like my visual software, modV. The whole shift between forums and Facebook was happening at the same time. In fact, it probably happened before µCollective was a thing anyway. A lot of people gravitated towards Facebook groups for the place to connect and share ideas. Facebook groups, even now don't really do the job to replace forums. I think the functionality is much better now but searching for stuff in Facebook groups is always terrible. It was always about the now. That was the problem. It just felt a little bit more like a show. It was like "This is what I've been doing recently" instead of "ah- here's a cool idea." 

Chiptography: It's not a place you can go and research and go down the rabbit hole of information. It’s not a useful tool in that sense. 

2xAA: It's also not searchable and not linkable unless you're a Facebook user so you have to have an account to see group content, as far as I know at least. Maybe some groups can be open now. I don't like the idea of it all being on Facebook. There's something about that that screams NO to me. I took down the main forums on µCollective but I still have all the data. That's all heavily backed up. I don't want to have a repeat of what happened with previous projects. I built a holding page for the site so you can listen to the music uploaded. It's like a random radio. You just click through and listen and you can see the comments and favorites on a track and how many plays it had before the site was put on hold. You can still access the media there at least in some form. Eventually, I'll swing back around to it and build it up as another online forum but maybe try to do it in a different way. Maybe more like an app. It's a difficult one because it is just me on the project and I would love some help but it's finding the people with the right abilities and time. I don't want to just make µCollective as a drop-in kind of like "This is now our forums" kind of thing. I want it to be fairly custom, something to be built to do the job. I coded the first site, all of the back-end functionality, all of the forum functionality. I don't want to skimp out on different features. I want to put a lot of effort into it but in the past few years I haven't had the time or motivation to do it, because of the big shift between forums and Facebook basically. It's kind of put a downer on things for me. 

Chiptography: I feel that. The world and technology is also always changing. 

2xAA: Absolutely yeah. 

Chiptography: Myspace was really hot for a while and now it's dead. There will potentially be a time when Facebook is dead. Who knows what the next big thing is going to be. Instagram is really big right now. 

2xAA: But Instagram has it's own flaws. Like I want to show a post from 2016, let's wait five minutes while I scroll back. There's no easy way to jump to a point on your timeline as such. People love the app itself but actually, from like a historical perspective, even just searching the thing or even backing stuff up on it, it's way more difficult. 

Chiptography:  I think you made a smart choice to put it on hold until you figure out what you want it to be and figure out its relevance in the modern internet world. 

2xAA: Thanks. At the moment I'm trying to build up the real world gigs again. I put on µCollective gigs under the name µChip (MicroChip). I’ve done five of those so far. Visualist, Antonio Roberts (HelloCatFood) helped me on the third one and he managed to get lottery arts funding. Having a budget for that one was really nice. I feel like that's something that can return especially with the Hyperwave pairing as of recently. Mikey (Shirobon) and I joined forces because we both want the same thing. We both want to put on good chiptune nights. We can support each other in terms of effort and financially. It's a very different way of putting on gigs now because we can take a little bit longer but put on a better show. 

Chiptography: I like that you're taking µCollective and building on it. It's not just an online forum to connect and to archive, it's also a physical event. You organize shows where people can come together and share their ideas, music and visuals. 

2xAA: It's really nice that it can be fluid and it can be in the real world. 

Chiptography: That's fantastic! I'm really excited to see where it goes and how it grows. I'm excited to experience it in the early days. 

2xAA: It's going to be good. 

Listen to 2xAA’s music on Bandcamp and Soundcloud.

Follow 2xAA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Follow NO_SIGNAL on Twitter and Instagram.

Follow µCollective on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Learn more about Sam Wray on his website.

Photos by Chiptography © 2020.

Claire Kwong

Chiptography: We met in New York City several years ago but you moved to London last year. Why did you move to London? 

Claire Kwong: I’ve always wanted to move abroad, and they speak English here. About eight years ago when I was in college I had a dream of going to Goldsmiths. They have a good creative computer art program and I wanted to do it when I was in undergrad but I didn't get to because scheduling didn't work out. I don't think I was at that point in my life when I was 20 to just move to a different country.

Chiptography: How did you find the transition?  

Claire Kwong: There are a lot of little things that are different that threw me for a loop. On the surface, they're very similar but people walk really slowly. Well not slowly, but we're from New York and I'm like, "Get out of the way!" And also, decide whether you walk on the right or the left. Right? 

Claire Kwong at the entrance of her school, Goldsmiths.

Chiptography: That is something that I've also been confused with because the traffic flows on the left side but then sometimes when you're in the Underground, you're walking on the right side. 

Claire Kwong: The sign will tell you walk right or left. There are tourists who don't know what they're doing and I don't know what I'm doing. 

Chiptography: It's not consistent. 

Claire Kwong: Food is worse so I've had to learn to cook some more. I've met a lot of people from all over Europe which I really appreciate, a lot of different diverse backgrounds. 

Chiptography: I came to know you through the chip scene because you are a visual artist. How did chiptune find you as far as making your work? 

Claire Kwong: When I was 20 I took a semester off of school. I was like, I want to be an artist in New York City. That's all I had. So I moved there for a semester. 

Chiptography: Where did you move from? 

Claire Kwong: I moved from Providence, Rhode Island from Brown University. When I was in New York I interned for Harvestworks and that's where I met Haeyoung Kim, Bubblyfish.

Chiptography: What type of company is Harvestworks and what did you do for them?

Claire Kwong: Harvestworks is a center for digital media art. It runs a residency program where artists develop new work and can get help from technicians. I was one of those technicians and I helped artists with code. I was assigned to help Haeyoung on this project, Moori. It’s this really cool interactive art performance. I did some coding for her and one day when we were sitting in my basement room she was like, “Let me show you this thing I'm working on for this Devo compilation of chiptune” and she played Love Without Anger and I was like, what is this? It was chiptune. It sounded so raw and aggressive but really good. I really enjoyed it and that was a side of her that I hadn't seen before. It was cool to see a different side of her. It was also really important for me to see an Asian woman doing that stuff. 

Chiptography: She must have been someone who you could identify with in a lot of ways. 

Claire Kwong: She still is a role model for me. I went back to school for one semester and I came back to NYC the following summer. Then I went to my first Pulsewave. It was Ladies Night.

Chiptography: That was your FIRST Pulsewave?! That was one of my all-time favorite Pulsewaves. 

Claire Kwong: It was so good! It made me feel so welcome. I'm a shy person. I'm really anxious and I always feel the patriarchy but it felt so good. It felt really amazing. It was all Asian women on stage.

Chiptography: Right, it was Drum Machine Dating Service, Bubblyfish, Corset Lore with visuals by CHiKA. It was probably very misleading. 

Claire Kwong: Yes, actually it was. It was super misleading!

Chiptography: When did you start to actually perform as a visual artist? 

Claire Kwong: I think my first one was in 2015 with bryface and Mega Ran. It was meaningful for me to be part of a racially diverse lineup. I met Jessen through ITP camp which is at NYU. Jessen had seen me do stuff with Glitch Cake, my previous band. I knew our friend, Kat Tingum, from Harvestworks. I would try out all sorts of experimental things that would project on her face and things like that, doing stuff with her body. I really enjoyed that and I think Jessen might have seen one of the shows and so he asked me to do visuals for his show, I/O Chip Music. 

Chiptography: Since then, have you been involved in the chip scene here in London? 

Claire Kwong: I've gone to a few shows but I’ve only performed once. I think it's less frequent than in New York. I find it's a little bit harder to break into as an outsider. I find it's harder to sell yourself as a visualist. What I do is very integrated into the live show. You have to watch the visuals and how it interacts with the artist. That's very important to me.

Chiptography: For me, the visual element of a show is 50% of what makes a good show. A lot of people go there because of who’s playing but if there were no visuals the show's not the same. It really is a 50/50 thing for me. I don't know if a lot of people realize how important the visual element is. 

Claire Kwong: Yes, absolutely. You have to find out what works with an artist and complement their music. 

Chiptography: I really appreciate that. I photographed you once at WordHack. The performance was quite different from the work you make for chip shows. 

Claire Kwong: WordHack is a monthly night of words and technology. It's run by Todd Anderson. The whole thing is trying to mix words, literature, and technology in any way possible so it's very broad. I performed at WordHack three times. It's a really great community. It's almost like the chiptune scene but people are less... they don't move as much. 

Chiptography: It's not a show you go to to dance. It's more performance art. 

Claire Kwong: I did performance art but other people will show work in their browser or they'll read things. It's kind of like a poetry reading or slam poetry but with words projected on your mouth.

Chiptography: What was your piece about? Describe it for me. 

Claire Kwong: The performance was called Voice. I took phrases from my journals and projected them on my mouth one word at a time, like Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. Todd called it Young-Hae Chang Dental Industries. I love the textural possibilities of projection, especially on a body. I especially love it inside a mouth. It's so intimate and unexpected.

Photography of Claire Kwong’s performance at WordHack in 2017.

Claire Kwong: I find that my art practice has split. I was thinking about that when I was working on my website for public presentation so people can look at me and get me a job. I split my website into artwork and visuals. 

Chiptography: I saw some photos of your final project. Can you tell me about that? 

Claire Kwong: It's called Light Touches Skin and it's a play area with a floor projection. People can go in and the goal is to make different shapes with your body to fill out some shapes like triangles. The projection will be on your body. I aim for it to feel very textural and visceral, so like bumps on your skin moving and crawling. I wanted to make an unnatural experience that will bring people closer together. Touch is very hard. People in London go out of their way to avoid touching each other, which is reasonable. They did that even in my installation. Obviously, it's very loaded with unwanted touching and all that but I wanted to push the boundaries of my art and create social situations where people must cooperate in order to win. It's a game in that way. They'll find themselves making strange movements and touching each other and everyone always laughs a lot. They take selfies a lot. 

A game that uses projection to move peoples’ bodies.

Chiptography: That would be really interesting to bring it to different parts of the world and see how your piece changes with different cultures.

Claire Kwong: I think that's interesting. Thinking back on my own touch phobia, given that my family is from Hong Kong which is densely populated and touch averse, they're like, "None of that." They have a big house now and they're not very touchy-feely people. For me, I wasn't a very touchy person but when I moved to New York, people were huggers. After every show they always want to hug you at the end, especially if you collaborated on visuals. I like hugging. I grew to like it. I grew to give really tight hugs. 

Chiptography: I have to really trust and like someone to feel comfortable hugging. 

Claire Kwong: People will assume you want to 'cause they're hugging everybody else and you're a woman. It's assumptions like that. Maybe I started coping with it by embracing hugging and also trying to question it in my work. I am a little touch phobic. 

Chiptography: Tell me more about your family. Do you have any brothers or sisters? 

Claire Kwong: Yeah, a younger sister and a younger brother. 

Chiptography: You're the oldest of three? Me too! Was there an expectation from being the eldest in your family?

Claire Kwong: I think so. I've always been very independent. I've always tried to figure things out for myself. I moved the furthest away obviously. I always held myself to a higher standard like achieving stuff academically or being together emotionally which is a hard standard to live up to. I never wanted to depend on my parents. I know that Asian parents have high expectations but they also are a bit of a helicopter. Even though they have good intentions, it's a different kind of relationship than we have with kids in Hong Kong. 

Chiptography: Tell me about where you grew up.

Claire Kwong: I grew up in Rockville, Maryland. Well, I was born in LA, in Pasadena, but I only lived there for three years. Do you know the Rodney King Riots? 

Chiptography: Yeah.

Claire Kwong: My dad didn't feel safe anymore. That was when I was a baby. We moved to where his family was in Maryland. My mom's family was in California but they had moved by that point to San Francisco or Sacramento. My parents immigrated to the US from Hong Kong separately when they were 16. They didn't know each other before.

Chiptography: So they met here, in the States? 

Claire Kwong: They met in Los Angeles. It was cute. After the riots happened, my dad left his job. He was an engineer at LADWP, LA Department of Water and Power. There was a labor strike and a picket took out his car light. I don't know all the details but he didn't feel safe. He didn't want us to grow up like that and there was smog everywhere. My dad's three older sisters and his parents were in DC so we moved to Rockville, Maryland. It's a suburb of DC, about 30 minutes outside. A lot of people worked for the government. Everyone there is either a doctor, lawyer or engineer which is the Asian parent's dream, right? My dad was an engineer for a company for 15 years until he made his own company which was very inspiring to me. As an engineer focused on energy efficiency and things like that to make the environment better. 

Chiptography: That was his own company?  

Claire Kwong: Yes, it's just him as an employee but he made it work. He just didn't want to have a boss which is relatable. 

Chiptography: Does he still work in that industry? 

Claire Kwong: He does. He's doing good for the world which is all I want in my career. I don't want to just make other people money. My mom works for a public school system as a counselor for students who come from other countries. They're often very troubled. She actually learned Spanish to help all the kids who came from Central America. She helps Chinese and Spanish speaking students. It's very noble work. It's very difficult work. 

Chiptography: It must be an emotional career too. You're dealing with children who potentially don't feel safe. They had to move from dangerous environments. 

Claire Kwong: There's a lot of trauma there. My mom has kids who literally walked from Honduras. Literally. Just thinking about that, my God... Through that we've all become very sympathetic to immigrants. I mean, my parents are immigrants, right? But a different wave. My grandpa wanted a better life for his daughters. My mom’s family immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area when she was 16 but soon her parents went back to Hong Kong to work, leaving her there with her sisters. They were floundering around. There are funny stories but also not all funny. It was a bit traumatizing too because she was 16. 

Chiptography: Trying to figure things out at such a young age is difficult. I can't imagine if I was going to a foreign country. I mean, even you coming to an English speaking country, you didn't feel comfortable until you were a little older. 

Claire Kwong: Yeah. I think my comfort level is a bit higher. Well in different ways higher and lower than my parents. But yeah, Rockville, Maryland. There are a lot of Asian immigrants. The majority of the friends I made in school were Asian. We even had our own clique called "The Asian Angle."  It was so dumb. 

Chiptography: No! I like it! So why angle?

Claire Kwong: In high school at lunch, we would sit at an angle, a corner. We had a lot in common because we all had the stereotypical Asian parents. They're very demanding. My friends were all very academically driven. I felt a lot of pressure. I wanted to get away from that. I really felt a strong pull to not be the typical Asian person. That might not be totally true for everybody but I didn’t want to be the person who becomes the lawyer, engineer or doctor and doesn't really have interests. That's the stereotype and that's what Asian parents might want you to be. 

Chiptography: Even if you do have a drive towards art, it's often expected that you put that to the side and make that hobby. 

Claire Kwong: Right. It took my parents a long time to come around to my art. 

Chiptography: Have they come around?

Claire Kwong: I think they're trying. They like it but they still don't understand it. They didn't like me going to New York to be an artist when I was 20. I took a semester off. That's not the way to do things really but I was being a rebel and I was being an artist. 

Chiptography: Do you feel like it had to do with the fact that you had this very strong internal identity of being an artist but you were being told to go on this different path? 

Claire Kwong: Yes. I majored in computer science and also modern culture and media which is like art and technology but I always felt pressured into doing computer science because it was marketable and it could get me a job. That's what my parents wanted me to do. It's been useful. It's good to know how to code but I did not want to be just like that in my life. I wanted to be an artist. 

Chiptography: When did you first know you wanted to be an artist and did you have anyone in your family or childhood that exposed you to art and nurtured you?

Claire Kwong: I've always been creative. I wrote stories all throughout my childhood. I also made websites as a teenager – girly sites where you drag and drop clothes onto dolls. My parents were always supportive but a little bemused because they aren't creative themselves. I never really thought of it as art until I went to college and took a class about digital art. That class inspired me to use the tools from my computer science classes towards weird, counterproductive, artistic ends.

Chiptography: It's inspiring for me to know someone like yourself who has that innate talent. With computer science, you can go and take classes. With art, there's a lot of internal intuition and sensibility.

Claire Kwong: There is. I've often felt like there's a lot of self-mythologizing with artists in that we have to put our own personal lives into our art at all times. I tried to do that for a while but it got really exhausting and hard. Now I try to strike a balance. That's why I try to involve other people in interactive installations, like making other people touch each other. 

Chiptography: It still relates to a personal experience for you. Your personal experience can also be relatable for so many other people. 

Claire Kwong: Absolutely. I often find that art, it's one of the ways that I reach out to people. I'm such a shy person. I never talk to people. 

Chiptography: Outside of your art, what are your interests and passions?

Claire Kwong: In a way, being an artist is so much part of my identity so a lot of what I do is related to art. I like to go to art museums. I love going to upstate New York to see Dia:Beacon. I had a tradition for a while where I would go there for my birthday. It's in January and I loved seeing the frozen Hudson River on the train for two hours and then just going inside and taking a selfie of myself in front of the same artwork and seeing how much I changed. 

Chiptography: Which artwork would you always photograph yourself with?

Claire Kwong: On Kawara's Today series, a collection of paintings spanning over 40 years that each just show the date the painting was made. At Dia:Beacon there's a gallery of them in chronological order. I always posed next to the painting from 1992, the year I was born. That's what I like, being on the train by myself and listening to chiptune. The last birthday I did that I was listening to the Depreciation Guild. It's very emotional chiptune. I was thinking about my life. If there's no WiFi then it's great because you can just think about things. There are only a few places in this world without WiFi like the shower and the train. Those are the places that are the most introspective to me. 

Chiptography: You are the first woman that I'm interviewing for my project. Tell me about your experience as a woman in chiptune. I know that you said your first chiptune experience was an all-female lineup which as we said was pretty deceiving.  

Claire Kwong: I remember feeling really welcomed in that room. I remember seeing women I knew like Nicole Carroll. She was my boss at Harvestworks. I saw that she knew Haeyoung and I was seeing this beautiful network of women who knew each other and supported each other. I really liked that. Maybe that was part of why I came back to New York. As a woman in the chiptune scene, I do sometimes feel tokenized as a one-person diversity ad but I do not want that to be the only reason I'm there. I want my work to speak for itself. There were so many times I've been the only woman. I try to bring a bit of a feminine perspective to my visuals. I try to include a lot of pink and blue and more red, soft things like body parts, eyes, mouths. I was doing visuals for Trash80 for Magfest and FreqFest. His work is very emotional to me and it resonated with me even before I knew him. For Missing You, I remember putting on a pair of lips but then it would fade away and glitch and overlay with some shapes. It was all hot pink. I tried to do something that not only resonated with the music but also brought a feminine visual perspective to the stage.  

Chiptography: If you had any superpower, what would it be and why?

Claire Kwong: I've always wanted to fly! It's not that practical since we have airplanes, but every time I dream about it I crave the sensation in the morning. That's all I want, the sensation. That's the instinctive side of me. But if I actually could have any superpower, I would probably do a ton of research and make a spreadsheet to find the most practical one. I'd never be able to decide.

Chiptography: Did you have a favorite chiptune memory? 

Claire Kwong: It was Glenn Graeber’s farewell party before he joined the navy. 

Chiptography: Glenn is a staple behind the scenes guy who helped 8static with technical operations. He’s a goofy guy who genuinely cares about his friends and family.

Claire Kwong: It was such a good party. It was in Allister’s (SKGB) kitchen in Philly. Mike Goodman (DIY_Destruction) had to leave early so Glenn switched us around and I ended up doing visuals for Ap0c. I didn't have anything prepared for him but at the last minute he suggested, why don't you just go on the internet and browse and that will be my visuals. It was hilarious.

Chiptography: What did you browse? 

Claire Kwong: I went to Facebook and I browsed my feed.  

Chiptography: That's so personal! 

Claire Kwong: Yeah! It felt very personal but I also felt comfortable. It was so funny at the time. Allister had a tapestry on the wall and Mike took a picture of it and posted it on Facebook. I scrolled on my feed and saw the tapestry on the projection. It was so amazing. I loved it. Everyone was screaming out words for me to Google. Everyone was so happy. 

Chiptography: This is one of those times when you take it to the next level with your artwork. It seems like a simple concept but your visuals are layered, smart and interactive.

Claire Kwong: Another set I did with Ap0c was at 8static when I was first starting. It was also very funny. I think he's a conceptual thinker like me. He was making these memes about the SoundCloud orange ball so he told me he was going to bring these orange ping pong balls and throw them at the audience. You know the ball you get when you get an alert? So I made a fountain of SoundCloud balls on his site. It was hilarious. I love when I can bring conceptual art but also when I can bring humor into visuals. That's my favorite. 

View Claire Kwong’s work on her website and Vimeo.

Follow Claire Kwong on Twitter, and Instagram.

Photos by Chiptography © 2020.

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. 

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Photos by Chiptography © 2019.