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What about the Low Level All-stars project you just completed with Alex Galloway?
It's basically a research project about late 80's Commodore 64 video graffiti scene. When kids would crack video games and began this underground culture of kids adding introduction scenes in games.

Sounds like an animated version of ".nfo" files that come with cracks these days?
It's nothing new to the European Commodore hackers' scene. But in terms of contact with early home computer video art and the whole home-computer art movement it is totally new for some people. That kind of stuff never really made it out of the European underground. So we did this research project where we tracked these people down, went through a thousand of these screens, and then picked out the ones that we liked.

Where did you find all these screen tags?
Most of the video game ROMs online are cracked so all we have to do is just find the games and more than likely there will be this video graffiti.

So no one removes that video graffiti once they've encountered it?
No, because if you want to take it out of the program you have to know assembly language. Now that I think of it, it's also like removing the signature off a painting or the SIG off of ASCII art. You can't just delete it -it's too difficult. The process of just making one is very laborious. It was really amazing for Alex and I to see this stuff.

They must look really interesting, I can't wait to see some of them.
Yeah, they're incredible. I have a lot of them online you can take a look at them. We also burnt the project on to a DVD. There was also an installation at NYUFF at Anthology Film Archives in the basement. It's just a Commodore64 with these intros on a disc. I have directions there on how they can load them off the floppy. For stills and videos of them check http://rhizome.org/Low_Level_All_Stars

You mean the floppies are there and the people are free to load which ever they want?
They are actually all on one floppy.

Oh I see, so they don't just have a kiosk playing the DVD?
The DVDs are there but that's for sale. I didn't want to display the project off of a DVD, I thought that it would cheapen the experience. This way it makes a lot more sense.

I can imagine people asking "Why is this computer playing a dvd that is emulating a video game console which itself is loading this game…??"
The DVD is only so people can take the project home and not worry about emulating and booting this etc…

Can you tell us a little more about the Boo-Yaa Technology™/Carnivore project, another Galloway collaboration?
It’s pretty simple, the Boo-Yaa project is just a packet sniffer that uses the Carnivore software. A while ago the Radical Software group made a personal home edition of Carnivore and asked several artist to make some kind of project with it. So I made this project that uses Carnivore app to filter for the term "Boo-Yaa Tribe." The idea is that you could have this setup sitting in your apartment and watch every word that goes in and out of your whole apartment building. So for example, if anyone searches for those words or receives an email with those words it would be tallied on to the screen in this setup.

What if the words are in an encrypted email, can the Boo-Yaa Technology™ detect it?
No it doesn’t, but pretty much everything over the Internet isn't encrypted. It's rare that some one uses 64 or 128 bit encryption while doing daily tasks.

I remember an ex-coworker that used to encrypt his email. He once sent me a key to decrypt the email he had just sent me.
Wow -what a paranoid dude![…] (Showing photos of the Boo-Yaa Technology™ Installation, picture below) This is a shoot I did with my sister, This is what it would be like when used by people in the high society. I imagined all these rich fashion people being curious about how many times the word Boo-Yaa Tribe was encountered in their high-rise. This is on the 40th floor of the Tribeca towers in Lower Manhattan, in my friend's apartment.

Does he use the Boo-Yaa Technology™ filter system?
Only for that day, he had no idea what was going on.

What was the Boo-Yaa count for the day?
I faked it for this shoot, but installed at EyeBeam it was always zero. Nobody looks for the Boo-Yaa Tribe anymore.

Yeah, that would seem pretty rare*. So why did you choose the term Boo-Yaa Tribe?
Because it's the most obscure term -it's also one of those terms that you hope someone else looked it up, and that would make you feel like you had a friend somewhere. I search for that term, I'm always wondering what happened to the Boo-Yaa Tribe. ( *shortly after the interview was written the Boo-Yaa Tribe released a new album West Coasta Nosta, which might affect the BYT counts in 2004)

You also mentioned that you did a story on Hacker fashion, can you tell me more about that?
My friend Paul and I did a story on contemporary computer hacker fashion that was published in Select Magazine #4 Fall 2002. Basically we went to h2k2 last summer and took a picture of all the Hacker fashion. (H2K2 is hosted by 26oo “The Hackers Quarterly”) -there was some Bad Ass stuff there.

What did you wear that day?
I wore all black to fit in.

You should have tried to stand out!
That’s not such a good idea at one of these conventions. They were wondering why I wanted to take pictures of them, “Are you an FBI agent?” These people were already paranoid. So it was best not to stand out. There are some crazy people! Some kid had a shirt that read "I read your email" (laughs)

That’s because we don't encrypt our email! (laughing)

About the same time I went to a lock picking conference where this guy picked a Master lock in 6 seconds. He just stuck a shim down the side and it just popped open. The speaker said, "I hear they have these Master locks here in America, personally I have never seen them, so lets have a look at how good they are..." Then he slipped the shim down the side and all you heard was a click and the crowd went "Woooh!~"

What kind of lock does he recommend?
He recommends a Medeco lock. He said if your gonna get anything in Manhattan, don't get those round keys with the bumps and indents. He showed the audience how to pick those too. With one of those keys and some aluminum foil you can trick the lock into forming it's key. With normal keys they have lock-picking machines that just pop them open. In the Netherlands they have this lock-picking conference which meets about every month. People get together and try to pick the un-pick-able locks. Every month it's competition between the lock pickers and the lock companies. They are always trying to out do each other, which is probably good for everyone's safety because they keep improving locks.

That's the idea behind hacking as well: to reveal the weakness or holes in the code.
Yes, if you find a flaw you have to tell the person instead of making it public. Publicizing flaws is really crap.

And with all that said you don't mind being on a wireless network?
No, I don’t care -READ MY EMAIL PLEASE! I would be really honored if people would read my email. It would make me feel less lonely. Know what I mean?

Yep. So tell me what else are you working on?
Let's see, oh yeah, I am working on a collaboration with Rammellzee* & Taketo Shimada. For the last 20 years Rammellzee has been hiding out in his studio. He is famous for inventing this whole language about graffiti. He‘s old school. He was in the Hip-Hop movie "Wild Style" (1982) . I think one of his tracks was in the 80's Graffiti flick "Style Wars" (1983). He also has 26 remote control cars, he made one car for every character in the alphabet. He's even made a character of himself - it’s got rocket launchers, coders, ghetto blasters -all this junk! In the movie Basquiat (1996), he was the guy in the party that came up to him and yelled at him for selling out. I really like Rammellzee.

Is this his bag: eccentric costumes, remote control cars, action figures and graffiti?
Yeah, but he has also made hip-hop records. His famous records is "BeatBop" with K-Rock. If you have an original, it’s worth a lot because it has the Basquiat cover. It's pretty ridiculous that I am working with him. He's the real deal.

*Rammellzee has been found to also be spelled Rammelzee. Wikipedia goes with Rammellzee so we'll stick with that.

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