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Interview 01 2004

Katie Hines is writer and journalist currently living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She conducted the following interview in March of 2004 in York, Alabama at the municipalWORKSHOP’s Creative Residency Facility.

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Richard Saxton is the artist who started the municipalWORKSHOP, an organization that creates and facilitates public art projects in York, Alabama, a Black Belt community in Sumter County. Saxton, 28, is in the artist-in-residence program sponsored by York’s Coleman Center for Art and Culture, which also conducts workshops, holds exhibitions and sponsors local festivals and events. A Nebraska native, Saxton received his graduate degree at Indiana University in Bloomington and spent one year at the Rural Studio in Newbern, Ala. One of his projects, the Bicycle Shed Project, which he discusses here, began as the Utility Now! project while he was at the Rural Studio. In response to a need for additional, economical transportation for York’s Public Works Department, Saxton worked with the Public Works employees to create utility tricycles and bicycles that would allow them to complete their duties. Now, in addition to other projects, he is working to find similar uses for such vehicles and is restoring a building that will become the home of the bicycle project.

Among drawings on the walls and sketches and models scattered over a couple of drafting boards, Saxton and I talked in his tiny studio on York’s Avenue A. Wearing carhart work pants, an old cardigan sweater pulled over a t-shirt, and a seed company baseball cap, he spoke comfortably and with ease about a profession to which he is clearly devoted.

KATIE HINES
What is your title, or what are your actual responsibilities at the municipalWORKSHOP?

RICHARD SAXTON
The municipalWORKSHOP is something that I invented, so it’s always open for whatever happens. It can go anywhere. But right now, I look at my position as the projects director of the municipalWORKSHOP. Sometimes that means I’m alone on a project, which I identify and build and see all the way through, and then sometimes it means finding other people who are interested in similar things to come in on a project, and work with them, and see the projects through. I think that I definitely have a vision for what may be good public work, or at least for the way I want to see it done. And so part of it is not just finding anybody, but finding people that I think in some way share a vision. All the projects have something to do with things that I’m interested in, whether it’s environmental issues, alternative energy issues, reclaiming abandoned spaces or broken spaces and doing something new with that, or collecting salvaged materials and building with them. So, there are certain things that I identify with or that I am interested in pushing forward in the projects. A lot of this is working with the city and figuring out what the needs are in the community and trying to come up with a creative solution.

KH
When did you start the municipalWORKSHOP?

RS
It’s about a year old, officially, I guess. I’ve been interested in public art for a long time, and the municipalWORKSHOP is kind of a fusion of two interests of mine. One is public art and the other is an art making model that is similar to a rock band or something where it moves around to different towns and works with a lot of different players and changes a little bit. But it has developed out of those two interests—one of public art and then a kind of collective model of art making. I decided to stay here in York because the Coleman Center is the cultural agency of the city, so there is a real connection between what happens at the city office and what happens through the Coleman Center, whose mission is about art making and this kind of thing. I figured this was a great place to try to do this project that I had been thinking about—being able to work directly with the city and engage that structure in public art projects and there also seemed to be an opportunity to bring in other artists. So, I made up a proposal. The original idea that I had for York was to house an artist studio in the Municipal Building or “City Barn” as it’s called here, and then everything would have been done out of there. That proved to be too complicated and time consuming, so I switched gears a bit in order to get the projects rolling.

KH
Does the need come to you first and then the idea?

RS
It’s not totally dependent on the need because there will be things that I see walking through town or bicycling through town that I think will be fruitful material for a public art project. The bicycle program came out of needing to come up with a transportation solution and a solution for keeping the streets clean. The building came after that when we realized, after prototypes and a test run, that there could be a future for this. But one of the things that I identified was that the project needed to have its own space, just for its own kind of psychology to say yes, I’m my own program, I’m an important program. We’ve been housing the vehicles at the city barn, but that building serves so many functions, including storage. So, if something big came in and it needed to be moved right away and a bike was in the way, it could easily get crushed. Some of them got damaged over the winter when the program took a rest. So, it really needs to have its own place. So simply renting a garage space or something like that could have solved this problem, but one goal of the project is to take on some of these abandoned or neglected spaces and breathe new life into them. The city has granted us use of the old TV repair building and they are allowing us to refurbish it and put the program in there.

KH
And did I read something on your Web Site about the water in the building?

RS
We plan to have a rainwater harvesting system that would run a hand-washing sink and store water for area gardening.

KH
Aside from storing the bicycles, what else will be there, is that it’s main purpose?

RS
They will be stored there, and there will also be a small bike mechanic shop that will be in there. And my goal is to be able to create one or two jobs out of this, maybe for a retiree or a high school student, where they would come in one or two days a week for half the day. They would service the bikes, make sure that everything is running smoothly and just kind of keep them up.

KH
Why the solar power and the rainwater system? Are you doing that just because why not do it that way, that’s where things are going? The bicycle shop’s needs don’t have anything to do with that right?

RS
Not directly, but conceptually for me, they do. It’s an appropriate technology for this region. Where we live is one of the poorer parts of the country. It has been called a third world, which I don’t think is necessarily true, but part of what I’m interested in is what kind of projects can we do that are appropriate to a town or appropriate to a region? I think there are definitely some similarities between these small towns in west Alabama and communities in third world countries. That’s why I came to the bicycle. It’s a technology that is used a lot in third world countries. It’s low tech, easy to operate, and anybody with a little bit of skill can repair them and keep them going, but it doesn’t cost a lot of money. In a small town like this, it will get you from one end of town to the other just as fast as a car will. It’s a technology that makes sense for this region, and I think that these other technologies are similar to that as well. This is a building that will only need to be operated one or two days a week for maybe four hours at a time. That’s the perfect situation for solar power. You have no utility bills, you get all the power from the sun, it stores it there, and the power is there when you need it. It’s about trying to make a system that doesn’t require too much from its users. Also, there will be no water bill because the water is all collected rainwater, and the use of the water is minimized to hand washing. There is no restroom in the building, and we’re not going to put one in because we don’t need one. To me, these are all technologies that make sense to the project and also to this region.

KH
Did you design the bikes and how you wanted the different things on them?

RS
I didn’t design or build the frames. It is kind of like I use the bike as a found object and then build onto it what the needs are. If we need to carry a rake, shovel, and a hoe, there will be three tubes on the side. For the original two prototypes, I purchased two pedicabs, they’re pedal taxis, and they use them in a lot of other places. I purchased two pedicab frames off Ebay and then from that basic structure, changed them up-- in terms of handle bars, wheels, etc. and in terms of what the utility was going to be. The prototypes came out of working at the city building with the Parks and Recreation Department, the Utility Department, and then asking those guys every day, ‘If you were going to use this bike to go out and read meters, what would you need on it?’ A place for a shovel, a place for a clipboard. . . so that’s what dictated what went on those first bikes. The new bikes will be geared towards hauling stuff, watering for the garden project, and picking up litter.

KH
Where does the funding come from?

RS
The bicycle prototypes came from Auburn University and the Rural Studio, and each of our other projects has its own funding. Projects here are a mixture of City Funds and Coleman Center funds, through the Coleman Center we have gotten support funds that come from the State Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Alabama Power Foundation, and I have a number of private funders that help out with these projects.

KH
Do you get paid?

RS
I’m not paid for the municipalWORKSHOP projects. The lines are fuzzy a little bit because my position in York is as half time artist in residence at the Coleman Center, which during that time is when I work on the municipalWORKSHOP stuff, but the other half, I’m employed as the Artistic Director at the Coleman Center. There, I’m in charge of coming up with the gallery shows, looking for new artists, trying to get the artist-in-residency program straight, working on this building back here to get it set up for the residency program. So, I get paid for my job at the Coleman center, but I don’t get paid for the municipalWORKSHOP.

KH
Have you always known that this is what you wanted to do? What did you major in?

RS
Sculpture. I’m always going back and forth between gallery-oriented stuff and the public art stuff. Before I was in Indiana, I lived in Omaha. I would always make up proposals and send them off to the city. I would never hear any response of course. Then, I did the same thing in Bloomington. There were three or four projects that I approached the city about and I didn’t get a response from any of them. I think that ever since I started learning about art, I’ve always wanted to do some kind of art that engages people. Even my gallery work always engaged other people. It always dealt with getting people together in some way and coming up with something that felt collective, even if it was my own thing in the gallery. The municipalWORKSHOP is just a natural growth out of that. It’s a lot like that band thing. As I move through, the band will change, the people that I work with will be different, and we’ll all have different ideas. The sound and the way it looks—that will all change, but somehow it will have some cohesiveness.

KH
I’m interested in the creative process. As a writer, I often suffer from writer’s block or I have to revise things over and over again. Do you come up with several drawings or ideas before you come up with the right one?

RS
Absolutely, and I’m not sure that even the right one is the right one. I’m a mess every couple of days with this whole thing. Sometimes, I think, it’s a waste of time, it’s a crackpot idea, nobody cares, this idea sucks. Not every project is going to be great and not everything you write is going be great, but you just do it. That’s why I love the model of the band. Because the thing is, bands come out with really crappy albums, but it doesn’t mean the band sucks. It just means they produced a bad album and the next time, their album might be really great. I think maybe we’re a little more accepting of something like rock music because a writer or an artist can totally get trashed and their career obliterated with one bad project. There is also letting go of that perspective of everything that you make is going to be great. I look at it like each of the projects are good for different reasons. Some of them are good because they engage a local business somewhere. So, projects are good for different reasons, but of course, I go through that block, but I try to keep myself busy with a bunch of different things. Whether I’m traveling or whether I’m here, I try to constantly look, for my own work, at the way things are built. Whether it’s the way the telephone polls are out here, or the cracks in the sidewalk, or whatever. There are tons of different ideas in every square inch of landscape, and it’s just a matter, for me, of sifting through those. I’ll waste a lot of time going through something that I think is a great idea and then it ends up being totally lame.

KH
So, what’s your goal, really? What’s your goal for York? What’s your vision? If you were in charge here, what would you do?

RS
Well, I would never want to be in charge. I think the bottom line is I’m interested in things that I can control and things that I do know something about, which is making art. I can participate in this civic environment by working myself, or trying to find an artist that is interested in doing a project that addresses a civic issue somehow. What I can do is use, and in a way I think that’s what everybody should do, with whatever field they are in or whatever they are talented at, is try to find some way that they can participate with how their community is shaped. Maybe it’s just going to the city council meetings and sitting there and you don’t say anything. That’s fine, you will probably have an opinion about something at some point and want to engage with how things are done. The vision, I think, is just to keep doing projects that look like art or are kind of like art. The goal at the residence facility here for me is just to set something up where artists can come and explore this place. I think this town needs it and think artists can also benefit from spending time here. I think the town needs new ideas, because they have tried everything in the book. This new Ford plant is not the answer to how people can survive and have a decent lifestyle. That is not what it’s going to do. People have been working in paper mills for 40 years, and they are still poor as hell, and it’s not right. That’s not the way things should work. I’m not saying we can solve all of those problems, but I think solving a part of the problem can be done through developing a sense of self-worth in the community and some sort of local pride. I think that’s a role that public art can play. So, I guess the goal is just being able to help people’s lives be more fulfilling, not so depressing. This area is so depressed and a lot of small towns are incredibly depressed because they are looking for the next answer from somebody. I think there is an awareness that can happen through the projects we do, which I think is different than just maybe going out and beautifying something. There are other levels with these projects, levels that hopefully inspire and make people think.

KH
How long do you think you’ll be here?

RS
I will be here for another year for sure. My hope is that at that point, the structure will be kind of laid out. The municipalWORKSHOP will continue to function here. We’ll have a Station here, where I can send people, where artists can apply to come and develop projects. York will be one of the municipalWORKSHOP Station’s where you can submit a proposal to do a project and then we’ll have another town somewhere. I want to go somewhere in the mid-west next, and then we’ll see where it goes from there.

Interview 02 2006

Stuart Hyatt and Richard Saxton in conversation with Lena Vigna, Curator of Exhibitions/Department Head at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI, August 2006.

LV: Talk to me about who you are independently and how/why you came together for M.I.K.E. And please touch on how, generally, you view the intersection of art/architecture/and music.

RS:  Well, most of the work that I do lands somewhere between art, architecture, design, and maybe social intervention. I have been creating projects under the moniker of the municipalWORKSHOP since 2002. I have always felt like the work I wanted to do could or should provide some sort of meaningful social utility—which is what I strive to accomplish with the municipalWORKSHOP projects. I am experimenting with social participation with these projects--I would like the work to be involved with the shaping of the social landscape—be meaningful in someway. I kind of think this is what everyone should be doing, right? Can you imagine if our society worked in a way where everyone used their work to somehow better their community--or at least kept that concept in mind while developing their “to do lists”? 

I think both Stuart and I share a number of ideas about what art maybe “should do.” Obviously he is a “sculptor” as well—which by the way is how we met, in Graduate School at Indiana University—but he is in no way working like a traditional sculptor. What both he and I are doing is more in line with what Beuys talked about with his idea of Social Sculpture—the idea that you can shape a society or community in the same way that you can shape a ball of clay. So, Stuart is gathering community members together to make these interesting music recordings. Generally, I think we share a lot of values in terms of art making. We had worked together before developing this project—which really came out of an opportunity for Stuart to do something in his hometown of Indianapolis and for me to get back to the Midwest to realize a new piece.

SH: Yeah, we’ve worked together for a while now. Our first official collaboration was a very strange installation in a front yard.  We rented a backhoe and dug massive holes that we turned into meditative bunkers. I think we connected over the agreed need for a backhoe.

Although my art training is in sculpture and installation, I seem to spend more of my time working on music projects. My activities in contemporary art and popular music have intersected on many projects and I felt the need to organize my various music projects and the people I work with —TEAM Records. TEAM Records is just an umbrella for my various sound and music ideas.

As for the intersection of art/architecture/music—there are obvious formal/functional intersections with much of the current challenging architecture designed to hold/display art (museums) or to give space to music (concert halls and theatres). But on a personal level—I am an untrained musician who studied art and architecture—so when I write music, I am thinking about space, color, scale, line, figure/ground…all that art stuff. I am not thinking about scales, modes, keys, or time signatures. And I find a lot of people who, when describing their listening process or their emotional reaction to music, describe it in very architectural terms—something is solid, massive, vertical or horizontal. Of course there are composers who have deeply studied graphic scores and the like—but I am not so interested in all of that, I like pop music. Which brings up one of the points of comparison between Richard and I. We both think in the built environment—he really responds to the hand-made, the vernacular, the modest, the simple - and I respond to these same qualities in music.

LV: Where were you with the development of M.I.K.E. when the John Michael Kohler Arts Center became involved? How much did this commission structure the project and what do you think it is about M.I.K.E. that resonates with the Arts Center's interests?

SH: Richard and I were finalists in a competitive public art competition in Indianapolis. Each finalist (or collaborative team in our case) was given a budget to propose a major new public art project to be funded by the City of Indianapolis and various private donors. Our proposal was M.I.K.E. We had a pretty ambitious (and in hindsight, insane) scope of work in mind—a 16–foot wide mobile structure that would, over the course of 18 months, facilitate the recording of a 4-CD box set of original music in 4 distinct Indianapolis neighborhoods. This was in January of 2005. We didn’t end up getting the commission, and each of us went on to new projects. Later that year, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center saw our proposal packet and thought it might be a great fit for Sheboygan as a Connecting Communities project. We then spent about a year coordinating our schedules and refining the nature of the project. In April 2006 we formally began the design of the sculpture as an Arts Center commission.

RS: To be quite honest, we had really moved this M.I.K.E. thing to the far back burner by the time the Arts Center showed an interest in realizing it. As Stuart mentioned, the proposal had been finished—there were models, graphics, the whole works—and since we had already presented this project a couple of times to panels in Indy, the ideas and visual layouts where totally in place when the Arts Center picked it up. I think we both hoped it would be realized but we both had moved on to other ideas as well, so it was kind of a surprise to us to be thrust back into the M.I.K.E. project and begin moving it through its next steps. The Arts Center had a unique perspective in wanting community members to actually participate in the building of the thing—our original proposal had a good amount of the fabrication work being shopped out—and we ended up doing it all ourselves with the help of a ton of people the Arts Center hooked us up with. So this did a couple of things—it cut the budget nearly in half (which I think was key to getting it realized) but also opened the project to these other people’s ideas. An example of this is Lee Seeger, a machinist at Lakeshore Technical College. We had a design problem of creating hinges that could open a 1200 lb. door and still look like part of the unit. Lee just kind of took off on the project and developed these things from the initial design stage all the way to actually bolting them onto the unit. So I would like to think that during the building phase of this project M.I.K.E. involved some community members in some unique experiences—which seems to be a huge part of the Arts Centers mission, impacting the daily life of local residents with contemporary art. I think this is definitely a key value that both Stuart and I, and the Arts Center felt strongly about and why, ultimately, the project ended up happening here rather than Indy or anywhere else.

LV:  M.I.K.E. feels to me both familiar and alien—an amalgamation of the past, present, and future. Talk to me about its structure and it's cosmetic make-up. Why the grain bin? Why the salvaged materials? What was planned and what was organic?

SH: The familiar and alien description—this is exactly where I want to be with my work, both visually and sonically.  In fact, this is probably the closest I can come to a definition of the projects that I most connect with. Having worked with Richard on several of the municipalWORKSHOP projects, there always seems to be a very simple ground (the familiar) upon which he adds his aesthetic (the alien). So the process of creating a form is, as we both like to say, intuitive building. And because intuition is a direct perception of something independent of a reasoning process, I think we get forms that are a bit off the cuff, off the logic radar. But, this alien that has been added is derived from personal experience in the world—Richard is from Nebraska and I am from Indiana, we both live and work in the Midwest. Using vernacular forms makes sense on practical and conceptual levels. 

RS: I have always wanted to make something out of a grain bin. Growing up in the Midwest it is such a familiar form on the land and I really enjoy this history of people making new things out of readymade structures. It is a way of working that is utilized by everyone from farmers to really influential makers like Bucky Fuller. The salvaged materials come in as both a way to build on the cheap and add interesting aesthetic information while at the same time maybe this adds an element of responsibility—through using materials that might be destined to sit in a landfill for years and years. I think all of the municipalWORKSHOP projects have this kind of lowbrow rural mentality meets refined NASA-ish thing going on. I am not sure exactly where this comes from, but it keeps showing up. 

 

LV:  Was it always conceived of as something transformable and mobile - qualities that certainly resonate on both aesthetic and practical levels? But even if it was to be "interactive," it would not necessarily have to be mobile or transformable—were those elements also always at play?

RS: It has always been thought of as being somewhat mobile. Again it is probably personal experience mixed with the way things are being built these days—the combination of I-80 stretching through where I grew up (always seeing RV’s, semi’s, mobile homes, etc. going down the road) and the real mobile culture that is prevalent in our lives today (people buying condos instead of homesteads and carrying iPods and mobile phones). Automobiles are increasingly transformable. And this isn’t necessarily anything new—there was a big “mobility” movement in the 60’s and 70’s in design—but I think it is just an idea that comes around every now and again for us humans. Wasn’t it Deleuze and Guattari that said something about humans being hardwired for a nomadic existence, that standing in the way of this is what caused wars? I could be totally wrong there, but perhaps that is why we continue to be explorers—wanting in our time to colonize Mars rather than the Wild West.

SH: I think the mobility has two meanings. First, the structure is small and has elements of campers, trailers, heavy machinery, farm equipment, and storage sheds, lunar pods—all of which are made to move around. Second, the modest architecture we were just talking about has a certain transient, temporary nature. Although it is grounded in its surroundings, it seems itchy, ready to change or be torn down—as if it may or may not need to be there forever. I think maybe it makes me feel better, when building a big outdoor steel sculpture, to think that it doesn’t command the landscape, but gently settles in—perhaps hovering—until it needs to move on.

LV: Did it feel at any point as if the practical—that this ultimately needed to function as a recording studio AND a bandstand—was going to overwhelm the aesthetic? How did you resolve those concerns?

SH: No way. If somebody wants to go into a big-league recording studio they are not going to put up with outside noise, whacky temperature changes, and messy cables everywhere. We are not trying to replicate the pristine recording environment—what we are giving is a unique space that is intended to transport the participant to a place where they are comfortable and inspired to create their music. Most people that have come inside to record comment on how comfortable they feel. The bandstand is intended to be a platform for impromptu and spontaneous neighborhood concerts. I’d like to see it used more on that level than for major organized concerts.

RS: We were pretty aware and careful about the practicality of the thing. I definitely error on the side of form over function but, in this particular case, both aspects had to work equally well. I don’t feel that we compromised anything on either side of the coin there.

LV:  What directs your motivation and your ideas when you recognize that this is going to be an interactive work utilized by the community-at-large? That at any given moment it could be presented at a different point in its utility—as a sculpture/as architecture/as recording studio/as bandstand?

SH: We like to make things that serve a purpose other than just looking good. With M.I.K.E. we just tried to make this as simple and as approachable as possible for people to interact with. That said, it is a sculpture, a studio, and a bandstand—that is what it is made to do.

RS: It also might be the overwhelming urge to want to please others. Making something that has multiple options for success is kind of nice—if someone doesn’t appreciate the sculpture part, maybe they like the recording studio. If not that perhaps they are into the bandstand. Part of that may also be damage control. If you build a transformable thing like this that is made for people to utilize, perhaps there is less of a chance of letters to the editor about how ugly and what an eye sore the thing is (a problem that never seems to go away in public art). So those are a few things—but the inspiration and conceptual side of it is simply making a utilitarian device, something similar to a large-scale Leatherman tool or something like that.

LV: In some ways, it is quite radical to propose a project such as this—something that is architecture but portable--that is sculpture and a studio. Can you talk about why this is the kind of work you want to make?

RS: Radical, huh? Well, I think it is just the idea of the new object that is the motivator. You know, nobody wants to make something that has been seen a million times already—so with each project there is always an element of invention. How can I push this thing to be more than it’s basic elements? We talked a lot during the build process about how much easier it would have been if the thing didn’t have to open—if it could have just been a recording studio in a grain bin. But that is just kind of leaving the project in it’s basic form—a disservice maybe—if its going to be good, you have to push the idea to a point that it is new. So neither one of us had ever seen a recording studio, a sculpture, and a bandstand all wrapped into one spaceship-like grain bin before. So that makes sense to pursue as a viable project.

SH: I just think it is more interesting and has more levels than a static sculpture. But you have brought up a very important point here—one that I’m sure has a long discussed history in art/philosophy:  this structure is, simultaneously, an artist’s comment on the world and an actual living thing in the world. This I think speaks to both of our desires to be participants and observers, performers and recorders. For example, I designed M.I.K.E. because it is something I would want in my neighborhood—I like M.I.K.E.! That is a possible point of departure for all my projects—do I want this thing in my world? Would I like using it, looking at it? —And then balancing that with study of a given environment or a community and designing a project that you think will address a desire/need in that particular place.

LV: While I have not seen or heard you use the word "utopian" to specifically describe M. I. K. E., it does seem to embody a certain sense of that--more a sort of "practical utopia" with the use of salvaged materials, solar energy, and the idea that it can function in a variety of different capacities on both theoretical and conceptual levels. Can you comment on that categorization?

SH: And don’t forget about space travel! Space exploration is a paradox, because it is almost a rejection of the utopian ideal—let’s get out of here! And when we designed this thing we did have some fairly utopian conversations about the grain bin being a storage/vessel of energy and sustenance—and how music making might provide similar nutrition for the spirit. Also about the structures and the people of the Midwest and the Plains, settlers and homesteading, you know—the pioneer spirit. Covered wagons and spaceships. Barley and Tang!

RS: I guess I think about that in a real simple sense—that perhaps to me utopia implies making the community or world more ideal, or at least better if not ideal. So that is totally subjective but to me at least adding something like M.I.K.E. to the built environment is participating in that ideal built community. I would love to see communities that have things like M.I.K.E. all over the place. I guess that’s kind of what I picture when you say “utopia”—like a bunch of organic space ship houses—things that are real geodesic or look like that crazy thing in Brussels, the Atomium. I love that thing. It also seems to imply the future (which I don’t know why). We should really start building utopia now, huh?  Why wait? I guess maybe that’s why the Arts Center commissioned the project—there is a very utopian vibe with the mission there.

LV: Clearly the idea of a civic, community-oriented project is significant to you. That combined with the details of M.I.K.E. itself resonates with some of the aforementioned R. Buckminster Fuller's ideas about cooperation and sustainability relative to architecture, design, technology, the intermingling of disciplines, the intermingling of human beings, and nature. This connection would also tie you into the utopian/visionary ideas of other philosophers, social theorists, designers, artists, and architects. I absolutely see M.I.K.E. as having that kind of potential--as being a part of the dialogue of contemporary society on a broad scale. Do you? 

RS: Absolutely, although I don’t know if I can articulate what that is. It would be best to leave that up to people like you who know what they are talking about when it comes to philosophy and social theory. I would just say that yes, an intermingling approach to creativity is definitely the strategy that I am most comfortable and that I find most successful. It is just so much more fulfilling for me to meet and collaborate with architects, or machinists, or recording engineers, or construction workers. I would much rather be out amongst the people and the built environment. I don’t think we can really evolve as a people with a specialized view of things. There are too many perspectives, too many interesting viewpoints, including cultures, religions, etc. that get ignored through specialization. Clearly that is what our political leaders and governments are struggling with now—they don’t know how to interact with people that are different than them. I guess it comes back to that point of using the work to participate in society someway. But you know, you can’t get totally worked up about all this stuff, or you become paralyzed—so you do what you can, build a project and then move on to the next one, hoping all the time the work matters in some regard.

SH: Utopian/Visionary concepts, cooperation, the intermingling of human beings and nature—this is exactly what is happening through the music, inside during the recording process. It is not as if a polished band is coming inside to cut a record. What is happening, is that people are approaching this strange structure with curiosity—they walk up, they ask about it, they come back to participate, to sing and play and become a part of something bigger. In doing so, they have had a great art experience I think—where M.I.K.E. is the medium through which people connect, in ways they might not have without it being there.