COULDA BEEN A PROGRAMMER

MONDO 2000: What computer do you work on and what kind of stuff are you doing?

GIBBY: Well, I've got an IBM-style 386 with an 8-Meg RAM and a 32-bit video card. And I'm running some key frame animation modeling programs. And I've got a paint program as well that I use.

M2: What kind of imagery are you doing?

G: Oh, I like to do things that you can only do on a computer. Computer models that mutate off of outside photographs. A lot of my stuff can best be described as looking like Jamaican space stations.

I do a lot of texture mapping, so I use a lot of photographs. And then I always find uses that weren't intended, generally to interesting effect. That's really the key, I think. Most computer graphics seem really similar... like obvious ways to respond to the capabilities of the machine. But there are plenty of people doing interesting things. The worthwhile stuff usually goes beyond the intentions of the programmer who wrote the software they're using. I'm kind of limited because I can't program, but I seem to have a better imagination than most people I've met who are programmers. It's a shame I didn't learn programming but I don't know... maybe I lost a few too many left brain cells!

M2: I think that when you program, the right side of your brain rots. So what are you going to send us?

G: What I can do with photographs that's really neat—especially portraits—1 have an image that looks like it was shot with a bumpy lens, if you will. Different focal lengths that go across the whole thing so it stretches and bends. You can create some really weird, pinheady lookin' people. It's really strange.

M2: I think God's already done that one.

I TOLD YOU SO

M2: A lot of computer graphics that you see involve people playing with mathematical formulas and coming up with interesting—I guess—symmetrical patterns and stuff like that, which don't do anything for me art-wise.

G: Yeah, it's kinda hard to find the people who really do wildly different stuff. It's usually a woman or an Asian person that does the interesting things. And I don't know why but they're always in some place like Ohio. Weird.

M2: Well doesn't Ohio mean "hello" in Japanese?

G: You haven't asked the title of our next record! It's basically unpronounceable. It' word that's kinda like keoyenh. Pronounce it "Keo-gee-eeh."

R. U. SIRIUS: And what's the spelling of it?

G: I don't know.

M2: Isn't that one of those Russian pastries?

G: Actually it's Navajo code talk for "I told you so." (general laughter] It's kinda funny. The Navajos used this language for their own communication in WWII. It's not a written language, but a spoken thing. So when what you've got is a non-phonetic pronunciation of a non-written language, I think things are pretty questionable. But it seems like the record company's buying it. We're gonna have a lot of computer effects on our video for the next record. But you know they'll never play it on...

M2: We're talking MTV?

G: Well there's a lot of other things you can do with a video, like get it played all over Europe. Actually, MTV does play us but they always want something that's funny. You know, it's gotta be funny. I don't know why. It's just this weird group of people — actually a pretty nice, friendly group of people at MTV—but it's like they know what the kids want. And they don't want anything too weird or too heavy or too questioning. Anyway, that seems like a general thing with us. The sorta day-glo people like us for the yucks.

M2: So are the portions of your video that aren't going to be computer generated being shot on film or videotape?

G: We're gonna shoot it on super-8 and 16 and dump it down to videotape, and frame-by-frame capture it into the system and then fuck with it—we'll rotoscope (or texture-map) one video frame onto an object and then let it metamorph, if you will. So we'll texture map with a stream of files.

M2: Have you seen the video Roy Orbison and his Friends? It was a video that they shot down in L.A. where it's got all of these...

G: This was black and white, right?

M2: Yeah.

G: Yeah, yeah. With like Tom Waits playing completely random, off-key notes and giving everybody dirty looks?

M2: Yeah. I thought that was quite an incredible video actually. They used a lot of 8mm combined with...

G: They probably shot it with 35mm, then used a $50,000 machine to make it look that way.

M2: Right (laughter). Yeah!

G: And they like had a control with different knobs you could turn to different kinds of super-8 cameras. And then you could select from different kinds of fuck ups.

ASSASSINATING PRESIDENTS TO IMPRESS PEOPLE

M2: So who's gonna be inspiring the music of the Ws? And who's inspiring you?

G: Well, I don't know. I was really embarrassed by the jumpsuit that I had in the disco era that was too short in the crotch for me so I just had to do something else. I imagine that Andy Gibbs'll inspire the 90's. Personally, I've always been really inspired by Sarah Jane Moore. She was the first woman who tried to assassinate President Ford. And she's cool because she was the rich housewife of a successful plastic surgeon in the Bay Area who was also hanging out with the radical left. And she tried to narc on members of the SLA who she was also hanging out with. When she did that, her name was immediately mud in the radical community in the Bay Area, so to make up for it, it she tried to kill Ford. [laughter]. She missed but she's pretty dang interesting, methinks. Somebody who's really tried to make something of her life.