"Time and Space is Fucked,"
an interdimensional chat with artist Larry Carlson

November 12, 2001

Blue Arts Magazine

"He's a super psychedelic cyberspace cowboy and his online creations are making huge waves in the world of cyber art."

by Gary Petty

Larry Carlson's eye-popping flash animations seem tailor-made to be viewed at the peak of a hallucinogenic experience. Fans have praised the artist as a "psychedelic genius", and "the Dalí of the New Century."  But Carlson's art is more than just eye candy for stoners.  In the tradition of arch-surrealists like Miró and Magritte, Carlson at his best gives us a kind of disjointed representation of the slippery nature of the unconscious mind, driven to Dionysian extremes. 

Recently, I had a chance to "sit down" with Larry in virtual space for a lengthy discussion about the artist and his methods:

gary: I've seen the number 76 crop up in a few places (once literally) in your work. Any special significance to that number?

Larry: That's my digital ID number.  I like to use several different names, or identities in my work. 76 is my "digital" name.

gary: So it's the artist's signature, so to speak. Cool.  It seems to me that your art would lend itself well not only to multimedia presentations on the web and in live situations like raves, but also to the even more immersive environments of installation art. Have you had the opportunity to do any work in that area? 

Larry: Yes. My personal website larrycarlson.com, has been shown in FILE (festival internacional de linguagem eletronica), a festival that took place in the Museum of Image and Sound, in the city of Sao Paolo, Brazil. Larrycarlson.com was showing in a special room as a projection and on individual computers . . . and I have been putting on "live" events using all the multimedia on my sites.  Sometimes I work with a DJ and mix my own computer samples over the mix. 

gary: So what kind of a set up do you use for the visuals? Do you project things onto a single large screen on stage behind you, or do you have multiple projections going at once, in different places? 

Larry: Right now I use an LCD projector on really big screen, but I'm now working on a show of multiple projections going at once, in different places. Kinda like you're "inside" the websites.

gary: How often do you take these productions on the road?

Larry: I'm always on the road but not always doing live stuff . . . but I do consider my almost daily output on the sites to be a sort of "live" act, too. I mix up the work whenever I feel like it.

gary: You began studying digital art at Cooper Union in 1994, but I haven't seen too much in the way of pre-digital art on your sites. Why?  Have you stopped working with pencil and paper?

Larry: I still draw in a "real" sketchbook with a "real" pencil. For the past seven years or so I've been doing a lot of drawings of women. Then I take those drawings and mess with them in Photoshop.  I also do a lot of real old-fashioned cut and paste collage work, too.  Before I started making digital images, I was making paintings, so even though I use a computer to create my images, they are still "paintings" in my mind.

gary: Have you ever been to snarg.net or superbad.com? Those were the first two non-linear web art sites that I came across after I got my first internet connection. It's difficult to find sites like that.

Larry: Snarg . . . not yet  . . . superbad was a huge inspiration for me to start making web art. I always loved how you could get lost in it. 

gary: Yes! I liked your web poetry labyrinth for that reason. But your sites are the first I've come across where you can get lost in them and still find your way out, thanks to the handy control panel you place in each one.

Larry: Thanks . . . what's cool about that web poetry labyrinth piece (THE LOVE MAZE) is a lot of the text is collaged from all over the web. 

gary: Really?  So I take it you're familiar with W.S. Burroughs and his cutup method?

Larry: Me and him share several same interests.  

Larry: I use the "cut up" to tap into some kind of higher language.  A lot of my text comes from the front page of the New York Times . . . I think it's amusing that I take this serious text and transform it into the trippiest trip online today.

gary: One of my favorite phrases -- it pops up in the unicorn at the edge of the universe animation --  is " time and space is fucked."  Is that a cut up?  I laughed out loud when I read it. 

Larry: "Time and space is fucked."  That just popped into my head while I was making that piece, so I just stuck it in there.

gary: It's perfect.

Larry: I should show you this page I found that lists every phrase the Beatles sampled. 

gary: No way!

Larry: Like "for the benefit of Mr. Kite there will be a show tonight" from Sgt. Peepers, is from an old circus poster that John Lennon had seen. 

gary: I knew the "Mr. Kite" source.gary: I know a lot of them, like the Hamlet samples at the end of "I am the walrus."But all those samples on "Revolution #9" . . . does the site say where those come from?

Larry: No, just sampled text.

gary: What's the link? We'll put it in w/ the interview.

Larry: I'm more then just a fan of the Beatles, I study them. The way they experimented in the studio is mind blowing. Very inspiring stuff. 

gary: Like the way they cut up all the tape loops of organs, tossed them on the floor, then picked them up and spliced them together in "Mr. Kite"?  I keep going back to this idea of cut up, for some reason.

Larry: Well one of the best things a computer does is CUT and PASTE, so it relates to digital art.  

Larry: Back when they were making Sgt. Peepers there really were not that many options, but they would just push it as far as they could to create new effects, like putting plastic bags on the microphones or singing underwater.

gary: Well, so what other sites, like superbad, have you been to that really grabbed you?

Larry: Can't say I'm really blown away by anything online right now.  Most of the good stuff I see done is a little too "commercial" for my tastes.

gary: Too slick, or too propagandistic? A little of both?

Larry: Too "graphic designy."  I like stuff that's raw and real . . . like kick ass music, ya know . . . 

Larry: the best thing on the net for me is just the act of hunting for weird, fucked up shit.

gary: That's why google is the best search engine on the planet.

gary: It's not so "graphic designy," and they cache pages, so even the totally random crap that's up for only 3 weeks still gets saved, at least until the next time they send their bots out to trawl the web.  Best of all, so far they have no banner ads.

Larry: I use google's image-only search to get a lot of the visual samples I need for my work. Type in a word and 'bang'! There. 

Larry: The image of it.

gary: You mentioned kick ass music.  What kind of music do you listen to when you're working?

Larry: I listen to a mix of all kinds of MP3s -- electronic, hip hop, and rock and roll .  I only listen to MP3s now.

gary: What's currently playing on your mp3 jukebox?

Larry: 40 different Emenim freestyles, lots of spacey orb stuff, live Bruce Springsteen, Björk, some rare live Grateful Dead and every song Biggie Smalls ever made.

gary: When you're creating a flash animation, which do you work on first, the visuals or the music?

Larry: I usually work on the visuals first and then add interactive sounds and soundtracks.

gary: Didn't you say somewhere that you might be working on 50 or 60 different things at once? Is there one important thing that you're totally obsessed with right now? 

Larry: I think I'm totally obsessed with getting all these different multi-media (music, poetry, photography, programming, etc.) that I work fused into one art form. And that's what the websites are for me. A way for me to take all my various interests and merge them into one giant piece.

gary: I would like to see one of your sites in a VR platform. How far away do you think that is?

Larry: That has always been my dream . . . to create a fully virtual environment. In many ways my websites are like blueprints for what I want to do in the future in VR.

gary: I think VR was invented for people like you.  And I'd much prefer your brand of virtual surreality to any mainstream kind of virtual reality that somebody like Spielberg might make.

Larry: Yeah.  The government's and corporate America's vision of virtual reality is so boring.  They want to use it to train you to fight in their wars and buy their products in virtual stores. I want to use it to create places where you could totally lose your mind . . .

gary: It sounds like either way you lose your mind.

Larry: what do you mean?

gary: Well, with the first way, you lose your mind to corporate hegemony; they get to do with your brain whatever they want. Your work, it seems to me, is about losing your mind in the best way, like letting go of a burden.  

Larry: But I do call a lot of it "mind control."

gary: It seems to me that what art like yours does is break down the patterns of thought and behavior that corporate media try to program into everyone.

Larry: Yes.  I use many of the same techniques that traditional advertising does, only my media's ultimate goal is to set my viewers free.  

gary: Are you trying to communicate a particular message with your work, or do you just channel the higher power, or muse, or whatever you want to call it? 

Larry: I don't know what to call it . . . but I do feel that I'm channeling a higher power.  I can't tell if it's a freaky alien, GOD, or just a way for me to deal with my fucked up emotions . . . maybe a combination of it all.  Though I do think my work can be used as a tool for channeling, kind of like tarot cards. 


gary:  Your animations are as mystical or sacred as they are trippy or irreverent. I'm thinking here not only of Virtual Om, with its Hindu symbols, but of Medijate, which to me was like a window into one of McKenna's hyperboreal dream worlds.  

Larry: The Medijate website is hard to explain what it is or what it means . . . for me it's just a loose feeling . . . a spirit . . . or a dream.  A trip inside a living organic technology.

gary: So what trip are you on? Do you know where it's taking you?

Larry: I get the biggest high from creating new art and being able to broadcast it to a worldwide audience. That's my trip . . .

November 12, 2001