Interview date: April 2005
Interviewed by Ka-Man Tse
LMCC: Tell me about your speaker project.
Tom: Yeah … we’re tying to figure out
this way to get silent speakers happening. Cause I’ve been
dealing with these sound boxes that have really loud music in them. There’s
some pictures (of them) up over there. I thought it’d be
fun... I went from to doing these sound box things with loud
music in them. And then I started making these little boxes,
like these on the floor that are silent boxes, they have nothing in
them, but they’re built in the same way the sound boxes are built. I’ve
been thinking about silence, in a way, and the architecture of silence,
building silence. So now I want to take it to the next stage:
The architecture of sound, yet made silent. But actually having
sound come through them. So it’s like twisted around the
idea of silence, and being silent. Again it’s all really
developing. I don’t know why but I’m really psyched
about it. I’m just really into the architecture of the
black stereo on the white table. I’m feeling the juices
all flowing at once and I’m having fun right now. And I
play in a band and I make a lot of noise that way. So maybe I’m
trying to be the anti-band.
LMCC: The anti-band?
Tom: The anti-band.
LMCC: What kind of instrument do you play?
Tom: I play bass. It becomes a bridge between
percussion of melody, and guitars and drums. It’s a nice instrument
to be involved with because you’re in the center of everything. Everything
revolves around you in a way, although traditionally, the bass is in
the background. But it’s kind of a fundamental thing that
everyone sits on top of. Especially rock and roll. It’s
fun to be considered in the back but kind of break forward too.
This is a model for a piece that I have out at Black & White Gallery. It’s
another one of the sound pieces with the loud music coming out of the
box. It’s an outdoor piece so I built a model for it. This
is a plywood shelter that I made and the sound box goes inside. And
you open this and really loud music comes out so this whole becomes a
sound chamber. And it blasts outside against a concrete wall. So
the whole courtyard lights up with the sound blasting out of here. And
again it’s my band’s music coming out of the sound box, so
it’s a sort of biographical thing too.
And these are drawings…. I work in a very architectural way. I
took theatre design when I was an undergraduate in school. It was
really influential in the way I work. I feel like, if I don’t
have a plan, if I haven’t sketched it out, if I haven’t plotted
it out, I feel really out of sorts. I need to think before
I put together. It’s a real integral part of the way I work…even
though I always feel that I have to break out of that too. Cause
I feel like it kind of limits me in some way. So it’s always
this constant battle with planning versus spontaneity or mixing the two. That’s
why rock and roll is important to me. That’s a really
spontaneous kind of expression, where the artwork is all about form. Although
you have to be precise when you play music too. So it’s
this balance of expression and precision at the same time.
LMCC: But when you’re in a band you’re
also collaborating with other people.
Tom: Yeah. And In fact with these projects
I end up collaborating with people too. My friend Matthew helped
me put this project together and he was great- he spent the whole day
with me. There’s no way I could have done it by myself. And
another friend of mine, David, helped me cut the pieces of wood. So
I end up, especially with larger pieces, needing a crew. Of
course, artists who don’t make a lot of money making art, you
have beg your friends to help you, but they’re usually psyched
to help you, so it’s a nice atmosphere, working that way. And
it’s the same with the band. No one’s making money,
it’s not about any material reward. It’s just about
doing it....
I just had this idea and I’m thinking about that as my piece for
open studio. Again, I’ve been thinking about silence and
the architecture of silence, as well as loud noise and what that means. Other
people have done this, where you manipulate the speaker horn to drive
back and forth, but without any noise coming out of it, it simply mimics
the idea. I want to program frequencies that will play through
here, where the speaker will be activated, but no sound will be coming
out. Doug is a sound technician, and a musician, and he has some ideas
on how we can do that, so we will be collaborating and coming up with
the programming to do that to the speakers. What I really want
to do is get a song— one of my band’s songs— through
those frequencies, so it’s an actual song that plays through here,
but you can’t actually hear it. Even though the volume may
be all the way up. It would be this controlled frequency
response with the speakers. There will definitely be a sculptural
element with it too. I’m going in stages. I really want to
see what effect on the speaker is first, and then expand it out to do
an entire sculptural installation with the speakers. But already
I’m really just liking the way it looks, this a classic relationship
architecturally, [speakers and the box] it’s the whole plaza building
thing, which you can expand into that. I love the black and the black,
and the yellow in there and the gray. There’s
all kinds of beautiful little details here that I’m really excited
about it.
LMCC: It’s almost like an advertisement too…
Tom: Well, it has that slickness to it. It’s pretty
polished. But again, I like to take something that’s seemingly
one thing, but it’s not. That’s the fun of working with the
loud noises contained in these boxes is that you don’t necessarily get
what you see or see what you get. Something also happens, hopefully
to that effect.
Again it’s very mason work, I’m not quite there yet as far
as how it’s going to manifest itself finally but I’m pretty
excited about where it’s going and I love the idea of containing
this within a sound proofing kind of chamber when it’s playing
loud, but then kind of it naked and open, and sort of having it not be
able to produce something, even though it’s trying. It’s
a sort of reversal there that I’m really interested in.
LMCC:What are your inflences?
Tom: ….Professor Valerie Chadam. She got
me into this idea of sketching—just taking an idea and sketching
through them until you can’t sketch an idea anymore. Then you go
to the next idea and sketch that. And keeping them in a very uniform
format so that you’re not worried about the aesthetics of it necessarily. It’s
simply jotting down an idea, it’s almost a way of writing visually
to yourself. It’s really a great way of thinking about … working
work in progress. So I was just going through something like
that when I got here.
Celina: Definitely. What’s next?
Tom: Well I think the speaker thing is definitely
the thing I’m most excited about now. But as I was saying before,
there’s a sculptural element that I want to bring into this. I
don’t simply want it to be, the stereo with the silent speakers,
there’s a kind of a graphic or sculptural element that I want to
push on that too. I just haven’t really figured out that
part yet because I want to see what talks to me when they are doing their
thing, when these speakers are flopping around. But whatever happens
sculpturally we’ll definitely Incorporate that -- two speakers
and box in the middle. To me that’s a little architectural
cluster itself. That’s what’s next. I think I’m going
doing that piece for open studio. That’ll be the direction it
goes.
I was thinking about downtown and the architecture here. This
work is from last year. I had a little spurt where I did these
fake television sets with the architecture in there. They’re
kind of a humorous meditation on power. The thing that interests
me too is power and power politics, but there’s also power music
and power architecture. The way power plays itself out and the
way we take it for granted. That’s what was so great about
getting a residency down here at LMCC because we’re in the midst
of power architecture. This is all about money and wealth and big
and grand and modernism and it all coalesces so beautifully down here. That’s
why I love this area. Because In a way all of that is very frightening
and it has a detrimental effect on people, but in a way it’s something
I admire too. A minimalism, and that aesthetic is also a big power
trip and I admire all those artists that do that or have done that. Some
people call it elitist but I think it’s just people that have a
strong will and strong opinion on things and they do it. I wish
I had more of that in me maybe, or I think I want to have more of that
in me, so I gravitate toward that kind of work and that kind of architecture..
Celina: Who is inspiration for you?
Tom: These beautiful catalogs in her library
contemporary catalogs from 1972; conceptual minimalist artists
that were showing in the galleries at the time. Richard Serra,
Donald Judd, Michael Hesier. When these guys were at the peak
of their youthful experience when they were really breaking bounds. They
had just been recognized as breaking bounds. That generation,
Joseph Boise, Art De Bobera, that late sixties, early 70s, that whole
generation to me is really inspirational, those guys were just—and
women too Eva Hesse was part of that group.
Celina: Yes.
Tom: They were really just doing what they wanted
to do. It was all about the idea, but there was something aesthetic
about it at the same time, they were very concerned with the aesthetics. They
had a very philosophical mindset even though what uneducated people
would look at it as farcical was not farcical at all. They were
really focused and determined on saying something. Which you
don’t necessarily have to know at the time, but the fact that
they were saying it is really important. So I think that’s
really the most influential to me. And it’s been interesting
to think about that work in context with what I’m trying to do
here because I’m thinking even more of making the sculpture more
big or maybe more subtle, being much more subtle with this work, just
in a way that work was in a beautiful way was so subtle. So I’d
have to say in that late 60s Minimalism, like Judd, like Erwin… that’s
where my heart starts to beat faster when I see that work or read those
texts. And it’s great that you can still see that work
around. The Earth Room down in Soho on West Broadway… little
treasures. New York was heavily influenced by that time, and
the gallery scene really became mature at that time.
LMCC: So how you do personally get rid of the hiccups?
Tom: I hold my breath as long as I can.
LMCC: You’re a musician, what are your favorite
cds or musicians at this moment?
Celina: What’s on heavy rotation right now?
Tom: I’m been reading more than I’m
listening lately. The last big push I was doing was black Sabbath. The
early stuff, the Paranoid, the Black Sabbath album. … Now in
my old age I’m discovering that stuff as if I’m a kid again. Now
I want to be a kid. A lot Black Sabbath, a lot of Motorhead. Right
now, I’m listening to a lot of really basic, simplistic but earnest
rock and roll. But I also like Stereolab and things that are
funky and crazy. But it’s been a lot Black Sabbath lately.
LMCC: Favorite website?
Tom: Mightyhigh.net.
LMCC: Any guilty pleasures you would like to admit
before the general public?
Tom: I’m a shoe whore.
Celina: That’s awesome.
Tom: I don’t have any special shoes on right
now but if I find shoes on the street that I really like, I take them.
I really love shoes.
Celina: So how many shoes do you have in your
closet?
Tom: Too many that I don’t wear that even count. I
don’t know, I am a mess. it’s a mess. It’s
just shoes everywhere.
Celina: me too, so don’t feel bad.
Tom: And I love cars, and I’m a big car guy. Not
fancy cars, just Chrysler K cars. I’m really into design.
LMCC: I like the old green American classic long
sleek cars.
Tom: Those are beautiful. There’s
also the new ones too. The Chrysler Magnum, now that’s
a great looking car. I don’t limit myself to just classic
cars or great early sports cars. I like a great station wagon
as much as a fancy Porsche. It’s just about what that design
says at that moment. And there’s terrible cars that are
like creepy family cars like Buicks and things.
LMCC: That are like box cars.
Tom: There’s a difference. If you look
at a Chrysler K car, that’s a simple elegant square box from
1982 or 83, then you look at one of those crappy GM RogerSmithMobiles,
from ‘82 or ‘83, they’re both in the same price range-
they’re meant for the same audience, but there’s one design
aesthetic that works and one that doesn’t and I just love comparing
those things.
LMCC: What else do you pursue? You’re
a musician.
Tom: I play music, I make art. [we laugh]
I don’t know. I’m trying to read more art theory.
Celina: What are you reading right now?
Tom: A great book by Amy Newman called Challenging
Art. It’s the story of Art Forum from
1962-74. It’s a series of interviews edited together,
from all the people that started Art Forum and were writing
there. It’s great first person art-historical tale. Another
book that really influenced me in the same vein that I read last year
was Please Kill Me by Ledger Leonce. It’s the
unauthorized history of punk music, New York punk. And it’s
the same kind of book. Interviews with Joey Ramone and all those
guys spliced together. It’s this narrative like wow, and
you want to be there at the time. And actually I’ve played
some of the places that they’ve talked about, so I know what
they’re talking about, but it’s an era where those places
were really vibrant and new.
When I was reading that book it was right at that time when I started
making the sound work. It’s interesting how you don’t
realize how things are going to influence down the road but they somehow
always come back if you’re really thinking about it the whole time. That
book made me think about what it means to be an artist. All these
guys were f*cked up heroine addicts but they had something to say and
they were areally bright. Even though no one thought they
were bright they knew they were bright. Those guys who did the
conceptual art in the 60s they knew they were bright too. They
didn’t give a shit what anyone thought, they just did it.
Celina: So is there a certain amount of nostalgia
that you have just for that?
Tom: Definitely. Well my work is very nostalgic.
Celina: That’s what I was going to say. Can
you talk about that in your work?
Tom: I don’t know if I can talk about
it so much in my work, but I definitely can talk about it as far as
how I feel about those things. My family is a family of immigrants. So
I feel like I have feet in two places. I still have really strong
ties to where we came from, which is the Czech Republic, Prague. And
I spent a lot of time there and I spent of lot of time with my grandmother
when she was alive there, and I have a lot of amazing memories of friends. I’m
always thinking about the meaning of home or the meaning of existence. I
think a lot of people can relate to that … I don’t think
I’ve ever really been able to make work that talks about that
openly, but I think somehow it permeates what I do, a sense of not
necessarily loss, but a sense of something else that you need to fill
in somehow. Loss is so melodramatic, there’s a lot of loss. And
I have been pretty privileged and pretty lucky in life. There’s
always a sense that you can never really go back, or there’s
something you’re missing there’s always something that
you’re reaching for in the back of your own head.
