Needless to say, many digital artists supported themselves over the past few years with their programming or design skills, happily relieving dot-coms of their cash in the process. "Usually, someone who was 24 with, you know, a master's from CalArts wouldn't be very serious corporate material, but I was fortunate enough to get here during the Web boom," says Jeremy Blake. Just as the young Andy Warhol alchemized his commercial-illustration skills into his pioneering Pop, many artists who spent the nineties at mouse-and-keyboard day jobs have brought those familiar tools to their artwork. "I didn't want to become an executive at a dot-com and go public," says Blake. "I was always thinking, What kind of art could I make while I'm here?" The irony of his situation does not escape him. "While a lot of those companies are now leaving the building," he says with a grin, "I'm still around doing this oafish stuff I always wanted to do."
Some weeks after Larry Rinder's fly-by, Blake is still very much in the building, though to save money, he's moved his studio to a slightly more modest fourth-floor space. He's a little under the weather, having worked and reworked Station to Station's images, tones, and pacing "nonstop since August." Sinking into the relocated orange couch, he sips a hot drink. "I thought the computer would increase the amount of work I could do," he laments, "but it's not the case." His piece has evolved into a slow-moving half-animated movie of his imagined Tokyo train station, with each frame, each luminous color, each dissolve and effect under his precise control.
As "BitStreams" draws near, Blake is feeling at the top of his game. "Interest in my work went way up after the millennium," he says. "Beforehand, we were supposed to be anxious about Y2K or something. But after" -- he glances at his Mac, eager to hit the keyboard -- "it's like people were given cultural permission to like new things." And then, this being software development, it's back to work.
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