[Discussed: Star Trek, cyberpunk, Mr. Rogers, psychedelics, VR, UBI, mud, etc.]
I was introduced to Haoyan of America through music videos. The images I saw dazzled and shined like superbowl commercials, but their aim was unclear. The characters were adorned in a puzzling assortment of cultural artifacts: VR goggles, tunics, Bindis, fingerless gloves, fidget spinners. They moved like cartoons through hypermodern spaces both dystopic and familiar. A slow motion shot captured a man wearing sunglasses as he anointed a statue of the Virgin Mary with water from a neti pot. An owl blinked in crystal clear resolution. Drones buzzed in the periphery, a trophy caught fire, Blu Ray discs fell from the sky.
I looked further and found Jellyfishing in America, HOA’s documentary series following the evolving relationship between culture and technology. The footage, shot on the streets of New York and elsewhere, was set to monologues by scientists, poets, and cultural critics, and collaged with music. The film’s alchemical approach brought to mind British ‘documentarian’ Adam Curtis or French filmmaker Chris Marker. HOA’s tone was wide-eyed, but not naive; precise and artful, but not didactic or heavy-handed. The camera, our seeing eye through the abyss, revealed visions both hilarious and haunting. It waited patiently for its subjects to move, finding moments of delicate beauty within the miasma. I had the sense that our guide was grinning, but not cynically.
Haoyan was an individual, I learned, when a friend invited me to his Brooklyn studio to experiment with VR. Meeting the filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist confirmed my suspicions about him. I was puzzled, but refreshed, by his optimism. He guided me through some virtual open-heart surgery with a rusty saw, and we did some 3D painting. Later, we talked about technology, media, and visions of the future.
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On your website, and in any credit I’ve seen, it always reads Haoyan of America. Do you think of that as a brand? Why did you decide to present your name that way?
I thought of that in college. It could definitely be construed as a brand, but it’s also just very literal. I was actually inspired by Nintendo, of all things. When Nintendo came to America they called them- selves Nintendo of America, because they’re from Japan originally. So the idea to call myself Haoyan of America kind of came from that. In the beginning I never really thought of it as a brand, just something purely descriptive. And it still functions that way.
My impression is that some of your work is for clients and some is more personal. What do you consider your day job? Where is the distinction?
I would say it’s a little bit of both. Work that’s paid, or for clients, I try to infuse with as much of my personal interests as possible. And as far as what I do, as far as titles go, it could fall under the moniker of “art.” Or sometimes I think of it as design, because, to me, a lot of it is just problem-solving. But also it could fall under the moniker of just ‘communications.’
A large part of art-making fundamentally has to do with communicating—ideas, aesthetics, whatever.
And, if you could get more granular with it, the only kind of artists that might fall outside of that paradigm are what you might consider ‘outsider artists,’ who purely make things for themselves. But, even in that world, I think they’re attempting to do something there, even if it’s for themselves.
It seems that sound is really central to most of the filmmaking you do, particularly in Jellyfishing in America. I’m curious which guides which, sound or vision?
That one, if I were to put a percentage on it I’d say maybe sonically 60-70%. That is made up of fictional setups, but also a lot of documentary footage. Often times if I see something that’s striking and memorable I’ll definitely file that away in my mind. Like, “Oh, I definitely have to do something with this.” So then the image comes first, and it’s a matter of find- ing something that would be suitable it or complement it well. But a lot of times sonically I will hear a talk or a monologue or a song that I know I really want to work with. Or extrapolate something else from it. Either couple it with something that contrasts with it well, or amplify whatever underlying feeling or message might be there.
When you were younger do you remember if sound or imagery spoke to you first? Is there a memory you associate with becoming interested in communication in general?
I emmigrated to the United States from China. I actually did not really grow up listening to music or watching television until around the age 6 or 7, and I never really listened to popular music until high school. We were just having lunch. My friends were talking about music, and they realized I had no idea what they were talking about. This was during the time when cassette tapes, mixtapes, were a thing. So my friends made me some mixtapes, and it went from there. So I think that the way I listen to sound, and maybe even vision, I scrutinize it a little bit differently, because it wasn’t so normalized when I was younger. Maybe I paid a little more attention to it.
I have a friend who said something similar about coming from a pretty rigid religious background. He wasn’t allowed access to any media really. When he finally accessed it, it had a sort of magical quality to it.
Yeah, I think for me there’s also the fortuitous parallel of the Internet coming into existence around that time. So when my interest in music began it was also followed by the introduction of things like Napster and filesharing, and therefore it just became a lot easier to access a lot of this information in the form of music.
Do you remember what was on those mixtapes at all?
The first tape I received was a mix of industrial and, I don’t know what you call it. Maybe post-punk music? I remember groups like Skinny Puppy, Tool, The Cure, Bauhaus. That was the flavor. It was kind of an amazing time, early internet, pre-internet. Thinking of it now, I’m fascinated by how certain bits of culture reached me. I remember I was introduced at the time to groups like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, who were from overseas. They weren’t even that popular at the time, but a certain group of people knew about this stuff, and they were able to transmit it. And this was in Alabama of all places!
Whoa. What part of Alabama?
Birmingham.
How long have you been in New York?
For a little over ten years now.
Did you move from China to Birmingham directly? Or was there somewhere else in between?
Missouri. So I spent all of high school in Alabama, and my elementary studies were in Missouri.
Where did you study?
In high school I went to Alabama School of Fine Arts, and then I went to School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I was there from 2000 to 2004, and then I lived in LA for 4 years. Then I moved to NY in 2008. And, hilariously enough, my friends and I in Chicago, we all pretty much focused on film and new media. They moved out to LA to work in film, and the 4 years that I lived there I never did anything in film. I ended up working in video games for a little bit, and then I got into web design and development. But to me, eventually all those things tied in together. Which is why I’m kind of interested in the media landscape in general, and not just one form or another.
The gaming world I know nothing about. It’s huge! I get glimpses sometimes, via co-workers. They’re always playing Pokemon Go.
It’s so vast! If you’re ever interested, go to a convention. Those things are a great way to get your feet wet. Because it’s so concentrated, but you also have the hype and everything. And it’s such fun peo- ple watching. It’s like going to the airport, but on psychedelics. It’s amazing.
Are psychedelics an influence on your work at all?
I think they definitely have been. I’ve had experiences with psychedelics. Not too recently, but I think I’ve definitely had a pretty significant experience. If you wanna know what that’s like, but don’t wanna get your feet wet, just read that new Michael Pollen book. It’s really good, because it talks a lot about the science behind it. They’ve been doing a lot more research into psychedelics and their potential uses in therapy and stuff like that. There’s actually a lot of interesting science in it as well.
It’s unfortunate that a lot of those studies got shut down when they did.
But they’re starting up again. And again, this is the kind of thing you don’t hear about in the popular culture, the mainstream. But a lot of those things are coming back, and under a lot more scrutiny. Which has its pros and cons.
Johns Hopkins does a lot of them studies, right?
Yeah. And NYU does them, too.
I’ve mainly heard about psilocybin and ketamine studies. Are any of these schools studying acid clinically?
They study MDMA, for PTSD stuff. But I think they’re studying LSD, too. In the book they talk about studies that specifically avoid LSD because of prior connotations. Psylocibin, a lot of people don’t know what that is. Whereas, culturally, everyone knows what LSD is.
I could see how that would be a messy factor, from a scientific standpoint.
In the book they talk about this current, renewed interest in psychedelics, which leads to support from people you would not think of. They have former heads of FDA and people like that. These people understand its potential, and they also know you have to go about it in a careful way, because the thing that undermined research in the 50’s and the 60’s could happen again.
You mentioned early internet culture. When you were show- ing me some Virtual Reality stuff you compared where VR is at currently to the early stages of the internet. You described it in a way that I thought sounded optimistic. Or, at least not wholly pessimistic. I’m curious if you have an overall feeling about tech, and the possibilities of tech. Where do you see it going? Where does the optimism come from, if you’d call it that?
I think a lot of the optimism could stem from one of the TV shows I watched a lot when I was younger, Star Trek The Next Generation. The way they portrayed human beings in the future and how they used technology was, in a way, very optimistic. But they also did it in a way that was definitely not utopian.
People still had character flaws. You still had human nature, and you still had conflict. But technology was used in the service, mainly, of exploration.
Technology is a tool, and its usage is basically reflective of the conditions of the culture. It’s just a matter of actually creating a culture or society that uses technology in that manner. And there are examples of that, you know?
A lot of times when societies and cultures exist in relative peace and luxury, the bad things are the ones that stand out, and they get a lot of attention. In the media landscape we currently exist in, those things get highlighted quite a lot more than all the other things happening. I like to remind people who get caught up in the political turmoil of our times that, all this is happening, and at the same time, for instance, we have people in the private sector who have developed rocket ships that can go into space and come back, in unison. And land in the ocean! You know? This has already happened. This is 2019; it’s happened for a couple of years. And most people in the mainstream, if they have an inkling of that happening, they’re not really attuned to the possibilities there. To them, it’s a singular event. It’s a spectacle. But they’re not realizing, that’s the doorway to a whole other future that people in decades past were already imagining.