DL: In viewing your art work I was intrigued by the relationship between existence and technology that is created. For example in Spore 1.14 the Rubber Tree plant is dependent upon technology for its existence, and in Coke Is It5, technology is presented as an artificial life form that destroys itself. What role do you see technology playing in the life-death cycle of society?

DE: I see in humans, a strange duality - kind of like a cyborg, but where the technology connected to our bodies is more of the technological results upon our bodies (rather than mechanical apparatus). For instance, our genetics has prepared us for perhaps being without food for several days. This is why we crave fat and sugar. What happens when there is suddenly, as a result of technology, an over abundance of sugary and fatty foods? We aren't equipped to handle it - there is no discipline organ, instead we have to monitor ourselves consciously and eat healthy and exercise to augment technology's cornucopia (our invisible cyborg half). This is what Coke Is It is about - the robot is a stand in for a human. The skin-umbrella is an inadequate protection for the environment of its consumption. The rubber tree plant is also a stand in for a human. Here is a perplexing situation we have put ourselves in, transplanted, and controlled by a ridiculous synthetic virtuality. But I am not saying technology is itself an 'evil' thing - its all about making a statement that technology expands exponentially, with no valuable feedback concerning the well being of humans, other organisms, or our ecosystems: we need to start paying attention to other values besides economics. We don't have a technology problem, we have an awareness problem.

DL: In your work Run World Run6, advertising slogans such as "we're cool, beautiful... desirable - buy us now," are intermingled with words like "progress and growth." I find it interesting how these last terms are often in contradiction if one thinks about them in relation to ecosystems and business markets. Growth for a market often entails more resources which corresponds in the ecosystem as a depletion. In this sense "progress" ideology has a strong linear element in its thought construct, as opposed to a more cyclic way of thought. How does "progress" in this sense fit into your artistic practice in terms of production and success?

DE: That is a good point. I haven't thought about those contradiction in terms. It makes me think about Naomi Klein's "no logo" and the depletion of resources and quality of human life that is occurring in Southeast Asia. So in the US, we see 'progress!, progress!, progress!': look, another Home Depot opening down the block. Hooray! We must live in a good progressive area!!! Where do all the products come from lining the cavernous isles of these supercenters? From a far away and hidden land - never revealed to us through mass media. No informative feedback comes back into our mechanisms of consumption. We just concern ourselves with buying, with convenience, at the lowest price. In this way, we can think of 'progress' as being something akin to mob-mentality; the conflagration of exponential consumerism.

Footnotes:
4 SWAMP, Studies of Work Atmosphers and Mass Production, April 4th, 2005, "Spore 1.1 is a self-sustaining ecosystem for a rubber tree plant purchased from Home Depot. In this project, Home Depot is responsible for the plant in two ways: first, an unconditional guarantee to replace any plant they sell, for up to one year; secondly through an implied cybernetic contract. This second responsibility is the creative content for the work, where Home Depot's economic health is transitioned through a series of physical computing techniques to a mechanism for controlling the watering of the plant. An onboard computer uses a Wi-Fi connection to access Home Depot stock quotes once per week, keeping a database of these week ending stock values. From the fluctuations in Home Depot stock, various programs and circuitry are controlled accordingly. As the company does well, so does the plant - if the company suffers losses, Spore 1.1 does not get watered. If the plant should parish, due to poor stock performance, it is returned to the Home Depot and replaced with another-at no additional cost."
5SWAMP, Studies of Work Atmosphers and Mass Production, April 4th, 2005 http://swamp.nu/projects/cokeIsIt4.html, "In this artwork, the routine destruction we do to our bodies, mitigated through corporate mass media, is comically expressed through a robot named C3 (parodying Coca Cola's new low-carb product C2). C3 is a hex-crawler robot, outfitted with a CMUcam, enabling it with the ability to search and find puddles of Coca Cola placed on the gallery floor. When C3 finds a puddle of coke, it sucks the beverage up through an electrical pump, and then sprays it across itself. The acidic nature of the coke eventually eats through the robots skin, finding its way to the circuitry, causing it to break down. The robot is designed to find and consume until it kills itself. Companies such as Coca Cola deploy marketing strategies that completely infuse our culture with a sense of well being and elevated self worth that contradicts the actual benefits of the consumable product."
6 SWAMP, Studies of Work Atmosphers and Mass Production, April 4th, 2005, "Run World Run is an interactive animation (with also a time-based version), exploring a society where the general public emulates pop stars and indulges in product fetishism. Corporations and their celebrity sponsors, products, and consumers, are all interconnected in an elaborate feedback loop. This piece realizes the endless layers of structure that consumers and companies cohabit. Overlapping grids are used to symbolize the homogenous confinement of these structures, where people forfeit their individuality to stand in the shadow of corporate marketing. Each layer leads to a new one, baring the same marketing messages: "we're cool, beautiful, wealthy, talented, desirable - buy us now".