Subversive, yet Fun

by Marc Savlov

On the cusp of the 21st century, consumerism runs rampant. Spike Lee and William Burroughs shill for Nike; commercials possess budgets dwarfing most American films made before 1970; and entire independent two- and four-year colleges have opened to cater to the needs of a culture that needs more ad people. What's an artist to do?

Los Angeles artist (and Austin transplant) Bill Barminski has found a solution, of sorts, in his new multimedia CD-ROM, the aptly titled Consumer Product, which takes the participant on a genuinely interactive, hypersurreal tour through mass market consumerism, pop culture hell, and the elaborate labyrinths of the Bar-Min-Ski mindset.

Co-produced by producer and director Webster Lewin (also a former Austinite) and designer and technical director Jerry Hesketh, Consumer Product has recently secured a distribution arrangement with Distributed Art Publishers, a firm which until now has relied mainly on the printed word -- not CD-ROMs -- to pay the bills. Yet with the steady emergence of this new format, the stage is set to unleash a new wave of non-Sega/Nin-tendo-related product on the masses. Things like this bizarre Consumer Product -- odd, yet strangely endearing. Subversive, yet fun.

I had a chance to speak with both Barm-inski (many Austinites may remember his scathingly funny Tex Hitler comics that circulated around town during the mid-Eighties) and Lewin about CP and future products. Here's what they had to say.

Austin Chronicle: To begin with, Bill, why did you pull up stakes and move out to Los Angeles in the first place?

Bill Barminski: I left Austin because I wanted to pursue my artwork and it just seemed like New York or Los Angeles is where you had to go. I mean, I know a lot of really good artists in Austin, but there are not very many of them that are making a living off their art.

AC: How did you hook up with Webster to come up with the whole CD-ROM package? It's quite a leap from Teutonic cowboys to QuickTime beer ads...

BB: Webster and I went to school at UT, and so we met back then while we were working on fanzines and stuff back in the thriving punk scene that Austin had back then. When I got out to LA, I started doing the struggling artist bit, doing paintings, but I got really lucky -- I found some patrons who helped me out when I was getting started. Eventually Webster moved out here after he received his degree in film. He began working in multimedia, and so it was his idea to do the CD-ROM.

Webster Lewin: I'd always wanted to do a documentary about Bill, but I was concerned about where we could get it seen. I knew Bill was an interesting subject, you know, but when we started throwing around ideas of what kind of CD-ROM to do it just seemed like a real natural progression with Bill's comic book history, the things that he did in Austin, the music that he was doing -- and is still doing -- and primarily, the paintings. It really did work out well because of those three core elements.

AC: What was it about Bill that made you think he'd be such an interesting topic for a documentary?

WL: If you've spent any time with the disc, you'll realize that Bill is a really interesting person. He's a good talker in the same way that maybe someone like Will Rogers or Studs Terkel were storytellers.

BB: I'll give you that $20 later, Webster.

AC: How did Consumer Product itself come about?

BB: When we finally decided on doing a CD-ROM, the first obvious thing was that we could use it as a documentation device for all this pre-existing work. You could just fill up a whole disc with paintings and comic books, but you really have to try and go further than that and make use of the multimedia and the interactive element. [We asked ourselves] how do we use the computer to make this something better than a coffee table book or a documentary film -- to merge those elements together?

WL: Plus, we had seen so many poorly designed titles. I mean, most of what's on the market has huge buttons that tell you exactly what's what, and so in our prototype we went completely the other way -- there was no explanation as to what you would get when you clicked on something. We've since moved back a little bit from that, but, you know, we were really stressing the idea that we didn't want it to be totally spoon-fed to the user.

AC: What kind of response have you gotten so far?

BB: I think what was most interesting for me was this person that I've known for a long time out here who, after seeing the CD-ROM, came over and told me, "You know, I've never really liked your artwork, but now that I've seen this CD-ROM, I understand what it is you're doing and I actually like your artwork now." I was also surprised by the amount of articles and press attention that we've gotten from it.

WL: There's a lot of stuffiness in the art world and the art press has been slow to pick up on the CD-ROMs. I think that's going to change, but we've gotten most of our press from the non-art-oriented publications, Entertainment Weekly, Wired, stuff like that, International Design.

AC: Do you find that the CD-ROM makes it easier for people who wouldn't normally come in contact with this sort of art to be exposed to it?

WL: Absolutely. For instance, you might go to a bookstore that has art books, or galleries, but that's a pretty limited opportunity, really. A CD is very small and can be sold in its little jewel case. I think ultimately, maybe 10 or 15 years from now, you're going to see a ton of art-related things on disc because it's just not that expensive to do.

AC: On top of that, do you think this format makes it easier for people to "get it," as opposed to having to dredge through books, museums, and other, more traditional means of accessing artwork?

BB: It's hard to say. Right now, there [are] not a lot of people who can play these in their homes, but that's changing, and when more and more people have that capacity, I think it's going to move artwork from galleries and museums into people's living rooms, much in the same way that recorded music took it out of the concert hall and put it in the home. I don't know if it's going to be that dramatic, but it's definitely going to have an impact.

WL: It shouldn't replace going to see art in museums or galleries, not at all.

BB: Right, but the question is, do people in Bumfuck, Idaho, really have access to museums and galleries in the first place? No. It's going to give people there a chance to see these things.

WL: A lot of contemporary art cannot have justice done to it by a book. Art is kinetic, and how much of that art is really captured upon the page?

BB: One other difference is that, say, with the disc that we're working on now, it's all artwork that we are creating for this medium. I'm actually to the point now where I'm creating artwork that I can't even put on a canvas.

WL: The interaction between the user and the artwork is part of the artwork.

AC: CD-ROMS, then, must not be too difficult to make. How about the publishing aspect of the business? Getting it out to the public?

BB: The hard part began after the actual disc was made, trying to get it distributed and published. There's just so much resistance to "art" titles. People in these publishing firms don't know what to do with them, because it's not kicking and punching. It's not really a game, and that's the big market right now.

WL: They'd call us up and say, "Oh, we love your CD-ROM, do you want to work on BattleBeast II?" [laughter]

BB: I get that all the time. "You wanna art-direct Monster Trucks CD-ROMs? 'Cause we loved your disc!" And it's like, "No, I want you to publish this one!"

AC: So how did you sidestep this problem?

WL: Well, we became a publishing company. We formed De-Lux'o Inc., and now we're looking for some additional titles to take on, two of which we hope to have out in the spring.

BB: There [are] all these other things you have to consider, too, like we had to have it in a box, a box that people are usually just going to throw away, but no distributor will touch your product unless it's in a box. It's ridiculous. And the box cost more than printing the actual CD itself!

AC: That ties in with your whole consumerism theme...

BB: Right, but I still feel kind of bad about it because, you know, I recycle everything that I have, and so I feel terrible about actually producing something that essentially will probably get thrown out and just add to the problem.

AC: It's a Catch-22 then, no matter what you do you're being sucked into this consumer-oriented society, even when you're trying to subvert it and make an artistic statement about it...

BB: [laughing] Right! For our next disc, The Encyclopedia of Clamps, we've tried to come up with a different type of packaging, something that isn't as wasteful. It's tough, though.

AC: So how do you think the whole CD-ROM business figures in the future of the artistic medium? Not just a passing fad, is it?

BB: Well, in this medium, now, I can bring all of these artistic elements together for the first time -- music, images, animation. If you took them out separately and looked at them by themselves, they might be interesting, but they're not cohesive and they're not one unit until they're mediated by the computer. And, of course, the user is actually the one driving it all. On the one hand, it's just another tool for you to use, but on the other hand, it's just too useful, too complex, to be a passing fancy. I certainly believe it's here to stay. At least I hope so.