Last week, in a piece for the Guardian, Nick Maynard, a volunteer surgeon at a hospital in southern Gaza, wrote, “I’ve just finished operating on another severely malnourished young teenager. A seven-month-old baby lies in our paediatric intensive care unit, so tiny and malnourished that I initially mistook her for a newborn. The phrase ‘skin and bones’ doesn’t do justice to the way her body has been ravaged. She is literally wasting away before our eyes and, despite our best efforts, we are powerless to save her.” The humanitarian situation in Gaza, which was already dire, deteriorated even further in July, with sixty-three people, including twenty-five children, dying from malnutrition-related causes, according to the World Health Organization. This past weekend, Israel announced that it would pause some military activity in the territory and allow more aid in, although it remains unclear how long that pause will last.
As more reports and images of emaciated children emerge from Gaza, close Israeli allies, such as France and the United Kingdom, have issued harsh critiques, calling the current humanitarian situation a “catastrophe.” Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, announced that his country would become the first member of the G-7 to recognize a Palestinian state, and Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, has also promised to do so unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire. On Monday, even President Trump acknowledged that children were going hungry. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has continued to insist that there is “no starvation in Gaza.”) Two Israeli human-rights groups have begun referring to Israel’s actions as “genocide.” The scale of the crisis has also caused a number of American politicians and commentators, including defenders of the war, to argue that more aid needs to be allowed into the territory, or that the war itself has become unjust.
Amit Segal, the chief political correspondent for Israel’s Channel 12, is widely considered one of the country’s most influential journalists. Segal is a prominent defender of the Netanyahu government. He has written on topics such as what he calls “The Settler Violence Scam” and the need to annex parts of Gaza. Last week, he wrote a piece for the Free Press in which he said that “Gaza may well be approaching a real hunger crisis.” He approvingly quoted the Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur, who said, “It’s hard to convince Israelis of that because literally everything said to them for 22 months on this topic has been a fiction.” He also wrote that without Hamas’s “gleeful hoarding of food,” Gaza “would not be facing the current food shortage.” (The following day, Reuters reported that an analysis conducted by U.S.A.I.D. found “no evidence of systematic theft” of U.S. humanitarian supplies by Hamas. Another report, in the Times, said that Israeli officials privately agree that Hamas has not systemically looted United Nations aid, directly contradicting a central talking point of the Israeli war effort.)
I recently spoke by phone with Segal. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed his wavering opinion on whether there is hunger in Gaza, his support for Trump’s plan to develop Gaza without Palestinians, and just how much power the extreme right has over the Israeli government.
For Americans who might not know your work, you’re often talked about as someone who’s very familiar with Netanyahu’s thinking. Are you in touch with—
Yeah, that’s correct. I’m not the mouthpiece of Netanyahu. I’m a right-winger, but not more than this. I speak only for myself.
I just meant that people say that you understand his thinking and have good sources in the government.
I wouldn’t deny it. Yes.
So tell me what caused you to write this piece for the Free Press saying that there was grave concern about the food situation in Gaza.
So, first of all, I don’t think there is hunger in Gaza. I want to put that first and foremost.
You do not think there is hunger in Gaza?
I don’t think that the hunger campaign that Hamas runs in the international media is anything remotely connected to the truth. However, I do think there is a situation that can actually deteriorate to something like this. For the past twenty-two months, Hamas has been running a hunger campaign in Gaza. Israelis and maybe some Americans are wary of these accusations because they know it’s propaganda. The fact that there is a developing crisis does not emanate from Israeli decisions, but from a cynical game played by Hamas and the United Nations. However, Israel will be blamed for it. That’s why I want Israel to be wise and not only to be just.
Just to be clear, your article does talk about a “hunger crisis” in Gaza.
Developing. Developing. [The piece is titled “The Price of Flour Shows the Hunger Crisis in Gaza.”]
There are reports of starvation deaths in Gaza. Are you denying those?
I doubt ninety per cent of it. I can’t tell you that it doesn’t exist in specific places or specific people, but I don’t think that the numbers Hamas and the international media quote are the numbers.
One of the things your piece says is that, essentially for the entire duration of the war, there’ve been false warnings about a hunger crisis. Why do you think the warnings were false previously?
Hamas tried to depict a picture that did not exist. There was no hunger in Gaza. For years, Hamas has claimed that Gaza is starving. Hamas always used this weapon of alleged hunger in order to get more humanitarian aid. [A U.N. study from 2022, prior to the war, found that more than three-quarters of Palestinian families reduced the number of meals they consumed because of a lack of food.]
The Timesreported that “at least 20 Palestinian children had died from malnutrition and dehydration.” So we’re not denying that people have died, right?
No, we do not deny that people died. We just are not sure that people died from dehydration or starvation.
That report I just quoted was from March of 2024.
I see. I beg to differ with the New York Times because the New York Times bases its reports on Hamas sources. The New York Times relies heavily on stringers in Gaza that have two options: either report what Hamas wants or die, and I blame the New York Times for this. The head of the legal department of the New York Times told me, How can you blame us for writing what Hamas wants? Our journalists died because in the past they reported things that Hamas didn’t like.
This person told you this on the record?
They wanted to sue me when I claimed that they relied on stringers who collaborated with Hamas.
So they told you this privately?
Yeah. You can quote it. [David McCraw, the lead newsroom lawyer at the Times, was identified to me later by Segal as the person who allegedly said this. McCraw told The New Yorker, “I never said any of that. We never threatened to sue him. And our journalists have not been killed by Hamas.” In 2023, McCraw asked Segal to make corrections to some statements he had made on social media, including that the Times employed “ISIS-embedded stringers.”] So even if we take into account the fact that twenty children died of dehydration, which I doubt and which the I.D.F. doubts, there is no way to double-check it. [In the past several days, a number of news organizations have called on Israel to allow international reporters to enter Gaza, something that it has thus far largely restricted them from doing.] What can make hunger in Gaza is the unholy coalition between the U.N. and Hamas. Each and every organization in Gaza has to pay at least fifteen to twenty per cent of the humanitarian aid directly to the pockets of Hamas.
Larry Jayasekara opened his first restaurant, The Cocochine, with Hamiltons owner Tim Jefferies. Justin De Souza
Every aspect of The Cocochine is about quiet indulgence. Caviar augments several dishes, the tables are luxuriously far apart and the walls are decorated with a rotating selection of art from Hamiltons Gallery. The Mayfair restaurant, which opened last fall in a former townhouse on Bruton Place, is a joint venture between chef Larry Jayasekara and Hamiltons owner Tim Jefferies, and it embraces Jayasekara’s thoughtful approach to hospitality.
“It’s about looking after the guests, cooking with love and heart and respecting the ingredients,” Jayasekara tells Observer, speaking from the restaurant’s impressive top-floor private dining room, which boasts three Warhol paintings. “Hospitality means opening your home to friends and family. You cook for days, and then the first thing you offer [when they arrive] is water. I don’t want to have a champagne trolley in the restaurant, because that should not be the first thing offered. I want to offer guests a glass of water and let them come in, get comfortable and relax.”
Jayasekara met Jefferies while he was working as the head chef at Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus in Belgravia. Jefferies repeatedly returned to the restaurant, trying to convince Jayasekara to helm a few private dinners, to which the chef eventually agreed. After, Jefferies asked Jayasekara what he wanted to do going forward in his career. Jayasekara said that he wanted to open his own restaurant.
“He didn’t say anything,” Jayasekara recalls. “Time went along. Then he said, ‘I know a lot of people, and I could put together a group of people to help, and I could put in the art, and we could create something really special together.’ That’s how easily it started.”
The interior details were essential to Jayasekara. Justin De Souza
Designing and building The Cocochine was less straightforward. The team started the refurbishment of the four-story townhouse in 2020, quickly realizing they would need to completely redo the foundation and the structure of the building. There was a lot to consider, including how much power the restaurant needed and how to construct the custom kitchen, which is accompanied by a chef’s counter, on the second floor. Then, Covid-19 hit, and it was difficult to get construction workers and materials.
Ultimately, it took over three years for the restaurant to come together. The small details, like leather-wrapped banisters on the staircases and a carved marble drinks station, were essential to Jayasekara, who was also able to create a custom chef’s kitchen. On the lower level, guests can experience a state-of-the-art wine cellar stocked with more than 1,500 bottles, and there’s a snug sitting area for pre-dinner drinks. When you order a steak, a server brings a box of custom knives with differently colored handles to pick from.
The chef’s counter. Justin De Souza
“We always wanted to make it a place where it’s about the level of art and the quality of the ingredients together, so it’s not just a plate of food,” Jayasekara says. “It is a whole experience. Everything here is custom-made to fit. Everything is like a jigsaw. Everything has to be matched. Everything has to be exactly how we wanted it: the flowers, the water, the steak knives, the plates, the tiles, the curtains.”
The food, too, is immaculate. Most of the ingredients come from the Rowler Farm Estate in Northamptonshire, to which the restaurant has exclusive access. The salad, for example, is composed of more than a dozen vegetables and herbs from the farm, and several of the proteins, including the pork, travel 60 miles from the estate to The Cocochine. Other ingredients, like the fish, are carefully sourced from Scotland.
Rack of venison, sourced from Rowler Farm. Lateef Photography
Jayasekara spends one day a week on the farm, which he feels is essential to his process as a chef who focuses on seasonality and quality. He also draws on ingredients and flavors from his travels, as well as his upbringing in Sri Lanka. Each dish emphasizes decadence in an understated, elegant way, exemplified by an indulgent starter of Japanese otoro, roasted foie gras and golden Oscietra caviar.
“We’re not doing anything you’re not familiar with already,” Jayasekara explains. “I want the menu, when you open it, to have [things like] scallops, crab, lobster, mushroom, caviar. I always dreamed about having a menu in a restaurant where you can’t choose one dish. If you want every single dish, you’re in the right place. Hopefully, we’re doing that, and we’re making it focused on two or three ingredients rather than 15 [in each dish].”
Japanese otoro and roasted foie gras. Lateef Photography
Jayasekara’s obsession with quality is best understood via the menu’s standout dessert: Tahiti vanilla ice cream, served with jaggery caramel. It might be the most memorable ice cream you’ll ever taste, because Jayasekara insisted that the level of vanilla bean be significantly turned up.
First, the chef added 15 vanilla pods for every liter of crème anglaise, a significant amount of vanilla bean. “That was okay,” he says. “But I wanted the vanilla seeds to be popping in the palate. It’s not vanilla essence or vanilla powder or whatever. So I said, ‘Let’s put 20.’ And now we doing half a kilo of fresh Tahitian vanilla for one liter of crème anglaise. That is 50 percent vanilla. And believe it or not, since we opened, the best-selling dessert is the vanilla ice cream.”
The famous Tahiti vanilla ice cream. Lateef Okunnu
Growing up in Sri Lanka, Jayasekara never imagined having his own restaurant in Mayfair, where he could test the limits of vanilla bean ice cream. He had never seen a cauliflower, caviar or a scallop before he moved to London two decades ago. His life back home was simple: surfing, barbecuing fish and eating rotis. He acknowledges that his life now is “very privileged,” but it’s taken Jayasekara years of hard work and sacrifice to get to this place in his career. He started out in London by cleaning bins, then moved on to chopping vegetables in a Thai restaurant, eventually going to culinary school.
“Learning to cook was simply about having a job, first of all,” Jayasekara says. “I didn’t know how to cook. I had never cooked before. It gave me a different passport. It changed me from a young boy surfing to starting to be anal about the size of a scallop or how the herb tastes. It’s a crazy journey. I used to wake up in the morning 20 years ago and think about how many waves were coming in.”
The Cocochine occupies a former townhouse in Mayfair. Justin De Souza
Jayasekara worked his way up in acclaimed restaurants like the Waterside Inn, Michel Bras and Le Manoir aux Quat’Saison, before eventually becoming head chef at Petrus, which focuses on high-end French cuisine. Despite Ramsay’s reputation, Jayasekara says the famous chef never yelled at him in the kitchen.
“It was very good experience,” he says. “He trusted me to run Petrus, and I have a huge respect for Gordon. He knows exactly what the market needs and how the menu should be. Having trust from someone like him to run one of his flagship restaurants; it was a privilege. I learned a huge amount about running a restaurant, rather than just cooking.”
Most importantly, Jayasekara learned the essentials of being the person in charge. According to Jayasekara, you need three things in order to succeed as you move up the ladder: preparation, communication and organization. “If those three things come together, you have a full experience,” he says. “As one man, you can’t achieve anything. You don’t win the Champions League just being Cristiano Ronaldo, right?”
That, to Jayasekara, defines success as a chef—not Michelin stars or rave reviews. It’s about having a loyal team as much as it is having a restaurant with packed tables and returning guests, all presumably coming back again and again for the aforementioned vanilla ice cream.
“Any accolades that are presented to any restaurant are a reward of how you work, the standard at which you’re working, the hospitality of the restaurant and how good the team is,” he says. “It’s always a great compliment to the team and to the business. Those accolades are appreciated in our work. But the real success is a guest who comes back. Signature dishes are created by the guests, not the chef. You eat something and tell five of your friends, and suddenly something becomes the chef’s signature dish. That, as I see it, is success in a restaurant.”
The artist Edra Soto is inspired by Puerto Rican architectural elements that are connected to European colonialism, the U.S. and Puerto Rico affiliation and the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. Maria Burundarena
Last month, the artist Edra Soto debuted Graft, a new installation presented by the Public Art Fund at Central Park’s Doris C. Freedman Plaza. It’s a grand structure that still manages to feel welcoming, with bespoke angular tables built for domino playing. Soto may be familiar to visitors of the Whitney’s excellent “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” exhibition from 2022, and we caught up with her to hear about this ambitious new public project.
The rejas used in your sculptural practice are ubiquitous in Puerto Rico, but may not be familiar to all New Yorkers. Can you explain their significance?
The designs of rejas—wrought iron fences—that I represent in my work are architectural motifs that can be found in working-class homes of Puerto Ricans. My project focuses on representing the rejas and decorative concrete block motifs present in Puerto Rico; not only because I grew up there but also because learning about their cultural significance, I became aware that this information is not a part of Puerto Rico’s populous knowledge. For example, author Edwin R. Quiles Rodriguez relates that the shotgun layout of the working-class residence was adapted from the Yoruba dwellings of African slaves, which were developed in Haiti, and then migrated abroad with hacienda owners after the slaves rebelled. Architect Jorge Ortiz Colom’s monograph, “The African Influence in the Design Build Edification of Puerto Rico,” states that criollo architecture, which incorporates quiebrasoles and rejas, originated from Sub-Saharan Africa through the population brought to Puerto Rico as slaves to work plantations during the rise of colonization. He argues that this influence is largely overlooked by historians due to the impression that ‘Africans could not transplant their ancestral ways of life under the inhumane conditions of their transfer and the lack of freedom in their new home.’
It was previously thought that this decorative architecture was an amalgamation of European features that had undergone transformation through the Western lens. Graft highlights the inextricably intertwined histories of European colonialism, the U.S. and Puerto Rico, and the Afro-Caribbean diaspora through the framework of architectural intervention. I began the Graft series to address the complex sentiments generated from migrating to the U.S. while remaining connected to family on the island—a feeling of dislocation compounded by Puerto Rico’s ambiguous status as an unincorporated territory of the United States. The series Graft, which means to move living tissue from one place to another, to imagine the transplant of my homeland to anywhere on the mainland.
Puerto Rico’s current cultural identity has been intrinsically shaped by its historic affiliation with Spanish colonial military architecture, an alliance that expired 126 years ago. As my traveling to and from Puerto Rico intensified throughout the years, I kept asking myself, “Why does this reference and build identity to the archipelago live in the foreground?” My work proposes to consider the cultural and historical value of residential architecture from working-class Puerto Rico. Understanding the cultural value of the decorative motifs that embody working-class homes can influence Puerto Ricans to consider where they live as something that has value to acknowledge, protect and uplift.
This is your first large-scale public art commission in New York City, though you’ve lived and worked in Chicago since 1998. How did your understanding of this city influence your commission?
New Yorkers are voracious cultural consumers and the New York Latinx communities truly excel at this. I really love and respect their leadership and commitment to uplifting their communities and artists from the diaspora, like me. I believe their commitment’s impact will continue to reform our culture. Paving the way has not been an easy endeavor. The Clemente, El Museo del Barrio, CENTRO, the Latinx Project, U.S. Latinx Art Forum, ISLAA and the Mellon and Ford Foundations are some of the organizations committed to supporting and making visible our stories and communities with rigor and integrity.
Cultural identity shouldn’t rely solely on the past to build community connections. Unfortunately, many cultural institutions in our nation rely on this formula. This form of producing culture is not as palpable in New York as in other cities across the nation. Regarding the past is as important as acknowledging and celebrating the present and reflecting on the future.
My participation in the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition “no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria” was one of the best experiences I had in my life. I felt as if my presence in the art world was rendered in three dimensions. As an artist, I felt heard, regarded, and celebrated. Brilliant curator Marcela Guerrero has championed the inclusion of Puerto Rican artists in the Whitney’s permanent collection, including my Graft, which has enhanced my confidence in my commitment to the project. It also brings a certain comfort–even relief! It’s always comforting to think that your passion is not misleading.
To me, New York is a melting pot. I think New York personifies what America means to me. I think about it in terms of the people who immigrate or migrate to make a living and live their lives. I can relate to this way of moving through life.
Edra Soto, Graft, 2024; Presented by Public Art Fund at Doris C. Freedman Plaza in New York City. NICHOLAS KNIGHT, Courtesy Public Art Fund
What are your thoughts on Doris C. Freedman Plaza, its home?
The Doris C. Freedman Plaza is an entrance as much as an exit. It is a destination. It is also an impressive and lively hub where many immigrants work. The plaza is their workplace and possibly their second home away from home. What impacts me the most about Central Park is the life happening in that plaza. It is so impressive, sometimes chaotic, sometimes breathtaking. Since the beginning of this project with the Public Art Fund, I have expressed a desire to highlight the life that happens at the plaza, making that as visible as possible. It is important that the documentation of Graft reflects the life at the plaza, which has provided me with the opportunity to interact with a community that has settled there for many years, as much as the sculpture itself.
Central Park is the first public park built in the United States that serves as a refuge from urban life but also as a democratic space for all people, and it is expected that life and chaos will happen every day at Central Park. The horse manure smell is quite pungent at times… another example of the tourist economy in the city–that lives in the plaza—but it doesn’t seem to be perceived as a disruption. The predominantly African-American community of Seneca Village and its history of displacement is acknowledged and will forever be a part of Central Park’s history. The plaza’s overwhelmingly affluent surrounding vicinity and relationship to this history prompted me to think about the working-class home as a grounding point for the people who make their living at the plaza, a “home” that will be inhabited by them, as well as the people who come and go to and from the plaza. I aimed to build a monument representative of working-class communities.
Your sculpture has very clean lines and, though it isn’t imposing, does feel very solid and bold. How did you come to that decision?
Thank you! I really like the way you describe my sculpture. I meditated for many months before coming to my decision and focusing on a direction for this project. I wanted Graft at Central Park to feel monumental yet also approachable and familiar, with simple lines that make space for people to inhabit it and allow those moments to be visible. Graft at Central Park was modeled after a working-class home facade that exists in Puerto Rico. I toyed with the idea of the entrance marker or welcoming structure since the beginning of the project. As soon as you arrive, you can settle, take a moment to regroup, and go about the rest of your day, or arrive after a long walk and settle in to take a break before the end of your day’s journey. Perhaps you have noticed that there are benches bordering the park. My benches and tables—modeled after public seating found at plazas in Puerto Rico—are strategically placed or staged.
The sculpture creates a threshold, with one side representing a home exterior while the other creates the illusion of being inside a lived-in home. I remember being conflicted at some point in the development process with the sculpture looking like a theatrical prop. I reassessed the color and gave it a monochromatic look with its dimensional materials to unify the various parts—to read as a unit—and to contrast with the park’s foliage. The sculpture proportions were modeled in relation to the plaza space. It was important to me to create a sculpture with an adequate height, width, and length. I love simplicity, and sometimes that can be hard to achieve, but I worked with a great team led by Navillus Woodworks, Public Art Fund project manager Hussain Khanbhai and curator Melanie Kress, who were with me step by step throughout the making of the project.
This year’s Venice Biennale featured a whole room about Puerto Rico in the Central Pavilion. Why do you think your diaspora seems to make for such fertile artistic material?
It is impossible to detach Puerto Rico from its political status. All art comes with its political baggage, and Puerto Rico’s is not the exception. Perhaps we excel at it. Pablo Delano’s archive project comes with an explanation provided by Amanda Carneiro and Adriano Pedrosa regarding the 500 years of colonial rule. His work is compelling and determined to map or disclose information through historical artifacts and archival documentation. The heavily didactic approach of the installation is what stayed with me when I saw it online—I haven’t been able to go to Venice. I care about archives and find them compelling and sometimes essential in the crafting of a story that is backed with facts or exudes credibility. As you might know, I have been using my personal photo documentation archive which sometimes makes it to the public, as I integrate it in my sculptures and architectural interventions.
Why do people want to know what Puerto Rico thinks? It is a fair question. Puerto Rico’s political status is the core of its national identity. It has been debated for over 50 years. We are U.S. citizens, but we don’t have the same rights as people born in the fifty states. Besides the political mess, Puerto Rico has tremendous visibility for being such a small island in the Caribbean. I believe Puerto Rico has an outsized influence on American culture. Perhaps that explains the Bad Bunny phenomenon. Like it or not, he is possibly the most influential proponent of the Puerto Rican dialect. A great majority of Puerto Ricans have been, and continue to be, impacted by mainstream media like I was. Local television is relevant in Puerto Rico because people still produce and watch it. People still read the local newspapers. Perhaps it all sounds like minor things, but here we are, being chewed up by ignorant Republicans… even Republican voters deserve much more than what they have to deal with.
How have the duties of public sculpture changed in the last few decades?
I think there’s a lot of expectation from artists and institutions to invest in amending a history of racial oppression and abuse of power that continues to live out in the open in the form of public art. Since the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a second hard look has been placed on existing public monuments. As someone who regards the present with equal importance to the past, I am on board with organizations that instigate conversations, surveys and temporary and permanent projects that consider the future of monuments. Organizations like Monument Lab, the National Monument Audit, Counterpublic and the Creative Time Summit have developed initiatives in the foreground. Public Art Fund has been a pioneer in investing in the diffusion of challenging and thought-provoking work into prominent spaces of national impact for over 40 years. After working with them on this project, I understand why they are so regarded in the field. It has been a magnificent experience.
You’ve created some bespoke dominos that borrow design elements from this work, available at the Chess and Checkers House in the park. What was the thinking behind that activation?
The dominoes are just another form of instigating visitors to convene, sit and play at my sculpture’s tables. The furniture that forms a part of my sculpture’s composition was modeled after existing public plaza furniture commonly found in Puerto Rican municipalities and public plazas. People can use the tables as they please, but I thought it would be nice to provide an intentional component that adds to the nostalgia that the rejas usually exude. The Clemente, to whom I donated a domino table that I designed, collaborated with the Public Art Fund on a “Domino Table Talks” activation as part of a two-year archive initiative titled Historias. The activation consisted of a conversation with artists and activists of all ages from the Puerto Rican community while playing dominoes.
I have been in love with dominoes since I was a kid, and I still have a very old set that belonged to my parents. I always carry a mini traveling domino set, hoping to play with anyone who wants to play with me. I’m surprised by how many people don’t know how to play dominoes. It is an activity that I associate with leisure. I used to travel to Puerto Rico with my husband years ago before my visits to Puerto Rico became dedicated to helping with my mother’s health issues. For each visit, we selected a parador to stay at, where we brought a domino set and sipped rum while playing through the night. Like idiosyncratic aspects of the Puerto Rican language that are such an authentic part of my culture, dominoes carry on as it is very much connected to a tradition that passes from generation to generation.
Kevin: When we went to do the IPO, it was very, very clear that the digital side was far more valuable than the magazine side. That was the beginning of the craziness. Here’s a magazine that has a lot of revenue, respectability, great enthusiasm, and support from the readership. And here’s this really weird digital side that’s worth 10 times the magazine.
Jane: When Condé Nast bought WIRED and Lycos bought HotWired, the company combined was worth less than the company separated. To this day, we liken it to Nike deciding to sell their footwear to Puma and their apparel to Adidas. Why would you do that? Why would you take the premier brand that had both the technical credibility as well as the upside of the lifestyle and culture stuff and pull it apart?
Jeff: It was a very traditional and typical tech acquisition where the startup gets acquired and comes into the bigger corporate culture. It just doesn’t work very well.
Jane: Louis and I were so crestfallen, heartbroken, and devastated, and everyone’s like, “Yeah, but everyone got rich.” That was not the point. It was a very, very difficult time.
June: Almost all of us started to feel a pretty profound sense of loss and grief that the culture we knew, the values we believed in as innovators and creators, had been lost. That the industry was no longer about innovation, invention, creativity, and certainly not about democratization. That everything was about money.
Well, maybe. There are 5.45 billion internet users on planet Earth, and sure, some of them are bad actors—no argument from WIRED. But most of us are still raving around the internet, hanging with pals, cruising for jobs and mates, catching up on gossip and news, buying and selling stuff, and finding fellow travelers who share our woes and our passions. And, yes, a slice of us are into fraud, abuse, and bad ideology. Did HotWired not anticipate that humans would be human?
A day at the HotWired office
Photograph: Courtesy of Julie Chiron; TREATMENT: JAMES MARSHALL
Ian: Back in those days, we’d say, The nice thing about the internet is how safe it is. Everybody’s there to help you, and everybody just wants to do good things. People asked, Why require passwords for stuff, because who’s going to do anything terrible on the internet?
Kevin: Today, a new thing comes along and people immediately say, “I don’t know what it is, but it’s going to hurt me. It’s going to bite me.” That’s definitely a change that wasn’t present when we were starting.
Jeff: But nostalgia can be dangerous. It was really hard what we did, and stressful, and we didn’t know what we were doing. When people say, “If we could only go back to then,” I’m like, no, we only had modems. It was terrible.
John P: As a business, HotWired failed. But all that stuff that we were doing, it was scientific investigation.
Jonathan: We thought the internet was going to be good for people. We were wrong.
Jeff: I still feel like literally anybody with an idea can start hacking on the web or making apps or things like that. That’s all still there. I think the nucleus of what we started back then still exists on the web, and it still makes me really, really happy.
John: We were lucky with WIRED. With HotWired there was no choice, and we couldn’t do it differently if we went back and tried. But we were unlucky to be first.
Condé Nast eventually bought WIRED’s website too—in 2006.
Animation: James Marshall
Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor atmail@wired.com.
Pop Art emerged at a pivotal moment when mass consumption and communication strategies were just beginning to take shape, capturing the “inevitable phenomenon” of postwar American pop culture and its persistent and pervasive imagery. Often termed “capitalist realism,” Pop Art reflects a radical acceptance of modern civilization, embracing the ways society communicates, produces and consumes. Unlike earlier avant-garde movements, which aimed to narrow the gap between art and everyday life, Pop Art was the first to fully engage with the cultural landscape as it was—making it democratic and broadly accessible in a way few movements had managed before. This accessibility has helped make Pop Art one of the most inviting and relatable art forms for the general public. Though contemporary critics dismissed its “poverty of visual invention” and even questioned its status as art, Pop Art broke down the walls between art and culture, speaking directly in the language of the everyday society it portrayed.
“Pop Forever, Tom Wesselmann &…” at Fondation Louis Vuitton offers a deeply comprehensive look at Pop Art’s enduring significance. The exhibition centers on Tom Wesselmann, a key figure in the movement, with 150 paintings and other works that highlight and explore the legacy of his approach. It then expands to explore Pop Art through the lens of seventy works by thirty-five artists across generations and nationalities, creating a visual narrative of the ways subsequent generations of artists have engaged critically with the pop culture of their time. The diverse collection of works questions what Pop Art means today and its relevance in the future in an age of hyper-communication through digital media that empowers consumers to act as co-creators, enabling the continuous, global circulation of messages and cultural expressions.
On the occasion of the exhibition’s opening during Paris Art Week, Observer spoke with artists Derrick Adams, Mickalene Thomas and Tomokazu Matsuyama—all of whom have newly commissioned works presented in the show—about their relation to Tom Wesselmann and Pop Art, and what this term means for them today.
“I think that Pop art was the only art movement to date, and the audience that the work that’s made is a response to not only the society that informs it but also the audience that embraces it and communicates to it,” Adams said. The link between this artist and Pop Art, and in particular Wesselmann’s work, lies in how he navigates media culture and discusses consumerism. His relationship with Wesselmann started while studying his archives, as he was interested in understanding more about his process and how it related the material construction of his work to media culture. “I was curious about how he started, finished and collaged things together, whether this was in paintings or sculptural objects. This is something that I also do in my work.”
Adams was particularly drawn to Wesselmann’s Great American Nudes series and the controversial way it portrayed the female figure in American culture, sparking in him a mix of interest, concern and curiosity. His response to Wesselmann is embodied in the series Great Black American/African American Nudes, a set of four new works in the show depicting Black male nudes, whose colors—drawn from the African American flag popularized by David Hammons (black, green and red)—are accented with comic-book-style onomatopoeias. Through these parodies of the American dream, Adams critiques the image of white, heterosexual, patriotic American superheroes, challenging the paradoxical values underpinning this dream and exposing its inherently marginalizing nature, which has long excluded entire segments of the population, at least in media representation. In a conversation with curators Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, Adams noted that “they aren’t necessarily counterimages, but more of an offering to assist in the expansion of the notion associated with who and what ‘Great American’ fully represents.” The figures are also partially censored, adding a playful, provocative edge, blending humor with eroticism as they evoke social media’s use of symbols like eggplants and peaches to imply sexual meanings without explicit language.
Adams observed that consumer culture and communication have shifted significantly since Pop Art’s emergence: “I think we are now more self-conscious and aware of our image.” Social media has fundamentally altered the dynamic between media and consumers, making them far less passive, as they now play a critical role in co-creating both media and meaning. “Now you can curate your image and can no longer be objectified, but you can objectify yourself,” he clarified. Rather than imposing fixed models and desires, media industries now cater to a more fluid sense of desire. “It’s more about allowing people to be part of popular culture and contributing in defining what this should be.”
Adams’ work thoughtfully examines how people express themselves through media today, using daily “staging” to shape identity and storytelling, which directly impacts consumer habits. He also noted that the art world and institutions are now much more attuned to what “Pop” signifies for audiences and actively seek ways to connect with it; data allows for a deeper understanding of what people enjoy, desire and respond to, along with insights on viewers—knowledge widely used in marketing across industries. Reflecting on his relationship with Pop Art, Adams suggested that the references to popular culture in his work “allow people to have a direct relationship with it.”
Thomas observed that while the willingness to engage with contemporary culture persists, the very definition of “popular culture” has evolved along with the artistic practices addressing it. “It’s transformed because it’s of that moment,” she said, and art “is about how we define it as a culture and how those artists decide to pull from that particular moment and what they want to present to the world. It’s about the new technology and the new media that are available. Today, it’s more diverse, it’s expansive, it’s global, it’s universal. Art is now amalgamated with different sort of ethnicities in a global society.” Thomas’ own style reflects this shift; her vibrant, engaging works draw from pop culture, particularly in their connection to fashion trends. Bold depictions celebrating the beauty and resilience of Black female bodies challenge historical narratives that have sought to erase or marginalize them.
In her work, Thomas often employs photographic materials, engaging in the hybridization of painting and mechanical reproduction. She fragments these images, adding unexpected materials like rhinestones and glitter to empower femininity and female independence. During our conversation, she shared her longstanding fascination with Tom Wesselmann’s work, noting significant similarities between hers and his. While an undergraduate at Pratt Institute, Thomas discovered Wesselmann’s art, conducting research in his archives—a journey culminating in her current exhibition. What particularly interested her, as she emphasized, was how Wesselmann portrayed both white and Black female bodies on equal terms, exploring how both inspire desire. “When it came to the American nude female body, there was no hierarchy between a Black woman’s body and a white woman’s body,” she said. This was radical for its time and remains so to some degree even today. Thomas, as a queer Black woman creating art that celebrates Black female bodies, still encounters resistance.
At Fondation Louis Vuitton, Thomas presents works that explore Black erotica and delve into themes of sexuality, desire and the female gaze with a boldness akin to Wesselmann’s, similarly challenging societal norms around the representation of the nude female body, especially the Black female body. She highlights a shared element in Wesselmann’s work and her own: empowering women by portraying them as fully aware of their seductive power. This approach invites desire while pushing back against the objectification of female bodies in mass media and advertising. Examining these narratives and the societal dynamics they reflect remains one of Pop Art’s greatest strengths, according to Thomas. “I think most artists today are pop artists. We’re always bringing things to the forefront and bringing attention to what surrounds us, inviting others to question it.”
Japanese-born and U.S.-based, Matsuyama offers a unique perspective, highlighting the pervasive influence of American commercial culture worldwide while drawing parallels with Japanese culture. His work examines how these cultural strategies operate within commercial, media, and social media realms, contributing to a global culture that often leans toward homogenization yet thrives on a rich exchange of symbols and elements from diverse backgrounds.
In particular, Matsuyama’s shaped canvases feature densely layered collages that capture the cultural and aesthetic diversity of our global society. The sources for each piece range from traditional art history to contemporary fashion campaigns, along with objects and interiors inspired by popular design magazines. These are often blended with references to Japanese culture, visible in the manga-inspired flatness of his characters and traditional landscape motifs. His art embodies a cultural fluidity that reflects the diasporic experience and the global nature of identity, moving beyond a fixed idea of pop culture. “I was a minority when I got to the U.S., but even in Japan, I was that, as my father was a pastor,” he explained. “Throughout my life, I couldn’t adapt. Now everybody’s trying to adapt to the world. What I’m doing in my work is adapting different influences to reflect us.”
When discussing his connections to Pop Art, Matsuyama noted that if his work is categorized as such, it’s because his palette is colorful and certain elements align with the genre. He also acknowledged the influence of pioneers like Warhol and Wesselmann, the latter of whom played a key role in his early digital collages, which he later translated to shaped canvas. What intrigues him most, however, is that while Japanese culture has traditionally valued fine objects such as historical ceramics or porcelains, Wesselmann and other Pop artists elevated the everyday object to a similar level. “My way of assembling fictional landscapes from everyday items represents a continuation and transformation of Pop Art,” he said. At the same time, Matsuyama layers his work with additional dimensions, incorporating a final dripping of white paint reminiscent of Pollock’s Abstract Expressionism and treating art and cultural history as a vast, global archive—carefully researched, selected and recombined using digital tools before translating them into painting.
At the same time, while Pop artists like Warhol explored the imagination conveyed through media such as TV, magazines and advertisements, Matsuyama engages with a digital archive of our civilization—one that already fuses traditional and historical, contemporary and vernacular, on a global and multicultural scale. He also draws parallels to today’s cultural disorientation, noting that “back then, in the ’70s, America was going through this huge economic growth, and therefore there was a dark side that was coming.” The quest for idols, for points of reference, for something to believe in is what both pop culture and Pop Art ultimately express. “Now we’re going to this last generation stage, like: Where do we fit? What do we belong to?”
In this light, Matsuyama’s art—and indeed, this entire exhibition—can be seen as a celebration of “Pop” as a model for multiculturalism, which has already permeated today’s global popular culture. This model embraces the complex, multifaceted nature of modern popular culture and offers the potential to move beyond the subtle nationalist undertones of the American Dream that Pop Art once exposed, instead fostering a new sense of belonging rooted in shared global identity and an ongoing, cross-border exchange of goods and symbolic meanings they carry.
Installation view of “Leonardo Drew” at Galerie Lelong & Co. JONATHON CANCRO, Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.
Entropy best captures the essence of Leonardo Drew’s work: the randomness that transforms into creation, a level of disorder that permeates all aspects of life but ultimately finds its measure, becoming a force that adds complexity to existence. Fragments of wood, painted in varying hues, overrun the gallery space, which resembles the aftermath of a hurricane. Yet, amidst the seeming chaos, there is a striking harmony in the way the colors interact and some poetry in the incursions of more personal elements in the comics that hint at Drew’s earlier talent in that field.
Drew’s soon-to-close show at Galerie Lelong & Co., “Leonardo Drew,” repurposes material fragments from his previous works and exhibitions into an immersive and explosive site-specific installation of monumental scale. The exhibition remains untitled, with the works represented only by numeric series and codes. The artist deliberately avoids assigning specific meanings to this material composition, leaving it open for viewers to interpret and engage with in a dialectic process of signification.
As Drew explained during our walkthrough, he views himself as a catalyst: his art is about receiving, transmitting and amplifying the flow of energies and particles that define the cosmos. “Within yourself, you have to have some idea of that there’s a synergy between us, and other bigger things in the cosmos, much bigger than ourselves,” he told Observer. By following the movement of particles and atoms on a macro scale, Drew allows these fragments to land and recombine into new material constellations. “Each of those works informs the incoming work. I’m usually working on like seven things, and I’m continuously rotating.”
As we delve into his artistic process, it becomes clear that Leonardo Drew’s work is more spiritual than rooted in physics or science. It aligns more closely with Eastern philosophies, which emphasize the continuous circulation of materials and forces that sustain existence and fuel its restless evolution. “The actual physics of creating these things is applied, but it’s not part of our material world,” is how he described it. “You need to have a base from which you’re operating, which is your philosophy, your spirituality, your way of receiving and walking this planet.”
During our conversation, Drew acknowledged the profound influence that Asia, particularly China, has had on his artistic direction. The distinct energy of different places comes through in his work and his attitudes toward it. “When I was in China, I started smashing the porcelain vases that I was creating there,” he said. The artisans there felt it was garbage, so they started throwing it away. I was like, this is not garbage, actually.”
At its core, his practice is about perceiving and listening to his materials, maintaining a heightened awareness of his position in space. It’s about “being in tune,” he said, which lets him focus on the piece in front of him. His process is one of intuitive composition, building with the materials at hand. He describes his work as sculptural abstraction. “I come off the wall,” he said, but his practice transcends that definition, pushing beyond boundaries. “People want to categorize and describe you, but all borders are broken through the process.”
For Drew, the moment of artistic awakening came in a library when he encountered Jackson Pollock’s work in a book. This revelation prompted him to abandon a promising career with Marvel or DC Comics. “It was something I was really considering growing up in the hood,” he recalled. “The poison came when I saw Jackson Pollock in a book in the library; from that point, I knew I had to pass the prettified surface. There’s something beyond that surface. So I started to experiment to understand what was all this about.”
The exhibition at Galerie Lelong & Co. also features some new works in which painted plaster blocks form grids, suggesting a return to human-controlled order amidst the chaotic flow of all things. Drew explained that the shift to blocks was born from the practical need to move his work more easily into and out of the studio. Yet these fragments, once seemingly useless and broken, find renewed meaning within the multiplicity of the ensemble, much like atoms, entities and humans do—gravitating toward purpose and significance.
A larger piece on the entrance wall resembles a code, almost like an alphabet, which Drew has developed over the years through various projects. It includes fragments from his Madison Park sculpture, his last show at the gallery and other works, making it a compendium of potential constellations that Drew refers to as “a catalog of materials that comes from a life of living with these actual words.” This work encapsulates a coded set of possible forms, illustrating how matter can find shape and meaning in space. By staging and playing with the rules of the cosmos, Drew’s exhibition demonstrates, both physically and experientially, how chaos can give birth to new forms and meanings. His work reflects the cyclical nature of life and decay, caught in an endless dance of creation and destruction—revealing the universe’s ultimate purpose in the beauty it continually generates.
Luke Agada’s work is deeply rooted in the “third space” concept. Photo: Robert Chase Heishman
Since earning an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago last year, painter Luke Agada’s career has taken off. Early showings at group exhibitions spanning continents—“Collective Reflection: Contemporary African and Diasporic Expressions of a New Vanguard” at Gallery 1957 in Accra, “Unusual Suspects” at African Artists’ Foundation in Lagos and “Where The Wild Roses Grow” at Berlin’s Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery—established Agada as an artist with a knack for expressing cultural identity, ambiguity and introspection in surrealist works rendered in color palettes reminiscent of his native Lagos. His first U.S. solo exhibition at Chicago’s Monique Meloche Gallery in September of 2023 was followed by a standout showing at Art Basel Miami Beach, where Roberts Projects featured his work in what quickly became one of the fair’s most buzzed-about booths.
All this from someone who not terribly long ago was making and selling paintings in his spare time while pursuing a degree in veterinary medicine. But just a year into his veterinary career, the Nigerian-born, Chicago-based artist quit to focus on art full-time—a pivot that involved moving from Lagos to the U.S.
“Far from home, with little familiarity and no family nearby, I experienced a constant sense of longing and nostalgia that eventually permeated my work,” Agada told Observer. “The figures I depicted began to reflect fragments of my memories, reduced to simplified forms, shadows and lines—mere vestiges of my past. I sought ways to navigate this longing and explore how the migrant form adapts to globalized spaces.”
Agada’s style is a confluence of Surrealism and postcolonial theory, and much of his work explores the “third space” concept popularized by Homi K. Bhabha. With earthy tones, shadow and light, he depicts clashes of memory and migration in psychologically engaging landscapes where intersecting cultural identities and shifting power dynamics create tension-filled environs populated by distortions representing not individuals but states of being.
On the occasion of the opening of “Between Two Suns,” the artist’s first solo show in Los Angeles now on at Roberts Projects, Observer connected with Agada to discuss his influences, how his life’s journey has shaped his work and what he hopes people will take away from the show. With his star on the rise, expect to see more of him.
The surreal distortion in your figures is uncanny—what shaped your visual vocabulary?
In the early stages of my practice, I was heavily influenced by European surrealists such as Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy and René Magritte, which grounded my work in traditional figure drawing. I later became intrigued by various modernist movements, particularly the impact of modernism on American art that challenged conventional representations of the human form. This interest sparked my desire to push the boundaries of representation in my work.
Upon moving to the U.S. for my MFA at SAIC, my approach shifted significantly. Far from home, with little familiarity and no family nearby, I experienced a constant sense of longing and nostalgia that eventually permeated my work. The figures I depicted began to reflect fragments of my memories, reduced to simplified forms, shadows, and lines—mere vestiges of my past. I sought ways to navigate this longing and explore how the migrant form adapts to globalized spaces. My interest in Postcolonial theory grew during a class on the subject, as I found it deeply relatable.
Encountering the works of the New York School painters opened a new avenue for developing the visual framework of my practice. The emotions embedded in their work were palpable; they were invested in infusing meaning into forms that resonate with the entire human experience. Their unique way of freezing moments within the intermediate zones of image-making further fueled my interest. Consequently, I shifted my focus from purely orthodox surrealists to artists like Arshile Gorky and Joan Miró, who employed an automatist approach while drawing on their surrealist influences.
Luke Agada, Therapist. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California; Photo: Robert Chase Heishman
Who are those ghostly figures meant to be? You? An everyman?
Although I deeply connect with the emotional and psychological states of the figures in my paintings, they are not biographical assertions of myself. Rather, they are representations of states of being, some of which are tied to specific stories or events.
What should people know about your approach to painting?
My relationship with painting has gradually shifted or evolved over time. Earlier, I paid more attention solely to the representative image, which had a major focus on the well-defined identity of the subjects. However, I soon developed an interest in how the idea and approach to representation of the figure amongst modernist painters of the 20th century evolved. This made me realize that the theme of identity is not the only foundation or final form that my work can take. I saw the need to go beyond just the reconstruction of identity.
The transformative property of painting, amongst other things, contributed to my interest in the organic and biomorphic forms that sit at the border between the Representative and Prefigurative Image, which accurately reflects my thoughts about some of the conversations I am interested in.
I am interested in challenging the anatomy of forms and the new meaning they assume as they adapt to a new space. Doing this creates tension between them and the space they occupy. The spaces are a mix of memory and imagination, yet they’re not purely autobiographical, as I am sometimes making a space that can only exist in a painting.
“Between Two Suns,” installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California; Photo: Paul Salveson
I desire the paintings to have a life of their own, so there is always an ongoing negotiation between my hand and the material to capture the poetics of the moment as I layer up, add and remove paint to reveal the underpainting. I am gradually embracing the plurality of perspectives because it opens for me an infinite number of possibilities and entry points into the painted picture. Picasso and Georges Braque breaking down the picture plane into the fourth dimension was a good example for me.
Although ideological concepts are important, I do not prioritize them over painterly values. This is because painting often operates beyond the artist’s intentions, especially upon first encounter. The meaning of a picture often reveals itself later. Therefore, I approach my work with an open mind, staying highly observant and sensitive to where the process leads me, even when working through a specific idea.
How has your own cross-continental exposure impacted the evolution of your artistic style and/or narrative?
Learning how to truly “see” is one of the most valuable experiences I’ve gained as an artist. It has enabled me to view the world contextually, through the lens of the human story—understanding that each person’s perspective is filtered through their unique experiences, histories and cultural contexts. Despite the world being incredibly interconnected, with vast diversity among people of different cultural backgrounds and nationalities, the “single story” perspective remains prevalent. This oversimplification reduces complex individuals and experiences to stereotypical narratives. I have taken a keen interest in the subjectivity of forms across borders; recognizing that the interpretation and meaning of forms, as a visual language, are shaped by individual lived experiences and perspectives.
This realization became particularly clear to me when I encountered the work of some modernist painters, such as New York School and abstract expressionist painters. Engaging with their works awakened me to new sensibilities and revealed possibilities I had not previously considered in my own work.
I’ve read that you draw inspiration from both scholarly texts and literary works; what can you tell me about those influences in particular? How, for you, does text translate into the visual?
I recently developed an interest in postcolonial theory and literature, particularly some of the writings of Homi Bhabha that have helped in my understanding of the international and intercultural Third Space of migration, the binary opposition between geographies, between the East and West and how that is impacting the formation of hybridity and complex cultural identities in the globalized space. A part of my work has been derived from some of the lexicons, such as the migrant or alien, used to describe these new identities and their adaptation in the Third Space.
Luke Agada, Vestiges. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California; Photo: Robert Chase Heishman
The paintings actually do resist concrete references to the theoretical part of my influences. They only carry a sensation of my thoughts and imaginations as I sample through visual references that represent the information and feeling I am trying to convey. Hence there is nothing literal about the form of the paintings that directly references my interest in Postcolonial theory visually, the scholars have done great justice in theorizing that thought through text. It’s an interpretation of all the elements that work together in the paintings to evoke the same feeling we experience about the subject.
A direct translation of text to visual information or painting would be an unnecessary and overly illustrative narration of what has already been said. This would be a bit too much to ask of the medium of painting because it cannot have the desired impact that other media like film, animation or montage would have in doing the same thing. Rather than do that as a painter, I focus on the texture of sensations like tension, movement and transition.
Painting is slow, not just as a medium or in the process, but in its ability to become. It has the propensity for not just immediacy but also a prolonged impression or impact that has to be digested over time. Hence, I feel the purpose of painting lies in serving as a catalyst to stimulate feelings or thoughts about a subject, and an effective way of doing that is not by giving you all the visual information or telling you what you already know. Sometimes, a strong painting will not force down on you more information than necessary—that will become “propagandist,” it rather offers you a few essential ingredients to draw you in, and the rest is up to you. That’s why individual interpretations and the meaning we all ascribe to forms can be quite subjective. It’s like taking a Rorschach test- our personalities are revealed in how we see.
What do you hope people will take away from the totality of “Between Two Suns”?
First, I hope that they are able to visually digest, connect with and enjoy the formal component of the works. Through the conversations around it, I hope to invite them to meditate on the notions of displacement and hybridity and offer a visual meditation on the precarious balance between survival and dissolution. And by refusing the structuralist comfort of definitive meaning, I hope to leave space for the audience to confront their own assumptions about identity, migration and shared space.
Genesis Belanger’s work is coming to Pace London. Fine art documentation for Perrotin, photographed and edited by Claire Dorn
New York-based artist Genesis Belanger has made a name for herself exploring the uncanny and unconscious meanings of everyday objects, crafting mysterious handmade tableaux vivants that blend mass-production aesthetics with exquisite craftsmanship across a range of materials, from wood to porcelain. She’s currently preparing for her upcoming show, “In the Right Conditions We are Indistinguishable” at Pace Gallery’s Hanover Square location, which opens on October 9 to coincide with London Art Week, but hit pause to speak with Observer about the themes shaping her new body of work.
Belanger describes the exhibition as a series of vignettes that challenge our relationships with material objects and the desires, needs and emotions we project onto them. “This idea that something or someone could all be the same, except for the context that makes one different. The context is what changes the person,” she explains. In our conversation, Belanger reflects on America’s polarized state and suggests that many of these perceived differences are actually shaped by external circumstances. In her work, she captures the tension between the homogenization of cultural habits driven by global mass production and the deeply personal stories we attach to the objects that surround us.
Underlying Belanger’s practice is a fascination with how advertising and popular culture shape our perceptions and the value we assign to material goods. Her meticulously crafted replicas of ordinary objects serve as eerie anthropological artifacts of mass consumption, revealing the layered associations and emotional weight we impart onto inanimate items. By inviting us to examine these items as symbols of our collective desires and anxieties, not to mention our deepest fears, Belanger’s installations offer a commentary on the complex interplay between consumerism and personal identity.
The surreal quality of Belanger’s art is intrinsically linked to her interest in human psychology, a fascination that both Surrealism and advertising share. “I feel like the surreal character in my work is because Surrealism is interested in human psychology and the subconscious, and so is advertising,” the artist told us. “I came to the surreal or uncanny elements through an interest in the tools advertisement uses to manipulate.” At the heart of her research lies a deep focus on psychology, which then intersects with sociology and semiotics. She’s not necessarily intentionally making work thinking about Surrealism, but she very much is thinking about human psychology.
Belanger’s practice stages scenes that hover between dreamscapes and studio sets, where miniature versions of human daily dramas are enacted through the objects that define those interactions. She examines how these items transform into symbols, becoming part of more intricate narratives. Yet, her characters (the objects) appear transient, embodying a sense of impermanence—as if they are worn-out replicas of a once-meaningful original, shadows of the objective referent drained of value and meaning through repeated remediation.
As for contrasts, Belanger’s ghostly, malleable cartoonist avatars of the real subjects have hilarious yet poetic titles, which transport them into another symbolic universe, already detached from the materialism that characterizes the capitalistic mass production and consumption from which they originate—and by which they would otherwise be condemned to rapid obsolescence. Occasionally, these objects become so malleable that they metamorphose entirely, adopting human-like features and transforming into eerie fantasies or unsettling creatures, evoking a blend of attraction and repulsion. Through synesthetic play, her sculptural creations evoke psychological responses that blur the boundaries between senses, unlocking a surreal, nonsensical realm of expression beyond any conventional linguistic code.
It’s no wonder that some of her pieces are reminiscent of characters from animation, such as those in Disney’s Fantasia. They tap into similar Surrealist imaginings, unveiling hidden aspects of the collective unconscious and conjuring a vibrant symbolic universe that resists the rigid societal frameworks of productivity and rationality.
“I’m always interested in the element of time and how, if you create a scene or an image that alludes to the presence of a person who’s no longer there, it’s like all the objects left behind are just evidence,” Belanger explains. “The viewer can access and then enter a narrative.” In this way, her works become relics—remnants that evoke human presence and their stories without depicting the actual subjects. By blending beauty, nostalgia and humor with motifs of capitalist consumerism, Belanger provokes specific psychological responses, allowing us to connect with the objects’ narratives and emotional associations. In this sense, they also serve as reminders after the loss and absence, contrasting the restless circle of consumption and destruction by freezing in time and eternalizing the emotional values associated with the original products.
The artist acknowledges that it’s impossible to escape the consumer-driven reality surrounding us. Thus, her primary source of inspiration is the overwhelming flood of products and images she encounters daily. “I live in New York, and I travel mostly by bike,” she says. “I feel like I’m just moving through this center of capitalism and seeing so much all the time. I don’t think you could exist today and not be inundated with a type of delicious image or images made to touch our desires. I’m a visual sponge; I’m absorbing every single thing that interests me.”
During this appropriation, Belanger creates critical friction between the readily available and reproducible mass-produced objects and the laborious craftsmanship behind her version of those objects. Using ceramics, wood and other natural and traditional materials, she highlights the handmade, tactile nature of her sculptures, imbuing them with a distinct material presence that transforms them into “artifacts” and cultural records of contemporary society and of the state of our civilization. This focus on craft interrupts the ceaseless flow of products and advertising, giving these objects a new weight and individuality, allowing them to stand apart from the homogenized world of consumer goods and acquire unique identities.
These layers of interpretation add depth to Belanger’s practice, especially considering how, in photographs, her art often resembles digital images created by A.I. based on inputs about our human needs. “I think it’s exciting to make an object that exists in the world, but when it’s photographed, it could just be like the imagination of an artificial intelligence,” says Belanger.
This concept complicates the relationship between her creations and the real-life objects that inspire them, highlighting how Belanger’s artistic process absorbs and transforms these influences into new material forms—similar to how A.I. processes and reinterprets data on human consumer behavior. Thus, her work reflects on the meaning and significance of objects and products, a dialogue that gains further relevance as data itself becomes more valuable than the physical items it represents. Despite these complexities, Belanger’s art ultimately encourages us to appreciate the tangible materiality of the objects we create, interact with, and integrate into our lives.
“Put All Heaven in a Rage” is at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, through October 12. Photo by Pierre Le Hors Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
A set of metal chains, black leather and mirrors sets the tone of Monica Bonvicini’s “Put All Heaven in a Rage,” her first solo show with Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Bonvicini, an Italian artist based in Berlin, emerged from the radical German art scene of the 1990s with a powerful voice, provocative humor and clever use of language. She is widely regarded as one of the most influential artists of her generation, particularly known for her exploration of the relationships between architecture, gender, and power dynamics.
In this exhibition, Bonvicini stages a critical interaction between the viewer, the mirrors and the space, creating an unsettling sense of vulnerability. This interaction critiques the ways specific objects and environments psychologically and sometimes physically influence behavior. In an upstairs installation, an entire room of mirrors overlaid with pink text challenges stereotypes and celebrates female resilience, power and the multiple roles women navigate throughout life. Bonvicini also extends her critique to language, using black-and-white drawings that feature fragmented quotes from literature, poetry and politics to underscore how linguistic structures shape and control meaning.
As the exhibition nears its final weeks, Observer caught up with the artist to discuss how her work addresses society’s increasing polarization, the threat of rising violence and the ongoing need for feminist discourse and celebration despite progress made in the ’60s and ’90s.
Let’s start with the show’s title, which is quite evocative. What inspired it, and what kind of reading of the show would it suggest?
Some years ago, I did a series of works, primarily drawings, related to the concept of rage from a contemporary feminist point of view, which are presented in the catalog “Hot Like Hell” from 2021. The quotation I chose for the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery show is one that I stumbled upon back then but didn’t feel right about using until now. The title comes from the well-known poem by William Blake, Auguries of Innocence.
I like how the sentence sounds, how impossible it is, how sculptural “Heaven” seems to be if you can literally take it and put it somewhere, like an object, a body that you can put in a closet, in a box, in a cage or in wherever or whatever the space is in which rage reigns. It makes me think of rash movements, storms or even hurricanes, and all those associations are in my works, like the pneumatic sculpture Breathing, 2017; the installation A Violent, Tropical, Cyclonic Piece of Art Having Wind Speeds of or over 75 mph, 1998; the ongoing series of drawings Hurricane and other Catastrophes; or the architectural sculpture As Walls keep Shifting from 2019.
Monica Bonvicini in her studio. ALBRECHT FUCHS
For the show in New York City, I wanted to create that tension, the impossible speed I read in the quotation that can be pinpointed down to an immobilized moment of concentration. The show is about that moment, a concentrated change. For that, I created the installation Buy Me a Mirror at the entrance of the main exhibition space, which closes the view to the show while opening it to the street. Once over the edge of the wood and mirror installation, the show displays different works and mediums I work with, from the colored mirror works Gorgeous, 2024, and the large-scale print Marlboro Man Praire, 2021, to the hanging sculptures Latent Combustion, 2015, and Chainswing Rings and Stripes, 2024, or the new black and white drawings.
Your practice has long explored the connections between architecture, gender, and both physical and psychological violence. How do you feel this exploration has evolved, especially with the rise of new surveillance technologies and tools for self-representation?
The roots of the relationships you are talking about remain the same, and what is added around can powerfully alter and improve the core of problems or obstruct them in a kind of endless fata morgans of images.
“Put All Heaven in a Rage” serves as a profound critique of the structures that govern our lives. Photo by Pierre Le Hors. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
Your work is characterized by a cold, hardcore, almost surgical aesthetic that highlights mechanisms and frameworks of control and suppression. Can you identify particular life experiences or cultural and societal elements that inspired that?
There are, for sure, some experiences that determined the aesthetics of my works and the process I am going through while working on them. I think it is necessary to be as precise as possible in formulating the artwork; contrary to what might be a cliché, you cannot do anything in art and expect it to be good. As an artist, I reflect in my practice what is happening around me, but I do not want my works to be journalistic or moral, didactical, or only personal. I used to do a little climbing when I was younger, and I have been to alpine peaks, where my attention was not on the magnificent views but just about to stay in equilibrium, not to fall, because of the little place you had under your feet. There is so much physical concentration in such moments. I also know, out of experience, the feeling of being powerless in front of injustices and violence. It’s an emotion that stays with you and gets into your body for some time. To be able to distill that into a work that implies all the explosive possibilities and scenarios and make them understandable without teaching about them is what I try to do.
Much of your work functions as a critical device, a nonfunctional machine that metaphorically explores societal and psychological dynamics between individuals and society. How do you define sculpture, and how would you describe your approach to this medium?
I never studied sculpture in the classical sense of the word. I studied painting in Berlin, got into making objects and small models with Isa Genzken while she was a guest teacher there and started making installation and performative sculptures while I was in Cal Arts. Michael Asher and Charles Gains were my mentors, so those places and people greatly influenced my work. I have a conceptual approach to sculpture. I see my works very close to what architecture is; installation art is also a way to define spaces and systems of power, and it can subtly do that. We are all surrounded by walls; we all use doors or look out at windows. There is nothing so universal as the concept of a house.
I understand sculpture and installations as ways to question perceptions of given structures, which makes you think about them from a different angle. I also think art is not there necessarily to cure all the maladies of the world but to point them out, to dig them up and to make them visible.
Bonvicini’s works draw their materiality and imagery from cultural associations and power dynamics, particularly as perceived through sexual stereotypes. Photo by Pierre Le Hors. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
Your work often intersects feminist and institutional critique. Given that you were one of the few women artists working in a male-dominated European art scene, particularly in Italy and Berlin, how do you see the role of feminist critique today? Do you think gender-based power dynamics are evolving within and outside the art world?
When I did the video installation Wallfuckin’ back in 1995 or Hausfrau Swiging in 1997, I didn’t call it a feminist work because I thought that feminism had won its battles already. I understood the gender theory of the ‘90s as an excellent example of how successful feminism had been. Yet there is still a need for a feminist elaboration and celebration decades later. The battle is never won. There is always a need to define and address existing imbalances; we see them everywhere, in the art world and outside. Europe is still pretty misogynistic. Even if things changed for the better, they didn’t change enough. I want to see more women’s works in museums’ collections, more solo shows by women, identical rages on working places, more equality and less violence.
In Bonvicini’s black-and-white drawings, quotes from literature and poetry become compelling commentary on political concern, division and the pursuit of personal and collective agency. Photo by Pierre Le Hors. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles
Monica Bonvicini’s “Put All Heaven in a Rage” is on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York through October 12.
For Zoë and Layo Paskin, going to a good restaurant should feel like being invited to a dinner party. It’s a welcoming philosophy that the siblings have embodied in all of Studio Paskin’s openings, from their iconic (now closed) London nightclub The End, to debut restaurant The Palomar, which opened in 2014, to Covent Garden favorite The Barbary, which opened its doors in 2016, to Michelin-starred fine dining spot Evelyn’s Table. Now, the hospitality group has expanded west with The Barbary Notting Hill, a lively restaurant that is notably bigger than all of their prior endeavors, but still retains that intimate dinner party vibe.
“I’ve always enjoyed having people to my home,” Zoë tells Observer. “So that’s, for me, how it all feels and how you’re making someone feel. And they need to feel better when they leave than when they arrive, so when they walk out that door, they think, ‘I just had a great time.’”
“It’s a bit like music,” adds Layo. “You need all the classical professional things to be there, but a little bit of the jazz that goes on top and feeling with the people who are serving you or welcoming you or are being present in that moment with you is quite important. You need to feel the whole thing is engaged.”
The Barbary Notting Hill seats 75 guests (the original has only 24), and expands on the sharing plates and flatbreads beloved at The Barbary and its sister restaurant, The Barbary Next Door. The dishes and ingredients are inspired by the Barbary Coast, a 16th-century region that comprised North Africa and southern Europe, although the dishes are modern and forward-thinking. It’s helmed by head chef Daniel Alt, who has included both classics and new offerings on the menu, which is accompanied by a 250-bottle wine list.
Guests for lunch and dinner can currently partake in two types of flatbread, accompanied by small plates like fried artichokes and dips like hummus and spinach borani. There is a range of fish preparations, from scallop aguachile to monk fish tempura, as well as larger plates of meat and seafood cooked on the fire (a personal favorite was the coffee rub organic chicken). These can be served with vegetable sides, although there’s no wrong way to order. It’s all intended as a convivial, collective experience, which Zoë describes as a “feast of flavors.”
The Coffee Rub Organic Chicken. Mickaël A. Bandassak
“In London, you’ve got a lot of reinvention of Thai food and Indian food, and with lots of cuisines here right now, you get the layering of lots of different dishes and flavors,” Layo says. “It’s a really fun way to eat, because you get a lot more food. Don’t get me wrong: It’s nice having one dish and one thing. But we’ve all been embracing, over the past few years, this option of having loads of dishes together.”
Zoë and Layo chatted with Observer about the two-year journey to opening The Barbary Notting Hill, how the menu was brought to life and where they like to dine when going out in London.
The Barbary Notting Hill took over a former gallery space. Mickael A. Bandassak
Observer: Why did you decide to open in Notting Hill?
Layo Paskin: We asked ourselves the same question. All of our places, and even going back to when we had our nightclub The End, are in central London, but neither of us live centrally. With the pause that happened during Covid, we focused a bit more on our own neighborhoods. So when we started to think about doing [another restaurant], we decided to step away from the center of town, although Notting Hill is a central neighborhood. So that started the conversation. And then, really, what often happens is, you see the site. We saw this site when it was an art gallery and it was a beautiful room. It was quite an immediate reaction to the site. A bit like when you’re searching for a flat and you see something you love. Galleries are nice because you get a sense of peace from the space. So straight away, we got a nice energy from it.
Zoë Paskin: We always hoped one day to do a corner site. The combination of that and a blank canvas was quite exciting.
How challenging was it to develop the restaurant once you found the site?
ZP: First, we had to secure the site. There were various people going for it. And then the lease took a long time, and the license had to be sorted out because it was a change of venue [type]. We actually went on a high-risk journey with this, evolving what we wanted to do but always knowing we may not quite get there. But once we started designing the restaurant, it was about what we wanted to draw from The Barbary’s core and essence. Obviously, it’s many years later in a very different location. When you find a space you always get informed by it, too. The Palomar was an old restaurant called The Spice Bazaar. The Barbary in Neal’s Yard was a skate shop.
LP: In the back of our minds, it was always to take some elements from The Barbary. We wanted to have a kitchen bar still, but we always wanted to have these bigger tables. You put down all of the things you want to include, and then you try to incorporate as much of that into the design as possible.
Inside the Barbary Notting Hill. Mickael A. Bandassak
Sitting at the counter is a big draw at the original restaurant. How did you balance having tables and a counter here?
LP: One of the biggest functions in this restaurant, from our perspective, was that the kitchen and the kitchen team could really work. So the positioning of the kitchen and the back of house informed a lot. The kitchen had to be in a certain position, which dictated where the bar is. There were two possible entrances to the restaurant, and we picked the one where your immediate reaction when you walk in is the drinks bar, with the tables to one side and the kitchen bar to the other. These are subtle things, but you think about where the thoroughfares are. If you’re sitting at a table, you don’t want a ton of people always walking past. The reality is you can’t overcome every obstacle, but I think we’ve achieved a lot of what we wanted.
How does it feel to finally open a restaurant after going through all of that?
ZP: In the middle of a service, you feel like you’ve taken this vessel out to sea. In a marvelous way. I quite like standing in the middle of the restaurant and seeing it all come together and all of the respective chatter. But, of course, it is a bigger restaurant to captain, in that sense.
LP: The nicest thing about a bigger restaurant is that there’s more places to be in it. Take our restaurant Evelyn’s Table; we can’t really be in service unless we’re actually in service because it’s so small. So it’s quite nice to be in the room orchestrating and working with the team, but not feel too in the way.
Octopus Sabzi. Mickaël A. Bandassak
How did you determine which dishes to bring from The Barbary and which dishes to introduce as new?
LP: We’ve been testing dishes all of this year. So we’ve got a big bank of recipes that work seasonally with different things, and that will react to how people in the area respond. But we tried to take all of the things that were important to take while also wanting to develop. We didn’t want to open the same restaurant in a different neighborhood. The Barbary and The Barbary Next Door are so small that there was a lot more to the story we could tell, and by doing that in a bigger restaurant with a bigger kitchen, we could have more scope. And none of it is hard and fast. It’s always evolving. That probably makes life harder work-wise, but it probably makes the restaurants have more longevity.
ZP: One of the things about the menu is the buildup of lots of flavors and lots of dishes, which is my personal favorite way to eat. I like the way they all complement each other.
LP: I like that we can also do bigger dishes. We could do a whole fish for two, which is just not feasible in any of our other places. And we’re only just beginning how we’re doing that. We’ve worked on it a lot. Even with our flatbreads, we’ve got lots of toppings and ideas, but because we have a brand-new team, we want to give them a bit of time to feel their way in. Those are the biggest changes in the dishes we’re doing—the rest of the evolutions of dishes that we’ve done and other things we’ve worked on in the same vein.
Has the concept behind The Barbary shifted since you first opened the one in Neal’s Yard?
LP: It’s developed. With The Barbary Next Door, we haven’t got a fire there, so it’s more about raw and slow cooking. That made us look at the cuisine in a different way. With The Barbary Notting Hill, we’ve gone farther into Europe than we have before. It’s the same geography of southern Europe and northern Africa, but we’ve moved that around a little bit. There’s more from southern Spain and southern Italy than we have in the original Barbary.
Did you travel to research those places?
LP: Yeah, that’s the best bit of the job! We went to Sicily. We went to Seville. San Sebastian. El Palmar de Vejer. Costa Brava.
ZP: It’s slightly more complicated now that we’ve each got children, but it’s one of the ways we get into a creative space together.
There’s still bar seating. Mickael A. Bandassak
What’s your favorite thing about opening a new restaurant?
LP: When you see it all come together and you feel that atmosphere and you see all the work, from yourselves and the team, come together. And all of that time and energy and creative endeavor comes together. It feels really, really good. And maybe you get a nice moment with a customer, either re-booking or coming up to you and saying they had a great meal. That’s when you feel, “Okay, we’re in the right area of where we want to be.”
ZP: At the end the night last night, I sat down to have some food at the bar on my own before driving home, and I managed to get to chatting with the couple next to me. I just had such a wonderful conversation with them. They had lived on Shelton Street near The Barbary and had loved it and recently had moved to Chelsea. They were so complimentary about their relationship with The Barbary and how they felt about the one they were now sitting in. It was just a magical moment. Very, very special.
It’s a nice idea to think about people having living relationships with restaurants.
ZP: They are living things, aren’t they? Like I said earlier, you’ve got this vessel and you’ve got the bar, the kitchen, the kitchen porters, the runners, the guests. People are waiting for a table patiently or impatiently. People won’t get off their table. There’s this whole improvisation going on every day where the core elements are the same but they’re completely different every day. And that’s bit where, hopefully, all of the good stuff happens.
Where do you both like to go out to eat in London?
LP: Thinking about it like relationships, I have different places for when I want different things. I like going to Bistrotheque if I’m having lunch in east London. On a night out, I’d choose somewhere like Chiltern Firehouse. If I want turbot, I’d go to Brat. If I want dim sum, Royal China Club. If I want Turkish, there’s a place in Dalston called Number 34. For takeaway, my favorite in Islington is called Afghan Kitchen. We go to all of the new openings, but some I repeatedly enjoy. For me, it’s a personal choice about what I’m in the mood to eat.
ZP: I have my favorites, too. Most recently, I keep wanting to go back to Farang. I live quite near and I like strong, spicy flavors. For old favorites in town, I love Barrafina.
What’s the most memorable meal you’ve had recently?
ZP: Whenever we order a ton of oysters and my partner shucks—that feels like a real treat at home. Or we go to the Japanese fish market near us, and we do a massive plate of sashimi at home. When I was at the end of my pregnancy, those were the two experiences I was asking for most.
LP: This summer, I was near Saint Tropez and near Dubrovnik, and both times I had lunch in beachside restaurants. Grilled fish and bottle of rose by the sea. If I can picture what my last meal should be, it’s that. Being in those moments, surrounded by friends and family, and feeling that sense of relaxed, late afternoon sun.
Chitra Ganesh’s Regeneration at New York’s Penn Station. Photos by David Plakke
Brooklyn-based artist Chitra Ganesh has just unveiled a large-scale public video installation at New York’s Penn Station, part of the “Art at Amtrak” series of rotating exhibitions curated by award-winning public art producer Debra Simon and her team. Known for her distinctive graphic and comic style, Ganesh blends South Asian iconography with science fiction and queer feminist theory. Her work celebrates feminine energies and ancestral symbolism, inspiring a deeper symbiosis between living beings, beginning with a reconnection to the inner self.
For this commission, Ganesh created Regeneration, a highly symbolic video narrative focused on the regenerative power of plants. The immersive video is designed to remind commuters of the vibrant life thriving in nature and reconnect them with, as the artist puts it, elements that transcend humanity’s limitations, encouraging a regeneration of perspective and a reset of both the mental and the physical.
This marks the first time the “Art at Amtrak” series, which previously installed works in the Amtrak Rotunda and 8th Avenue Concourse, has put art in the Hilton Corridor. Observer spoke with Ganesh at the unveiling of the installation, which complements her other video work, Coherence, on view in Moynihan Train Hall through October 14.
Chitra, your video works incorporate many elements of your symbolic and visual language. The flora, along with specific plants and species, seems intentionally symbolic in the narrative you’ve created. For example, the Rose of Jericho and the Welwitschia plant of Southwest Africa symbolize resilience, while others are native to the NYC area. How would you describe the importance of plants in your narrative, and how do they serve as metaphors for broader societal phenomena throughout human history?
I use plants from many regions worldwide to underscore humanity’s consistent recognition and association of plants with healing, regeneration, growth, resilience and remembrance. It seems especially important to remember that we humans are in a symbiotic relationship with plants—as we live through an unprecedented moment of climatic destruction that endangers countless species worldwide to the point of extinction. Plants have forever been at the forefront of human consciousness as a metaphor for life cycles and a scale of life and time in nature that is much larger than we typically think daily.
I was also interested in how specific plant qualities are similarly recognized across cultures, sometimes having multiple and universal resonances. Two examples are the calla lily and the dandelion. Calla lilies originated in South Africa and then migrated around the world. In Greek and Roman symbology, their chalice-like shape represented rebirth and bounty. In Mexican culture, they have been associated with purity and rebirth, often seen in historical paintings depicting Easter. I was also inspired by Diego Rivera’s use of calla lilies in his large-scale murals and paintings, which symbolize rebirth and revolution, as the works between 1920 and 1940 were made during the Mexican revolutions.
Dandelions, to me as a New Yorker, are symbols of resilience, survival and thriving despite the harsh conditions of urban grit such as cement and asphalt. In Scandinavian culture, words in Norwegian and Swedish reference the strength of the dandelion. For example, ”maskrosbarn,” meaning “dandelion child,” refers to someone with a tough childhood and still turns out alright, like a dandelion breaking through asphalt. The Swedes have long spoken of “dandelion” children, namely “normal” or “healthy” children with “resilient” genes who can do pretty well almost anywhere, whether raised in the equivalent of a sidewalk crack or a well-tended garden, as explained in an article by the Atlantic.
As you shared in the press release accompanying this important project, your first encounter with art as a child was in an urbanscape. How do you feel this street language has influenced your artistic style, and how would you describe it today?
There are so many ways in which street art has profoundly impacted my work. My relationship with public transport is long and rich. I started riding the subway to school by myself when I was ten years old, in 5th grade. Before they came to New York, my parents were native residents of Calcutta, India, a vast and bustling city, and lifelong public transport lovers. My mother never got a driver’s license, and my father loved his Senior metro card so much that he continued to ride the Brooklyn buses until his death.
In many ways, street art, such as Keith Haring’s chalk drawings executed on stripped billboards in subway stations and tunnels or the graffiti-covered subway cars that were a hallmark of the 1970s and ’80s, was the very first site-specific art I ever saw. Long before I entered a museum, I was engaging with the vibrancy, maximal color and mark-making energy of such works, which were larger than life scale. They were a massive part of my gateway into incorporating graphic aesthetics and brief presentations of my work.
Public art has a unique and beautiful quality to it that has the potential to offer an even more profound and transcendent experience with visual art than one we might have in institutions such as museums or galleries. Seeing art in a museum or a gallery is more likely (though not always) a one-off experience—you go for a particular exhibition. Experiencing artwork in a place you frequent over and over, perhaps even several times a week or month, is an experience more akin to music. That is, you organically engage work through various moods and mindstates, and depending on your emotional weather, you receive different transmissions from the work and have a deeper relationship with it by being able to look and be with the art repeatedly. It becomes part of both your external and internal landscapes. That is a very profound element of public art that historically was much more aligned with how people experienced religious art in spaces they regularly visited.
As a budding artist in the early 1990s, I was deeply inspired by the works of New York-based artists such as Basquiat, Brazilian artists OSGEMEOS and West Coast artists such as Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen, all of whom developed a singular aesthetic that drew from graffiti and freight train hopping culture. I love art in airports, artwork in subways and chalk drawings done by my neighbors’ children on the sidewalks outside my apartment.
Chitra Ganesh’s Coherence at Moynihan Train Hall. Photos by David Plakke.
Most of your work features psychological and spiritual interplay between inner and outer dimensions, between the purely unconscious and a more senatorial world. How do you feel the video allowed you to explore these dimensions further?
Video and animation have been essential media for exploring the interplay between internal and external landscapes in the place where collective and individual or societal and psychic realities converge. Drawing-based animation offers astonishing potential for exploring the intersection of complex worlds. In Coherence, outlined silhouettes of figures are set against a lush landscape, and inside the bodies, we can witness an equally rich and contrasting landscape. In this sense, the bodies themselves become portals into another dimension. Portals have been an essential feature in my work as of late; they are a form that allows the compression of time and space, allowing audiences to traverse vastly different landscapes and temporal zones within the blink of an eye. They also allow us to see how multiple realities, mindstates or universes can coexist simultaneously. This idea of seeing many different landscapes or ways of being simultaneously seems crucial to me at this moment we inhabit—for example, where we are fed information through predetermined algorithms that limit and curate what knowledge we might access and where we are charged with the task of navigating a politically polarized and fraught climate. There are also multidirectional movements within each frame; for example, an expanding cosmos within the body while a unicorn gallops in the background or walking into a forest within the silhouette paired with flora and animals from a painted jungle scene.
The place where those videos are shown is a crossway where so many people from different backgrounds and with many other lives pass by. What narrative and experience did you want to conceive and deliver in this space?
I want to offer harried, preoccupied and anxious travelers a moment of respite that gives them some breathing room from the anxiety-driven process of running from A to B. Unfortunately, that is an ingrained part of the New York City commuters’ lives. Perhaps engaging with some moments of beauty and depictions of natural beauty—in worlds that exist both just outside and far beyond the confines of massive transport hubs like Penn Station—allows some breathing room and a reset that will bring some peace and pleasure into a charged, hectic and challenging space. This is through engaging with moments of respite, such as a figure gazing at hand, offering her a young olive plant, hands reaching for butterflies or a young girl scattering the seeds of a dandelion pod. In coherence, this pause or catching one’s breath becomes more literal as viewers are invited to be in synchronous relation with the figures on the screen.
The installation comprises two different chapters: Coherence and Regeneration. How do those differ or act as a continuation of the narrative?
Both invite the audience to consider a broader arc of time and an environment that can elicit beauty and joy, speaking to the capacity for resilience and survival despite threats of destruction. This feels like a powerful metaphor to access at a time on Earth when there is so much ongoing natural death and actions towards extinction via militarized violence, extractive fossil fuel processes and emissions in places all over the world, as well as right here at home.
Chitra Ganesh’s Regeneration is on viewat New York’s Penn Station as part of the “Art at Amtrak” series curated by Debra Simon.
Painter-turned-filmmaker Titus Kaphar. Photo by Mario Sorrenti, courtesy of Gagosian
Last week, the artist Titus Kaphar opened “Exhibiting Forgiveness” at Gagosian Beverly Hills, a painting show that pairs with his film of the same name, which premieres next month and was called a “confident debut” for the painter-turned-filmmaker, by Vanity Fair‘s Richard Lawson at Sundance. Kaphar is the winner of a MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ whose work has graced the cover of TIME magazine. We caught up with him to hear about his new show and the transition to filmmaking.
The works in this show seem nostalgic in both their techniques and subjects. What do you see as the unifying principles in this new body of paintings?
Every piece in this show is rooted in memory—I started by writing down experiences from my past. I wanted to find a way to have a conversation with my sons about my childhood, which up until that point I had been hesitant to speak about. When I sat down to write, old memories brought new images to mind. This produced an entire body of paintings that were completed before we started shooting the film.
You’ve been working with both mediums for some time now. What’s the difference in your creative approach to painting and film?
The process of making a painting is fundamentally different from the process of making a film. Making a painting can be a meditative solitary act, while there’s almost no way to make a film on your own. In the best cases, all of the individuals involved pour themselves into making the film, imbuing it with energy that is greater than the sum of its parts. In my mind, that is the greatest magic that film offers. That said, the editing process felt most similar to my painting practice. As a first-time director, my editor, Ron Patane made the process manageable. It was Ron who helped me see the parallels between the erasure and cut canvases in my paintings. The way we were removing something from a scene in order to come to a more potent statement.
It’s always fascinating to watch a painter turn to film direction. Do you have a favorite film by a painter? Mine would be The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Basquiat was my favorite movie as an undergrad. Up until then, I had not seen a Black painter portrayed in a film. It had more of an impact on me than you might imagine. Around that time, I decided that I wanted to be a painter. For inspiration, I brought an old television and VCR into my “studio,” a.k.a. the garage, and started playing Basquiat every day. Somehow, it assured me that my dream was lofty but attainable.
You gave a well-known TED talk in 2017 on the question, “Can art amend history?” Have your thoughts on that question evolved in recent years?
No, my feelings have not changed. Having just returned from my family reunion in Mississippi, I am certain that we still need artists to amend the monuments that stand as emblems of injustice in our town squares nationwide.
You were recently honored at the Brooklyn Museum’s Artists Ball. What was that experience like?
Those kinds of things are always very hard for me. I am keenly aware of how much I owe my success to my family and to my team. It’s easy to give credit to the person standing on the stage, but the truth is there’s nothing exceptional I’ve ever achieved without my family and a team around me. NXTHVN, the not-for-profit arts and community incubator I started, would still just be a dream without our staff, and Exhibiting Forgiveness would still just be words on a page without my producers, cast and crew. So as grateful as I am for the honor, it is a truism that great dreams require extraordinary teams. I would have been much more comfortable if I could have had my people on stage with me.
This is your first show at Gagosian’s Beverly Hills space, which brings a unique crowd. Are you ready for them?
The better question is: Is Beverly Hills ready for us?! You know folks travel… in packs!
A lot of folks got into the SaGa series a long time ago through its many releases on prior console generations. For me, Romancing Saga 2 on iOS was actually my gateway into the series nearly a decade ago, and I remember struggling with it quite a bit initially because I kept playing it like a normal JRPG. Fast forward to today, I adore the SaGa series as you can see in the photograph at the bottom of this article, and I was surprised to see Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, a full remake of Romancing SaGa 2, announced for Switch, PC, and PlayStation a little while ago.
For today’s double feature, I’ve been playing Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven on Steam Deck through an early demo code and I’ve also had a chance to interview Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Game Producer Shinichi Tatsuke who was behind Trials of Mana’s remake. We discussed Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, learnings from Trials of Mana, accessibility, potential ports to Xbox and mobile, coffee, and more. This interview was conducted on a video call. It was then transcribed and edited for brevity in the case of some portions.
TouchArcade (TA): How does it feel having worked on a remake of Trials of Mana, a beloved game, and now working on Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, a remake of another classic and beloved game?
Shinichi Tatsuke (ST): Yeah, so both trials of manna and the romancing SaGa series are entries from the pre-square enix merger. It was when Square Enix was Squaresoft. These are both considered legendary titles from square. I do feel that it’s an incredible honor for me to handle the remakes of these two incredible titles. Both romancing SaGa 2 and trials of manna, when we remade these titles, it’s been 30 or almost 30 years since the original release. There was a lot of opportunity for us to kind of improve with the remake. So it was very fun to work on.
So romancing SaGa 2, as you may know already, it’s a very unique game that has a lot of unique systems. So these systems are not only considered unique back then, we felt that these are still considered unique today too. So we felt that even remaking this title, even though it’s been more than 30 years, we felt that it would still be a great title to remake because of its uniqueness. It would still be considered unique for the modern players.
TA: Romancing SaGa 2, the original game, was very challenging. When I played it, I think I got a game over in the first 10 minutes, and that was a nice wake up call for me with it being my first SaGa game. The remake, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, has multiple difficulty options. I wanted to know what were the challenges for you to stay true to the original while still making it accessible? This is likely going to be the first SaGa game for a lot of people with its modern graphics.
ST: I think you bring up a great point because as you mentioned, the difficulty of the SaGa series is very well known throughout the fanbase and again, this is something that you probably already know, but the SaGa series has a lot of hardcore fans in Japan and outside of Japan as well.
And there are a lot of people that would claim that the difficulty of SaGa is what makes the game, that’s what it’s essential for the SaGa title, for the SaGa series. But on the other hand, we have a lot of people that also feel that there’s a very, I guess, high barrier to start playing the SaGa title, because they feel that the SaGa titles are too difficult for them.
So there are a lot of people that say they know about the SaGa series, but have never tried it out before. And when you ask them why, usually the answer is, oh, because it sounds like it’s too difficult.
So because of that, we wanted to cater to both of these groups of fans. So the newcomers that haven’t yet to try the SaGa title, the SaGa series, but also for the hardcore fans. And one of our solutions that we thought was going to be a solution was to present the new newly added difficulty system.
So we have the normal mode and the casual mode. So the normal mode is more catered for the standard RPG fans, but we also have the casual mode for people who just want to experience the narrative or the story of the game.
So in the development team, we also had the core SaGa fans as well so that was our collective decision and solution to come up, solution to kind of resolve this situation where we have a lot of newcomers or people who haven’t played the SaGa title yet, trying to try, we wanted to try to hook them in by adding this difficulty, adding these new difficulty settings.
So this is kind of a metaphor, but when you add, when you have spicy food, so in Japan, the curry is typically very spicy. So what you would do to kind of alleviate that ease to spice is that you would add honey sometimes. So the very spicy curry would be the original Romancing SaGa 2, where it’s just really, really difficult for a lot of players. So we kind of added the honey and the honey being the difficulty option. So like the casual mode. So to make that, to make it easier for our players.
TA: One more question about the difficulty here. How was it like trying to deliver the original experience for veteran fans, but also offering some quality of life improvements into the gameplay and just the game in general? How did you decide which features to bring in to modernize the game, but also keep it very challenging for long time fans?
ST: Our belief is that the SaGa series is not just all about the difficulty. it’s not just all about how difficult the games are. It’s more so how difficult it was to understand the game. For example, in the original release, there were a lot of elements or a lot of data that weren’t visible for the players. One of the examples being the weaknesses of enemies. The weaknesses did exist in the game, but it wasn’t really presented to the players, so players had to figure that out. This also applies to other stats like defenses. Again, it exists in the game, but it’s not displayed for the players. Players had to figure it out on their own to get an understanding of these aspects of the game.
We thought that this wasn’t necessarily really difficult, it was just really unfair to the players. That’s something that we wanted to really improve on, because this is going to be a remake for the modern audiences, so we wanted to get rid of those unfair elements and make it fair and enjoyable for the players. That’s why in this remake, the weaknesses are going to be actually displayed for the players, unlike the original.
There are, again, player areas that we’ve adjusted that just made it too difficult in the original. In order to make it fair and more enjoyable for the modern audiences, we made improvements and focused on that area.
TA: When I started playing Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven on Steam Deck, because I’m playing it on PC right now, it is really good and it impressed me quite a bit with how well it runs. That got me thinking about Trials of Mana, because I played that on PlayStation 4 and Switch, and then I eventually played that on mobile also. I wanted to know, has the team been working to optimize the game specifically for Steam Deck?
Editor’s Note: This was asked before the game had an official Valve rating of Steam Deck Playable.
ST: Yes, so as you have already experienced the demo of the game on your Steam Deck, the full game, the full release, is going to be compatible with the Steam Deck as well, and it will be playable on the Steam Deck.
TA: Can you comment on how long the development was for Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven?
ST: I can’t really provide the details of that, but I can say that we started the main development towards the end of 2021.
TA: What learnings from Trials of Mana remake did you take into Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven to make sure that this is also a remake which fans love?
ST: Because of our experience working on Trials of Mana remake, we felt like we did develop a good understanding of what the players want and what players would enjoy out of remake titles. One of the examples being the soundtrack of the game. We learned that players generally prefer arrangements that are not too different from the original tracks. They would rather prefer something that’s more faithful to the original arrangement. Something not too different to the original. But that being said, back then, the original tracks were released, or the original title was released on older platforms like the Super Famicom, but then we’re releasing the remake on the modern platforms like the PlayStation 5 and whatnot. The technical limitations are very different between these two eras, so we were able to utilize that and then make the quality of the arrangements higher. The general direction of the tracks are going to stay the same, however, the overall quality has been refined for these remakes. That’s the area that we learned and we adapted into the Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven.
Another thing that we learned was that players generally would prefer to, or there are a lot of players that also just prefer the original soundtrack and not the newly arranged tracks. We added an option in Trials of Mana remake that players can switch from two different arrangements of tracks. They can either choose the original tracks as is, or they can choose the newly composed or newly arranged tracks for the remakes. We added that system in Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven as well because we learned that players really loved that choice. Having that choice offered to them for the music was really well regarded, so we added that in Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven as well.
There’s also a couple of different areas that we worked on newly that’s not something that we did on Trials of Mana remake. One of the examples is the graphics. The characters are typically a bit shorter on the Mana series because the graphic style is a bit more on the adorable side. In SaGa, we can’t really keep the same aesthetics in the graphics. The characters are going to be a bit taller in this remake compared to the others. Even when you look at the backgrounds as well, for the Mana series, we added shadow effects into the textures of the backgrounds. Again, SaGa is going to have a different worldview. We wanted to keep it a bit more serious. In order to do that, in order to keep things realistic, like that’s more suitable for the SaGa franchise, we utilized the lighting effects to add these shadows and not the textures like we did for Mana. Even though there were a lot of areas that we were able to utilize and bring in as is for the SaGa remake, there were a lot of areas that we worked on newly as well.
A lot of different knowledge experiences, know-hows that we were able to use, but also new stuff that we figured out on our own with this remake.
At this point, I thanked him and the team for making the “Romancing SaGa 2 Primer” video where he introduced the game in English. I was very happy with that video and I’ve shared it with a lot of my friends who haven’t played a SaGa game before.
TA: Trials of Mana remake eventually came to mobile. I wanted to know if there are any plans to bring Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven to mobile or Xbox in the future.
ST: We do not have any plans to release on those platforms at the moment.
TA: My final question is how do you like your coffee?
ST: I don’t drink coffee because I’m not a fan of bitter drinks. I can’t drink beer either.
I’d like to thank Shinichi Tatsuke, Jordan Aslett, Sara Green, and Rachel Mascetti for their time and help with this interview and preview access over the last few weeks.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven Steam Deck Impressions
When I was offered a Steam key for Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven to try out the demo beforehand, I was equal parts excited and worried. I was excited because the reveal trailer looked excellent, but a bit worried because I had no idea if it would be a good experience on Steam Deck pre-release. Thankfully, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is not only great on Steam Deck OLED out of the box, but the few hours I spent with the demo made me not even want to bother getting the game on PS5 or Switch to play. It is that good on Valve’s handheld. But what about the remake and how it feels to play? I’m going to cover my early thoughts here.
Right off the bat, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven looks great and sounds fantastic on Steam Deck. This remake also properly introduces the basics of battle, stats, and more gradually. If you’ve played Romancing SaGa 2 before, there are some changes through quality of life improvements with information, how combat flows despite being turn-based, and also the new audio options. If you never played the original, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is shaping up to be a lovely modern entry point into SaGa in general for newcomers. The visuals definitely make it more approachable, but this is very much Romancing SaGa 2 with a fresh coat of paint and some new features. Playing on the difficulty meant to be like the original still is challenging.
As for the remake’s visuals and feel, it is a lot better than I expected. I loved Trials of Mana’s remake, but I think Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven will end up the better remake overall. This may be because I love the original game a lot more than Trials of Mana, but only time will tell on that when I get access to the full release. It also helps that at least on Steam Deck, the PC port is quite a bit better than I expected. When it comes to sound and language options, you can toggle between the new remake soundtrack or the original, English or Japanese audio, and also various graphics options.
The PC port of Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven lets you adjust screen mode (windowed, borderless, exclusive fullscreen), screen resolution (800×450 and more with 720p support on Steam Deck), frame rate (30 to unlimited), toggle v-sync, toggle on dynamic resolution, use graphics presets, toggle anti-aliasing, adjust texture filtering quality, adjust shadow quality, and adjust 3D model rendering resolution. I set most things to maximum or high with shadows on medium and still got a near-locked 90fps on my Steam Deck OLED at 720p.
On the audio side, I stuck to English for my first playthrough. The voice acting is good, but I will likely play the full game with Japanese first to see how I feel when I get it. I might even do English on console and Japanese on Steam Deck. Either way, a lot of care and effort has gone into not only making Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven feel modern, but also retain its SaGa-ness.
I’m looking forward to digging into the full game when I can, and also seeing how the demo feels on consoles. Right now, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven is a game you should have on your radar if you enjoy RPGs. I hope this leads to more folks trying out other SaGa games as well, but Square Enix needs to give us SaGa Frontier 2 next.
Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven launches on October 24th for Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS5, and PS4 worldwide. A free demo will be available on all platforms today and I recommend trying it out.
You can keep up with all our interviews here including our recent ones with Sukeban Games here, FuturLab here, Shuhei Matsumoto from Capcom about Marvel Vs Capcom here, Santa Ragione here, Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman about PH3 and Falcom here, M2 discussing shmups and more here, Digital Extremes for Warframe mobile, Team NINJA, Sonic Dream Team, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and more. As usual, thanks for reading.
When I first wrote about boomer shooters last year on Steam Deck and also on Switch, aside from New Blood and Nightdive, the most common name was Andrew Hulshult who has done some amazing music over the years. He recently was involved with the DOOM + DOOM II re-release that included his IDKFA soundtrack with new music for DOOM II, and having wanted to interview him for a while now, I finally had a chance to chat with him on call for a few hours to discuss game soundtracks, composition, bands he likes, guitar strings, pickups, cold brew coffee, his first film soundtrack, games he’s playing, and a lot more. This interview was done on video call and then it was transcribed and edited for brevity. Just like my interview with Dave Oshry from New Blood, this one was more casual than usual, and this is likely the longest interview on TouchArcade so strap in and grab a cold brew.
TouchArcade (TA): So for those unaware, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Andrew Hulshult (AH): Yeah, my name’s Andrew Hulshult. I’m a composer and sound designer for mainly video games, but I’m starting to move over into film as well. I like to just write music by myself sometimes when it’s not for a game or film. But that’s primarily what I do. I work in the game and film industry doing sound design, soundtracks, and sometimes voice acting.
TA: How did you end up working on the canceled Duke Nukem project and also Rise of the Triad 2013?
AH: Duke Nukem 3D Reloaded was actually just kind of like, I think that was 2010. That’s, I’m reaching back here a little bit. So I think Frederik at the time, Frederik Schreiber, the guy who runs 3D Realms now, or I think he still does, basically he was remaking maps in the middle of Unreal Engine 3 of like some of the original Duke 3D maps and posting them on Gearbox forums, which I think one of them that got a lot of hits was like all of the 3D renders of like Hollywood Holocaust, which is like E1M1 for Duke 3D. That caught my attention as well. I was like, wow, that looks really neat. You know, like I reached out on the forums, I was like, hey, do you need any music? Maybe this would be fun. Like, I really liked Duke 3D back in the day. And he said, yeah, sure. You know, like if you want to remake some of the stuff and hand it off to me.
So I just did some of that. I just had gear laying around and I wanted to kind of learn how to do this anyway. So I just dove in head first and started kind of remaking some of the old Duke 3D tracks. That kind of spawned into, you know, not a lot, not a lot was done in Duke 3D Reloaded. It was just like, you know, like some odds and ends stuff. Somehow that turned into Apogee, Terry Nagy, head hunting us and saying, hey, I have an IP that I’d really like you to work on called Rise of the Triad if you guys want to give it a try. And he had an investor with him at the time who was interested named Dave Oshry And this was a very long time ago. And it’s crazy. Like all those people now are like, you know, on the, we were all on the forefront of like the retro FPS revival stuff.
But basically after Duke 3D Reloaded, yeah, Apogee came, said, hey, we’re interested. And Fred said yes on our side. And we started making Rise of the Triad 2013.
TA: It was funny you mentioned Dave Oshry because when I finally got an interview with him, I think it was easier for me to meet Iron Maiden than get that interview, but after getting that done, I had New Blood covered. I recently also interviewed Nightdive about The Thing, but I needed to complete the trifecta for boomer shooters: Andrew Hulshult. Now that’s finally happening.
We both laugh.
TA: I remember in a prior interview you did, you mentioned how when you were doing the 3D realm stuff, you weren’t aware of how much you were in demand in the industry. So when that door closed, suddenly you had like a, like thousands of opportunities and stuff like that. But, and obviously you’ve gone on to do some of like some huge titles since then. Obviously Doom Eternal DLC is the one which a lot of people think about you. For me, it’s like other titles like Nightmare Reaper and Dusk and stuff like that. I want to know how you’ve changed as a musician and as a professional from back then to now.
AH: Oh, that’s a great question. Man, starting off in the industry with, you know, doing the whole stuff with Interceptor, like where we were, what we were just talking about, it was a completely fresh experience as a musician. So you don’t know what you’re getting into. And then a lot of times you’re like, I don’t even know what I should be getting paid, you know, like you have an idea, but you’re not, you don’t know. And so like wading through those waters is interesting and also dangerous territory. But the stuff that I have learned has been all from, you know, tripping on agreements as you go forward. You sign an agreement, you go for it, you make the money, and on the back end you’re either like, this didn’t really work out, or you’re like, hey, this worked out, we need to make sure that we do this again, you know.
It’s learning the entire time. Because this is the thing that I feel like musicians get hung up on a lot, which is, you know, they just, they want to make really, really awesome, beautiful art for games. And like, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. You should, that should be the core principle that you do. But you have to make sure that you get paid so that you can continue to do it. Because otherwise you burn yourself out and you don’t want to work in the industry anymore. And that, to go back to what you were talking about with, I didn’t know how much, like how in demand I was. I was right at that point. I was about to walk away from everything right after the whole stuff with 3D Realms. I was done with games. I was like, you know what, like there’s not a lot of avenues here and I’m just getting more bitter as time goes on. And the last handful of things I’ve worked on have just bombed so why am I putting all this effort into this?
I should try and do something else. And I didn’t realize until I stepped out from 3D Realms how many people wanted to hire me. And like, it’s one of those weird things where like, I’m sure you can probably relate. When you have a job, like a day job, if you’ve ever just held like a simple, simple day job, you can get sucked into that entire cycle of that job and nothing else matters around.
So an example of this would be, I worked for a music retailer for about 15 years, okay. I was doing well for them. They wanted to give me my own stores. I was working on management. And the cycle that comes with that where you get so wrapped up in the business of that makes you lose focus of lots of other things in life. And that’s kind of what happened to me while I was working with 3D Realms. That’s nothing bad about them. It’s just when you’re working for a company rather than working for yourself, it turns into that.
From the start to now has been like just a crazy learning process. You do have to walk on landmines. You do have to get blown up a couple of times until you figure out what works and what doesn’t. Stepping out from 3D Realms after they said, hey, we don’t have the cash to pay you. It’s like, oh, okay, I guess I’ll go figure this out now. And then all of a sudden, DUSK, you know, like that’s literally the next thing that and AMID EVIL were the very next things that I worked on. It was crazy.
TA: Obviously you get a lot of questions about game music, but what is like, since you brought up this whole thing about how you’ve changed, what is the biggest misconception that people both in the industry and like the players have about video games music right now?
AH: The biggest misconception. Oh, that anybody can do it and it’s a small part. laughs It’s like, you can’t just throw anything in there. Like, man, it’s I’d say that from a public like standpoint of I don’t play games that much and I’m casual kind of thing, some of my friends and some of my family are like, you have the easiest job. I’m like, you have no f***ing idea. You know, walk in my shoes for a day and let’s talk again. Yeah, it’s really difficult because you, you really have to trick yourself into getting into whatever atmosphere or whatever world someone else has painted already. Right. Like they’ve already built everything out. This is their vision. You have to step into it and you have to step into it with respect to their design philosophies. And you also have to have the confidence to say, well, this is what I think we should do and why we should do it. And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of social confidence that’s needed to do a gig like this.
It’s complex in a lot of different ways. The art side of it is hard enough, like pulling shit out of thin air, is difficult already, but then, um, explaining to people why you want to go this direction and sometimes even arguing to get that direction can be a hassle in and of itself.
So yeah, I’d say the biggest misconception is that it’s easy and that it’s not easy. I swear to God, so many times my friends are like, ah, you’ve got the easiest job. I’m like, no, man, I live, I, I threw a hundred pound boxes from 6 AM to 4 PM. And sometimes I miss that.
Whiskey and coffee fueled half of the @RiseoftheTriad OST. Most songs were composed between 9pm and 3am.
TA: So I also want to talk a lot about your gear, but before that, I think we should discuss some of the game specific things. So let’s start with ROTT 2013. I’ve just sent you a tweet right now, which I wanted to reference. This is quite an old one (linked above). Well, I actually didn’t know much about this soundtrack until recently. I had heard about it and I had heard that a lot of my friends bought that release. They said that it wasn’t that great. I played the original on DOS but not the 2013 version, so I didn’t really hear it all in-game until the Ludicrous Edition and when folks made a big deal about it having Andrew Hulshult’s music. I decided I wanted to properly try it then. I wanted to talk about your thought process between like, you know, redoing those tracks and coming up with your own flare on them, because anyone who, at least any fan of yours, if they listen to that, they know it’s your music. It’s not like, oh, this is just like him doing a cover of someone else. It still feels like it’s you.
AH: The first and foremost thing was to make sure you respect your elders. I wanted to make sure that whatever I did obviously served the fanbase and by proxy served everything that Lee Jackson had written. Lee Jackson and Bobby Prince, as far as I’m concerned, that’s the de facto composers for FPS. The originators. You’re already stepping into something well established back in the day. People are very familiar with this. If you f*** it up, you are toast. That was my first professional gig. Stepping into that kind of pressure.
Just really what it came to, it was all really natural. I heard these songs and I saw the game and what they’re making and I’m like it is kinda jank, but it is fun. It is ridiculous. ROTT is so ridiculous. I was like man, I was talking to Dave and Fred about it. What if we did like rock and metal stuff predominantly? That’s the kind of music I listen to all the time. They said let’s try it. Even Terry was like you should do it.
Really they just kinda gave me free reign to give it a try on some of these things. The first one I did as a demo to work on it was “Goin Down the Fast Way” and I remember I handed that to Terry. Terry is awesome and he has been great to me for my entire career. Never had a bad piece of advice from him. He is the CCO for Apogee by the way. I remember handing him the very first demo of “Goin Down the Fast Way”. His comment coming back to me was “It is in the right direction but it sounds like a diarrhea of sound” Because it wasn’t mixed correctly. I was just excited to hand him something. I was like ok this is one of those moments where I’m going to have to learn how to accept feedback even if it is not from a musician and I know that they mean well. I remixed a couple of things and I think this is what he was talking about and I sent it back to him and he said it was way better and it was awesome. Ok cool, this guy doesn’t just hate me.
It kind of just came from the heart. All the soundtracks I work on, it’s me. Even if it is stepping into someone else’s shoes, I have to remember that the source material comes first, then you put your influences on. So the source material is the structure of the house but you can put up whatever walls you want and paint on it, and hang and decorate, but just make sure that the house is still the same house that people remember.
Now to address the Tweet above, Whiskey and coffee fueled half of the Rise of the Triad soundtrack. Most songs were composed between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. That’s true. Here’s one little tidbit with it too. Terry Nagy, the guy I was talking about, the CCO from Apogee, he would regularly take me down to a bar called Hula Hands. And he would buy the drinks and then he would just take me home and be like, “Alright, now go write some more songs.” It was awesome. I miss those days.
TA: This reminds me of that one track in IDKFA where you used a tremolo to replicate a specific sound and it was the perfect way to do it.
AH: That was Dark Halls in DOOM. It has the tremolo guitar that’s supposed to be the rolling bass synth from that sound. I love that song.
TA: After ROTT 2013, another game I didn’t really play until recently was Bombshell and I literally only bought that game because of your soundtrack. I got it when I was researching boomer shooters for an article and was looking at the games I don’t own. I bought it and didn’t really care for much of it, but the music was great. I kind of think of that soundtrack with Nightmare Reaper where they feel like just metal albums from Andrew Hulshult rather than dedicated game soundtracks. Was this the point in your career where you realized you’re really good at bringing metal into these kinds of games? It felt like a turning point.
AH: That’s that’s a great question too like actually yeah like right around that time I was experimenting a lot with just you know making big atmospheric like synth stuff and like orchestral as you can hear on that soundtrack if you got far enough, laughs, but also like for the for the bigger fights and stuff, I really wanted to start dialing up you know my own sound and my own writing and you know I’d already done the cover stuff I wanted to want to show people what what I could do and so yeah that is kind of really where my introduction to like my own original pieces started coming into place, so yeah that is actually right. I never even thought about that that is where that started and also like I mean I gosh that’s if I think about it, that was 2013 is the end of 2013 is when development started on that, and it originally started as a Duke Nukem game before the lawsuit, and I had an eight string by that time. I was tuning down big time at that point, and there’s a lot of stuff that never made it maybe I’ll put that up on Twitter at some point but there’s a lot of stuff that never never showed up on it because it was a little too aggressive you know but that stuff would later show up in DOOM you know. laughs
TA: When just discovering your music many years ago, everything was really good metal, and this was probably around the time I was mainly listening to metal before I started broadening my horizons. I went through this phase when I was learning guitar and I started listening to more Dream Theater and then got a seven string guitar, and eventually got into Meshuggah. It got me thinking about how when I listen to your music now, you manage doing unique things for each game and make the songs fit the game properly. It isn’t just metal anymore so there’s no worry about being typecast. Did you have that fear that everyone is just going to expect metal from you when you’re behind a specific soundtrack?
AH: Oh man. You just saying that just out loud makes me wow. I still worry about that sometimes. There are moments where I’m like am I getting typecast at this point, and you saying, yeah I don’t have to worry about that anymore, I’m like oh thank god I heard it from someone else where they were you know like, because I don’t want to be like I don’t want to be like straight up known as metal guy you know like I love metal I love playing it I’ll make those records all day long as people as long as people will listen to it and even if they won’t I’ll probably make them, but yeah I like to paint with different brushes like especially when I get older, like I really enjoy mixing sound design with guitars.
I like mixing sound design with orchestral instruments, I like just going full hand on my Eurorack synth stuff over here and just getting lost. As a musician I’m fortunate enough at this point where I can just experiment, and I know I can find, I have the confidence now after working on all these games and having some success with it where I know if I get lost I can find a way out because I’ll find something that I like, and chances are if I like it, I can probably show it to some people who will dig it as well. I’m so glad to hear that you’re like I know that I can get some variety. laughs
TA: I mean if someone just heard DUSK and I’d say if they heard DUSK even that is pretty different. I mean if someone’s not into metal maybe they think dusk sounds the same as bombshell but you can totally tell that DUSK was trying to be like this middle ground of what you like and Nine Inch Nails’ Quake. I think it has one of my favorite guitar tones in gaming right now, and it’s still pretty timeless. I want to move to AMID EVIL. I love the soundtrack to the main game, but I want to ask about the DLC for two reasons. Now the first thing is kind of like a personal topic because I believe you were going through a family emergency during the time when you were recording the soundtrack, right? When I was playing Dragon Quest VIII on the 3DS and my grandfather was in the hospital before he passed away, whenever I think about Dragon Quest VIII now it reminds me of that. So do you go through the same thing with the AMID EVIL DLC music?
AH: I don’t think I’ve been able to sit down and digest it that way yet. But I know exactly what you’re talking about and I’m sure that is what I will absolutely go through. Yeah, to harp back to what you’re talking about, to what you’re referencing, my father had a heart attack. And it was just out of nowhere. And it was on, gosh, I think it was on New Year’s Eve. It was like 9 PM on New Year’s Eve. It was the year before it was released And I was halfway, I was like midway through working on that soundtrack. And it just scared the shit out of me. As anybody would. Your father’s dying And he ended up having like a, all four valves around his heart were like 90-95% clogged. So yeah, he had to have a quadruple bypass. And thankfully, We have a really, really good heart hospital right next to us. And they’re at an age now where they’re on Medicare. I think it’s Medicare. I can’t remember. It’s like once you’re past 64 at a certain age in this country, you can get on Medicare. And you know, like health stuff isn’t as much of a nightmare as it normally is. But they got great care, got taken care of. But it was months.
It took months for all that stuff to happen. And there’s like so many things that happened in between that. Like this was right in the middle of COVID. So like whenever he got, it was right in the middle of the big Omicron spike for the world. So as soon as he got admitted, he couldn’t get to an actual emergency room. He had to sit in another room for like two or three days and they actually had to sedate him for a few days before they could transfer him to another hospital to get looked at. Like it was just crazy. And I was out of my mind. I was crazy at that point. And so once they got to a point where they said we’re going to do surgery and he came out of surgery, I just needed something to occupy myself. Otherwise, I was going to self-destruct.
So I started writing a lot on the AMID EVIL stuff and started really finding that old like playing with a band and writing songs for you kind of vibe going in. And a lot of that stuff in a AMID EVIL, the stuff that’s like got a lot of energy behind it, that is pretty personal for me. There’s a lot of emotions on that soundtrack. There’s also something else that I haven’t talked about in public yet and I’m not going to talk about it here that I started working on that has a lot of that as well. And that’ll still be a while before that pops up. But I’d say that that was my main outlet for a while. You have something to look forward to.
But yeah, like that soundtrack let’s wrap it up. That soundtrack did have a lot of tension and a lot of emotions tied to my father almost passing away and me trying to wrap my head around that. You’re right. I hadn’t thought about that.
TA: The other thing about the AMID EVIL DLC is this specific song I want to touch on: Splitting Time. This song is interesting for a few reasons. It reminds me of some of my favorite game trailers like the song used in the Nioh 2 launch trailer, I’m not sure if you’ve seen it. But more interesting than that is I was playing Street Fighter 6 with a friend of mine and listening to this in the background and he asked me if I was listening to Killer Instinct music? I said it was the AMID EVIL DLC and he wanted to know who made it. It reminded me quite a bit of Mick Gordon’s non DOOM music. We spoke about Killer Instinct and my friend said “they should get Andrew for a new Killer Instinct album” and I wanted to ask if Killer Instinct influenced that song?
AH: No I didn’t actually. But there might be little hints of that back and forth because gosh, there are moments when I went back to that Killer Instinct reboot because I thought Mick did such a great job on it. Where I’m like, man, the production here is exactly what I have been trying to do for like a handful of years, And like that soundtrack was just really inspiring to listen to. I think he’s just, he’s a brilliant composer.
TA: That’s another game I bought because of the soundtrack because when I played DOOM 2016, I was like I need to play more games with this guy’s done the music for and everyone was like Killer Instinct. I was like I’ve never heard this. I didn’t own an N64. What the hell is this game? I bought it and liked the music a lot more than the game.
AH: That whole soundtrack slaps, man. He did a fantastic job on that.
TA: OK, so now let’s go to Nightmare Reaper a bit. I already mentioned how this could be your own metal album. I don’t even think it needs to be related to this game. And this is another game I just bought because the music was so good. And I was like there’s kind of like this disconnect between what I expected in the game and after I heard the music, because I heard the music before playing the game and I was like, OK, I need to get used to this. But so before I ask you about your thought process between doing the music, I want to just bring up this other tweet (linked above) from New Blood’s Dave Oshry, which is interesting for Nightmare Reaper. When I saw that Tweet, I knew I had to bring it up whenever I interviewed you in the future and here we are.
Laughs
AH: Whenever Bruno reached out to me, Bruno is the developer of Nightmare Reaper. Whenever he reached out to me, we just literally started talking about some of our favorite bands and we would just go off back and forth because he showed me a game that he was making. I was like, “That looks cool.” I was like, “Well, let me know if you’re ever interested.” And then we just started talking about music. He’s like, “Would you be interested in working with me on this?” And I said, “Yeah, I think that would be cool.” And he literally was like, “I just want this to be like a metal record from you.” I was like, “Really?” He was like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “You’ve got good influences.” He’s like, “I just want it to sound like you just made a straight metal record.” I was like, “Well, it can’t be just that.” I was like, “But it’ll be mostly that.” You still need to like, we need to, it needs to still be for a game. Because otherwise you’d have me, you know, screaming over top of everything as well.
But yeah, it is pretty close to something I would have written at that time. You know, as you go with a, as time moves on, tastes change. And you know, but like at that time, for sure, that’s what you would have gotten for a metal record. I think that’s pretty close, yeah.
TA: How do you manage doing that and also keeping the soundtrack dynamic for a game then?
AH: Um, play through it a lot of times where you can figure out where you can have rests and lulls. And where somebody’s gonna possibly just walk around and look for things. And then try to write something that you yourself would not get bored of. And that’s still interesting in terms of like, you know, like an ambient track or like a low energy track that still moves a little bit. Just music to explore to, right? And then try and make a piece that complements what that is, but is super high energy or, uh, just higher energy for it. So like, so that those two can work together. You really have to think of it as like, you’re gluing two or three different pieces together. Because like Prodeus has like three pieces.
It has an ambient, it has a light combat, and it has a heavy combat. And they’re structured in triggers throughout that game. So I have to think of how this ambient works with this low combat song and then work with this high combat song. Or this heavy combat song. And do they all move well between each other, um, if you were to just crossfade them at random times, you know? Because that’s what the engine is going to do. So yeah, it’s like, I don’t know, you just, you gotta take one of those pieces of music, build it out first, and then think about the other piece.
TA: Since you brought up Prodeus, that was the next game I was going to ask about. I don’t even remember what happened with Prodeus when it launched on Steam, because I remember being sent a code for it and just tried it out for review, but was blown away by the music. I remember I even joked about that when I wrote about boomer shooters. At the time, it felt like everything boomer shooters was all about New Blood, Nightdive, and Andrew Hulshult. So Prodeus feels like metal, industrial, bass heavy, and punchier in general. It works well with the aesthetic but I think Cables and Chaos is my favorite. You’ve spoken a lot about Prodeus, but I wanted to know what your favorite track is from that and whether you can give us an interesting anecdote from composing which people might not know about?
AH: Cables and Chaos is definitely my favorite one. Like, for sure. Like, that was the moment. Um, so, like, they originally only wanted me to work on, like, the music that first shipped. Not a lot of people know that I went through, like, this whole nightmare where I had to pull the entire soundtrack down across the entire, like, all this digital distribution and put it back up with all the songs because originally there was only, like, ten pieces of music with Prodeus. And then when they were getting closer to release they were like, “Hey, we want to… we want to… we want, like, ten more.” And I was like, “Oh, uh, okay. Well, I’ve already put out the soundtrack. We already agreed on this, so this is weird.” So, um, they showed me what else they were working on in terms of, like, the levels and everything that I hadn’t seen and I was like, “Good lord, these look incredible!” So I got really inspired with that and made a ton of really just more aggressive pieces of music which turned into things like Chaoscaster, Cables and Chaos, uh…I’m just trying to think of the other ones. Dystopian Dimension.
That whole soundtrack is awesome. Like, that whole soundtrack, like, it was built in an interesting time where it’s…it was… half of it was pre-pandemic and the other half was during isolation during pandemic. So, it’s got these really interesting tangents of, uh, the second half of the record’s way more aggressive than the first half. Just because, like, I don’t know, I was at home and I’m like, I can’t get anything out. Like, in terms of my outlet, I can’t go out. I can’t do this. So, like, all of my energy was focused on how aggressive can I make the rest of this, you know? Like, and then we finally get to put it out. I think that was 2022.
Here’s one thing from Prodeus that I thought was super neat. So, Spent Fuel is one of the only times that I’ve been…Well, it was one of the first times I’d done it at the moment. Where I’d taken an idea and I was like, how do I write a concept around this? And really, like, the map they showed me was just, you know, green sludge and radiated bullshit everywhere. It looked like Chernobyl. And, um…I was like, man, I really want to find ways to take things like Geiger counters, uh, and, uh, pulses from, from, uh, from fission reactions and, like, maybe even the sound of the, uh, the flash that happens in the video whenever they’re testing the atomic bomb stuff. Like, anything that’s gamma or uh, radiation that is audible, I want to take that and make a piece of music with it. So, there literally are all of those things in that piece of…that piece of music. So, there is the sound of a nuclear reactor turning on, doing what’s called a pulse, uh, for the first time. And that’s actually used in part of the beat. The Geiger counters used as portions of the beat that kind of sounds like a drum machine a little bit.
I reversed the sound of, uh, the atomic bomb, the initial flash hitting the camera, making this “bzzz” sound. I reversed that and made it pulse back and forth through the beat. And then, you know, later on the music is like a lot of guitar stuff to go with it and everything, but all that stuff that’s going on with the synthesizer is all based around, you know, like radiation. And I was like, “Ah, this is cool!”
Whenever I got done with it, I was like, “Finally!” I had an idea, like a concept idea for a piece of music that stems from like a real life thing and put it all together. So that was like, that’s one of the standout moments for me on that soundtrack. I was really proud of that.
TA: Can you say anything about the DLC music or is that just up to the devs for them to release?
AH: Uh, that’s up to the devs for them.
TA: Anything that’s different or interesting or should we just expect another banger soundtrack?
AH: I’m not sure if they’re going to use the base game stuff or if they want me to work on anything new. I have my suspicions that they’ll give me a shout probably somewhere in the near future, but I haven’t heard from them yet.
TA: I think in a recent interview where you spoke about the Iron Lung soundtrack, which you’re doing, obviously you can’t talk much about it, but I, don’t want to know about the soundtrack specifically, I’ll wait for the movie to come out, but I want to know three things: How is it working on a movie soundtrack? How is it working with Markiplier? How has the budget available for the soundtrack changed how you’re able to approach music composition?
AH: So the first one was, how’s it working on a movie soundtrack? Completely different. Like, I thought that, I thought that I’d be able to walk in and just be like, “Eh, this won’t, this’ll be simple.” Oh. Like, it’s just as challenging as the game stuff, but in a completely different direction. Where I would know exactly to talk to a developer about “Let’s put a piece of music here, let’s put a piece of music here, let’s do that.” I can do that with Mark, but they’re completely different conversations. One is, you know, I know exactly what’s supposed to be happening in the game here, this is, you know, you’re picking up this weapon, or you’re, this adventure is happening in front of you, this is the tone. The other is a film that I may get something out of, but Mark may be intending for a different emotion. So we have to talk about those things back and forth before I make a piece of music. So it’s really interesting. It’s a fun challenge, to be honest with you.
The second one was working with Mark? Mark is awesome. He is so much fun to work with. He hears things that I don’t hear, uh, brings things up in, in my own music, where I’m like, “Oh, I didn’t even think about that.” And he’s very much, um, a musician without, like, being a musician. Like, he doesn’t, he doesn’t write, like, as far as I know, he doesn’t write a bunch of music, like, on the regular, but he understands it very, very well. And will, uh, regularly make decisions when I hand him a piece of music, and he’s like, “Okay, this is, you know, sometimes we will have to cut these back and forth, but I promise you, like, like, to make it work for a scene.” He’s like, “But I promise you, we’ll do it as best as we can, or I’ll do it as best as I can.” I’m like, “Uh, you know, like, maybe I should just recompose the scene.” And every time he cuts something to, like, possibly make it, like, a tiny bit shorter, I’m like, “No, that’s exactly what I would have done. Like, how are you this good at editing this stuff?” Like, it’s, it blows my mind. Um, so he’s been fantastic to work with.
The third is about the budget for the movie soundtrack and how it changes how it affects composition? Budgets were a lot bigger. I’ll just, I’ll just keep it at that. They were, they were, they were much bigger. Um, just because of how much, it wasn’t, like, due to, um, you know, like, “Oh, you’re working on a film now.” It was, it was because of how much music we went through. Um, I wrote demos with them on the set. So, like, they flew me down to Austin and Mark said, “Hey, you know, why don’t you just write music while I’m doing scenes?” I’m like, “Wow, that sounds actually really, really f***ing cool, yeah.” So, I would go down there about once every two weeks and spend about two or three days there, just sitting at, uh, sitting out front while they’re, they’re doing scenes, and I’d be writing music with my headphones, just watching on a monitor, you know, what’s going on in front of me, like, 50 feet in front of me. And so, there was a ton of music from that, and there’s a lot more music that came afterwards that we wrote, and in fact, um, I’m actually about to jump on a call because I think they need one more, one more piece of music.
I’m gonna jump on a call in like two hours, ’cause I think they need one more piece of music. Um, but it’s, it’s just been a lot. There’s a lot there. And it’s picking the emotions that go where. So, like, there would be, I wrote all these songs for, you know, um, catching a vibe of depression, and these songs for catching a vibe of anger, and these vibes for tension, and this, and this, and we have this giant palette to just choose from and pick where we want things to go, and that’s what, that’s what Mark’s been doing. So, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty much, I mean, financially, the exact same thing as, that I would agree on with games, but it’s just, there’s the volume that, like, we’ve done with stuff is like, whoa, that’s a lot! So, yeah.
So, yeah, it’s been great. It’s helped me out a ton. I’d love to work with Mark again after this.
TA: Going from your first movie soundtrack, let’s talk about your first chiptune album, which was Dusk 82. So, was that actually the first time you did any sort of chiptune remixing or composition or arrangement, I should say?
AH: Yeah, the first real one, like, I mean, like, you could, you could argue that, like, the Rad Rodgers stuff has some of that on there, but that’s, like, closer to synth wave more than anything else, I feel like. And, like, that kind of retro feel. So, yeah, this was the first real time that I, like, approached, like, a chiptune. Like, this is, you have to stay within these boundaries of limited technology. And it was literally, like, you know, choose your, choose your sine wave. Do you want, you want sine, or choose your audio wave. Do you want sine, square, or, you know, triangle? So, it’s one of the three. Just building, like, drum kits based off of that and, like, white noise and everything. And, yeah, that was, that was interesting.
Like, when David approached me about that, I was like, “You wanna do what?” You know, like, completely make, like, the Dusk soundtrack and chiptunes of, like, why don’t we just, like, choose a handful of, like, the hits and go from there. Like, the ones that people remember the most, you know? And that was fun. Uh, that was super cool. Just bouncing those back and forth off Dave and David. But, yeah, that was, that was the first time I ever did that. And it was, it was pretty cool. I’m glad people like it.
TA: I think, uh, Dusk 82 was, like, this free pre-order bonus with the Nintendo Switch release. So when I started playing that, I was like, “Wait, did they actually do this for the soundtrack?” And then I looked it up and I’m like, “Of course they did!” I know obviously you’re, like, super busy with, like, a ton of projects, but if you had, like, unlimited time and resources, would you do a chiptune demake of any of your other albums? And if you would, which one would you pick?
AH: Gosh. Which one would be the most interesting is really the, uh, the question there. I think the one that would be the most interesting if I were to do that would be probably AMID EVIL. Because there’s so much going on in some of those, it would be, it would be a lot of fun to go back and, like, hear some of those melodies that are, like, on, like, all string sections and stuff, and here I’m taking all the way down to, like, 8-bit, you know? I think that that would fit really well too. But yeah, if money wasn’t an issue. Yeah, and time. Time’s the biggest one there.
TA: Speaking of time and money, I was going to ask you about remastering one of your old soundtracks, like bringing it to the modern Andrew Hulshult sound. You mentioned that you’d do ROTT 2013 if they paid you to remaster it.
AH: There’s a ton of work involved in that. Doing that just for IDKFA was a ton of work. Like, that was months of getting that together. Um, yeah, I’d love to do that for ROTT if Apogee would be interested in it, but, like, it’s a time thing more than anything else. I think it’s a time thing for them, and it’s a time thing for me. I mean, they’re literally down the street, so, like, they can open up that conversation anytime they want, and it’s just a matter of when, you know? When’s the right time.
TA: WRATH: Aeon of Ruin, I think is a game you composed a long time ago, at least in gaming, like, a few years ago, and it finally released this year. That’s a soundtrack where if anyone hears it, I think they probably wouldn’t expect it to be you when they listen to the soundtrack, and that’s one of the things I love about it, because here, like, he does more than just metal, like, you need to get that into your head, like, that feels like one of those things. How was it working on that soundtrack?
AH: It was interesting back and forth. Jeremiah, the developer on that, the original developer, at first, I think he’ll be okay with me saying this, at first we did not, we didn’t see eye to eye on things, because I wanted straight up, like, almost no guitar at all, Quake, Like, this is what you’re going for, this is the audience, we need to harp even further into this, and he wanted some guitar mixed in there, and like, we would butt heads back and forth on it quite a bit, until we finally came to like a mutual understanding, and I started hearing him out a little bit more, and he started hearing me out, and I was like, okay, okay, I think we’re all good on this.
But yeah, it was, that one was a little, a little more tough, just because the, like, the development cycle was, wasn’t, you know, as people know, like, didn’t, it didn’t go as great, like, towards about halfway through, maybe a little, even a little earlier than that, and I could see some of that happening in real time, just because I know all those guys, so like, it was unavoidable.
So that’s, that’s hard to make art for when you know that the product itself is having some problems. But I think Christalynne Pyle did a good job with wrapping everything up towards the end of it, which was a task in and of itself, for sure. But, I don’t know, there were some weird ideas pitched out there at one point, where like, I think Fred wanted like, like straight up, like really over the top metal tracks at one point. I think they even had a trailer at one point where I was like, this is not the tone of this game. I don’t know where you guys found that music, but like, this is, this is not that.
But I’m glad that everything in the end was able to have some cohesiveness and, and meld together. I really wish that we had time to do some action tracks, like, for that game. Like, I feel like there are moments where that could have, that could have been helpful, but also at the same time, that’s a big what if. You know, like, because there’s two things that you have to take into consideration. Which is, that’s the Quake engine. It’s like the OG Quake engine. You know, what are the limitations that we’re working with here? Can we dynamically swap music, and is it going to work well, just as well as you’ve heard in other titles? And number two, um, would that take people out of it?
Because everybody remembers like the OG Quake having like, you know, every map had its song. Well, I say that. It was a disc running that just played a bunch of music. But basically, every map had a song for it. So, yeah, there’s, there’s a handful of things there. But I like the soundtrack. I think it’s cool. I think it’s, it’s, it’s got some really interesting moments in it where like, one of them where I was, I just said, “F*** it, whatever. We’re gonna, we’re gonna bow a guitar through a bunch of pedals and see what that comes out like.” That’s one of my favorite pieces from that. I think that’s towards the end. But, um, yeah, it was a little bit of a struggle, but I’m glad I still went through it. I had fun, and I think that everybody that worked on it was pretty proud of it by the end.
TA: Now, DOOM Eternal’s DLC. How did it feel for you doing IDKFA and now doing official DOOM music? Like, it’s your soundtrack with David Levy? Did id Software actually talk to you about IDKFA beforehand?
AH: I know that IDKFA was, was passed around that studio a whole bunch, cause I, I’d get, um, DMs from people that work there that are now, like, I consider great friends, where they would reach out in, like, 2015, and 2016, and, like, all the way back as 2014, where they would be saying, you know, hey, I’m working at id right now, I just want you to know that I’m listening to your, to your music while I work, and I was always just like, oh, holy cow, that’s crazy, you know? Um, and I, you know, as far back as that, I was just like, hey, if you ever, you know, if you ever, if you ever need music, let me know, you know? So, but, like, never, never, you know, like, pushing like, the button or the boundaries, cause like, I think it was announced that Mick was working on there in, like, 2015? Like, it was like the year before, or something like that, when they really started showing some of the music, and I was like, oh, they’ve, they’ve, they’ve got that handled, okay, cool. So, um, but I was always interested in, in finding a, a way to work with that studio, cause I love DOOM, and, like, it’s really is, like, the core of my DNA wanting to work in games, is DOOM, and like, Duke 3D, um, so, yeah,
I always wanted to work with them, and IDKFA, I kinda looked at almost as a resume, like, I was like, I’m gonna put this out there, if it gets popular enough, it’ll speak for itself, and it did exactly that, because, uh, in, gosh, that was, that was right at, like, quarter one, quarter two of 2020, when, when they approached me, I think it was, actually it was, I think it was quarter two of 2020, and said, hey, we, uh, we are in a position where we need, we need music, where we need music, and, uh, we need it quickly, and would you be up to the task for this? They fully were, they knew what they were asking was, was a tall order, in a short period of time, and they said, you know, we can absolutely use the base game stuff, but we wanted to at least reach out and, and ask you, because we, we feel like we can trust you, cause I, I’d made relationships with, with, uh, with Marty, some light ones with Hugo, with Chad Mossholder, their sound guy, I knew all of those people by then, and, um, I was like, hey, you know what, it’s, it’s like 35 or 40 days, f*** it, we, let’s do it, it was like, this sounds like a challenge, I’m totally up for it, and, you know, I had to keep my composure the entire time, but in the inside I’m like, oh my god, you know, like, I’m working on an official DOOM game, uh, and when, but when we got done with that, like, I don’t know, it’s one of those weird moments where you go, holy cow, we went from, uh, you know, a mod project, uh, all the way to the official thing, and it’s just, it’s insane, it’s, it’s crazy, I keep running into those portions of my career, I hope they never stop, there are, something always surprises me like that.
TA: I think it’s safe to assume that a lot of people who tell you they love your music bring up Blood Swamps from DOOM Eternal’s DLC. Because I think every person I see on YouTube is like, everyone’s just doing Blood Swamps, it seems like the most popular thing and all, and for you that’s probably a weird feeling because you have this song which a lot of people love or something which you’re really proud of, but you can’t stream it or buy it legally. Can you comment on that in any form? What do you tell people who ask about buying your music from DOOM Eternal’s DLC?
laughs
AH: Well, Bethesda and id own all that stuff, they paid me well for it, so like I was happy to do all that, um, that’s not like a bullshit PR thing, like, for real, they took care of me. They own all that, so you know, if they, if they ever choose to put that stuff out, that would be awesome, I’d totally embrace it and get behind it with that, but sometimes studios do that, sometimes they don’t, and it’s just completely up to their call, but I will tell you that they have no problem with you, you know, grabbing it off YouTube or anything like that, so do that to your heart’s content, throw it on your phone, whatever you want to do, they just, they’re just glad that you like the stuff, and so am I, to be honest, but hey, hopefully one day we can get an official release, like, that would be cool.
TA: Yeah, because I have the DOOM 2016 vinyl soundtrack, and I’d love to have DOOM Eternal music on vinyl as well. Anyway that’s something I’ve been thinking about because it’s probably a difficult situation for you to be in, because people would who want to support you, like, obviously they can buy DOOM Eternal and buy the DLC and stuff like that, but it’s an unfortunate situation for fans, is all, like, I’ll leave it at that.
AH: It’s not really like a weird situation at all. I’m totally okay with whatever, Bethesda and id want to do with that, because they were completely up front, they’re like, we’re gonna own this, what we choose to do with that is…Yeah, yeah, and I was like, yeah, that’s fine, I just want to help, I want to make like, a cool DLC for everybody that’s stuck at home, and I want to write like, some kick-ass music for it. And, so there’s no feelings of like, you know, oh, this is weird because this isn’t out, or anything like that.
I know people are gonna rip it out of the game, I know, like, so do they, and like, that’s fine. But, you know, hopefully, I would like to see an official release one day, but that is completely up to them, and I will respect whatever they want to do, because they’ve been nothing but awesome.
TA: Now let’s just talk about Blood Swamps for a bit, because like, everyone loves the riffs and stuff like that, so, what was your thought process in creating that song? Did they ask you to make something that fit with the base game or tell you to just go wild and be Andrew with the music?
AH: They told me to go wild and just be me, which I was like, that felt pretty dangerous to me, because I was like, man, the, you know, what’s established here from Mick? I’m like, that’s pretty strong. Like, that’d be like somebody walking into another DUSK soundtrack, you know, like, for the Indie Shooter, and then being like, we’re gonna do all synthwave, you know, like, no, that’s not how that works. You have to serve what came before you. You have to show respect to what came before you. And that’s really important for the fans before anybody else. Doesn’t matter with an executive producer, doesn’t matter with the musician, doesn’t matter with the artist. It’s for the fans. Like, you have to make sure that whatever you’re going to do is going to, they’re gonna go, okay, cool, yeah, I understand, you know, why you chose this. So really, for me, looking at it when they were like, hey, you just be you, do whatever you want, what you think serves Doom the best. I was like, well, that’s a no-brainer. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna source some inspiration from 2016 and Eternal, and then write what I would want to write.
So, the colors that I’m painting with are familiar, but the writing that I’m using, what I’m using to paint, or the picture I’m painting is different. So there’s some familiarity there. Because, you know, like, Blood Swamps is quite a bit different than stuff that you would hear on 2016 or Eternal. It’s a little bit more, this is, uh, this is like almost like a traditional metal song. And like, in fact, uh, I remember handing that over to Chad the first time and him being like, “Oh, metal. Alright.” And I was like, “Really? That’s like, you’re surprised. But, um, the, uh, it’s just a little bit more almost traditional. But, um, yeah, there’s, like, it was nice having David and Chad to bounce stuff off of. Because where I would hand them something, like Blood Swamps was originally like just guitar, just, just bass, and just drums. And it started, I started adding things in at, uh, after talking to, um, to Chad and David quite a bit. Where they would be like, you know, “Have you thought about any sound design stuff?” I’m like, “Well, what did you, you know, what are you thinking? Show me the instruments that you’re working with and, you know, like, let’s just talk stuff out.”
We’d have like hour long conversations every single day. And we would all just learn from each other. It was, it was so cool. But, yeah, like Blood Swamps comes from a point, I just remember, I have to write something that if this is the only DOOM game I work on, it has to be just, like, way out there. Like, I have to, I have to, I have to just take my shot. And it has, I have to rip out all of the barriers that are like, “Hey, should I do this? Shouldn’t I do this? Who gives a f***?” Just, just just write the fastest, most aggressive thing that you can think of at this point in time, and we’ll go from there. And that’s what, that’s what Blood Swamps was. And then everything else came after it, I was like, “Okay.” It was like, “We can do different things now.” You know?
TA: I think you mentioned how you had a few weeks to do the DLC soundtrack, but because you had the support system of those two, it was all possible in the end. I think you mentioned that in one of the other interviews.
AH: Yeah, because David was handling, like, on the first DLC, he was handling the cutscene work, and he had his own, like, stuff where he was working on a boss, and a level, and then I got these two levels, so they split up the work evenly between us on both DLCs. And there’d be so many times where I’d call David or Chad and just be like, “Hey, how are you doing today?” You know? And one of us would be like, “Oh my God, I don’t know where to go.” You know? And we would just talk back and forth, and somehow we would give each other ideas. It was magical. Like, it was crazy. Just after talking to David, if I had nothing in my head on what I should write, after talking to David or to Chad, I’d be like, “I know what I need to do now.” It was cool.
TA: Going back to IDKFA a bit, you mentioned how much work you had to put into revisit and, like, Remaster the original soundtrack. What did you think about revisiting those songs? Like, did you feel like, you know, maybe I should have done something differently? Or were you like, “No, I’m happy with this. I just want to preserve it for fans of IDKFA.”
AH: Yeah, it was more of a, it was a little tiny bit of, “I want to do things a little differently.” But, like, I’m talking to really, really small degrees. It was more about preservation than anything else. And if something was being destructive while trying to preserve it, those were the things that I would try to eliminate. An example of that is there was a lot of compression on the original IDKFA. Just because I was still in my early 20s at that point, early to mid 20s at that point, mixing in an apartment that isn’t, like, acoustically sound or anything like that. So I’m making mix decisions that aren’t the greatest, but still hold up. Like, that album still sounds great, but just some of the compression side, like, on the master of it, is a little aggressive.
So when I went back this time around, I actually went through every single one of those songs one by one and just gave it a little bit more head room, a little bit more breathing room, so that if you listen to it enough times, you’re not going to get, like, ear fatigue or something like that. That’s really what I was concerned about. And that’s all of the Doom 1 stuff from the original IDKFA all got that treatment where the threshold has been raised just a little bit so that it sounds a little bit more open and natural. And I replaced a couple snares here and there, and maybe like a kick drum and a bass, but they’re so small I still haven’t seen anybody notice them.
TA: You should revisit Metallica’s St. Anger and do this for all the fans.
AH: It is impossible to fix that! laughs There’s been bands that have done that. I’ve re-recorded that entire record and I see it on YouTube every now and then. I’m like this is… this would have been a cool record if it would have sounded okay, and maybe some structure changes were different, but yeah, it’s whatever.
TA: I think when Metallica did Death Magnetic, they had the Guitar Hero Metallica stems which people used to mix it better than the actual album. How does this keep happening?
AH: James attests to it. Those guys are so big that they legitimately have final say on everything that they do. So whenever they’re touring and you already have Tinnitus and you’re mixing in a tent, I remember them talking about “Yeah, no shit, the guitars are bright.” I was listening to mixes in a tent and making mix decisions on the road. I’m like, “Oh, that makes a lot more sense now.” Like, oh my god. Because the Guitar Hero mixes do sound way better.
TA: This reminds me of when I watched Deafheaven and how amazing they sounded live. You have so many bands that release albums with brickwall mastering ruining the sound of an otherwise good album. It is a shame that some bands don’t get outside help for things like mastering.
AH: Yeah, it’s…I mean I still do my own mastering stuff so I’m the start and finish with all my stuff but I totally get it whenever I see a band that has a record that’s just completely smashed. I’m like, “Yeah.” If I was just a musician who really knew how to play guitar and that’s about it or really knew how to play drums and that’s about it, I understand how this happens. It’s just a bunch of guys in the room going, “Louder! This needs to be louder.” laughs
TA: So you revisited IDKFA’s original DOOM 1 music, but you also did almost a complete Doom II soundtrack. I think there was one track which was on YouTube or two tracks. When you were doing these new songs, how did it feel for you because now you’ve come so far ahead as a musician and did you feel tempted to make it a modern Andrew Hulshult album versus trying to be Doom II? How did you approach that?
AH: Man. This whole IDKFA thing with id’s blessing has been an incredible experience. It feels like I’m closing a chapter of my career with the fans because IDKFA is what got me so many jobs and so much recognition beforehand. Well, IDKFA and Rise of the Triad, but IDKFA was a big one and I still get people that are like devs that reach out that are like, “I know you from the DOOM stuff.” And I’m like, “What? DOOM Eternal?” They’re like, “No, IDKFA. I played that DOOM WAD.” And I’m like, “Oh my god.” So I still get jobs because of that. So whenever I sat down… Whenever Marty Stratton sent me an email about a year and a half ago to ask if I had time to sit down at QuakeCon last year and talk about some things, I was like, “Uh oh. Something’s either gone terribly wrong or he just wants to hang out.”
So we sat down and he was like, “Hey.” He’s like, “I have an idea.” And I was like, “What’s that?” He’s like, “What if we give you a license for the DOOM soundtrack for IDKFA so that you can put that out on all of the streaming platforms yourself and do whatever you want and you give us a license to do with what we’re working on, which was the DOOM and DOOM II remasters.” And I was like, “That sounds cool.” I was like, “I’d love to finally get that out on official sites and everything.” And he was like, “Oh, it’s awesome.” He’s like, “I was hoping you’d say that because this would just be so cool to have this as a selectable thing. Like to go from the Bobby Prince to this if people wanted to.” And I was like, “Yeah.” And I’ve been doing that with soundtracks recently anyways.
About halfway through that whole thing, we were just trading war stories about the industry and just getting along. And I was having a blast. I was thinking, “Man, this is really going to be closing a chapter in my career.” I was getting a little emotional. I was like, “I’ll tell you what.” I was like, “I’ll do you one better.” I was like, “Why don’t we finish DOOM II and make it the real deal?” People have asked for it forever. I’m like, “That would really poke my audience.” They’d be like, “Holy shit! Doom 2 is finally finished!” And he was like, “If you’re up for it, yeah, absolutely.” He’s like, “We’ll get you a license for anything that you do on that as well so that you can put that out as well.”
So, yeah. It was…walking into doing DOOM II was so much fun. Every step of the way. Adam Pyle, the guy that worked with me on Quake Champions, was the guy that I bounced all my mixes off of. He told me at the beginning, he said, “Hey, you know, do whatever you want.” He’s like, “It’s you. It’s the reason people want to listen to it, so I don’t really have much of a say.” I was like, “Bullshit!” I was like, “You worked with me on Quake Champions. I’m going to bounce every mix that I do off of you, and I want to hear feedback from you.” It’s like, “I respect your opinion because we got stuff like we did on Quake Champions because we talked back and forth.” So we did. I’d send him… I’d finish Running from Evil and send it to him, and he’d go, “This sounds great, or, you know, like, what if you did this?” It was only a couple times where he was like, “What if you did this?” I was like, “Oh!” They were always cool ideas. But I really respect Adam’s ability to throw out things every now and then. He’s just a great person to bounce mixes off of. So, just doing those one after another and getting to the end of it.
Once it was all wrapped up, I’m not going to lie, once it was all together, I was just in my office and I was like, “Oh my god!” Having a moment where I had a grown man cry where I was like, “I can’t believe that this is happening. I can’t believe that, number one, I’m going to be part of the original DOOM in an official capacity. Number two, they’re going to ask me to talk at QuakeCon, like, live on stage and announce everything. And number three, they gave me a license for all this stuff so that I can put it out and I can actually make some money off of it. That doesn’t happen with a big studio. They don’t just go, “Here’s the soundtrack. Have fun.”
I don’t know. It’s just still so crazy. It hasn’t really sunk in for me still. I’m still in that weird spot where I’m like, “Yeah, this is out there. We’re promoting it.” And once that’s over, I’m sure I’ll be like, “Oh my god.” You know, like, “Holy cow.” But it’s been fun.
The DOOM II stuff, I wanted it to be something a little bit more fresh on where I’m at as an artist. I didn’t want it to be exactly like IDKFA, like the original DOOM I stuff. Because if I were to do that, I’d have to go back and completely remix all of DOOM I stuff, which I was like, “No, that has to be preserved. People know what that is.” So you can’t touch that. That’s already done. So I thought, “Okay, well what if I just gave them how I would do DOOM II right now?” Which is exactly what it is. All that stuff is like, “Yeah, f*** yeah.” Those are the exact decisions that I would make with synths, with guitars, with drums. I think everything slams. I think it sounds great. So it’s just a picture from 2011, 2012 with the original IDKFA. It got officially released in 2016, but it started working on it as far back as back. So it’s a picture of where I was as a musician, that far back. And then this one is a picture of 2024. So you get it’s kind of like a time capsule.
TA: Was The Healer Stalks one of the new songs because it definitely feels like modern Andrew Hulshult?
AH: Yeah, that was the second one written. I think I almost went in chronological order doing that entire soundtrack.
TA: You and I have both been playing DOOM since the 90s. When I started learning guitar and playing a lot, I started thinking about the DOOM soundtrack and some of the songs definitely have bits that remind me of other band music like Pantera. When you did IDKFA and just heard the music in general, what did you think of that and how does it feel revisiting some of those songs now? Stuff like A New Level and This Love from Pantera instantly spring to mind.
laughs
AH: Yeah. Some of that stuff’s pretty close. Like sometimes, right? But it’s different enough where you’re like, oh, okay. Yeah. But yeah, there’s definitely some inspirations that were taken from like thrash metal for sure. Because I mean, like they always talked about Romero having on like Slayer and Metallica and all that stuff like playing while they were making the game. So it only makes sense that they’re like, you know, hey, make something similar around this. I don’t know exactly how that story went. I wasn’t there. I was like, you know, I was like four. But that makes complete sense in my head. And yeah, going back and listening to them like, yeah, it’s there somewhere in the ballpark of it for sure. Like
TA: So after DOOM II, have you gotten people saying, when are we getting an IDKFA version of Quake and stuff? Because you did one song, right?
AH: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did the theme. I think I did that just for fun. And I think I honestly did that as people were, I saw a bunch of forum posts. It was either forum posts or Discord about people not sure like about me on DUSK of all things. Like it wasn’t even like a fully announced game, but they were like, “I’m not sure Andrew”. And I was like, OK, you know what? I was like, f*** you. I’ll just remake the Quake theme. And then you’ll see if I’m the right person for the f***ing job. laughs And so I put that out and people were like, oh, and I remember like a bunch of the comments were like, oh yeah, okay, he can work on DUSK.
TA: Do you listen to that soundtrack often? The original Quake?
AH: Oh, man. I don’t listen to it. Listen to it. But like every time I go fire up Quake, which is about like once twice a year. A little more than that if I’m playing multiplayer with friends. That’s the thing I look forward to the most besides like the level design is the soundtrack just because it’s so out there. Reznor did such a good job on that. It’s incredible. God, I wish it’s a pipe dream, but I’d love to work with him on something and Atticus Ross on something at some point. That would be crazy. But they’re like way up there, you know.
TA: Their movie soundtracks are amazing. I’ve actually been watching some of the movies just because they’ve done the music because I think the audio design in The Social Network is incredible. I think they did like the recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thing, which I still need to watch.
AH: It’s so cool when artists step out of their comfort zone like that, where it’s like you’re known for like you’re angry and depressing music and then it’s like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It’s like now I’m interested. Yeah.
TA: Going back to your music, we covered Blood Swamps being the most popular song which people bring up when they meet you and stuff. I saw this interview with Final Fantasy 14’s composer Masayoshi Soken who was asked about a song which he really liked, but no one actually brings up, and that he thinks deserves more attention. He said Game Theory. I want to know what’s that for Andrew Hulshult.
AH: Splitting Time. Like whenever you brought that up, I was like, oh yeah, from the AMID EVIL DLC. I mean like it’s well it’s DLC. So like by nature, DLC doesn’t get as much attention, you know. But like the AMID EVIL DLC altogether before I talk about the music, the DLC is incredible. Like that’s my that’s one of my favorite things I’ve worked on like in recent memory. Like all the music’s great. Like it was , it was a joy to put it all together. All the sound design, all the traps and everything. It’s just an incredible DLC. If you don’t have it, you should go get it. That’s not me shilling and just oh go buy the game. Like it’s f***ing awesome. They did an incredible job.
TA: Everyone should buy that game and DLC.
AH: Well, I don’t want to look like a shill. If you like it, you like it. Like if you don’t, if you don’t dig it, don’t buy it. You know we’re not not here to like, you know try and sell a bunch of stuff.
But like splitting time finishing up that piece of music. It felt like a real moment where I don’t know. I felt like kind of a shift as an artist where I was. I was way more comfortable with a lot of the more aggressive sound design elements being mixed in with compositions and finding ways to make them gel better. And everything really came together on that track and out whenever halfway through I was like, this is the final boss track. I was like I don’t care what you’re designing. I’m like, this is the final boss track. And you know, two seconds after they started listening to it, they’re like, oh yeah, this is the final boss track. We hadn’t even made the character yet. I was just like, here it is. That one hung around for a long time. And yeah, that’s I feel like that song is very much a good indicator of where I am musically right now.
TA: Now let’s get a bit into the weeds. Let’s talk about your current guitar setup, your pedals, your amps, string gauge, pickups, I want to know whatever you’re using.
AH: So the guitar I’m using the most is a Caparison Dellinger 7. I actually just had a pickup swap on it where I put some Seymour Duncans. I think I put an SH5 in the bridge and an SH2 in the neck on this one. Specifically because the SH5 on it has a really interesting thing where it doesn’t emphasize the low mids a whole bunch but they still cut through really well. So whenever you’re sitting there and like, you know, like chugging on stuff and you have to track that four times, it just sits a lot better in the mix than if you were to just use like stock pickups. There’s nothing wrong with Caparison stock pickups. They’re great. They’re super, super punchy. But for my mixing style I just, I know what I want in terms of pickups so I just, I swap those out.
I also did the same thing actually last week with the 8 string. This is a Caparison Brocken 8 string. I don’t think they make this anymore. I swapped out the pickups on this one as well to a gosh, what is it? It’s Duncan. They’re really, really famous 8 string pickups by Duncan. And I can’t remember what they’re called now.
TA: I didn’t know Seymour Duncan even had 8 string pickups.
AH: They do 8 and like, I was originally going to get some Fishman Fluences for it because they seem like they would hold the top end in the midrange a little bit better but after I don’t know, I’ve just always been a Seymour Duncan guy. And after finding a couple that I really liked at a shop called Tone Shop up the street from me. I was like, man, I really want to put these in my 8 string and they have a tech there that’s just incredible at what he does with all my guitars. So I was just like, hey, order those and I’ll just leave the guitar with you and like a week later they came back and I was like, yeah, that’s exactly what I wanted, sounds incredible.
I’ve got my Caparison 7 and 8, and I still have all the guitars that I’ve had over the years for the most part. I’ve got another Schecter 8 string here that is a really cool color. It’s super neat, like, it actually changes from blue to purple.
TA: I think it is called Prism or something like that. John Petrucci has something like that on one of his guitars.
AH: But yeah, this one has like the EMGs in it and it’s a cool guitar. It still plays great. Like, I still like it. But let me show you something that’s actually pretty sweet. So I still have, I bought this in like 2004. And I still have it. This is the guitar that I actually wrote all of IDKFA or most of it on and I wrote all of, I tracked all of Rides of the Triad with. It’s just a Schecter C6. It’s like just stock. It even still has the plastic in the back which is crazy. But yeah, this is like, I still have this guitar. I was like I was so close to going up to id, like which is just on the street for me and being like after IDKFA was finished, I almost was just like, here, you guys, you need this. You know, like, hold on to this or something. Like this is the one. But like, I don’t know. It’s not like a mainline DOOM game, you know? Like, it has to be something like a mainline game where I’d be like, I wrote this on this guitar here. You know, if you want this, it feels like it belongs to you. And also, part of me is like, no, don’t do that. Like, hang on to it.
TA: Ok now string gauges.
AH: For string gauges, 10 to 59 on 7 strings. And on 8 strings, I think it’s 10 to 65. And then typically on 6 strings, I just like 10 to 46.
TA: Do you use D’Addario strings? I use them mostly.
AH: I use D’Addario for the most part, but I bounce back and forth sometimes to Ernie Ball.
TA: What about your amp setup and your pedals and stuff like that?
AH: So amps, I’ve sold almost every amp I’ve ever owned. I had a JC-120. I had a couple of those Crate Blue Voodoos way back in the day. The ones that were like, yeah, the ones that were, were basically copies of those Ampeg tube amps that they made a long time ago. I had a Valve State 8100. I had a bunch of amps and a bunch of VHT cabinets as well too. And I sold all of them years ago. I’ve really just been like working inside the box for the most part with like neural DSP plugins into an RME interface and I also went as far as getting one of these recently, which is a Neural DSP Quad Cortex. So basically this is all of their plugins built into like a really nice processor. But for a project I’m working on recently they were like, hey you need an amp. And I was like, yeah, you’re probably right. I do need an amp. So I went and bought this and I plug it into two 100 watt Seymour Duncan power stages. Okay.
They’re like, they’re these little tiny like 100 watt power amplifiers. They’re solid state power amplifiers. And I run the stereo out from that thing into the left and right side of those and those go into two Engel 2×12 cabinets. Which, okay, Engel 2×12 cabinets are awesome. Ever since I heard a Rammstein record that used them I always wanted to grab one because I was like, god, those things sound huge.
TA: I wasn’t sure about this because a friend of mine said he was sure AMID EVIL was recorded on an Axe FX Ultra.
AH: Any guitar stuff I’ve done has used either Native Instruments Guitar Rig from way back in the day. Like IDKFA used a ton of Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 and Guitar Rig 4. But pretty much everything since DUSK has used Neural DSP for guitar work. It’s just me plugging directly into my RME UFX and sometimes I’ll use pedals going into it like the Exotic BB Preamp but most of the time it’s just a dry DI signal getting manipulated inside the box.
So, the ones that got the most use on DUSK were the Moogerfooger low pass filter. Believe it or not, like anytime you hear the sound of something becoming kind of lo-fi or anything. It was always run through this filter. It was pretty cool. But the thing I like about it the most is the drive circuit on it. Like I don’t even like it that much as like a filter filter. The drive section on it is just so aggressive that it’s a really interesting sound and like that sound that you hear on the DUSK soundtrack which is like all of the really high high end that’s like really high energy. It’s almost like the Nine Inch Nails stuff. A ton of that comes just from driving the front end of this thing. And same way with the Fulltone Catalyst. But yeah, it’s just a few of them. I think there’s one more that I use a lot. I don’t think I have it here. It’s the ZVEX Fuzz Factory which is just an insane sounding pedal. It just sounds like garbage. And that’s why I like it. It just sounds like you are destroying a signal which is perfect. I’m cool. That sounds cool. That’s a great effect. I like that.
TA: You’ve accomplished a lot in your career so far with recognizable music. As a musician, how have you been learning to improve your own skills like programming drums, software, and how do you balance doing that while you have a lot of folks who want to work with you on new projects?
AH: Every day is just like I don’t know. If you’re not teaching yourself something every day, this is my train of thought. If I’m not trying to sound better in my own head, whatever I think is better, I’m wasting my time. So if I feel like the drum kit I’ve used like two or three times on two to three different records, if I’m like that feels stale. If I then go if it feels stale and I know the ends and outs of it and how to make it sound good then I need to change that drum kit. I need to find something different and work with it and see if I can get some different sounds out of it. So I’ll change instruments and just purposefully put myself in positions where I don’t know where I’m at or what sounds good with it just so that I can find my way out of it.
It’s kind of like limiting yourself, like putting yourself in a box that’s really important as an artist to make sure that you are working within a certain scope of things and going hey, you know, here’s something that’s completely unfamiliar, get used to it and this is what you have to work with. So, yeah, like I don’t know, just constantly challenging myself is part of who I am for the most part. So, it’s just how it always goes.
TA: I’m glad you brought that specific bit up because in another interview of yours you mentioned how once you got to your thirties the most important thing became getting good sleep which a lot of people take for granted in their twenties. So my question is that trying to have a routine is very important even if you can’t stick to it 100%. What does a day in your life look like right now?
AH: A day right now looks like about, a typical day is about anywhere between 6 to 7 hours of sleep which is about what I need I’ve found out, like it’s like somewhere around there, sometimes 8 and then randomly I’ll have days where it’s like, oh you need like 11 hours I don’t know why, but I feel fine waking up completely recharged with like 6 and a half to 7 and a half hours of sleep. So what I’ll do every morning is I’ll wake up, I’ll go take a shower immediately, like that’s the only way I can start my day is like I feel like I’ve got to it feels like I’m washing off yesterday I don’t know how else to explain that and then I gotta have a coffee and then I gotta start writing things on a whiteboard that’s right over beside me to the left because otherwise I’m just gonna spin my wheels all day long and think, oh I should do this, I should do that, I’ll be thinking about everything I need to do and then never actually do anything. I don’t know if that’s ADD, ADHD or whatever that’s undiagnosed, I’m sure it is to some degree which I’ll get to that at some point but until then I have the whiteboard and as long as I write stuff down on it on what I want to do that day, I’ll knock it all out, every single piece of it. But what’s super important for me to do is just plan out the day early on and then everything just comes to it afterwards.
The other thing that’s kind of new for me too is around like 4 o’clock typically I’ll now try and do, this has been within the last 3.5 months, I’ll try and do about 20 to 30 minutes of cardio. Just because I feel like for some reason elevating my heart rate really takes me from hey I could focus before to now I’m super laser focused and can get through whatever I need to and it also puts me in a much better mood if I’m having a shit day.
TA: You’ve previously mentioned that you love playing Cities Skylines. Did you play Cities Skylines 2?
laughs
AH: Yeah, but you know like I haven’t gone back to it yet. I need to try it again at some point. But oh boy like it needed some more time in the oven whenever I tried it. Like no offense to them. I was just like wow.
TA: I mean you probably tried it on like your proper gaming PC. I just like to play Steam games on a Steam Deck and I could get it at 5 fps or something after a bit of playing.
AH: Even with the 3080 I think I was at points I was sitting there at like 35 frames a second. I’m like really? With the 3080? This is where we’re at huh? Okay.
TA: Do you still play Hunt: Showdown and did you try the new Hunt: Showdown 1896 update?
AH: Yeah. They had some really interesting choices with their UI that they just pushed with this one that a lot of people aren’t in favor of. I’m getting a little more used to it as time goes on. But man there are some things they need to hammer out with it. But yeah I still play that like a couple times a week with my buddies in New Blood. Like with Dylan who’s working on Gloomwood. I’ll play it with David every now and then. I’ll play it with Mason who’s the developer on Faith. Like we’re all, just like we all just hang out. We’re all just friends. So Leon, me and Leon play it I think the most. Leon’s the lead on AMID EVIL. But yeah like New Zealand and America playing an online fps game is a wild thing but we have a great time doing it.
TA: Before we wrap up, I want to know your favorite bands and artists right now in and out of video games.
AH: I’m pretty boring on this one to be honest with you. I need to branch out a little more. Favorite bands outside of video games right now like for sure and they’ve sat there for a while is Gojira. I really like their mixing. I like how tight they are live. I like their choices on composition. I don’t feel like they write a bad song. I could throw out the obvious ones. Metallica is another one just because James Hetfield’s right hand is like what inspired me to play guitar. Like how fast you can do those things is crazy.
Outside of or in video games I’d still say I still think and it’s going to be a weird choice because you’re like well you write all this aggressive music. What is Jesper Kyd? That guy is just like great on everything he touches and everything he touches is always unique. But I always go back to his early stuff like the Hitman franchise because it’s just so strange and like it really suits those early games really well. If you listen to it outside of it, it feels like a really weird cold kind of soundtrack. Even from the very first game which has a lot of interesting things like almost drum and bass choices. It still feels like a cold front.
You know, like a Hitman. And I always just find that stuff fascinating. How he was able to take so many different genres of music between all those games and still make them fit correctly for that character. So yeah and I think he worked on the Darktide stuff more recently which I need to give a listen to. Everybody’s told me that’s incredible but I don’t know I was knee deep in like four active developments whenever that game came out. So I just haven’t given it a chance.
TA: Hypothetical situation, if you had no time or budget constraints, if you could compose for any single game and any single movie which would you pick?
AH: So let’s see for any game if it had the right direction I’d really like to take a shot at like a Duke game. Because I feel like that is an IP that could be brought back if it’s brought back in the right way. And you have to think that’s really going to be dictated by whoever the creative production is at the time. So if it was done in the right way I’d love to step into that.
Either that or I’m going to throw another one out to you. I’d love to work on Minecraft. Just like chill out you know. Like just make something that’s completely chill. So those are completely two opposite sides of the spectrum.
But as far as a movie, man, that’s a great question. Let me think about it for just a second. Man on Fire. Like I love Denzel Washington’s work as number one: as an action hero I think he’s great. But number two whenever he is able to have enough time to put drama into things. And like either I don’t know how else to explain it other than he does a f***ing crazy fantastic job.
Either Man on Fire or American Gangster. One of those two soundtracks I think I could do would be great to work on. Because there’s so many different emotions between both of those films. It’s a big roller coaster that doesn’t go up and down once. It goes up and down and does like a loop. And like you know, it takes you side to side. Like both of those films do that really well. 01:48:40.760 –> 01:48:42.760
TA: You have a lot of bands you’ve been listening to for a long time like Metallica. What are your thoughts on their recent or new albums?
AH: I can find things I like on like the records that they put out because like I’m a die hard. Even with this last Megadeth record. I could still find stuff that I like I can chew on. No problem. Absolutely. But you know these guys aren’t going to write like another Master of Puppets. That comes around once in a lifetime. You know what I mean? And they struck it four times. Like with Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets and …And Justice for All. So like to even just get that is crazy. But I do find things that I like on all their newer stuff. Like I think What was the 2016 record that they had? Hardwired to Self Destruct. Yeah I think that that actually had some real moments of really really good writing on it.
Specifically the last track. I felt like Hardwired was a great track. But I also thought Moth into the Flame was written super well. There’s a handful of just really really really good writing on that record. On 72 Seasons, there’s still a handful that I really like. But they don’t sync as much for me. And I’m not sure if it’s because I’m looking for something faster or not. Which that’s just not where they’re at at the moment. That’s not what they’re writing. And that’s okay. I will say the last track on that record I feel like is perfect. It’s so good. I can’t remember what it’s called off the top of my head at the moment. I’m terrible with song names sometimes. It’s crazy. It’s like 11 minutes and it feels like a 5 minute and 30 second song. I remember listening to it the first time. I was like gosh. There’s so much emotion thrown into this song that it’s just a joy to listen to. I love it when I can tell that someone really dumped all their emotions onto something. That’s when it really strikes a chord for me.
But yeah even the last stuff from Slayer, there’s things that I can find that I enjoy. but I know I’m not going to get the revolutionary record that we had growing up. That’s okay. I’m just glad they’re still making music. And it’s still pretty sick.
TA: What’s the most random piece of music memorabilia that you’ve held onto for a long time?
AH: I had a friend that I worked with a long time ago who fell on hard times at one point and he was friends and and like worked with Pantera for a long time. And he was like man he’s like I’m trying to get rid of this stuff I’m like why don’t you just hold on to it and like like here’s here’s you know here’s some cash if you need some cash to get by. He’s like no no no he’s like you hold on to it just pay me for it. I was like okay so I’ve got this vinyl of the Great Southern Trendkill that’s one of the original vinyl releases, but I also have a plaque that came like it was given to one of their either their sound or their lighting crew at one point and it’s like for the tour in Japan for the Great Southern Trendkill that same time. And I was like where did you get this you know like what the hell. And he’s like yeah we just you know had him and I knew the guy and he had like five or six of them that they gave him by accident so he gave me one. I was like oh okay all right. So I have both of those things in my closet they’ve hung out with me for like gosh I want to say 15 16 17 years now but those old ones will never go away.
Some people keep expensive booze in a decanter. Teah and I keep home made cold brew coffee. pic.twitter.com/7DJlgWcjaB
TA: Ok for my last question, how do you like your coffee? I usually ask this at the end, but I remember an old Tweet of yours (linked above) made me even more curious about your answer.
AH: Yeah man I like the cold brew stuff. I loved hot coffee forever but like cold brew I don’t know the longer I go the easier it is to just sit on a desk and sip on. I don’t have to be like that’s hot. I can just be like no we’re just getting all of the caffeine all at once if I want to. So cold brew coffee. Cold brew black.
I’d like to thank Andrew Hulshult for his time and help with this interview over the last few weeks.
You can keep up with all our interviews here including our recent ones with FuturLab here, Shuhei Matsumoto from Capcom about Marvel Vs Capcom here, Santa Ragione here, Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman about PH3 and Falcom here, M2 discussing shmups and more here, Digital Extremes for Warframe mobile, Team NINJA, Sonic Dream Team, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and more. As usual, thanks for reading.
Martinique-born Julien Creuzet represented France at this year’s Venice Biennale, transforming the pavilion into a space where a radical and collective imaginary opens up. Photo: Djiby Kebe for CHANEL Culture Fund
Originally from Martinique, Julien Creuzet brought his distinctive French-Caribbean voice to the French Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale where he reflects on the sea as both a horizon of opportunity and a threat, a place of healing and life as well as death and suffering. In Venice, Creuzet envisioned a pavilion where ‘overseas territories’ and the ‘ultramarine’ merge into a fluid dimension, evoking our embryonic origins in water and humanity’s dependence on this vital element. His work, titled Attila cataracte ta source aux pieds des pitons verts finira dans la grande mer gouffre bleu nous nous noyâmes dans les larmes marées de la lune (or “Attila cataract your source at the feet of the green peaks will end up in the great sea blue abyss we drowned in the tidal tears of the moon”) reads like a poem that connects ancient mythologies and suggests a continuous flow of narratives and spiritualities born from intercultural exchange.
“We need to consider which is the first and oldest memory a child has, as an embryo, before birth,” Creuzet told Observer. “This is an immersive experience inside the liquid—the liquid of maternity and life. Sometimes, when we take a bath and go to the beach, more or less unconsciously, we can feel again and retrieve memories about that, especially when our body is floating inside the water.”
The static visual components of Creuzet’s work are paired with sound and video to create an immersive experience. Jacopo La Forgia
Building on this concept, Creuzet has created an immersive multimedia and multisensory installation that blends sound, video and sculpture to explore the myths of hybrid societies. Sculptural threads hang from the ceiling, rich in texture and pigment, unraveling across the space like an intricate forest of lianas or a coral cluster. These threads capture relics of human civilization entangled in the currents of nature and history. In crafting this sensory confluence of narratives and sensations, Creuzet has forged a radical imaginary that invites connection to the divine, ancestral and, simultaneously, to Venice, with its canals and maritime legacy.
In Creuzet’s work, water—particularly as it manifests in seas and oceans—serves as a vehicle for the continuous flow of history, the movement of people, energies and ideas shaping new forms. The mysterious narrative he weaves within the space embraces water as a repository of collective memories and traumas but also as a realm of initiation, healing and regeneration. As Creuzet recalls, although he was born and raised in the suburbs of Paris, his family took him back to Martinique before he was even a month old to have his first saltwater bath—a ritual of reconnection and the continuation of family heritage.
His evolving mythopoiesis through video, poetry and sculpture unfolds across media with a boundless flow, where imagination allows him to tap into and reactivate timeless archetypes and symbols in a cross-cultural dimension. This hybridization of traditions results in the creation of new mythological beings. As Creuzet explains, the deities and demons of the sea that fluctuate around the pavilion were conceived through extensive research by him and his studio into various mythological and religious traditions tied to the sea. “We did a lot of research on how different civilizations conceived representations and mythologies about water. It’s a mythology we find everywhere, with different names, as an innate necessity across geographies.”
Creuzet describes the pavilion in terms of form and sound, volumes and lines in movement and colorful encounters that combine in an intense experience. Jacopo La Forgia
Digital animation and new technologies serve as powerful tools in Creuzet’s hands, bringing his envisioned creatures to life as universal hybrids that embody various symbologies and traditions. These traditions have long sought to represent the mysterious forces and energies of the sea. As Creuzet noted during our conversation, monotheistic and polytheistic religions, particularly animism, once attempted to depict these forces as deities or demons. Today, in a society that has largely lost faith in religion, it seems artists are among the few who can still create magical representations. This ability is crucial for helping us visualize the unknown forces of nature and, more importantly, for imagining different futures. Artists hold a unique connection to the ancestral, with the ability to extend the past’s reality into the future.
Building on this idea, Creuzet has reimagined the statue of Neptune atop the staircases at Palazzo della Dogana in Venice. He explained that Neptune has symbolically entered the pavilion, embodying his classical role as the god of the sea and his cosmic connections. Other sculptural elements in the pavilion evoke ancient relics and remnants of a civilization lost to the sea. Yet everything in the pavilion exists in a suspended, liquid, embryonic space where past, present and future converge. The artist’s imagination, manifesting in this multisensory experience, invites visitors to immerse themselves and float between these dimensions.
“Creuzet’s forms stem from a locus of emancipation, which must be felt to see truly,” reads the exhibition description. “It is a moment of learning and unlearning as a reconciliation with our senses and a space to be untranslated and liberated.” Jacopo La Forgia
The artist reflected here that his Caribbean identity allows him to navigate and operate more consciously within these fluid, hybrid dimensions. Édouard Glissant’s concept of “Creolization” illustrates this well—the Caribbean’s history, with its composite population, exemplifies the fertile melting pot of cultures, deities and traditions that arose from centuries of movement, colonization, migration and trade.
“I think to be a Caribbean person is about this universalism,” said Creuzet. “Simply because the Caribbean is a considerable mixing of different civilizations.” Yet at the same time, this hybrid reality seems to be the only viable position for those in exile or distanced from a singular national perspective. Like Ovid writing Metamorphoses while in exile, Creuzet added, this detachment from dominant narratives opens the door to explore broader universal themes.
“Contemporary art is a question of metamorphosis, a potential metamorphosis of society’s vision,” he said, revealing his approach to art and this project. For him, art is an exercise in radical imagination. By drawing on the accumulated heritage of knowledge and symbologies from various cultures and historical moments, it can still shape a new, meaningful universe in a universal language, casting light on a more harmonious future.
Celebrating the boundless imaginative potential of art and poetry, the Biennale pavilion Creuzet conceived embraces a pioneering universalism—one already embedded in the Caribbean—that can inspire a rich and beneficial coexistence among diverse individuals and entities.
Over the years, I’ve been able to interview some of my favorite developers ever including a few I never though would be possible, but it isn’t often I get to talk to one of the few people responsible for what is likely my favorite game of all time. That’s where Christopher Ortiz AKA kiririn51 of Sukeban Games comes into the picture. We’ve covered their titles on TouchArcade for years because at one point VA-11 Hall-A was even supposed to come to iPad (and I asked about that later in this interview). With Sukeban Games’ newest project, .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND, officially announced, I had a chance to have a long chat with Christopher Ortiz about the game, fan reactions, VA-11 Hall-A, inspirations, Suda51, The Silver Case, and also coffee of course.
TouchArcade (TA): Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Sukeban Games.
Christopher Ortiz (CO): I’m Chris, I’m a game creator and I do way too much in this company. I like to hang out with friends and eat delicious food when I’m not locked in.
TA: I last spoke to you in 2019 around the time VA-11 Hall-A hit PS4 and Switch following its prior release on PS Vita and its debut on PC. Even back then, as a fan of the game, it was wild seeing so much merchandise and promotion in Japan. You recently visited Japan for Bitsummit. How has it been for you visiting Japan and seeing the reception to VA-11 Hall-A and now your new project, .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND?
CO: Japan is like my home away from home even if its government doesn’t like it, so that’s a homecoming for me. Very emotionally charged. I also haven’t been at a game event as an exhibitor since Tokyo Game Show 2017; that was 7 years ago. That’s 7 years of roaming game events and being like “I want that” “I want some of this energy”. Now I feel like a pro-wrestler that’s coming out of retirement to a brand new world and industry; I’m lost, confused, not knowing if I still have it… but I was worried about nothing. People didn’t forget about us and still support the studio no matter what, so I’m never taking shit for granted, or letting these memories slip away. This will be my fuel to move forward.
TA: I consider VA-11 Hall-A one of my favorite games of all time, and I replay it each holiday season. When you worked on it many years ago, did you ever expect to see it grow this big and even get multiple figures with a new one coming for Jill soon?
CO: I didn’t expect the game to sell more than 10-15k copies, but we definitely knew we had something special brewing, or else we wouldn’t have pushed through with it. It’s just that the scale of said success was a little overwhelming and I think we’re still recovering from some of its unexpected side-effects.
TA: VA-11 Hall-A is now playable on PC, Switch, PS Vita, PS4, PS5 (through back compatibility). Whatever happened to that iPad version that was announced years ago? Are ports like that up to Ysbryd or do you also have some involvement? I’d love to see it hit Xbox as well if that’s possible.
CO: I actually playtested a build for iPad but it didn’t go anywhere for whatever reason. Maybe I failed to respond to an email. You’d have to ask the publisher.
TA: Many years ago, Sukeban Games were just Kiririn51 (yourself) and IronincLark (Fer). How has the team changed since then?
CO: We’re currently six people. Some have come and go, but overall we want to keep a small and tight operation.
TA: Leading into this question -> How has it been working with MerengeDoll?
CO: Merenge’s a trooper. She has this supernatural ability to pull ideas directly out of my brain and give them visual shape, so it’s always been a pleasure to work with her. It sucks that some of the projects she was working on as main artist got canned for reasons beyond our power, but it is what it is. The day will come when people will get to see Merenge’s true power. There’s still a lot of Merengedoll in 45pb so that’s cool as hell.
TA: Can you talk about how it was working with Garoad on the music on VA-11 Hall-A? Just like the game, the soundtrack is one of my favorites ever.
CO: Michael and I always had similar music tastes and influences, so the process was very free-form. He’d make a track, and I’d love the shit out. Repeat the process until the soundtrack is ready to go. Sometimes I would send him a song I liked as a reference, sometimes he’d create a completely original song that would inspire images in the game, then the images would inspire more music. This synergy gave the game a firm identity that stands the test of time in my opinion.
TA: I didn’t realize it until recently, but VA-11 Hall-A kind of became one of those indie games that had a very vocal fanbase and got a good amount of merch that keeps selling out. I think the vinyl box sets are also on multiple pressings now and that SLUT shirt keeps selling out. A good friend of mine recently bought it as well. How much input do you have in the merchandise? Is there anything you want to see made that hasn’t happened yet?
CO: I don’t have much input on merch creation. I mostly give the thumbs up or down once a whole chain of people already made the hard choices beforehand. Would like to be a little more involved for 45pb now that I know what I’m dealing with.
TA: I still have a few more questions before getting to your new game. Let’s go back to 2019 for a second. Playism’s JP release of VA-11 Hall-A included a fantastic art book cover. I really wish I could get that piece of art signed by you and framed. Can you talk about the inspiration for it and how you pay homage to your favorites like that in your work?
CO: Back when I drew that cover I was going through really tough times; even though I hadn’t fully realized yet. We were very focused on surviving the collapse of our country and many other things.
During this time, at our old office, we’d listen to a lot of Gustavo Cerati; his album Bocanada to be more precise and its tunes managed to keep us going in the face of uncertainty. So when I was asked to draw a new piece for the artbook I couldn’t help but pay homage to it. I admit now that it’s a little too overt and I would do it differently now, but I’m still proud of it. In fact, I’ve been reconsidering my approach to inspirations a lot in the past few years, and this will be obvious once people play 45pb.
TA: You and Fer have spoken a lot about VA-11 Hall-A over the years, but I cannot pass up a chance to talk about how amazingly written and designed the characters are. Looking back at the work you put into it, did you expect certain characters to become as popular as they did?
CO: I expected Stella to be the most popular one since her gifs would often go viral before release, but you can never predict this sort of thing. And it’s like I said before; I sort of knew certain things were gonna be a hit, I’m just unable to properly articulate why I thought that way or why it worked, and at this point I rather not know. The moment a hunch becomes a science the magic disappears. Formulas are terrible in this line of work. You gotta let things flow; Let them become their own beautiful thing.
TA: I’ve joked with friends about how N1RV Ann-A is my “Silksong”, but I have no problem waiting as long as it takes. I still enjoy revisiting VA-11 Hall-A often. Do you go back and try out whatever you had done for N1RV Ann-A or VA-11 Hall-A while working on unrelated projects?
CO: I like jotting down lore and characterization stuff for a rainy day. I love to draw Sam, I love coming up with new designs, characters; playing around with the general looks of the game, ideas for shots during cinematics; one liners, environments, atmosphere. I even like to imagine “what if this didn’t have to be a bartending game?” and other extreme musings, but that’s about the extent of the mindspace I dedicate to it currently.
Once we’re done with 45pb Nirvana’s development will pick up dramatically, though that really depends on if the spark is still there by then. So far it has no signs of extinguishing.
TA: As a huge Suda fan myself, I’m curious what you thought of No More Heroes 3 and Travis Strikes Again? As much as I love No More Heroes 3 (more than 11 playthroughs), I think Travis Strikes Again might just be Suda’s most “Suda” game yet.
CO: I REALLY like No More Heroes 3’s combat, but I wasn’t a fan of its writing. Maybe it was COVID, and game development is really tough; especially with the hardcore deadlines they had. But in general I think it wanted to be one thing at the start and then had to become another in order to be shipped. It’s a shame, and it is what it is. I just hope they only make new original games from now on and forget about sequels and reboots. Re-releases are OK; especially of the lost media kind, like Frog Minutes or the 25th Ward back in the day.
As for Travis Strikes Again, I agree it’s the best of the newer games. Feels like reading someone’s diary sometimes and that’s the kinda art I enjoy. I guess I didn’t see much of that in 3 outside of continuing some plot threads from TSA.
TA: What are your thoughts on Grasshopper Manufacture under Netease and the remasters announced? Suda even mentioned today that he’d love to bring Flower Sun and Rain to Steam.
CO: Netease is a big corporation so my hope would be that Grasshopper gets all the money and time they need to cook.
TA: VA-11 Hall-A’s journey from PC to PS Vita was quite something, and it involved many parties across regions. I remember buying the Japanese release just for the box art with no English included for publisher reasons. When it came to Switch and PS4, I think you wanted the JP release to have English so anyone could import it. How has it been for you now in Argentina trying to get your own game’s merchandise and merchandise in general? It is a pain over here with delays and extra import fees.
CO: I simply don’t import anything these days. I don’t wanna bother with Argentinian customs. Protectionist policies are stupid. Sure, make all electronics more expensive to import so the local market has a chance to compete, but there’s no Argentinian PlayStation to compete with, is there? There’s no Argentinian Steam, and so on. Only idiots come up with this sorta policy. Brazil does the same shit as well. Would be cool if they stopped.
TA: You’ve worked in PC-98 and PSX aesthetics a few times. When .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND was announced, I was floored by how it looked like the perfect game I’d want from you. The reception has been largely positive, but I can’t imagine what you and the team went through leading into its reveal with N1RV Ann-A and such. Can you talk about how the last few months have been for yourself?
CO: We’ve been locked in and doing our thing. No crunch, all fun. We party, we feast, we travel. We touch that proverbial grass. Lots of insecurities and self-doubt for sure. We even tried to downplay things and manage expectations before the reveal, bracing ourselves for possible apathy from the crowd because it’s not Nirvana. But when it came to actually putting in the work there was no hesitation. I’m happy the announcement worked out, but now we gotta buckle up and finish the story.
TA: .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND has been revealed, people can wishlist it on Steam, and I immediately thought of Vagrant Story x Sukeban Games’ Vibe when I saw the trailer. How has it been interacting with fans discussing it online and offline?
CO: It’s been incredibly fun, even though there’s so many comparisons with old games. Not that I mind but there’s been some ridiculous comments out there that boggle the mind.
One thing that surprised me was the amount of fanart right after the reveal. That shit was great. A fan even brought us a drawing that we proudly displayed on our table at Bitsummit for everybody to see.
TA: Probably too soon but when can I buy the key art as a poster and get it signed?
CO: Maybe on release.
TA: What were your main inspirations for .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND from a visual and gameplay perspective?
CO: When coming up with the actual gameplay for 45PB there was a unique concern. People know Sukeban as a Visual Novel/ADV developer because of Va11halla, and I wanted a sort of bridge between that audience and something more action-focused. I saw Parasite Eve’s battle system, but instead of saying “I want more of that” I thought “This is a good solution to my predicament” thanks to the hybrid of real time and turn-based gameplay. And that’s pretty much the way we work. Rather than wanting to imitate something, or wanting more of it, I look to games of the past in order to solve modern problems. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel every time.
For the visuals, I remember roaming the streets of Milan in 2019. I was ultra depressed, and didn’t actually have a country to live in at the time so I was also in a state of limbo. The mix of modern structures and old buildings, then juxtaposed to all the neon lights and LED screens along the river had my imagination running wild. For me that was the genesis for the game’s look.
This marriage between the old, the new and the decadent. The cherry on top was when I moved to Buenos Aires and found a similar atmosphere, except it included that South American roughness and texture that’s absent in Cyberpunk worlds (which tend to be mostly inspired by east asian aesthetics), so I decided to lean on that to create something unique.
TA: Tell us a little bit about the team working on it including the composer, and how long it has been in the works.
CO: We’re two people working on it day-to-day (me and the programmer), plus Merenge helping with additional character and production design. The composer this time around is Juneji, who has been doing a LOT of work with us over the years. We have this massive stash of incredible music that he’s made, but it remains unfortunately private due to circumstances with failed projects. Same with Merenge’s art.
There’s been some hella demoralizing moments since it’s hard to work on things for so long, pouring your soul into them only to see them crumble in front of you, but we’ve remained a tight group over the years and one of my goals is that the world can finally witness their talents on a large stage. I owe them that much. We also added an old friend in a producer/babysitting role and it’s helped us to not neglect important non-game stuff.
As for how long it’s been in development: Technically since 2019 but the current iteration is roughly 2 years old. Before that it was all experiments until we arrived at the right “moment to moment” gameplay.
TA: .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND had a teaser, gameplay, and now has a steam page. Are there any plans to offer a demo on PC in any of Valve’s demo fests on Steam in the near future?
CO: It’d be a pain in the ass to maintain a demo for this particular game so we rather keep those for offline events. Never say never though.
TA: A lot of my friends who love VA-11 Hall-A are excited for .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND. Will it be accessible for everyone or is it too soon to say how the difficulty will be handled?
CO: It’s too soon to explain, but as I’ve mentioned before, the battle system itself is meant to be a bridge between vibes-based players and action-oriented players. Not that I’m trying to satisfy both, but rather ease one type of player into a new system.
TA: What is your favorite aspect of .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND right now?
CO: As a game? definitely the atmosphere and the script. I sometimes play it for leisure on my Steam Deck while tryna sleep and wonder “Damn, what’s gonna happen next?” only to be like “you wrote this shit! you know where it goes!”. Also the combat is fun as hell once it opens up after the first chapter. Chaining skills and upping the tempo of combat after pulling off sick tricks makes for addictive gameplay. This will make sense later unless we fumble it.
TA: Can you give us an interesting development / design anecdote for .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND and VA-11 Hall-A?
CO: So I mentioned the influences of cities like Milan and Buenos Aires in the creation 45PB’s world, but one thing that people might have noticed by looking at very early screenshots was that it used to feature some locales reminiscent of Hong Kong. I actually scrapped a lot, if not all of it, in favor of the “South American Cyberpunk” I’m aiming for after a conversation I had with a friend from China.
I was consulting with him about getting the fonts and the text of the billboards just right so it felt authentic, but then my mind broke and I began asking to myself “Why go through all this effort trying to be authentic when I can just leverage my own culture?” and it’s a sort of mantra I’ve been following ever since. I find terms like “cultural appropriation” silly, but the word “appropriation” by itself is something I’ve been contending with a lot. “Is it my place to tell this type of story?” “Is it okay if these characters speak this or that way?” and so on. Not that it limits my creativity or that I’m afraid of hurting sensibilities; I frankly don’t give a shit. I just think that more original works can be born if we leverage what makes us unique instead of trying to make more of what we like. It’s all about balance.
TA: Since the announcement, you’ve no doubt had folks asking for a console version when we don’t even have a release year for .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND, but I wanted to know if there was any thought into working with a publisher or will this be self-published?
CO: We want to self-publish on PC and let other companies handle consoles. We’re in the process of finding the right partner for this.
TA: What were the inspirations behind Reila Mikazuchi’s design and character?
CO: I don’t know if I’ll get in trouble for this but I admire actor and singer Meiko Kaji a lot.
I love her movies, you name them: Prisoner Scorpion, Stray Cat Rock, Lady Snowblood, Jeans Blues. Something in her look is so captivating and I wanted my own Meiko Kaji for 45PB. I needed a character design that can say a lot with just the eyes. Someone who can project that inner pain and tragedy effortlessly, so using Meiko Kaji as a point of reference was a must.
As for the writing, every time I come up with characters they’re always a composite of several people I know and myself. So as to not ruin your impressions of her, I shall keep these inspirations a secret.
TA: How many iterations did you go through for her final design which rules by the way?
CO: I always had in mind the main look of long, black hair and pale skin. Plus the third eye. The thing that took me the most work was coming up with the outfit. She was wearing a suit at first actually! Then I wanted her to have a jacket, but finding the right type of jacket was a challenge. I gave her a biker jacket but it looked weird and I had to experiment a lot until I stumbled upon the current design. Merenge helped me with some accessories, such as the shoes, gloves and the logo on the back of the jacket.
TA: VA-11 Hall-A saw VA-11 Hall-A Kids and Sapphic Pussy Rhapsody released following the game. Ahead of .45 PARABELLUM BLOODHOUND, should we expect any smaller projects like that?
CO: Never say never but our plan with this game is to release it, let it be and move on to something new. No DLC or anything like that. Ports to future platforms are always on the table but that’s the extent of it.
If A24 or someone else wants to make a movie about it I’ll listen.
TA: What does a day in your life look like right now?
CO: Right now I’m a little f***ed up. I’m usually a good boy who works from 9am, takes a little lunch break then locks in again until 4 or 5pm, but sleep escapes me lately so I’m just trying to contend with that in whatever way I can. The key is to not stress over not having much sleep. As long as shit gets done it’s all good. When I’m not working I try to catch a movie at one of the many small cinemas in my neck of the woods, or go outside and take a walk and buy books I’ll take forever to read.
Buenos Aires has this magic that inspires me to go outside and have low key adventures. Can’t get too crazy because this is still latin america and we don’t f*** around, but I love it here and being surrounded by so much culture, great food, and a crazy clubbing scene keeps me sane. Especially when there’s friends around. I owe them a lot for my mental health even if I’m a huge recluse sometimes. I’m the type to uninstall messaging apps for a minute when I really need to be alone.
TA: What have you been playing lately that you’ve enjoyed a lot?
CO: There’s so many video games. This year I really loved Children of the Sun and Arctic Eggs. Late last year I was really into The Citadel, Lethal Company and RoboCop: Rogue City. I’m now in the process of going through The Evil Within, which feels like a lost Grasshopper game sometimes. There’s the Elden Ring expansion, and I also recently replayed Kane and Lynch 2 with a friend and had a blast as always. That game is so f***ed up in the right ways. We need more grit like that.
TA: What do you think of the current state of indie games?
CO: Every time I go to a game event I’m always madly inspired by all the unique games I see at the indie spaces and that energy is partly what kept me going despite all our production hiccups. That sense of community. That we all have this burning desire to create for the sake of creation. That shit is great. I f***ing love indie games and I think they’re better now more than ever.
BUT… I worry that we are trying to lean too much on familiar concepts and inspirations.
Games like Arctic Eggs do it right in that it’s trying to look like an old PSX game, but there were no PSX games like Arctic Eggs. Then there’s games that feel so blatant in their desire to be like one of the classics that I’m like “weren’t we supposed to be the creative ones?” not to mention the over reliance on “Roguelike” mechanics and such. But it’s not all bad. There’s some really cool shit all the time; especially on places like itch.io. It’s just that humans in general can be creatively bankrupt regardless of production scale. There’s triple A slop, there’s indie slop. There’s no escaping the slop. Being indie doesn’t make you inherently more creative and that’s okay. There’s always room for growth as long as we’re cognizant about our shortcomings.
TA: Are you looking forward to playing any specific game this year?
CO: I’m really looking forward to Slitterhead.
Dunno if they’ll be out this year but there’s also Sonokuni, Elation For The Wonder Box 6000, Studio System: Guardian Angel, Eating Nature (from the Arctic Eggs dev)… There’s a lot I’m excited about. My Twitter feed is an endless stream of cool indie games I doubt will ever see the light of day but the attempt is appreciated nonetheless.
TA: Obviously scheduling and such, but if we managed doing this interview on a call, I’d have taken this chance to nerd out about The Silver Case with you. I’m glad I listened to my friend and powered through it because that typewriter sound was too much for me. I adore The Silver Case and I know you love it as well. What elements from it inspired you the most and what’s your favorite track from the soundtrack?
CO: The Silver Case has always been one of those games that felt like a white whale to me. It was so utterly inaccessible that my mind pretty much created its own Silver Case by trying to fill the gaps. I used to browse this creepy Suda51 fansite way back in the day and I was always searching for every bit of info on this inscrutable-ass game, so when it actually released in a language I can understand I was afraid I wasn’t gonna like it but I think it was much more than I could ever have imagined. In that sense, the way Silver Case inspires me is tightly related to this need to fill gaps. The space between the real Silver Case and what I was imagining it to be is where a lot of the ideas for the presentation in games like Va11halla or The Radio Wave Bureau were born.
I can’t choose a single favorite song if I’m being honest. The whole soundtrack has such a vibe. Could be the Sayaka Baian theme that plays in Kamuidrome, but tomorrow it could be the opening theme, then the next day another one.
TA: Did you end up trying it out on console or just playing it on PC?
CO: I bought and played the game on every platform.
TA: The Silver Case’s original box art and aesthetic is probably the only thing I love as much as that in VA-11 Hall-A. What elements from its visual style had you curious back then?
CO: Definitely the stoic look of every character. Takashi Miyamoto is my goat along with Yoshitoshi Abe. For Va11halla I had to be very expressive with the characters because that’s what the story commanded, but ever since I was a kid I always had an affinity towards designs that say a lot with minimal facial expressions. Two of my favorite films are Patlabor 2 and Ghost in the Shell, and Serial Experiments Lain is also one of my favorites, so you can probably tell where I’m coming from with this.
I was also so transfixed by the UI. I could go on and on about this subject, but I’ll always lament that The Silver Case didn’t create a movement after its release. Visual Novels could look so much better if we had 1% the imagination of that original Grasshopper team. I’m not sure, but I think the look was done by Akihiko Ishizaka who would go on to work on Killer7 and Danganronpa. I wish he was still working with GhM. Or maybe he still does and I’m talking out of my ass.
TA: I think you’ve met Suda more than once now. How has that been for you and has he played VA-11 Hall-A? I know Travis Strikes Again has a VA-11 Hall-A tshirt that is the objectively best and only one everyone should use.
CO: I’ve met the guy twice and I’ll always lament not knowing enough japanese to just talk and talk all day with him. We share a lot of common interests, though the generational gap can be felt when he starts yapping about Japanese media from the 70s. I do know he played my game but I’ve no clue if he actually enjoyed it. Will have to ask if I ever see him again.
TA: Are you still up for this if the opportunity arises?
CO: There’s a story behind this that I’ll have to sit on for a while longer.
TA: My current game of the year for 2024 is Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I know you loved Yakuza: Like a Dragon, but did you end up trying Infinite Wealth/8 or Gaiden last year?
CO: I love Like a Dragon so much but I didn’t play Gaiden, and Infinite Wealth seemed like too much of a commitment when I played at launch. The game was throwing mechanic after mechanic at me in a way that made me feel overwhelmed. Like there was too much game ahead of me, so I put it off for the time being. Maybe once I’m in the mood again I’ll give it a honest shot.
TA: VA-11 Hall-A has always been perfect to play on a portable. I loved it on Switch and recently found a mod that adds full controller support to the PC version. I’ve been revisiting it on Steam Deck. Have you had a chance to try it on Steam Deck yet?
CO: I did and saw it sort of works but not quite. I wish I could go back and tweak it but it’s not technically feasible. The Game Maker version we used doesn’t even work properly on modern Windows and it’s the reason we haven’t been able to do any sort of fix or update to it. Aside from simply not having the time to deal with all that mess we made (at a technical level).
TA: Honestly I still have a lot more I want to discuss with you, but I think I should save that for part 2 or a future interview. Let me end this with one final question. How do you like your coffee? Go into as much detail as you can. If not coffee, talk about your favorite beverage.
CO: I like my coffee black like a moonless night. Even better if it’s accompanied by cheesecake on a beautiful afternoon.
TA: Probably not smart, but it is nearly 2 AM and sending these questions over made me want to replay The Silver Case. Next time we talk, let’s do a dedicated discussion on The Silver Case.
CO: Absolutely!
I’d like to thank Christopher Ortiz for their time and help with this interview over the last few weeks.
You can keep up with all our interviews here including our recent ones with FuturLab here, Shuhei Matsumoto from Capcom about Marvel Vs Capcom here, Santa Ragione here, Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman about PH3 and Falcom here, M2 discussing shmups and more here, Digital Extremes for Warframe mobile, Team NINJA, Sonic Dream Team, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and more. As usual, thanks for reading.
Later this month on September 27th, NIS America will release FuRyu’s action RPG Reynatis for Switch, Steam, PS5, and PS4 in the West. Ahead of the launch, I had a chance to talk to Creative Producer TAKUMI, Scenario Writer Kazushige Nojima, and Composer Yoko Shimomura about the game, inspirations, collaborations, how the project came into being, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, coffee, a potential Xbox release, and much more. This interview was conducted in parts with TAKUMI’s portion being done on video call with Alan from NIS America translating and then it being transcribed and edited for brevity. The portion with Kazushige Nojima and Yoko Shimomura was done over email and is towards the end of this interview.
TouchArcade (TA): Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Furyu right now.
TAKUMI: I’m a director and producer at Furyu. A lot of my work involves creating new games and working on brand new projects. For Reynatis specifically, I’m the person who came up with the main idea for the game. I produced it, I directed it, and I saw pretty much everything through from the beginning to the end so anything and everything related to Reynatis, I handled everything.
TA: I’ve been playing FuRyu’s games through many publishers in the West from the 3DS days, leading into PS Vita, PS4, PS5, PC, and mostly on Nintendo Switch. It feels like Reynatis has the most hype around it from any game which I’ve seen from FuRyu. How does that make you feel as a creative producer?
TAKUMI: First of all, I’m very happy. I take it very positively. I’m just simply pleased that people like it so much. About the buzz and attention it is getting, it feels like it’s actually more from abroad than inside Japan. I’ve been checking things out on Twitter and I noticed that a lot of times whenever they post information about the game, when they post trailers, when they post things like that, a lot of the comments that they’re receiving are from people outside of Japan. And so he says it seems like the fan base for this game abroad is large, or will be large.
And it also seems like, as you mentioned, up till now, this game has been receiving more feedback and more positive user interaction than any other FuRyu game in the past. So I’m really pleased to see how it seems to be being received in the West so far.
TA: Okay, so the game is obviously available now in Japan for people who live there to buy on console. How has the response been from players in Japan for the game?
TAKUMI: As someone who’s liked Final Fantasy Kingdom Hearts and things like that, I feel that the fans of those works, basically the works of Tetsuya Nomura in particular, seem to have really latched onto the game. They really appreciate what I’m doing and I really get the sense that they kind of understand everything. I’ve seen that as they’ve been playing the game, they’ve been noticing things and seeing how the story progresses and being like, “Oh, yeah, that’s how it should be,” or, “Yeah, I kind of expected that to happen.” And so they’ve gotten really excited and really delved into the world of Reynatis. They’ve also, kind of without really even being prompted, have kind of taken things farther to the next level, like, “I wonder where he’s going to take the story from here. I wonder what’s going to come next. I wonder…” All these little sub things that he hadn’t really had a chance to maybe flesh out or think about yet are things that the fan base has already decided to move forward with and already decided to start thinking about what’s going to come in the future.
Of course a creator, that makes me feel incredibly pleased and also kind of gets my creative juices flowing as it were, too, to think about what I want to do next. On the gameplay side of things, FuRyu games always kind of have areas that stand out a little bit more than others or have things about them that make them kind of unique and very FuRyu you could say. A lot of players have come to appreciate those things, too, and really enjoy those things as well. So for the people who really have always appreciated FuRyu games and have played them up until now and enjoyed them, they seem to be liking and enjoying the game as well. So far on both of those fronts, it seems that user reaction has been positive and people have really been enjoying it.
TA: I’m glad you mentioned Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy because from when the game was revealed, a lot of my friends who are hardcore Kingdom Hearts fans and who have been following Final Fantasy for a long time, everyone brought up Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s trailer and everyone’s trying to draw parallels with that and talking about how is this connected here, is that connected there? Can you comment on whether Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s trailer and that whole hype cycle over there had any influence on the project.
TAKUMI: So that question is a sensitive question, it’s a sensitive topic. There’s things that I can and cannot say in regards to it, but one thing I want to point it specifically is that as a fan of Nomura-san’s work and as someone who saw that original trailer for Versus XIII, and purely wondered what would this game have been like, what kind of game would this have been, how would it have played, and all these things like that running through my head, as a fan, I wanted to put myself on the same level as other fans. And as a representative of that fan base, I wanted to create my own take on it. If this game would have come out, maybe it would have turned out like this. So that feeling in terms of how Reynatis is related to Final Fantasy Versus XIII, you could say it’s something like that.
I can’t speak too much beyond this little window of speaking, but I have talked to Nomura-san. They’ve talked about several things about this,and the idea is that Nomura-san knows what he’s thinking and the things that they’ve talked about. As a fan and as somebody who really loves these works, I really wanted it to be from one fan to all the other fans out there. I feel like that group of fans who did love those games, that’s who Reynatis is for.
At the end of the day, all that really comes from that specific title is the inspiration. So seeing that initial trailer and that initial thought of “I wonder what this would be like” was an inspiration, certainly, for Reynatis. Reynatis is something that is wholly his own. It’s something that totally came from me as a creator. It is dyed in my own color as a creator. Everything that I wanted to express as a creator is what’s in this game. It’s not a copy or a rip-off of something else that’s come before, something that might have existed. It’s completely wholly my own. This was simply an initial spark of inspiration to make me think about what this world would be. Everything else about this world that is Reynatis is something that I made myself and created myself.
TA: So out of the many FuRyu games I’ve played over the years since Lost Dimension and stuff like that, my favorites are The Caligula Effect 2, Crymachina, and The Alliance Alive. Every single game usually has I’d say 75% of it is really good with memorable story, music, and stuff like that. But there are some aspects which fall short, and we usually see either technical shortcomings or some people might not like the gameplay or something like that. So I wanted to know if you’re happy with the current state of the game because I know there are updates planned.
TAKUMI: The game originally came out on July 25th in Japan, and from there, we had an actual play session where we streamed it, and there were people watching on Twitter, commenting, and since then, people have had a chance to play the game and receive their comments.
Obviously, to recreate the game, or to do things on a fundamental level, that’s impossible, but obviously, small things that we can brush up, as we are going through, for example, boss balancing, the amount of time that enemies come out, little quality of life features that kind of have to do with those things, all of those things will be addressed in the updates that are coming out. There’s an update coming out on September 1st in Japan, and then either with that, or a little bit before that, we plan to, again, start addressing some of those issues
Beyond that, obviously, if there’s any bugs or any kind of technical flaws or things like that, those are all intended to be addressed to over the coming months, because the last DLC is scheduled to come out in May, and so up until that time point, we are going to continue to work on the feedback that we’ve received, and implement as much as we can, as is reasonable and possible, into the game.
One thing I also want to point out is that specifically for players in the West, the version of the game that you be getting, essentially, will be a version that’s been refined and brushed up, compared to everything that’s come out in Japan, so please look forward to the best version of the game when it does come out here in the West.
TA: So I read the NIS America translated Famitsu interview with Takumi-san, Yoko Shimomura, and Kazushige Nojima in two parts (here and here). It was the two-part long interview and was really nice. So first, thank you to NIS America for translating that officially for us. Secondly, I wanted to touch on the part about how you approached both of them because it was very interesting and funny. I wanted to just ask you about that. How did you approach them directly? Is it just something like you messaged them or do you approach their representatives or the companies at all?
TAKUMI: It was pretty much what I said in the interview. Most of this was direct. I reached out to them directly. I didn’t contact them through a company. I didn’t do super formal emails or uptight things. The thing about Shimomura-san specifically is that Furuyo had actually done some work with her in the past on some other titles, so I kind of had an in there, but even still I ended up reaching out to her through X / Twitter.
For Naora-san, who was the illustrator for the game, it was a PM to him on X / Twitter. Kaburagi-san, who also did the illustrations, I spoke with him on X. Nojima-san, they did a lot of LINE. Even once the project had begun, a lot of the communication was still done via PMs and via private messaging and things like that. At no point was it ever really a very formal thing. I would just kind of reach out to people as necessary and say, “hey, what do you want to do about the music?” or something like that. It’s a lot rougher than you might have imagined in terms of how a company normally performs its business.
TA: That’s hilarious. It makes sense why you contacted them because they are very talented folks, and while the premise and game seem interesting, I wanted to know what prior works of theirs made you reach out to them individually? What are your favorite works by them?
TAKUMI: Well, basically, I’ve been playing Kingdom Hearts since I was a kid. I think the big part is that my personality and values were formed by Kingdom Hearts. So, when it comes to Shimomura-san’s music, I have a strong image of Kingdom Hearts. And then, in connection with that, I’ve been playing titles like Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy X. I think Nojima-san’s scenario has a strong feeling from that. I think I’ll just say that I wanted to do Nojima-san’s scenario with Shimomura-san’s music.
for Shimomura-san, obviously, most people think of Kingdom Hearts. It’s a really, really special game. It’s a series that I started playing when I was little. It influenced my values and who I am as a person. So, that was someone that I really wanted to work with specifically.
In terms of Nojima-san, obviously, I’m a big fan of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, and works like that. I wanted to work with them because I just wanted to work with them. I liked their work and he wanted to work with them.
TA: I wanted to know, before the game started production, what games did you play that maybe inspired some aspects of this thing? Did you start doing research and playing more action games from other developers to see how they are?
TAKUMI: I’m honestly an action game fan to begin with. So, whether it be older titles, whether it be more recent titles, I feel like I’ve played them all. Whether you’d want to call that research or not is kind of something different, but I have played them and I have enjoyed them and obviously, there’s a lot of things that I’ve taken inspiration from, you could say, from within that.
However, one thing I want to point out really specifically is that, and this is something you know as someone who’s played many FuRyu titles, is that FuRyu size-wise and scale-wise doesn’t have the budget to do something like a Final Fantasy VII Remake or a Rebirth. That’s just on another level. When I was creating the game and thinking about what I wanted to do, I thought carefully about what would be fun for the players. What will the players enjoy? Let’s make that and then let’s also try to make everything within the game something that’s fun.
So for example, even beyond the gameplay, you have the scenario, you have the story, you have all of these things that individually are disparate, but all of them together are what makes Reynatis the experience that it is. I want players to experience it as a whole and not so much as an action game solely, for example. If you compare Reynatis to something like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it’s obviously not going to compete on that level. Where it can compete is on this level as an entire package, as a game experience that is the sum of its parts beyond being some specifically one thing.
TA: Can you talk about how long Reynatis has been in production?
TAKUMI: About three years, give or take.
TA: So how was it working for the team during the pandemic?
TAKUMI: The pandemic was just at its peak. I think it was a time when we couldn’t meet face to face and talk about it. But I don’t think I was in that much trouble. The development company that was actually developing it was basically all-in-one, and we were able to work with the top development team. If we had been able to communicate with them, I think we could have made the game without any problems.
After the pandemic actually settled down, we were able to meet face to face. We were able to communicate while eating together. I don’t think there was a big problem in terms of development because we couldn’t meet face to face because of the coronavirus. Things kind of kicked off right at the beginning of the pandemic, specifically when it was really difficult to go out and actually meet people.
Truthfully, at the very beginning, we didn’t have a lot of opportunity to actually meet face to face and talk about things.However, A, as time went on, and B, because we were having lots of meetings and things like that, the people that we were working with to develop it, all of them actually were in the office. Because we had a good direct line of communication with the development staff, the head of the development staff, we felt like there were no issues there.
Also, as the project continued, things loosened up, and so I was able to meet people face to face. We were able to go out to eat and talk and have meetings and things like that. So things proceeded smoothly. Even in the midst of the beginning of the pandemic, when it was more difficult to meet people, I don’t feel that it really impacted the work negatively.
We were able, and I specifically was able to do my work without any problem, and things proceeded well. So there were really no issues from that sense in regards to the pandemic situation.
TA: So one of the things I noticed is, before the game was officially revealed for localization, there was a lot of hype around “NEO: The world ends with you. Everyone was speculating if this is part of the same universe or what’s happening And now we have an official collaboration, which is officially licensed and stuff like that. So I wanted to know two things: As a fan, play NEO :The World Ends with you and how did you approach Square Enix for the collaboration?
TAKUMI: I played the original on DS in the beginning. I played the smartphone game that only lived for a brief period. I played Final Remix when it came out on Switch and then of course NEO: The World Ends With You as well. I’m a simple fan just like everyone else when it comes to the series. I have played them all.
For the collaboration, I did go directly to Square Enix as a company and approached them from an official capacity as a company. Thinking in the console game space, looking at collaborations between companies it’s very rare. All I can think of is that there was a collaboration between Capcom and Konami using Metal Gear Peace Walker and Monster Hunter 2G. Aside from that, I can’t really think of anything else in terms of console creators coming together to make it. Because this is something that hasn’t really happened before, it had to be a bit more official. On the flip side, because it hasn’t happened before, there was really nobody I could talk to internally to be like, “Hey, so how do I go about approaching this? How do I go about making it happen?” I got a lot of feedback like “Oh, that’s impossible. You can’t do that.”
However, I have the kind of personality where I’m very strong and straightforward with things. I said “No, no, no, look, if it’s not impossible, there’s a way to do this. I’m going to find a way to do this.” The simplest thing in that case was to drop the plan, to go to Square Enix directly and say, “Hey, look, I’m making this game. I really like The World Ends With You. The setting for my game is also Shibuya. Is there anything we can do together?” That’s basically how the collaboration came about.
TA: Can you comment on what platforms Reynatis was always planned for? What was the lead platform?
TAKUMI: All of the platforms were decided from the beginning, but as you mentioned, you have to come up with a lead platform. In this case, it would have been the Switch and so the Switch was the main, and then the others came out from there.
TA: In the past, whenever I played FuRyu games, regardless of how much I liked them, the lead platform usually has some technical issues. I remember playing The Legend of Legacy on 3DS, which had a lot of technical issues, but now it’s perfect when you play it on modern platforms. Reynatis is a very visually striking and good-looking game from its trailers. So I was just wondering how it would run on Switch.
TAKUMI: I understand where you’re coming from. Even though the Switch is the lead platform, honestly speaking, this game pushes the Switch to its limits. Within me, there’s two rules I have to fulfill for this game. One is the producer, and the other is the director. As the producer, I have to be more mindful of things like unit sales. How many players are going to purchase and play the game? So within that, obviously, it makes the most sense that you release a game on as many platforms as you possibly can to maximize those elements.
On the flip side, as the director and as a player myself, it would have been great to focus on maybe one platform like PS5 or something to really push things to the next level. But at the same time, that’s a balance that I have to maintain within all things. There was a lot of internal struggle within how to handle that. But at the end of the day, the balance was essentially taken within those two elements of myself that I had to do. I’m happy with what came out.
TA: So far, FuRyu games release on consoles in Japan and get ported to PC for the Western releases. Has Furyu ever considered doing PC internally in Japan for these games?
TAKUMI: Actually, there was a title that came out recently that we did internally on PC. So it is something that we have been thinking about and working internally on. So yes, games are coming out made by us specifically for PC platforms.
At this point, Mr. Sonobe, FuRyu Localization Coordinator, added that FuRyu has established a partnership with NIS (America) to sell full-priced console RPGs due to their expertise in translation, promotion, and sales capabilities.
TA: The reason I ask is because we’ve seen a lot of promotions in Japan for Steam versions from publishers there. Like SEGA does with competitions for Like a Dragon and Steam Deck. Obviously you need to release on Switch, but you now also have a high end handheld PC. I see a lot of interest for Steam versions. Do you see more people recently asking for PC versions in Japan?
TAKUMI: Please take this as my opinion specifically and not a representative of the industry. For me and the people around me, the two worlds are very different. There’s the world of console gaming, as we call it, and then there’s the world of PC gaming. Those worlds don’t necessarily meet, and it seems like the players of one specific place, like console or PC, generally want to keep their play experiences limited to that space specifically. If you were to divide it up into three things, you would have consoles, you would have PCs, and then you would have smartphones. And so these are kind of the three arenas that exist. And these are kind of the three arenas that people generally tend to stay in when they’re developing and releasing games.
I don’t even necessarily know people who play on PC who have a Steam Deck or who want to play specifically on it. If they want to play a console game, they would play it on console if they had the desire to do so. That’s kind of where I feel the industry is specifically in Japan.
TA: Because you mentioned smartphones, I think FuRyu has one title which is available in the West on smartphones through another partner, Arc System Works, which is The Alliance Alive Remastered. I believe it uses NIS America’s translation for English. Do you have plans as FuRyu to do more smartphone ports of premium games?
TAKUMI: As a company we don’t have a plan to make games specifically for smartphones. It is more that our division specifically is focused on making console games and we believe that consoles are a place that can provide specific experiences that can only be provided by console games. The reason you saw something like The Alliance Alive Remastered come out on smartphones, was because we felt that it would be appropriate and because we thought it would still play well on the smartphone. For something like a super hardcore action game or something that would require more intricate controls, that wouldn’t really be suitable to be on smartphones so it wouldn’t happen. Our plan and goal going forward is to develop first for console and to bring out the best we can do in the console gaming space. IF that work is suitable enough to be brought to a smartphone, and still be able to be played well, and it doesn’t lose any of its intrinsic fun that you have from playing on console, then we will think about it in the future, but it kind of is on a case by case basis.
TA: So I play FuRyu games on multiple platforms, but there’s one platform that hasn’t seen FuRyu support much. This question isn’t just from myself, but also from readers who usually want to know why some games aren’t coming to Xbox. only myself, but a lot of our readers also usually ask us to check in on the possibility? I know there could be many reasons for why, but I still wanted to ask you directly about this if there are plans to do Xbox Series X versions of these games from FuRyu?
TAKUMI: Personally, I would like to do Xbox versions of the games but the reality is that in Japan there’s not enough demand from consumers. There’s not enough recognition from consumers for the platform itself to be able to justify being able to make an Xbox version. To talk about things from a development standpoint, you have to understand that adding another platform to the development cycle means you have to account for that within the schedule. Within that as well, the development team has to have the experience to be able, having worked on that platform, to be able to develop it appropriately for that platform. Because the team doesn’t have that experience, it suddenly becomes a very high hurdle to clear and be able to make this game. I would definitely like for us to be able to do it. I find it would be something that would be interesting. It’s just the reality of it that it’s a difficult thing to do for the reasons I mentioned.
TA: Reynatis is coming out in the West in a few weeks. I wanted to know what you’re most excited to see when players get their hands on the game in the West?
TAKUMI: I really want players to enjoy playing the game for a long time. Nowadays, you kind of have an issue that when a game comes out, it’s not uncommon for spoilers to get posted, whether that be videos or things like that. We’ve worked really hard to make sure that those spoilers don’t get out there. One of the ways that they’ve avoided having things spoiled is by having this– we talked about it a bit earlier–but by having this free DLC release schedule going forward that will bring up new story content and secret story content.
There’s going to be one that comes out October 1 that will be global. NIS America will release the game in the West in September. So players will kind of have to catch up first, but after that, they get to experience everything in real time with the Japanese player base as well as the updates come out. I hope that this is something that encourages people to keep playing the game and to play it for a long time to come and to really enjoy what they’re playing and seeing all the secrets and things that they have, because these are things that, again, are going to be not spoiled because it’s all coming out at the same time once the game gets released in the West.
TA: One of my favorite aspects of FuRyu games is always the art and music. That’s usually consistently very good. I wanted to know, are there any plans after all the DLC is out to have a Japanese release of the full art book covering everything and a full soundtrack?
TAKUMI: At the moment there are no plans specifically to do either of the things that you mentioned, but in regards to the music I really think Shimomura-san made a fantastic soundtrack and I would love to be able to get that out there to people in some fashion. So, hopefully we can do it, but there are currently no plans.
TA: Unrelated to Reynatis which we’ve covered a lot, I wanted to know what you’ve been playing outside of work in the last year, like in 2024, which you’ve enjoyed a lot, and what platforms you’ve been playing on?
TAKUMI: So for this year, I played Tears of the Kingdom and I played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Generally speaking, due to everything going on with Reynatis, I have a feeling that I didn’t get to play as much as I would have liked for everything else, but those are the two ones that I remember playing the most. Platform-wise, I probably played most on PS5.
As an addition, I’m a huge Disney fan and I’m also a big fan of Star Wars. All the information coming out about the new Star Wars materials has gotten, like, kind of reawakened that fire that I have, for the Star Wars property, so I’ve really been enjoying Jedi Survivor.
TA: What project that you’ve worked on so far is your favorite. If it is Reynatis, talk about another one as well.
TAKUMI: So I’ve only worked on two games: Trinity Trigger and Reynatis. To talk about Trinity Trigger, I was only the director on that game so I didn’t have the opportunity to do anything on the Producer’s role so thinking about the broader scope of things and how to reach out to customers on that. That’s something I felt was an area missing for me. I really wanted to do it. As a result of having that feeling on Trinity Trigger, I was able to, when the time came to Reynatis, I was able to take on the role of Producer, Creative Producer, and Director and therefore I was able to do everything that I wanted to do in this game. To oversee every single aspect of it.
By the same token, because Trinity Trigger was the first game I had worked on and I directed, I was able to do a lot of what I wanted to do with it. It is of course a title to him that remains really deep in his memory, but the game that I have the most affection for is Reynatis.
TA: For a lot of people, when they see FuRyu’s games, there are quite a few available on current platforms. Reynatis has the most hype. What would you like to say to folks who are excited for this who have not played a FuRyu game before?
TAKUMI: One of the things that I feel is most representative of FuRyu titles in general, is that they all have a very strong theme. If you look at each and every one of these games, the theme is very strong. The message reaching out to people is very strong. Reyantis is no different. This might be a rough or harsh way to put it, but if there are people who feel that they are weak, if there are people out there who feel like they are being put down by society, they can’t live and carry out their lives like they want to, I want you to play Reynatis.
One of the big themes in the game is that within Japanese society itself, there’s a very famous expression that you’ve probably heard many times before: “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” People in Japan have a tendency to go with the flow, and supplement themselves into what the rest of society wants them to do or say, and as a result of that, many people kind of feel really pressured and they’re stifled within what they actually want to do. Whether it be in Japan or outside, if you feel that way, this is absolutely the game for you. The message within this is very strong and I feel like it will resonate with people who feel like they maybe are put down by society or that they are not a place they want to be in society.
Going back to what we spoke about before, while the game might not be able to compete in the arena of graphics or richness in setting, the game does have a message that resonates just as strongly as for Final Fantasy VII if not more. I believe it can compete and beat it in that. I think that because the message in the game is so strong, it will remain in people’s hearts and minds and it will be something that will be a really positive and memorable experience for them. I hope people pick up the game for those reasons.
This part of the interview with Yoko Shimomura and Kazushige Nojima was conducted over email.
TA: How did you get involved in the Reynatis project?
Yoko Shimomura: Via a sudden attack from TAKUMI. (laughs)
TA: What have you learned composing for games for many years now and how do you implement these learnings in your future compositions and recent ones like Reynatis?
Yoko Shimomura: It’s difficult to put into words. I think that experience does become a new power, but I mainly compose via feeling, so turning that into words is difficult.
TA: My favorite soundtracks done by you are definitely LIVE A LIVE, Radiant Historia, and Street Fighter II. I’m very curious about the Reynatis soundtrack. What has been your favorite part of working on it so far?
Yoko Shimomura: Thank you! The night before recording, even though I was totally worn out mentally and physically, I just had more and more compositions flowing out of me, which was fun. (laughs) I was really ablaze with the idea, “I’m definitely going to finish this!”
TA: As a composer you have a very distinct style that when someone hears a work by you, they know you composed it. How do you feel that your style is recognizable through multiple iterations of technology?
Yoko Shimomura: I wonder! I get told that a lot, but I don’t really understand it myself. People have said that in the past, my compositions tended to be different based on the work, so there isn’t really a feel that they were all composed by me. I think maybe my style hadn’t quite come out yet.
TA: Were you inspired by any other games when working on the Reynatis soundtrack?
Yoko Shimomura: I wasn’t influenced by any other work in particular.
TA: You’ve worked on the scenarios of many of my favorite games of all time. How do you approach different games today compared to how you worked in the 90s?
Kazushige Nojima: It depends on the game genre. For games where the narrative comes first, players today want a character who is a convincing portryal of a fully-fledged person, rather than a character that is an avatar for the player, as was common in the past. In that case, it then becomes important to give the world the character inhabits a sense of presence. I do like those old games that were more akin to a fairytale, though. I’d like to work on one again in the future.
TA: How did you get involved with this project?
Kazushige Nojima: I received a call from my old acquaintance, the composer Ms. Shimomura. She asked if it was OK to share my contact info with TAKUMI. Things started from there.
TA: Is it influenced by Versus XIII in any way?
Kazushige Nojima: I didn’t think it was when I was writing it, but I can’t say for certain.
TA: Having now seen the game’s scenario all the way, what is your favorite aspect of it, and what do you think fans of your other work should pay attention to here?
Kazushige Nojima: It’s difficult to answer this while avoiding spoilers. I think that Marin’s change in mannerisms [throughout the course of the game] is well-depicted.
TA: What have you enjoyed playing this year and have you played Reynatis yet?
Kazushige Nojima: I’ve been doing nothing but dying in it, but I’ve enjoyed ELDEN RING. I’ve also enjoyed Dragon’s Dogma 2. Embarassingly enough, I’m only partway through REYNATIS. Sure enough, I’m just not good at action games, so for the games I mentioned, I’m enjoying the atmosphere of their worlds. I think the game I’ve played the most of is Euro Truck Simulator.
TA: So now the last question is for everyone here. How do you like your coffee?
TAKUMI: I don’t actually like coffee. *laughs* I don’t like things that are really bitter. I generally go for iced tea or black tea. If I’m going to drink coffee, I’m going to put a ton of cream, milk, or sugar to drink it. It is kind of funny that in university, I worked at Starbucks so I had to know a lot about coffee, so it is kind of funny that way.
Alan Costa: I like coffee with milk or soy milk. If I’m drinking iced coffee, I like just an americano with just ice and no sugar.
The two responses below were via email.
Yoko Shimomura: I like iced tea. I drink it all the time. I like doubling up [on the bags] to make it strong.
Kazushige Nojima: Black. And strong.
I’d like to thank TAKUMI, Alan Costa, Chihiro MacLeese, Mr Sonobe, Anna Lee, and Lottie Diao for their time and help with this interview.
Editor’s note: I unfortunately lost the recording I took myself where the other attendees from NIS America and FuRyu mentioned how they had their coffee and could only include these two.
You can keep up with all our interviews here including our recent ones with FuturLab here, Shuhei Matsumoto from Capcom about Marvel Vs Capcom here, Santa Ragione here, Peter ‘Durante’ Thoman about PH3 and Falcom here, M2 discussing shmups and more here, Digital Extremes for Warframe mobile, Team NINJA, Sonic Dream Team, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and more. As usual, thanks for reading.
The project pays homage to the work of Suh Se Ok, a pioneering Korean ink painter who expanded artistic horizons with innovative works from the 1950s to 2020. Courtesy of the artist and LG
South Korean artist Do Ho Suh is internationally known for his ghostly, diaphanous architecture and fabric-made objects, which create imaginary spaces that are physically present yet impossible to inhabit. His large-scale, immersive, but impermanent installations serve as “acts of memorialization,” exploring themes of identity, home, and the tension between personal and public space. These ideas are confronted within the framework of displacement and cultural transition, reflecting the global mobility of contemporary life.
For this edition of Frieze Seoul, Suh has been invited to collaborate with the fair’s main sponsor, LG, on a project exploring the intergenerational legacies of Korean art while spotlighting the country’s drive for technological innovation. He has been working with his brother, renowned architect Eul Ho Suh, on the digital canvas of LG OLED T, paying homage to their father, Suh Se Ok—a vital figure in Korean ink abstraction, a radical genre that opened artistic possibilities for an entire generation.
Observer spoke with the brothers during the unveiling of “Suh Se Ok X LG OLED: Reimagined by Suh Do Ho” at Frieze Seoul, discussing how the project traces a line between generations of Korean art and its potential future development. The project is, first and foremost, an homage to their father, who pioneered a distinctively Korean approach to visual art. This intergenerational conversation reveals how Korean art and aesthetics have evolved over the decades. As Do Hoh Suh told Observer: “This intensely personal project aims to honor our father’s legacy while also considering the evolution of Korean art. We hope this project will allow for a deeper understanding of our father’s work, highlighting the tradition he represents and the vital philosophical principles he explored throughout his life.”
Se Ok’s work embodies a defining moment in Korean art, linking calligraphy and a specific philosophical approach related to the mark-making moment and gesture to the interconnection between body and mind. “Movement is an integral element in our father’s painting, where bodily gestures create ink strokes on the rice paper,” said the artist, “These marks act as a trace of his action, a record of performance. The idea that these marks on the paper carry the artist’s energy is essential in creating his work, which we felt necessary to share with a broader audience.”
The presentation at Frieze intentionally juxtaposes rarely-seen footage of Suh Se Ok in action alongside his paintings and Do Ho Suh’s animations on the innovatively transparent screens of the LG OLED T, positioned in the space according to how Eul Ho Suh has envisioned and conceived the relation between the marks, the viewers, this new technology and the experience of being in the space. “We hope to invite audiences to engage in a dialogue about art, tradition, and innovation,” Do Ho Suh added.
For the installation, Do Ho Suh used the LG OLED T digital canvas to bring memories to life and pay homage to the legacy of his father, Suh Se Ok. Courtesy of the artista and LG
One highlight of the installation is Suh Se Ok’s People series: minimal black marks and signs absorbed by the paper that evoke human figures while remaining external and abstract, as a synthesis of the vital movements that animate our physical existence. Eul Ho Suh explained that before their father’s influence, Korean art was deeply shaped by traditional Chinese landscapes: “He wanted to go lighter, creating abstract paintings with no colors, just black and white.” When Suh Se Ok started to explore this radical new language in the ’60s, he was teaching at Seoul National University, and many students began to follow the new movement. It wasn’t just about the quality of the application of ink, however. He wanted to bring his energy to the works, with marks that could transfer thought and gesture, with porous paper as a transmitter.
However, what is most interesting about this project is how tradition interacts with technology. In Do Ho Suh’s installation, there’s a similar tension—the work is highly tactile and physical, yet the translucent appearance makes them look more like ghosts or digital renderings. “Although my practice is in many ways indebted to the long history of traditional Korean craftsmanship, it is also profoundly contingent upon new technology,” said the artist, who uses laser scanning, 3D printing, CAD and robotics in his work.
The transparency of the screen in the Frieze installation perfectly aligns with Suh Se Ok’s interest in the infinite and space, some of which the brothers have absorbed and adopted in their native practices. Layering allows for an interplay of opacity and transparency, revealing and concealing images and image planes. “The footage of our father making the paintings is presented here, combined with his writing and the animations, which further reenact the process of the paintings. This is a means to explore these critical principles of his work and reveal this intensely private process to inspire a greater understanding of his ideas.”
“Suh Se Ok X LG OLED: Reimagined by Suh Do Ho” is on view at Frieze Seoul 2024. Courtesy of the artist and LG
Layering also serves to underscore the complexity of the work, according to the artist. The layering of the images on the screens recalls the melding of ink and paper. “This leads to the question: is the painting on or in the paper?” said Do Ho Suh. “The properties of the rice paper allow for these layers to be separated to create near copies—something that straddles the idea of uniqueness and edition—an interrogation of the surface hierarchy.”
“You have all the powerful energy within the movement in an interplay between bidimensional and tridimensional space,” added Eul Ho Suh.
There are the technical elements—the layering techniques employed and the interplay of light and shadow—and those more philosophical. As the brothers noted, the display clarifies the principles underlying much of Eastern painting, enhanced by new technology. It also delves into the concept of transparency (a critical component in Do Ho Suh’s work) as a form of absence or emptiness, a theme central to Suh Se Ok’s work and uniquely interpreted by the two brothers. This idea echoes Buddhist teachings, where emptiness (śūnyatā in Sanskrit) reveals the true nature of things: they lack intrinsic existence, are impermanent, and constantly changing, reliant on various causes and conditions. The spaces between, though typically unseen, gain significance through exploration.
When asked how the approach and sensibility of Korean artists have transformed over time and how this relates to the rapid societal changes in South Korea, Do Ho Suh said those transformations are a reflection of societal change. “From my father’s time to mine, Korean artists have progressively embraced a more global perspective while maintaining a profound connection to our cultural roots,” he explained. “My time in the U.S. to study in the ’90s proved an essential shift in my appreciation of the differences between Eastern and Western perspectives and exploring the de-mystification of painting—this personal history and my Korean background have been essential themes in my work.”
Suh Se Ok, Dancing People, 1987; 54.6 x 62.1 cm / Ink on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
Ultimately, the project is a powerful statement on the evolution of artistic approaches and languages in South Korea, from the radical innovation explored by Suh Se Ok to the opportunities offered by the digital space and new technologies. In this sense, the installation’s screens both memorialize the past and serve as a portal to Korea’s future.
Memory is, in fact, at the heart of this project, as Do Ho Suh suggests. While art can document, help visualize and help imagine, this particular installation explores how art can also become a tool for oral and cultural memory. The artist calls the interplay of collective and personal memory in his work essential, but there are caveats to that assertion. “Exploring memory, both its fallibility and pervasiveness remains intriguing to me, but not in a nostalgic sense,” he said. “Memory not only helps document our past but also helps visualize our thoughts for the future. Our father’s paintings also act as memories of his actions, snapshots of his movement through time.”
To Do Ho Suh, art is a vessel for memories. “Our unique and privileged insight into our father’s work and the process of its making has led us to this project—it could be seen as an attempt to create a tangible manifestation of our intangible memories, an opportunity to revisit them and share them.”
RWRDS Canada is 23 years old and to celebrate, they are hosting the RC23 – RWRDS Canada’s 23rd Anniversary contest! So today, we are bringing back Patrick Sojka to share more! Patrick, this is such an amazing accomplishment to have such longevity. You continue to inspire and provide such helpful content. Looking forward to your next 23 years!
1) It has been a year and a half since our last interview, what’s new at Rewards Canada?
In the year and half since we last chatted we’ve really deepened Rewards Canada’s coverage of more of non-travel loyalty programs, whether it’s Triangle Rewards, Petro-Points, PC Optimum, PetSmart Treats Rewards or others, we are continuing our mission to being the all encompassing loyalty rewards and credit card resource for Canadians. Speaking of PC Optimum, our role of being an advocate for Canadian consumers has grown exponentially this year due to ongoing issues that have been frustrating many members of that program. I really hope we get some positive movement from them by the end of the year.
See also: Patrick was on Global News last night to discuss some of the issue surrounding PC Optimum.
2) Seems like you are hosting your 23rd Anniversary contest. That is an amazing accomplishment! Can you tell us more about it and how someone can participate?
Yes we are having a big contest to celebrate 23 years of Rewards Canada! We figured 23 is a good time to celebrate and hopefully it sets the stage for an even bigger birthday bash in two years when we hit 25 years. The contest is open to all Canadians aged 18 and over. Entering the contest is easy, simply leave a comment on our contest page and subscribe to our newsletter. Additional entries can earned by following us on our various social media channels. The 12 prizes we are giving away are amazing and they consist of points, miles, flight vouchers, elite status, and a smart phone. We have to give a big thank you to the contest sponsors who are Coast Hotels, Porter Airlines, Rogers Bank, Air France KLM, WestJet, Loyalty Status Co. and Air Canada. The contest runs until September 17 and people can enter at RWRDS Canada’s 23rd Anniversary Contest!
3) What can we look to with Rewards Canada?
There’s lots you can look forward to with Rewards Canada in the short and long term. We’ve got an exclusive loyalty program offer launching shortly that we are super excited about, our Canada’s Choice awards will be coming soon where Canadians vote for their favourite credit cards and loyalty programs. Plus, we are going to continue our no holds barred coverage of the all the cards and programs. And by that I mean if a card or program is good, we’ll tell you it’s good. If a card, or program sucks, we’ll tell you it sucks. No fluff to try to sell you on it.
4) Any closing thoughts?
I would like to thank all of Canada (and many people from outside of Canada) for their continued support of Rewards Canada for over two decades now. And a big thank you to Pointshogger for letting us share our latest story!
Artist Gina Beavers is primarily known for her straightforward tridimensional painting objects, or relief paintings, that take their subjects from the endless flux of online commercial visuals that inspire our daily consumption of products and experiences: exaggerated lips, glossy makeup palettes and visually appealing junk foods artfully arranged are among the advertising icons you’ll find in her work. But for her new solo show, which opens at Marianne Boesky Gallery on September 5, Beavers has conceived a far more abstract and comforting body of new works. These new “Comfortcore Paintings” were inspired by the endless variety of sheets and towels available online and their seductive power to activate our senses and desires.
The landscape of online communication has rapidly evolved since the artist started painting social media-derived narrative subjects in the aughts, when users exercised a greater degree of control over what they saw on Instagram, Amazon and elsewhere. “The algorithm has changed a lot, which has changed how we interact with the internet and the kinds of images you can come across,” Beavers told Observer during a studio visit. “I was appropriating food images or makeup tutorials for a long time, but now I don’t receive that content. Everything is tailor-made to offer you what you are looking for. I was looking for new bed sheets and towels when I started to conceive the works in the show.”
The exhibition, titled “Divine Consumer,” relates to Beavers’ way of intuitively reading, appropriating and remediating those digital images of commercial products which, from the flatness of their digital presentation, are brought back to their seductive tactility, sensuality and physicality that communicate the concept of comfort. She explores this in the series by focusing on the comforting range of patterns, textures and colors that function as psychological triggers to encourage us to indulge in a purchase, prompted to buy by the promise of softness.
Beavers translates the concept into simulacra with her signature tridimensional surrogates that, here, are already something more like painting objects: physically molding and reshaping those images, Beavers brings them back to life with uncanny closeups that stimulate our senses. The works in “Divine Consumer,” in particular, engage even more with tactility. They look soft, and one naturally wants to touch and caress them. These new relief paintings also represent an evolution in Bevers’ art-making process. The resulting pieces are less heavy with less paint—she uses foam, braiding it to emulate texture, molding the movements of the fabric and later painting them into an image. Despite being static physical objects, her works activate multisensorial reactions in the same way flat images on screens do as we passively scroll.
Gina Beavers, Knit weighted blanket landscape, 2024; Oil, acrylic, foam and wood stain on panel, 73 1/2 x 107 x 9 inches / 186.7 x 271.8 x 22.9 cm. Copyright of Gina Beavers. Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery
Although she does not apply any ready-made technique, the hyperrealism of Beavers’ works directly links her practice with Pop and New Realist artists who similarly commented on consumerism and popular cultures, like Robert Rauschenberg or Claes Oldenburg. She readily acknowledges these direct references and embraces them as continuing a legacy of a practice that is deeply rooted in the American culture of mass production and mass communication. It is, for her, the only way to experience this current reality: “I don’t know how to experience living without stuff,” she said. “I don’t know how to talk about life without everything we consume or the fact that we spend so much of our life in these consumption networks.”
More than that, her hyperrealistic compositions serve as a commentary on an entire cultural attitude. “In America, you go to someone’s house and you get the nice set of towels, which is how they’re marketed—it’s the capitalist kind of system that forces you to get more than one,” she reflected as we previewed the works in the show.
In pursuing her visual and semiological research into the culture of consumerism, Beavers applies the technique of collage, which, as in its cubist and Dadaist origins, combines materials stemming from different contexts to coexist and draws new trajectories of meaning from their dialectic juxtapositions. For the artist, collage is both a way to confront the chaotic, random flow of images we are all overexposed to and to find new vocabularies with which to decode this flux and find some order. It’s how she claims creative agency over a barrage of materials and messages. “It reflects my inability to pick up on a narrative from the internet and social media because it is chaotic,” Beavers explained. “There’s this idea of divine inspiration when you’re collating, as you’re putting things together. I’m creating something independently from this chaos.”
Scrolling through Google and Amazon, Beavers selects and captures images of comforters, towels and all those textile accessories of a domestic world meant to communicate care, coziness and comfort. She then pulls them out of their online environment and combines them via Photoshop into collages that rework them, mostly through intuition, drawing connections with traditional painting genres, particularly still life and landscapes.
Gina Beavers, Blue gingham still life (pie and casserole covers, crib sheets), 2024; Oil, acrylic, putty, paper pulp, foam and wood stain on panel 60 x 45 1/2 x 7 inches / 152.4 x 115.6 x 17.8 cm. Copyright of Gina Beavers. Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery
In translating images into a third dimension for the upcoming show, her signature object paintings appear in fewer works and there are more objects modeled with foam directly on wood panels. Some pieces slated to show at Marianne Boesky Gallery are materially more elaborate than others, depending on the fabric of the subject. For instance, Beavers meticulously braided and weaved foam as fabric to replicate the intricate texture of red wool blankets. “I’ve used linen on my paintings because I wanted them to have a conversation about the history of painting,” she mused, “but for this series, I just started to question why it mattered.”
Beavers has also been experimenting with scale. The larger works seem to envelop the viewer, while the minor works are studies in which it’s easy to get lost in the details of the interplay of light and shadow. There’s something obsessive yet extremely comforting in her precision. Indeed, it’s this precision—her extreme and almost obsessive hyperrealism—that makes Beavers’ work unique. It not only reflects on but also isolates and remediates fragments of the endless flood of digital images, bringing them back to the physical world and the human needs that created them.
Gina Beavers, American Soft towel set in Ruby, 2024; Oil, acrylic, putty, paper pulp, foam and wood stain on panel, 23 1/2 x 23 3/4 x 6 inches/ 59.7 x 60.3 x 15.2 cm. Copyright of Gina Beavers. Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery
The new series Beavers is presenting at the gallery represents a new stage of maturity in her work: she appears to be much more confident with her language and choice of subjects, as well as with her artistic research into the contemporary materialist imagery that has invaded our lives, totalizing our experience of the world and promising to heal all our problems with “retail therapy.” Amid the uncertainty of our time and rising political tensions, the artist reflected, ads for home goods can appear “safe,” as they contain no hidden agendas, no misleading propaganda. They ask us to buy, promising some version of fulfillment in return. After all, beyond our desire for transcendence or justice or hope, we all have physical desires that objects can help us satisfy.
Gina Beavers’s “Divine Consumer” opens at Marianne Boesky Gallery on September 5 and remains on view through October 5.
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