Mark Argo

Hailing from Toronto, Canada, Mark Argo is an innovative programmer, a reforming software pirate, and an expert gadget maker.  We caught up with him at a bar in Treviso, Italy just before he left for Bangkok, Thailand and he told us all about his plans to unlock commercially available hardware and create digital communities in physical spaces.


Chief: How did your interest in computers and technology first come about?

Mark Argo: I always had babysitters who were big nerds, and the big break for me in computers, was about halfway through high school and I met this Italian kid and he hung with a rough Italian crowd and they were all pool sharks and I was really into pool at that time, I was a bit of a pool shark, but he was really into computers, and we made this deal, that you know, he would teach me everything about computers, and more than anything he was really into online piracy, and we communicated with people all over the world trading files illegally, I thought that was the coolest thing in the world, and I taught him how to shoot pool, and he taught me how to upgrade your computer hardware, he taught me how to write my own bulletin board, how to manage users, how to look for pirated software, stuff like that, you know, the basics of hacking.  And after that I just kind of took off on that, dropped the pool, he dropped the computer stuff, and so eventually when I got into college and I was trying out things like writing, I also got really into music and video and really took to the homemade production of things, you know, where you can record at home on your computer, edit video on your computer, so the next step for me after I made something was to try and promote it on the internet so I learned how to make webpages… and then I learned a little programming, then I learned a lot of programming, then I got a job programming, then after that the rest is history.

So if you were to pinpoint a moment when you were like, “yes, it’s computer programming,” when was that?

I think my first experience that really set me aside was when I first showed something I had done in flash, I mean, my first programming languages were flash and director, which are kind of early interactive mass-available languages… the first time I showed something to a bunch of friends who were actually at a media arts school and just seeing their reaction and they were really impressed and right away they asked me to start a company with them and we started something, we tried to promote, to use the internet to create new ways to promote independent film so we developed a whole new kind of… I’d say, at that time, which was 1999, one of the most advanced ways for displaying film on the Internet, and we shopped it around, but really, the one pinpointed moment was when I showed those guys what I was doing.

And after that I realized like, holy shit, there’s not a lot of people in this field… it’s fresh ground.  And for me that’s my song.  I really love exploring spaces that have yet to be defined and try to put my signature in there somewhere.

You’re working a lot with Bluetooth these days… Seven years later, what has over time become the fresh new venue, or rather, what’s the next shit?

Originally, I had gotten really into mobile stuff during my master’s thesis at NYU, which is how I got into Bluetooth.  Part of the work that I’m interested in is in using commercially available technologies to do things that people never thought they could do.  A lot of people have a cell phone in their pocket and don’t even realize the potential of what it could really accomplish.  I mean I had a similar fascination with DVDs before, I mean how many millions of people have a DVD player in their living room and how can that be tapped into as an interactive medium?  And now I’m moving towards videogames.  There’s a lot of fresh, new ground.  The two I’m really interested in at the moment, one is hand-held videogames.  I really want to get into developing cheap videogame platforms, things like the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP; these are very powerful and cheap pieces of hardware with a lot of good stuff inside.  And how can those be tapped into for new uses that will appeal to a much broader audience… like if you could tell somebody, “Hey, go to fucking Best Buy, buy a DS off the shelf, and I can give you a photo album that’s connected to every other person in your family.”  All they have to do is put down the $120 to buy this DS and they’ve got an amazing piece of technology.  The hardware is there, it’s cheap, just give people the software; unlock this commercially available hardware.

And the other thing that I’m really interested in is this upcoming cultural preoccupation with conservation, especially conservation of energy. I think this is going to be a big thing, kind of like the Green Machine of the 80s when everything was green and recycling was hip and I think people are going to be really into energy conservation in the next five, ten years, and how can we create new interfaces for telling people how much energy they’re saving, making it fun, making it easy, and the first few steps are using the artistic medium to make people aware of how easy it is.

How does adding to or adapting commercial hardware tread the line of piracy or open source?

It’s weird.  I try to keep those things separate now as far as the stuff that I do.  My own personal feelings toward piracy have really been challenged in the last couple of years because I’m developing a lot more software and I’ve started to understand, you know… this is actually what I’ve always played out in my head, that eventually I’ll be making enough money to afford the pieces of software that are pirated now.  And for being able to afford the type of media that I use now.

The thing is that a lot of software companies build into their product financials the idea of how many people are going to be pirating their software.  Because they know that their software can’t become popular unless people are using it in a professional context.  People aren’t going to use it in a professional context if they can’t be instructed on how to use it and people aren’t going to be able learn it if they have to pay for it.  I mean, if I’m an independent developer I’m not going to go out and drop $400 on Adobe Flash software and I’m not going to learn anything from a 30-day trial.  So what am I suppose to do?  Fucking get a serial number from somebody, you pirate it, you steal it, you learn from it, and eventually you’re going to work for a design firm that’s going to have to buy it.  And that’s the way that works.

And as far as entertainment goes, my big problem is… I mean, our appetites have been drawn out, the carrot has been dangled and we’ve found a way to grab the carrot.  We’ve found out where they store the fucking carrots!  We don’t need to chase the carrot any more.

So it’s okay because they anticipate it?  Because they’re banking on the corporation it’s okay for us to steal it?

All I’m saying is that the people who can afford it can afford it.  It’s priced in such a way so that if I’m a professional and I’m making a couple thousand dollars a job, yeah, I can afford Flash.  If I’m a student, I can’t afford to buy Flash, I can’t afford to buy a flashlight.  I mean, I can’t even afford lunch.  So what am I going to do?  Go out and buying a $400 piece of software when my buddy’s got the serial number?  And it’s priced more expensive because companies can buy it and the other guys can’t.

So with my work as far as treading the open source and piracy and stuff like that, I’m still on the fence about open source because I do a lot of research and that research is more or less my bread and butter and if I were to make that stuff open and available to everybody then I have no… it’s great because a lot of people would be able to learn from the stuff I’m doing and be able to help themselves out but I have to secure my own path first before I can start relinquishing proprietary knowledge.  So I don’t do much stuff with open source.  And as far as piracy goes, well I’ve trimmed that down, I’ve started paying for a lot of software now, I’ve even started paying for movies, and you know, iTunes downloads… I’m reforming.

Tell me about the exhibition in Nice, France.

That was sort of the exhibition that brought me to Fabrica, which is where I’m currently in residence.  I like to say in residence, you know, kind of like you’re staying at your grandmother’s house because your parents are out of town.

My girlfriend was asked if she’d be interested in participating in this exhibition in Nice building robots and if she could recommend anyone and she was like, “Yeah, actually, I know a couple people.”  So me and my buddy Dan got signed on to the gig and this other guy who got called away to fight in the Thai army at the last minute.

What?

There were four of us and in the last minute before we started the project he got his draft letter.  And he had to fly home and join the army.

Have you spoken to him since then?

Actually we just heard from him today, the first time in about two and a half years.  He lives in Bangkok and can’t wait for us to join him.

And that exhibition was in 2004?

Yeah, so the idea was that the city of Nice, which has a long reputation in modern and contemporary art, wanted to do something new.  The guy who was… You know, it’s one of those fantastical stories, where the guy who was the Minister of Tourism for Nice, Bernard Morrell, was sitting up in bed one night because he couldn’t sleep and changed the channel to this French art and culture program that was interviewing this guy from NYU who was talking about the type of work that was going on at NYU I was at, and instantly he was like, “Oh my god, this is it, this is the answer!”  So I guess the next week he got on a plane — he used to be the president of Air France so he can just hop on the planes — and so he got on a plane, went down to NYU, and knocked on every single door in the building until he found the guy who was on TV.  And from there they decided this plan to revitalize Nice’s art scene and culture through this partnership with NYU, particularly with our program, so what we did was… well, they wanted a robot installation.  And we were pretty much given carte blanche, a pretty decent budget, to come up with an installation, so we came up with this idea of The Nice Bots.

---

And we designed a small robot, an autonomous robot, that was constructed out of wood and it was meant to be the opposite of everything you expected a robot to be.  Normally you would expect a robot to be cold and metallic and functional, to have some type of purpose, to be performing some type of task… and so we wanted to make it soft, make it something you’re not afraid to touch, to pick up and play with, and for it to have absolutely no function whatsoever, to not to anything.  And so we bought a bunch of equipment, we bought all the parts we needed, we designed them, and then we flew everything out to France and we spent two months sitting in this gallery space building these robots and people could come in and watch us construct these robots, they could help out, I mean it was a big hit with the kids, a lot of these kids had never seen a robot before, and that was it.  I mean, it was fantastic, over the course of these two months not only did we build these robots, going from three to five to 10 to 15, eventually we ended up with 29 robots, but also I was doing this software development, like basically writing their personalities.  And so over time their personalities would evolve, get more complex.  We started off with really simple things, you know, just a core personality where if it saw something it would stop, it would think, and it would try it again.  And then I started developing that into timid personalities, you know, where if it saw something would it try it again or would it stop?  Would it shake in nervousness?  And then there was anger, when it ran into a wall, would it back up or would it just try to smash that wall as much as it could because if it ran into a person maybe it could get that person out of its way by hitting it a couple of times.  So it was really fun, over this period of time, not only evolving the project but evolving the personalities of these robots. And I mean, it was an overwhelming success.  We didn’t expect it to be so good.  And it was.  And at the same time we got to live in Nice, we got a taste of European culture, and in the last few weeks we got a phone call from this guy, Andy Cameron, who wanted us to come out to Italy and check out this place Fabrica.  So after everything wrapped up in Nice we went out there for a couple days and that was it.

---

How long have you been at Fabrica?

It’s been a year and a half now.

What’s the best part of Fabrica?

I’d definitely say the best part of Fabrica is the people.  I mean, maybe it’s just my perception when I first came here, I felt like there were a lot of snobs.  Fabrica’s a young place, so it gets a lot of young people, so in many ways it had that feeling of this young, art school crowd.  But over time, maybe it’s been this new group of people, but everyone has been absolutely amazing.  People have been really warm and really creative, and I think maybe it’s because the creative energy is down at Fabrica, in my personal opinion, that people are resorting more to strengthening personal relationships.  I think I’ve seen a lot more of that now than when I first arrived.

Why is the creative energy down?

There’s a major project going on now, this Open Your Eyes exhibition at the Centre Pompidou.  And I think it’s kind of itching at a lot of the talent, which can be good and is important in the creative process, but at the same time I think it’s been really tough on a lot of people who have arrived at Fabrica in the past six months with this one notion and are having to work on these new projects.  So you don’t have that synergy of fresh blood, of incoming energy and new creativity, you know, I think a lot of it is being stifled right off the bat, which leads to an overall drought of creative energy.

Is it the selection process that’s so stifling?  In terms of projects or in this case this large Pompidou exhibition?

Well it’s just like any other design firm that’s involved with a major project. There’s no room for personal work right now.  There’s no room for feedback from department heads because they’re too stressed out and busy managing their own parts of this enormous project.  And there’s no extra budget to go around.  And plus there’s the psychological factors of everyone should be working on this one project.  And that’s a little tough.

And just to add, getting back to the best part of Fabrica, I think for me personally, what I’ve taken the most out of it, I mean, in the best way possible you really find out a lot about what you want.  You end up having to be very clear and concise.  So the real challenge I think, especially for people coming from North America, the way we’re used to working, especially East Coast, I mean, having to graft your own way of working on top of this laid back Southern European way really allows you focus in on what you like, what you want to do, what you would like to change about yourself…  You get a lot of time to think.  And I think that’s why a lot of people who come out of Fabrica are very successful.  It’s like when you’re in the ocean and you’re running towards the shore: your first ten meters are fucking absolutely sluggish, but the second you hit the sand and your body starts to come out of the water, you’re screaming, you’re running, you’re running fast.

There was a lot more freedom of ideas but at the same time back then I was a lot more wet behind the ears.  I didn’t know what wasn’t possible yet.  We were brought in, the three of us, to work on physical computing and aside from three small pieces I made I haven’t done any physical computing in the year and a half that I’ve been here.

So is the outward appearance of Fabrica different from the reality of the institution?

Of course.  But it’s like that with almost any kind of institution.  The outward experiences you see… so many people move in and out of Fabrica and so to catalogue the fine work that’s come out of this place is really easy and when you realize it’s been around for over ten years, it’s easy to get the sense that there’s a constant stream of amazing things that are happening.  And in fact I think the people who are outside of it probably experience it more than the people inside.  There’s no public venue.  You’re not even allowed to hang shit on the walls.  There’s no real public venue within the Fabrica community for exhibiting new work, exhibiting new ideas.  We used to have workshops, which was a chance for people to kind of pour their creative energy into two or three days of rapid development of a project that would be presented amongst 20-30 people who had all participated in this workshop, so you would have five or six or seven new projects that would be created in less than a week and presented to almost all of Fabrica.  And there’s something really magical about that.  It reminded me a lot more like school.  And that’s been absent for like ten months now.

How much of that is the Fabrica experience and why did Fabrica lose that?

I don’t think anyone knows for sure.  There are a lot of rumors that come about, which I won’t speculate on.  But I think what you really want to ask is how much does that detracts from the Fabrica experience and I think that’s a lot.  There’s not much synergy between departments, which is normally cauterized between these rapid sessions that would have no commitment.  And that was the best thing about the workshops is that at the end of the workshop it’s done, there’s no commitment beyond that, it’s just a crop of fresh new ideas.  And ever since that’s been absent… I guess the energy has been different.

Also one of the best things I got out of this experience is that I’ve been here with my girlfriend from New York who has been working with me here, and we also did the Nice exhibition together, and this was a big kind of adventure for the two of us, not only would we be working together but we would be living together.  I mean, it was the test and we both passed it.

It’s funny, we’ve been walking around Treviso, we’ve been taking the later bus in to Fabrica, spending the morning walking around, you know, getting a coffee and a brioche, doing the things we would’ve done if Fabrica wasn’t in the fucking butt fuck middle of nowhere.  You’d wake up, check your emails, get a coffee, get a feel of the town, and then probably work all night, you know?

Looking at Treviso, you know, walking through the market, and thinking this isn’t a town where things go.  In a city things are happening, things are moving, things are going, no one is resting, they’re all trying to go and get something.  Treviso is a town where things stop.  And that’s exactly what’s happened to me in the past year and a half.  I’ve stopped.  And in many ways it’s a great thing.  How many people are coming from an experience in New York City, you know, your careers are taking off, there’s demand for the type of things your doing, you’ve got great contacts, how many people would at that point in their careers, stop?  And take a couple months to explore Europe, which we’ve done, I mean we’ve traveled a lot here, and also kind of reevaluate, and I think there’s a lot of value to that, a lot of value in doing that, and it’s a really really risky move when you think about it.

What are some of the beneficial aspects of this sort of removal?  Is it a sort of discovery as a person and artist, beyond creating new work?

Yes.  The one thing that I did hear that I’d never be able to do in New York or Toronto or anywhere else is stop and focus on one project because it started off as doing it just because, well, it was the easiest thing to do.  I wouldn’t have to bother working on anything new, I could just chill out and do my work, or chill out and enjoy… but in the end it ended up turning into a great thing, I ended up pretty much focusing on one single project since I’ve been here which is this Bluetooth camera phone uploading thing, which is something I’ve always wanted to do.  I mean I did several projects back in New York where we would start with a raw system, basically a blank canvas, and then put some type of device in a public space and ask people to contribute their own personal media and this was something that I loved ever since the piracy days, setting up a BBS server essentially with no files and then you ask people to use it as a place to trade files.  And you get stuff, and you meet people, and you get a community going.  So this was along the same veins as far as setting up a place where people could upload photos in a public space using Bluetooth, share their public media, and through this collection of personal media collected in a public space you get a emergent character of that community which is the thesis behind this whole project.

We’ve shown it in five or six cities now, three continents, we’re presented an academic paper on it in October.  And we just won a wireless art competition in Korea where we’re going to be presenting as well.  And I never would have stopped and worked on just one project if I had another option.  (Laughing)  And that’s what Fabrica is good for.  It takes away your other options.

Tell me more about Bluetooth.  When did you first start working with it?  What’s the goal of your project?

Bluetooth is just the technology.  Really, it’s a lot less Bluetooth and a lot more about personal media.  The idea that so much of our identity, in the digital age, has become digitalized.  Much like we share movies… this is the way I explain it to my family members… our media becomes a common thread in a community.  If I play a Chuck Baker record… if I’m playing a Chuck Baker record in a public space and someone else hears it and he’s like “Hey, I like Chuck Baker too.”  “Hey, that’s amazing,” you know, that’s a connection that happened because of two people being in a single space with a shared thread that’s created through this personal media.  And the same thing happens with file sharing, people post their own collections, this is what Limewire was really good at because you could browse people’s music collections… this kind of transposes those phenomena into camera phone media and in a localized space.  I think the Internet is too big.  I think globalization is a fantastic thing but it’s absolutely worthless if we lose focus on the people around us and the people in our communities so it tries to leverage these connected technologies in a way that refocuses ourselves on the local community.

---

So by putting a screen in a public space and allowing people who pass through that space to be able to upload images from their camera phones to it, not only do you know that the images that have been uploaded have come from people actually with a physical presence in the space, but you get a lot of shared images a lot of images of similar places, similar things… you know, in Treviso we have this goat island, with a bunch of goats… on an island.  For no reason.  But it’s the kind of thing where I bet you every single person in Treviso has a picture on their camera phone of goat island.  And that if you were to share these types of experiences in a public space you’d be able to create new links within that community and over time you’d get, you know, the tag line, the emergent character of that community. That’s something I’m really interested in.  How our collected media is an indicator of our personality.

Cell phone camera is a relatively new invention, and using that as a departure point, what’s the next tool, what’s the next?

Well, I think this project is almost at the end of its life.  This theme of projects… I mean, it still has some validity and will probably be able to be presented a little bit more but I’m really no longer interested in pursuing this kind of stuff because I think we’re almost in the post-period where it’s kind of already happened and been explored almost all that it should be.

That project is dead.  And I think that the next… I mean, who knows what the next technology is, but I think the things that I’m most interested in pursuing are ways to incorporate technology into the every day human experience that doesn’t sacrifice the human experience.  So whatever that’s going to be.

With that said…what are you up to now?

In less than two weeks I move to Bangkok, Thailand where my girlfriend and I will be developing interactive pieces for the new Discovery museum, which is a new history museum that’s being built next year where we’ll be working on eight to twelve exhibitions that we’ll be doing the interactive design for.  At the same time we’re doing two shows in Korea over the next three months, one in November as part of a group Fabrica show, called Waiting for You, which is co-curated by my girlfriend Ann and I’m showing a piece in that.  Then both Ann and I are showing as part of the Connected exhibition at the Art Center Nabi where we won the mobile Asia wireless art competition… and then I’m going to be starting right away on research for my next project which is called The Gadget Maker which is going to be happening next summer in Toronto and it’s basically a departure from this wireless stuff that I’ve been doing, going back to what my real core interest is which is making gadgets, I’m a gadget freak, which is where I draw my creativity from, by creating small, almost pointless objects… so I’m going to be setting up a shop in Toronto for three months and developing some projects, developing some gadgets under the guise of traditional the craftsmen ala jeweler or sculpture, watchmaker…

Why Toronto?

Well, Toronto is my home city.  I’ve been far more interested in establishing myself there as an artist for a couple of reasons, one being that Canada has a lot of good financial support for artists.  This project is being funded almost entirely by the Canadian Arts Council.  The other thing is to be closer to my family, whom I’ve been pretty far away from for the past five or six years, so this will give me a chance to be back home.  And to be back with my friends for a little bit.  As well as I have a lot of faith in Toronto’s arts community and I think it’s blossoming.

---

Were you the kind of kid that took phones and stuff apart when you were younger?

That’s how I got started with all this stuff.  Kind of fearlessly taking stuff apart, and normally not putting them back together.  That’s the hard part.

And I worked at a computer store for a year, basically assembling computers so coming really familiar with… over-coming this fear that people have with electronics, you know, that if you touch it wrong it’s going to explode or something.  This is part of what I want to do with The Gadget Maker project.  I’m going to be developing electronics in a storefront and just like the NiceBots project, people can come in and see the process and the goal is to have them a little more demystified about these kind of cool guts or this magic that happens underneath all these form-fitted polyurethane shells.

Website

http://www.markargo.com

---