| THEODORE
TERBO TERBOLIZARD, aka Terbo Ted, is a freelance new media artist in San
Francisco. Melding his mind with the wonders of computer technology, he creates
a gamut of commercial multimedia products including audio, web design, print
design, interactive media, and textiles. His professional affiliations include
Shag/TL clothing and records, the
TAZ/SPAZ collective,
and Atlas Magazine.
Terbo's work has been featured in books, magazines, websites, festivals, TV shows, radio, and has been on exhibit at: the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, LIMN Gallery, Meridian Gallery, A Gallery, 30 Rose Gallery, 111 Minna Street Gallery, Acme Gallery, (San Francisco); Postmaster's Gallery and CyberSoho (New York). |
| (fabric8)-> when did you start all of this multimedia madness? |
[TERBO] when i was a teenager i saved up a bunch of money and bought a fender telecaster, that was 1983. i spent the next several years teaching myself how to play. at that time i mostly listened to college radio, which was playing punk, new wave, modern rock, funk, etc. so i started on electric guitar. pretty much the same summer, 1983, my family got an old monochrome pc, running DOS. learned how to do word processing,,, and some simple typesetting... my favorites were the games. sometimes i think that our first computer really was the atari 2600 video game we had in the late 70s. |
| (fabric8)-> how did the music and computers begin to mix? |
[TERBO] in 1987 i bought a drum machine and a keyboard synthesizer/sequencer. i was in a band at the time, we were using sequenced patterns in our tunes... and that stuff was all hooked up with MIDI, which is a very simple computer language really. in 89 i got a new mac-in-the-box computer, an SE, and i had a MIDI interface for that, so i could compose arrangements from it. gradually i dropped the guitar, and then a couple of years ago dropped the MIDI equipment and started composing inside of the computer almost exclusively, using samples and software sythesizers. |
| (fabric8)-> you make clothing as well . . . how does that fit in? |
[TERBO] in my mind, any medium works the same to some degree, for example a picture or a sound might be describing the same feeling. clothing is in a way the same as sound or visuals, but it's more essential, you need some every day usually and it has to be functional. i think it's important to be able to control your own environment, the way it sounds, looks, what you're wearing, etc. |
| (fabric8)-> is that how you came up with the idea to integrate graphics and interactive multimedia, too? |
[TERBO] i had it on my mind before it was technically in my hands, i started with my own interactive computer toys in 93, and have been doing it since. i think it was just the possibility of doing it that got me there. i've always made graphics and sounds, so why not combine them. i started working with audio/visual animations, and eventually learned more and more code. |
| (fabric8)-> one could describe your style as psychedelic. did experiences with hallucinogens inspire you at all? |
[TERBO] computers have kind of replaced my psychedelic urges, it stimulates my brain in almost a druglike way, the whole thing that used to be called 'cyberspace'. when i was younger i had numerous psychedelic experiences, so that could be something i'm coming from or referring to when i'm making something. when i was putting together the tracks and running order for my latest CD i was always conscious of how it would flow while peaking--one of my favorite compliments is that someone listened to one of my CDs while they were tripping. |
| (fabric8)-> what were some other inspirations? |
[TERBO] i think mostly it's a reaction against my earlier two CDs. in my mind, when you start putting stuff out, it's more about the packaging and the printing, the actual product you hold in your hands. the original idea was that it wasn't the music that was important but getting an object into peoples' hands. but eventually i'd written so much new material that i was thinking of a double CD. san francisco was a big inspiration, i'd moved out of town for the winter, and when i came back this past spring, i was bursting with creative energy. another big stimulation was getting my own CD burner at the beginning of the year. and obviously, the internet. most of the sounds on the album were found online. |
| (fabric8)-> why is it called "spamming"? |
[TERBO] i always like to give away as many free copies as possible of my CDs. i'd rather that people heard them, as opposed to having to do all this complex accounting and paperwork business tring to make some extra money. so in a way i think of them as business cards, self-promotion. so when i hand a CD to someone, it's like junk mail, bam, you're spammed. it's like an annoying ad campaign. |
| (fabric8)-> what's your most memorable spam experience? |
[TERBO] i think it was called cyberstar 98. this german group set up a mailing list for some art festival they were curating. to unsubscribe, you were supposed to reply to the email. the address they put in the reply field was actually the automated mailing list. started to get some weird unsubscribe and 'fuck you' messages, had no idea why... and then by the weekend it got insane. the germans were on holiday, so they didn't even know what was up. hundreds of people were on the list, and everyone kept trying to unsubscribe, we were all getting dozens and dozens of messages, ranging from 'please stop' to elaborate explanations of what was happening (most people couldn't figure it out on their own). eventually, the emails got pretty interesting because there were a lot of artists on the list, it became this sort of temporary forum. we were speculating that the germans were doing it as performance art, but later we realized that they had simply made a really bad mistake. i'd decided to call my third CD "spamming" quite a ways before that, and that cyberstar experience nailed it down.
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