I’ve interviewed many people: artists, scientists, musicians, billionaires, chefs, AI pioneers, sexperts, vibration analysts (unrelated to previous profession), entrepreneurs, cosmonauts, and specialists of-all-kinds. Here are some interview quotations that reassured me that I was onto a story…
‘So basically, I couldn’t afford to work in the nuclear weapons business anymore.’
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‘At one point, we might end up with something sentient.’
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‘Who would play me in the movie? I’m just one of the rescue guys who came at the end. So maybe someone from Baywatch?’
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‘If AI could impersonate Elvis and even win on my favourite show, America’s Got Talent, I got the idea we would be able to use the same deep GAN-based framework to do synthetic animal testing.’
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‘Numbers just add up: The fact I’ve written over 50 scientific articles only means I am old.’
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‘But these brain cells have nothing to think about: there’s no input or output. And this actually gave me the idea: let’s give them input and output. And that’s what we’ve been busy with for the last three years.’
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‘Do I think I’m Dr Frankenstein? No, I self-identify more as an eccentric professor.’
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‘After crashing six startups and burning through millions and millions of dollars, you only get more aware of the gravity of the situation.’
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‘In a way, our ultimate job is to make ourselves obsolete. By looping in our discoveries over time, the algorithm will eventually become so accurate, it won’t need the human element.’
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‘I am a professor of organised fun.’
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‘A shareable vocabulary is not only essential for colleagues but also for customers. No one trusts something that comes out of a machine – at first anyway.’
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‘Hey, get this: there’s no money in the terror game. We’re really doing this for world peace.’
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‘Whether her going into Jupiter’s cage was premeditated in the sense that she thought Jupiter would kill her, I don’t know.’
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‘I got chips and root beer. That’s pretty much it.’
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‘We’re building a jungle. Then maybe we’ll let some monkeys loose and see what happens.’
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‘Whisky. Back porch. Saws and spoons. You know.’
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‘Leeches get really worked up before a storm, so if you attach bells to them you’ve got yourself a pretty good barometer.’
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‘I wouldn’t call him paranoid. He’s more of an observer of society. And since he’s been high for so long, he has a very interesting philosophy on observing society.’
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‘No, it has nothing to do with self-sufficiency or survival anymore. Now it’s more about voodoo.’
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‘Have you noticed that there are so few Mercedes here? That means it’s an honest place.’
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‘And then the tank driver said to my blind Opa: ‘No way, old man, we’re not American. We’re fucking Canadian!’’
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‘So now if you want to know something about bathhouses in Amsterdam – I wouldn’t know why but just imagine – you now have in one handy place all the articles on bathhouses since 1840. And it’s the same with murder and manslaughter. Very handy.’
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‘André Hazes is a legend and a hero. He’s our Biggie Smalls… No, he’s our Tupac!… Yes, our Tupac!… André was actually black, but you know how the history books always change everything.’
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‘Near equator on rafts. Floating seven days with no help. Little breakfast. Little lunch. Little water. Much sun.’
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‘I was collecting records: jazz, avant-garde, experimental stuff. People brought their tapes, and they did crazy things – sometimes pretty sadistic, actually, in terms of treating their cats as instruments. One night, a friend of mine was playing the Moonlight Sonataby Beethoven. Another held up a portrait of the great composer, and the third started to use a drill on it. There was a riot in the audience. It was very nihilist, modern and inspirational in a way.’
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‘At that time, we were using this solvent in very high concentrations. So we could only work with it during the weekend because of the smell. One Saturday, I remember asking someone to go get us some coffees, but he couldn’t walk because the rubber of his shoes had partially dissolved and he was glued to the floor.’
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‘Anything I’ve left out? Oh yeah: Curling is making a comeback.’
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‘Well, most modern Satanism is post-Aleister Crowley. But I use it as a broad term that is really a form of questioning things. I don’t worship anything. I just have questions… Questions such as: WHY? WHY THE FUCK AM I?’
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‘After the war, my grandmother had a club in Soho called La Cave, which ran until my step-grandfather murdered his girlfriend and hung himself – to put it politely. You know: a bit of murder-suicide back in the family. So that put an end to the first family disco…”
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‘They just want to realise their goal of flying into space. So, of course, sometimes they try to cover up their true psychological condition…’
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‘I am equally inspired by reading Russian folktales as I am by eating German marzipan.’
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‘If there were more stupid people than smart ones, then the world would have ended a long time ago.’
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‘No, I never dreamed of going to outer space. Never. Because for me it was impossible. People who studied aviation were rich people. I cleaned shoes and I was an orphan and I was black. It never crossed my mind – even when I could see the military aircraft from the American base in Guantanamo. Sometimes I threw stones at them but I never thought of piloting one.’
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‘If you want to join the outlaw motorcycle club, you got to hang around, man! It’s as simple as that with whatever you’re into. Just go there. Maybe you’re into macramé and you want to be down with the top crew of aunties making string plant-holders. So, you go to a convention and you start a conversation. You just put yourself in the way.’
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‘I remember years ago coming to Amsterdam and seeing two men walking down the street arm in arm and going ‘Wow, what a great city!’ Okay, it turned out to be a cop and a guy in handcuffs, but my sentiment was real.’
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‘If this contamination comes from the reigning culture through the media, academia, books… For example, there is still a bookstore in the middle of Belgrade that sells these ridiculous books about the Jewish plot against the Serbs, or ‘The Life and Styles of General Mladic’. So if you have this garbage just flourishing and officially backed by the army and secret services and it just spreading naturally, via for example, people talking on buses about what they saw on TV last night, it becomes obvious that you have to formulate a counter-statement by those who don’t agree with this. Also, if a people can be systematically contaminated with dangerous ideas, tools can be invented that promote culture in a cross-border sense. And therefore, we needed a meeting place that could represent this alternative. A place where people could see it, touch it, interact with it.’ (R.I.P. Borka Pavićević, founder of the Centre for Cultural Decontamination)
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‘The reason why taboos exist is that society regards human bodies as an object that needs to be disciplined. By disciplining human bodies, society is able to control individuals. Sexual organs are the most untamable part of human body. It’s the nature of our sexual organs to be free, untamed and to do what they will. This is also why the control over the human body centers on the control of genitals. But I believe bodies belong to individuals, not to society. And that’s why I want to be a macho man that subverts tradition.’
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‘I am in and out of the hospital these days. Diabetes is something I share with most of our food-reviewing colleagues. Except, of course, for that scrawny little woman who doesn’t seem to even like food but writes about it anyway…’
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‘Enjoy! Be entertained by the social games you play! Look 360 degrees around you! Learn! Then unlearn! Yoga’s good: it brightens up every cell! There are no endings, just etceteras! Always be in a process! Stay curious! Smell the mutation in the air! Be a generalist, not a specialist! Enter new houses! Stay surprised! Be in wonder! Everything is allowed! Don’t kill time, make time! Keep your own street clean! Regard every pain as a growing pain! Stay flexible! Read Walt Whitman – he’s the Opa of hip! Trust life! Actually, trust is good but it’s also good to stay a bit suspicious, since it’s just getting more and more about the survival of the fittest out there…’
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‘I do have my cat Flo Rider as sole employee. Unfortunately, he’s fucking useless. He’s in charge of sitting down and licking his ass. He doesn’t bring much to the table. But it must be said he did bring in three rabbits in the last year – two dead and one alive. The living one we kept for a while and called him Dennis Hopper. He loved tangerines. Is that enough of a company description?’
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‘The coffin racks were perfect to store our rolls of materials.’
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‘The other syndicates wore their fancy sailing glasses and foul weather gear and a bunch of fancy sailing paraphernalia. And we had this pig waving on top of our mast.’
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‘I went in through the wrong door and ended up in their production area. Fibers were flying everywhere, and I thought, “What is this insanity?!?” It was like walking into a huge spider’s web – and in a way that’s how it’s been: once you’re in, you can’t get out…’
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‘Each day had new customers and new projects. One day we’d work on ballistic skins or sailcloth, and the next day would be airships and flexible circuitry. The day after would be heart valves and submarines.’
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‘How do you recreate that organic sense of chaos? It’s all about the slub…’
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‘It was an hour ride to Sousse to get to a doctor. I lost a lot of blood. I was already against the system. But getting shot inspired me to become a true combatant. A soldier for independence.’
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‘After we won the America’s Cup, I was full of champagne and bravado, and a young female reporter approached me to ask what it felt like to win. And of course, since I was a little uninhibited, I said, “It feels like having a thousand orgasms all at once!”’
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‘I am paranoid by training. By working with the US government, you get that way for many reasons…’
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‘The thing about selling a Picasso and a Monet is you don’t want to watch the actual auction. Either way, you’re gonna cry. I’m gonna cry if the paintings don’t sell. And if the paintings do sell, I am gonna cry because I love them and they’re leaving.’
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