thor johnson
about the artist
I am an artist, musician, and photographer, etc., born and raised in Dallas, Texas, USA.
When the United States of America breaks down in widespread civil unrest in the near future, I will become a powerful and dangerous military dictator-style ruler/warlord of some significant area or enclave of the balkanized former USA, and I will rule over the few surviving human apes with an iron fist. My sculptures and photographs are about the physical body of the human apes, the sufferings and the pleasures associated with such a body, the methods that human apes have evolved to survive and attempt to make themselves more comfortable (like fluorescent lighting, air conditioning, and toilets), the spaces that they gather to buy and sell things they need or want, distribution of goods and services, religion, and the way all these things affect and shape the human ape body. I need good servants for my future dictator-state and they need to be physically healthy. A fat and lazy human ape is an inefficient and useless human ape. My interactive audiovisual works deal with archetypes of the human ape's "collective unconscious" mediated through cultural programming memes and technologies. Re-mixable visual and audio components become surprising and frightening oracles - warnings of future possibilities, which awaken the in the human ape the realization that their true nature and purpose is to die in service to me, and that by doing so they will achieve the highest pinnacle of evolution. Hypnotic subliminal suggestions also make the human ape more susceptible to my commands. My narrative animations are a form of psychic surgery or medicine (or, conversely, a psychic injury or infection, depending of the viewpoint of the patient/victim) for various cultural and emotional plagues, affecting or afflicting the human ape on both the conscious and subconscious levels - a mental inoculation or poisoning. These narrative animations also serve to indoctrinate and influence the members of my militia at the deepest and most primitive levels of their human ape minds. I make music with the Didgeridoo, Moog synthesizers, MetaSynth, PureData, Reason, Ableton Live, Balinese flutes and gongs, the Arduino microcontroller, and hand percussion, among other instruments. Influenced by my study of the way human ape consciousness is affected by certain tones and rhythms, the aim of my music is to overwhelm and manipulate the consciousness of the listener (who is merely a human ape, after all). A so-called "transformational ecstatic experience" is induced (similar to fabled "shamanic trance states", but not grounded in or related to any cultural, religious or spiritual dogma), which serves to create the foundations of a new religion and culture based upon me and my obvious right to rule over this world of human apes. |