Listen to MP3 Commentary by
Pete Moraites and Eric Scott
(Salvador Dalek)

SPELLING TEST

This, to me, is where all the things I do come together… the photography, video, drawings, writings, etc.

I’m a musical visualist (and by the way I compose, I’m a visual musician).

I remember being nine years old and listening to Mike Oldfield albums through headphones, laying on the floor and making movies in my mind. I played with action figures while listening to music as soundtrack for my adventures… or humming and “durr durdur durr durdur durr”’ing my own made up tunes. The same while drawing pictures.
The birth of MTV was as seminal a moment in my childhood as the first time I saw Star Wars.

In ’95 I found RES, and discovered an art world I hadn’t known existed. I saw music and video and animation married together in forms which spoke beyond the commercial promotion of a band. Paintings in motion with sound. I had found something I wanted to do.

And I wanted to get paid for it.

I spent the next ten years of my life devouring this kind of work everywhere I could find it… events, books, magazines. Teaching myself constantly, lying my way into jobs for more experience. One day I’d get hired to do whatever I wanted to imagine for a piece of music I loved and with a budget! One day I was gonna make enough money to be able to start making my own stuff. One day I was gonna make enough money to be able to start making my own stuff.
One day I got tired of waiting to get paid to do what I like.

In 2000 I traveled to Tokyo to participate in one of the first Tomato workshops. In 2001 I attended another in NYC. These two events began to shift my thinking about creativity. I began to remember the real reasons for its appeal. I started to pay more attention to process than to result.
My relationship to everything shifted more and more in this time. The world was looking weirder and weirder and things I’d taken as given for so long didn’t make sense anymore.

In 1999 I saw Fight Club. American Beauty was the same year and the movies are nearly identical in theme and structure. I think I first became aware of this when I noticed the parallel scenes of the main characters extorting their employers to support their new directions in life. Both spoke to me, but Fight Club stayed with me. Haunted me, not in a spooky sense, but in a constantly whispering in my soul kinda sense. “You are not your things.”

In 2001, I gave away (nearly… and I do mean nearly) all my material possesions, and I moved from NYC to California. I spent 9 months in Orange County bankrupting my finances in a business which I could “retire after only TWO years with residual income for life to support my dreams!! Between these two processes, my life began to transform.During my great giveaway phase, I purchased nothing other than food for about two months. By the time I went to a mall to start acquiring clothing again, it was a very, VERY strange place to me.

I’m going to focus this ramble a bit.

Most of this work I’ve done in place of watching television. All of it I did with whatever I had available to me.

I’m suddenly remembering something from high school. A few friends asked me why I’d chosen to major in art in college rather than acting. I said something to the effect of “ as an actor I still need a stage, an audience and a role to play. As an artist all I need is a surface to mark and something to mark it with”. I’m not sure I believe that in the same way any more… acting is as much a shamanic process as any other form of expression. Looking at some of the drama I’ve created in my life, I can definitely see a value in saving some of it for stage or for tape. Besides, college is as totally fucked as high school unless you’re just there to get laid. For the money, there’s better things you can do you your time and still get laid.

Didn’t I say I was gonna focus this ramble?

So most of the work on this site was created with whatever tools I had access to at the moment. Paper, pens and thoughts. A digital camera was one of the best things I ever acquired. I took photos constantly… thousands (now tens of) and stitched them together or cut them up and moved them around (most people have some kinda software pre-loaded on their home computer which can do this stuff).

I always wanted to make music. A friend gave me a copy of a music program (which I eventually purchased since I’m not openly advocating piracy even though it seems culturally sensible to me that great creative tools be available for people to create with even if the “cost” for the software is needed to pay rent and eat. If a young Picasso of the digital video era downloads a software package and a serial number and then revolutionizes a culture, does anyone really think that such a person is criminal?)
Wow. So much for focus. OK, ramble on…

So I got this music software and just started playing with it. Clueless, really. But I was just as clueless when I tried to play “Myst” a bunch of years ago… and this was far more rewarding. I logged hours on it like my gamer friends, but instead of racking up points or ranking, I racked up loops, atmospheres, and eventually songs.
And then I started fitting it all together. And the aspect of play has since permeated my life more and more.
I’m wrapping it up now, for those of you still reading:

Stop Shopping
Stop Watching TV
…and see what you begin to do