Straight outta Taipei && from the future yawl!
Way back in September, we welcomed jonCates from the future (Taipei Taiwan Standard Time) as the DOS Punks DAO Artist of the Month.
DOS Punks fam, Bayneko, summed it up nicely, saying, "jonCates is an experimental artist and glitch media master, who uses writings, digital images, films, games, and even colloquial grammar to draw the viewer into his glitch Western universe."
I first bumped into jonCates in sgt_slaughtermelon's Glitch Forge server but didn't start paying close attention until Kentucky Route Zero made a Glitch Western Wednesday appearance! Check out our conversation that follows.
The following is a total copy/pasta from a jonCates Medium post (here).
DOS Punks conversations, Part I
āæodaciouspiratĪ (DOS Punk 856) && jonCates discussion, September 2022
(āæodaciouspiratĪ (DOS Punk 856) && jonCates (The Cowgirl) in conversation)
āæodaciouspiratĪ: howdy jon! The Cowgirl is especially impactful for me for two reasons: there is a remarkable resemblance to DOS Punk 856 that i normally have. and so The Cowgirl imagery became even more memorable because of how it was introduced to me
(https://twitter.com/joncates/status/1524431370864398336?s=20&t=VGbxlnfIpAaXKbELzKQnag)
jonCates: on May 11, 2022, i posted: today is the 1rst Glitch Western Wednesday yawl! ā”āš time to unLock sum secrets, from The Cowgirlā¦ She dreamt of walking to the edge of the worlds again. Datamoshed, she left Kansas Territory that dayā¦ headāN Out West; towards a é¬¼é® (Ghosttown), where she would find herself, inna Glitch Western
(The Cowgirl glitches virtual Spirit Simulator ā jonCates (2022)
You are playing the final/first Interlude of Kentucky Route Zero, The Death of the Hired Manā¦ In game, Emily sits at the bar in The Lower Depths, watching the television, and talking to Carrington. She says: āI was in a movie recently. A western. Kind of. A glitch western.ā
(Kentucky Route Zero ā Cardboard Computer (2011ā2020)
āæodaciouspiratĪ: i went back afterward and did some catching up about how we arrived at the version of KRZ today. i love the haunting misery of the gameās locations and its characters.
(Kentucky Route Zero ā Cardboard Computer (2011ā2020)
jonCates: they credit me with initial inspiration and influence which is very sweet of them and which i appreciate endlessly we made a game together, Jake and Tamas and i, before they made Kentucky Route Zero (KRZ), which they also credit as being how KRZ got started after they had gotten started on KRZ, i began to formalize the structures of my Glitch Western so it becomes a situation where itās all vry interrelated rly when Emily, in KRZ, sits at the bar and says that she was in a Glitch Western she is, in a sense, or from a certain point of view, saying that she (Emily) is Emily Mercedes Rich, who starred in my film é¬¼é® (Ghosttown). which is supersweet kinda easter egg that Jake put into the narrative of KRZ to kinda say that we had been on these paths all along that we were in the same whirlds or that we were crossing over between our whirlds as we had done in reality for so many years togethers
āæodaciouspiratĪ: hell yeah! when i came across that line in your tweet thread, āI was in a movie recently.ā i kind of sat up like āokay ā¦ what have i missed here ā¦ ?ā
jonCates: its buried deep at the end for true believers, like you :)
āæodaciouspiratĪ: The Cowgirl, how did this character and imagery evolve in your work?
jonCates: i could answer in different ways like sum would be rly straightforward direct answers. for instance, in my film i set out to center female characters as well as queer the genre EMR (Emily) is perfect bc she is this person. she is this cowgirl +so i knew i wanted her to be The Cowgirl, the central fictional character in the film i had alrdy been writing for the film, but then when she agreed to do it, i started rly writing specifically for her as The Cowgirl +we were spending alot of time togethers, like a couple times a week, every week. we started to rly zone in on who The Cowgirl is +i think that even tho its an experimental art film, it still has sum traditional narrative structures, where often times, you have a central fictional character. this central character is often a version of the creator of the film, the director or the writer, etc. in this way, The Cowgirl, as played by Emily, is defāly a version of me that we created togethers. she + i mirror each other, esp when we were out shooting on locations Out West all vry intentional
āæodaciouspiratĪ: jC and EMR on location š¤
jonCates: ya! āshootāNā ;) +then to bring it around to the VR +such, im mixing different technological moments. im comparing technological āfrontiersā + industrial revolutions bc weāre living through different industrial revolutions now. Old West era is during a previous industrial revoltion that changes everything in a way that leads to this industrial revolution that weāre living through now. in our current industrial revolution digital is a technological āfrontierā literally and ideologically. this is how we get to California so its like a mix of all this, all of these considerations and motivations + all vry sincere actually, vry much who i rly am
āæodaciouspiratĪ: and this mix is so good. i can feel how itās inextricably intertwined, so i appreciate the time and effort to share some of this with me.
jonCates: theres one other piece of the puzzle that you might like i went to Austria to study Media Art Hystories + got my Masters degree there. my MediaArtHistories program was the 1rst of its kind + i was literally the 1rst person to graduate from it lol! the whole idea in the program was to compare the past, present, futures of Media Art, so i was technically trained in how to do that
āæodaciouspiratĪ: and so thatās how you ended up in Austria? to participate in that degree program? how did you find it?
jonCates: yes, Oliver Grau founded the program, he created it. + i knew his work && was alrdy in communications w/ him etc. so when he started the program i applied. this is active Catholic monastery called Stift Gƶttweig on top of a little mountain is literally where i went to grad school lol
(Stift Gƶttweig Library ā Jorge Royan 2009)
āæodaciouspiratĪ: ā¦you lived there too? āon campusā essentially?
jonCates: sumtimes in the little village below, on the mountain so imagine being there, in that library, studying abt computers, VR, Digital Art, etc. thats what it was like. at a certain pt i also decided to do sumthin weirdy like that, in my own work, in é¬¼é® (Ghosttown), working w/ my own experiences of haunted āAmericanaā
āæodaciouspiratĪ: i have a predisposition to want to experience haunting. and i appreciate your work on both the surface level (it looks cool!) and also for how it makes me feel.
jonCates: thatās high compliment! deeply appreciate it friend
āæodaciouspiratĪ: thank you for continuing to share.
(https://objkt.com/asset/KT1DgWtehNmmQEfJHJKxbJAjJdEcfaUg9T4L/71)
CC0WPUNKs
Gifted by jonCates to DOS Punks DAO members:
Cowpunks, cowpokes, and cowfolks can copypaste, remix, instantiate, fake, flip, rip, steal, invert, modify, distribute, decentralize, decode, recode, recompress, right-click-save, bitcrush, ASCII, ANSI, DOS, punk, phunk, demake, dƩtourne, glitch, game, simulate, imagine, dream, appropriate, abstract, trash, pirate, imitate, flatter, and even celebrate CC0WPUNKs; all without asking permission because permissionlessness is a coreconcept of Dirty New Media digitalPunk and thereby foundational to these here CC0WPUNKs yawl!
(Cowpunks, cowpokes, 'n cowfolks whose spirits instantiate here...)
