Fall 2022 Home Archived Issues Switch Journal on Scholarworks

SWTICH Issue 31, Fall 2022

Interview Issue: A History of the Metaverse

Banner Design, Vanessa Rivera: Vanessa Rivera Design Contributions: Richer Fang, Rosa Salangsang, Vanessa Rivera © artists retain copyright

Interview with Don Hanson

Credits

Abstract

This article, Interview: Joel Slayton is just that, an interview with CADRE Founder Joel Slayton.

Bio

d0n.xyz (Don Hanson) is a designer, electronic musician and Internet artist known for creating experimental websites and establishing New Art City, the virtual art space for digital exhibitions. His artworks include a tool for creating interactive music videos, a browser extension that covers your window with plants, a tracker for an autonomous robot released in the desert, an AR geolocation game that simulates the TOR network, and several types of video synthesizers. From 2009-2020 he ran the electronic music label Gridwalk, and is currently working on a new series of generative art that doubles as a live AV performance tool. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Art in America, SXSW, and CBC radio. Find his projects online at

  • https://d0n.xyz

    • Article Body

    Rhonda Holberton  00:00

    So can you just tell us who you are and like how you self identify and like where you're based?

     

    Don Hanson  00:05

    Sure. My name is Don Hanson. As an artist, I go by the name d0n.xyz. And I'm an internet artist primarily making new media works that are connected to the World Wide Web. I run a virtual gallery and DIY online art space called New Art City (NAC). The website is newart.city. And I'm currently based in New York City. And I moved recently from the Bay Area where I lived for 14 years.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  00:36

    So what is your earliest memory that you have of working with art and or technology?

     

    Don Hanson  00:42

    I was exposed to a lot of educational video games, really early on, we had a computer in the house ever since I can remember. And so I spent a lot of time in virtual spaces and playing with user interfaces from a very young age. And when I grew up, at least, and started doing design, as a visual and graphic designer. I found joy in producing interactive experiments, similar to game design. And I always wanted to create interactivity using code and my path kind of transitioned from just being a designer that creates images into somebody who can create interactivity and explore ideas using code. And that was kind of my early experience, like when I was graduating college, creating interactive prototypes and internet art experiments. But at that time, I didn't really know it was internet art. I didn't know internet art existed or was the thing. I was just doing experiments online. And when I became exposed to contemporary art, and learned about new media, art, and internet art, I realized that that's what I had been doing and moving towards the entire time. And so I kind of re-focused my branding and portfolio and energy towards engaging with contemporary art, and working as an Internet artist and connecting with the global Internet art community. Does that work?

     

    Rhonda Holberton  02:58

    Beautiful? Yeah, perfect. So I'm going to ask an interesting, special question that wasn't in the list. But I think you kind of identified one of the projects that you well, let's just be fully transparent, like you came to San Jose State as a part of that trajectory, right to, to get an MFA. And one of the projects that we had talked about in the early days of your tenure, there was a kind of visualization of that kind of history of internet art. Can you kind of talk about your conceptualization of that project? And then maybe we can use that as a way to kind of talk about how you found your way to New York City itself? Yeah.

     

    Don Hanson  03:42

    Yeah, totally. So when I first started engaging with the internet, art, and new media art, I didn't have all the information that I needed. And I started a research project called found you online, which is a website that's a database for new media art. And in the process of making this database, I was able to gather enough information about things like, what is actually happening in new media, or what's historically important, who's active right now. But this is like new media art is a niche. But I wanted to go deeper into a sub niche of internet art because that information is also kind of hard to find, like there's kind of only one major database and that's the rhizome art base, but it's not as user friendly as I wanted that information to be.* And that project never really came together because while it was in the planning phases, the pandemic started and a new art city became my focus. It kind of came out of this, like the rapid immediate need to have an online exhibition space, which is somewhat related to a place for Internet artists to post their work. But it wasn't specific to URL based artworks. It was more for all artworks that can be digitized or digital artworks.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  05:54

    So do you want to talk a little bit about the kind of early conceptualization you kind of gave us an orientation? So what did the deployment look like? And yeah, can you set up some kind of a framework for us there?

     

    Don Hanson  06:07

    Yeah. Prior to starting work in New York City, I had been experimenting with 3d in the browser for a couple years. Just kind of like visual experiments and trying to learn how three Jas works. And three, Jas is this software framework that's open source that is the most popular rendering engine for 3d on the web. There's a lot of other frameworks that are built upon it like a frame, for example. And so my experiments with three Jas kind of gave me a very, very basic understanding of how to render 3d in the browser. And when it came time to make a prototype for a virtual art gallery, I just followed some really basic examples on the three Jas website like a first person controller. And I kind of made my own script for randomly distributing artworks within this space. And as soon as you could, like, have a first person view and a 3d space and have artworks that were uploaded into it, that was a really exciting experience, especially because the other options for doing that at the time were pretty limited or non-existent or not customizable. So being able to create something that felt personalized, and fast and easy, was a great motivator, motivator, because people were excited about it.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  07:45

    And so, that kind of developed out of a very specific need, and really quickly, right? Because you had already iterated on this idea. There's a few features that have developed since the initial kind of conception. Do you want to talk a little bit about the evolution of New York City since that kind of pandemic lockdown experience? Yeah. So

     

    Don Hanson  08:14

    The North City project started out as just a way to view artworks in a 3d space. And then the first major priority after that prototype was to include multiplayer features. Because, personally, the most exciting part of an art exhibition is actually attending it and seeing other people and having a social experience discussing the art. And I wanted to make sure that people felt like these virtual events were actually events and not just a website that you can go to anonymously and without any interaction with other people. So in order to get that first step, I brought on Benny and Martin as like the first two collaborators, and it was just the three of us three developers working for a long time, like trying pretty much trying to work as fast as we possibly could. It was really an unsustainable pace. But there was a lot of excitement around the project and we wanted to build as fast as possible and create something especially because people were using it. And after multiplayer, we started building a content management system on top of the 3d space. And this was allowing people to upload All artworks. And as soon as you could upload artworks, we started seeing all sorts of random weird files that couldn't render in the 3d space. So we started implementing all the different file types that could be uploaded, such as images, videos, audio files, multi channel synchronization of videos. 3d models, of course, 3d models formed the basis for architecture and like the placements of virtual spaces. And after a while, we implemented live streams. So people can give artists talks or presentations or performances in the 3d space. And that contributes, again, more to the feeling of being there. And having an event that's only happening at a certain time. A huge part of this project is, is really just making an intuitive user interface for developing 3d spaces. Because developing a 3d space, if you're writing the code for that, it could take weeks or months. But we wanted to bring that down to like, days or hours or minutes. Do something that is helpful for artists and people who don't like code or want to know how to code and just create a really easy user interface for making these 3d spaces.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  11:34

    Beautiful answer, yeah, really exciting. I love also thinking about your priority as being, you know, just get it done and, you know, make it as easy as possible for artists to get work uploaded. Right? And part of that was probably just how we create a space for folks who have lost spaces during COVID. But I think also, you know, just as kind of a startup kind of culture that there's like, there's that kind of, you know, yeah, impetus and drive to get something something built. And the fact that it was kind of browser based, and the architecture is what it is like you had access to the error messages. And so allowing there like the bugs to kind of guide the development process, I think is really interesting, because in many ways, anybody uploading exhibitions at that time, were your beta testers, right? Like that was, and one of the things that you were really generous about was working with us at San Jose State, which I might talk about in a second. But maybe we can talk about, like other platforms that you might have been looking at, or, you know, because you had been kind of working through a history of new media art. Were there others like historical platforms or other platforms that existed? contemporary? Like, at the same time that you were looking at and guiding, you know, some of your design decisions?

     

    Don Hanson  13:01

    I guess maybe no, no. Like, there were some, there are some 3d virtual gallery builder tools that existed when we started. I don't really want to name who they are, because I don't think they were very good. I don't want to name names about time.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  13:22

    Or maybe you can like, Yeah, talk about general features rather than specific platforms. Yeah.

     

    Don Hanson  13:31

    I guess the sort of design, like the category of what a new art city is, is actually just a website builder. And there's plenty of other tools in this space, like there's been, What You See Is What You Get editors out there for a very long time. And having worked as a web designer and a web developer, I've been working in these tools since the beginning of my career, and have been building websites, and content management systems, and tools for generating web pages for a long time. And the major shift here is just that instead of building a 2d webpage, this is outputting a 3d web page.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  14:22

    I actually think that's really interesting. Like that framing of this is not necessarily like a world building toolkit, but that it's a website. I think that this is really fascinating to think about. And yeah, I think it guides a lot of the decisions like now kind of thinking about, especially some of the UI and back end. I think that principle makes a ton of sense. Thinking about

     

    Don Hanson  14:53

    1. Yeah. Like if we put ourselves in the category of like, Squarespace and Tumblr and WordPress. And Wix and all of these site builder tools that offer some sort of flavor of, like, a website that comes out. New York City is a type of website builder, but as a theory D website, just is a big it's a big step, I guess, in content management system design. Yeah, yeah.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  15:31

    But it also leaves, you know, the blank canvas rather than getting too fussy in like, the kind of 3d Canvas space itself, right, like you let the users have a lot of control over that. And then maybe part of that to the workflow, using other 3d, you know, building tools, because they have that, like, you know, not reinventing the wheel so much is like, creating a layer on top of it that can extend and enhance. That's a really, really fascinating way to think about it. So maybe this distinction is, so there's like two ways to think about my next question. It was kind of written to think about the differences between like an in person exhibit, right, this was kind of developed as a, it's in many ways to fulfill a need for the lack of the in person exhibition, but also has kind of created a world unto its own. So act like a post pandemic lockdown, right, starting to, you know, you're continuing to build and continuing to expand. So what do you think, you know, some of these benefits of, you know, the this kind of format could be, you can think about that lots of different ways, the benefits of both like web 3d, but also the benefits of some of the toolkits and the discoverability features that you've implemented on top of that as well.

     

    Don Hanson  16:57

    Yeah, the reason to build and use a virtual space has morphed a lot over the past three years. The initial reason was, of course, because we couldn't have any physical exhibitions. And so everybody, regardless of if you work in virtual, or online or physical, or a museum, everybody had to do online exhibitions, there was no choice. So that was a huge driver for innovation very quickly. And it gave us exposure and feedback to all of these different points of view within the art world of what people need and what they want. And

     

    Rhonda Holberton  17:46

    by integrating

     

    Don Hanson  17:47

    their feedback, and learning what all of these different user types needed, we built out a tool that was pretty flexible for both individuals and organizations, and educators and all of these different user types. And as the world outside of the virtual space has changed, the organizations that have typically and historically run in person exhibitions are very eager to get back to their version, their in person exhibitions. Because that's what they're good at. They have an audience and they have a space. So those organizations have been working less in the virtual space, now that they're able to do physical exhibitions. But we still see some physical organizations using virtual space to reach a wider audience and to explore concepts and ideas that they couldn't do in person, as well as work with artists who are situated in different parts of the world. And so the growth of the toolkit has also attracted artists who are more interested in working in non physical environments. And this benefits both artists who are making digital media that doesn't show very well in a physical Gallery, and it shows very well in a virtual space. And also artists who just want to experiment with virtual space and create like, completely unrealistic environments and like even small small games, or interactive spaces, and it's kind of unlocked this sort of new medium. And we're seeing a lot of interest from these individual artists who want to experiment with this new space.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  19:53

    Awesome. And I'm gonna switch some questions around a little bit right now just because I think it's up nicely on what you were just Talking about. Um, is there an exhibit in New York City that stands out to you? And are there kinds of features in that exhibit that exemplify some of the things that we're just talking about these kinds of new concepts or new ways of working that have become unlocked because of the platform?

     

    Don Hanson  20:19

    This one is really hard to answer, because there's so many exhibitions.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  20:26

    But you could also like, approach it as like a piecemeal, right, like bits and pieces to

     

    Don Hanson  20:32

    Yeah. The ones that I like to use in examples, as examples and share are the ones where the artists really, really used all of the features in the way that they were intended to be used and did a really great job with the both the quality of the work and like the focus of the idea that they're presenting. Because New York City is web based, there's a limit to how much content you can put on one space, because of its bandwidth and its load times. And my favorite spaces are focused on one idea that's executed in a very, I guess, masterful way that shows their artistry that shows their aesthetics. And it shows, usually some sort of, like concept that goes with the work, tangible data. The Baron Long chain was probably the first exhibition that was created, start to finish by an individual without any help from the New York City team. And we were, we were really impressed. And this is a really great example of something that somewhat resembles a physical space, but also kind of breaks the laws of reality a little bit. It's like floating, floating sculptures, and images that are like draped over objects. Another one that I really like to share with people is called Eat me. Let me get, let me get to it.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  22:32

    This is the former MFA student at Berkeley.

     

    Don Hanson  22:37

    I didn't know she was a former athlete, and if a student , the show eat me by Alice Yan Jiang is a really excellent example of a conceptual space in a new art city. That takes you on a journey. And it's a simulation of being digested where the stomach is consuming media from the internet.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  23:04

    Love it. Yeah, I mean, every time I add one of my favorite assignments to give, and this is like, you know, outside of the interview, anybody transcribing this, cut this part out. But one of my favorite things to do with students is assign them things like, go out into the wild in New York City, and come back with like, what are the exhibitions that you like? What are successful, like, constantly asking them to do something that I started initially out of the internship class, which is like, like a feature based analysis? Like, what are the features of New York City that support this particular artwork? And then also, like, what are the features of the artwork that are particularly well suited, you know, an exhibition on New York City? And I think, you know, that's evolved a lot like the ways that we've started to think about exhibitions, not just as like a replication of the gallery, but like that, something else has become unlocked as well, like, given some of the ones that are like harder to to necessarily navigate to remember where you are, but or, like, you know, where you've allowed folks to fly through that kind of 360 exploration is also such an interesting for certain pieces, I think such an interesting way, like to deploy the artwork with nonlinear, it doesn't actually matter where you are, because the entire thing is about the experience of exploring and kind of being lost and, and finding, right, and I think that that, that is something that exhibitions, you know, physical exhibitions, because the limited space or like even if there are larger institutions, they want things to be more navigable. And I think that that kind of loss of ground isn't so exciting and that's something that I hadn't really kind of thought about, necessarily, because even in gameplay I think you know, there's very few examples. Maybe flow where like loss of ground is really kind of expertly deployed.

     

    Don Hanson  25:07

    Yeah. That was a little. I just wanted to mention that point, also not for the interview, but like water levels and video games where you're like swimming. Like those are, like, usually the most hated levels, because it's hard to control. But it's like, they're, it's, it's almost like a water level when you're flying through virtual New York City space. But it's like, not frustrating, because you're not trying to avoid enemies or anything.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  25:43

    Right? What will I mean, like, once you give yourself over to it, right? Yeah. And I feel like if I'm not like, you know, in those spaces, where it's you generally like a little bit more cacophonous and you know, again, things are kind of oriented so that it doesn't really matter which way you're facing, I think the more successful, the ones where I'm like, I truly lose, like the executable function, you know, is my brain where I'm like, Okay, now I'm just, I'm just awash in this space. Yeah, it's really interesting to think about, like, yeah, that is not necessarily an object obstacle environment, where Yeah, it's, there's something else that's kind of unfolding and happening. Okay,

     

    Don Hanson  26:23

    I want to point to one other space that is related to that. One other space that I really love is called crypto roots. And this show is curated by Albert Burke, drawn as part of sonar plus d, which is an experimental music festival in Barcelona. But this is a really excellent example of a group show in New York City. That also rejects physical reality and lets you fly through the space where every piece in this group is at the end of a route extending from a giant tree in the center. And the space is awesome, because it uses the environment in a really effective way, because you're flying. There's even little birds flying nearby. And it uses the fog in New York City to always show you just at the end, at the end of your vision, there's something that there's something else that you can go to, to encourage exploration.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  27:36

    And like using a functional component of the platform, the fog is almost like a navigation feature or an indicator. That's really cool.

     

    Don Hanson  27:49

    Right? Yeah, my favorite. 

     

    Rhonda Holberton  27:51

    I don't think I've seen that.

     

    Don Hanson  27:53

    Yeah. My favorite projects use the limitations as a feature rather than fight against

     

    Rhonda Holberton  28:01

    1. Beautiful soundbite. I'm just gonna name it. Now in the transcript, anybody coming back to do edit, work, use that. Alright, so. Alright, so I think maybe time for one. One ish, more questions. So one of the things that's going to be hard to avoid, you know, moving forward, right, just because of the kind of commonality of the phrase, the metaverse right now, and the kind of popularization by Mark Zuckerberg and other kinds of social media platforms. Web 3d has been around for a long time. The concept of the metaverse has been around for a long time. What are the conversations like, how do you position yourself next to that term? And how do you see it kind of being deployed? And do you? Are you interested in some of the conversations developing out and around from the current usage of the term metaphors?

     

    Don Hanson  29:04

    Yeah, this is a really tricky question. So as the metaverse idea gained popularity as a marketing term, early last year, there's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about what it is. There's a lot of people with a basic understanding of just a video game space or virtual space as being equal to A Metaverse where there's actually a long history of research and ideas about what a true Metaverse connected virtual space could be. And I believe that eventually there will be some open source connective libraries for virtual spaces to have this sort of federated ecosystem where they can all connect to each other and certain elements can move between spaces fluidly. But we're kind of a long way away from that. And that idea of a true interconnected Metaverse is not how most people understand the term. So at Newport city, we don't use the term Metaverse to describe what we're doing, because it's not even close to being interconnected to other virtual spaces. And as soon as that's possible, and as soon as we have tools to connect to other spaces, and other platforms and other ecosystems, that will be a really interesting thing to try. But because the term Metaverse is so confusing for people, and there's a lot of sentiment that equates Metaverse with crypto, which also has its own very controversial views. We don't use the term Metaverse with New York City, unless we're having this sort of conversation.

     

    Rhonda Holberton  31:22

    You know, I think that's a really interesting and useful definition and kind of declaration, actually, and one of the things you know, because my last interview was with a developer who was working in 3d web environments in the 90s. And I think I told you, you know, like the team was prescribed before they even like came on board, you know, to read Snow Crash, and like they actually were thinking about, they use fiction, you know, where metal, the, the term metaphor verse was coined, right with, with wisdom literature and using fiction as a way to conceive of an environment that was not yet built. And one of the things that kind of came up in the discussions with the developer was like, that was a useful framing mechanism. But you know, the way that the developer was thinking was very much in terms of like, what are the possibilities of the kind of a tech tech platform right now, in order to do this? What would we need to do? And so that the kind of times get like, it was a useful tool, that expansive thinking but their timescale? You know, when I when I asked them, you know, what, what, at the time, what were you imagining the metaverse would look like today, you know, because I, you know, I was a developer, you know, like three months cycles or, you know, it's very differently. But at the same time, in the start of the conversation, you acknowledge the usefulness of speculative or more artistic based thinking as an artist, but then you find your way towards the development of this platform. What are the ways you approach NAC as an artist, but also as an engineer, and now as a founder? How do you see these skills kind of circulating and kind of interacting with one another, as you're thinking about New York City's future?

     

    Don Hanson  33:27

    the future and development plans for New York City are always guided by what we, I guess, call our mission and our like, reasons for doing it in the first place, which is to create better tools for digital artists solve problems for digital artists, and create a space that's accessible to everybody, both for creators and for visitors who have maybe never even went into a virtual space before. And so I tried to be aware of literature around virtual spaces and prior art and other platforms, but I don't actually look too closely at them for how we define our roadmap, because everybody has different goals. Every project has different goals. And we shouldn't be trying to mimic or keep up with other projects or create something that somebody else dreamed up because that's not related to our goals. And so the development when we're thinking about what to build next, it's always like, how do we make it easier for people? How do we support artists? And how do we make it more fun?

     

    Rhonda Holberton  35:05

    Beautiful. Another wonderful soundbite there. Thanks. So I want to give you your time back. I know, you know, we still got started a little bit late, but this has been so fun. You know, like, I think, you know, since I've been a part of this, like so closely, haven't really pulled back and asked some, you know, some of these questions with you. So it's actually really informative and really fun for me to listen to your answers, which is a really good sign, I think it means that our readers will also be really interested to cool. Yay. Thank you, Don. Thank you so much. And I'll send out the edited version of both the video and the text for you to take a look at let me know. Thank you


    References:


    Media

    Video Recording of the Interview with Firstname Lastname, Conducted November 28, 2022

    Kewords

    metaverse, exhibitions, virtual art, media, space

    Disciplines

    Discipline 1; Discipline 2; Discipline 3