Are you planning to stay here? San Francisco, United States?

At least a little while longer..I like being at Quokka because I get plenty things to do I wouldn’t get from any other company. And if I wasn’t doing that, I would be doing my own stuff. I actually wanna get back into teaching again. Maybe I go back to University and teach.

What do you mean by ‘back’? Have you been teaching?

Ya, I have been teaching. I teach now, too.

Where? At CCAC?

I teach at a computer college down in the city, and I teach with Linda Weinman, too. I taught when I was in college, design classes.. What I’d really like to do is, find some school, start a new media department..

Why not starting a company?

I don’t want to do business. It’ll be tricky, I’d like to find.. I don’t know, we’ll see..

Josh Ulm about being on Haight Street, comparing the ’68 movement to Todays internet development: “The people in the age group, and the things they were trying to do.. They were trying to take music, and do music differently. They were trying to show people that there is more.. that you can really communicate with it, that they can bring people together. And thats kinda what people like you and I are trying to do with the internet now.

Thats definitely what I try to do with REMEDI, show people that you can do something differently, it doesn’t have to be ‘brochures on the web’, you can communicate, you can make people laugh, cry do all this stuff. Doesn’t have to be just information design, it can be emotional, too! To a degree there is a lot of similarity there. I mean it’s completely different, now it’s based around a much different business model, but even than [1968] music was a business model as well..

Ya, some people are always making money.. drugs was a business too!

They still are.. that hasn’t changed.

What’s the schedule for the next REMEDI?

You are up for three month. So April 1st. but I am gonna archive them. All the stuff thats been in there before is still sitting in there.. Shannon and Future Farmers had a piece in there before, all that stuff..

Are you involved with hiring at Quokka?

..Finding flash artists is hard.

Why? It’s really not a complicated program!

It’s not, but it’s new! Plus it’s real storytelling now. All these designers come from print, so they are not used to doing dynamic design, they used to doing static, flat design. So to ask them now to do sth. with animation or with moving type or sth. like that is difficult for them, and they are not good at it yet. So finding really good people is difficult!

Who do you respect, who’s your hero?

Thats fun.. Ahmm, my dad..

Work wise!

Interactive media, I think, no one is good at it yet. No one really understands it well, nonlinear storytelling. And that’s what I am interested in! More than all this design stuff and interface stuff, I am interested in telling stories and I am interested in interactivity. Those are the only two things I really care about. And there is no-one who is doing that right now.. who I think is really like saying, ‘this is new’, ‘this is different’, ‘this is how’.. we gonna start to play with that!

Peter Cholsky is one of the closest to doing that. So who I really look to is story tellers, cause I don’t think anyone does interactive well, ahmm, and for storytellers I still look at film, cause film in my mind is one of the most elegant ways to tell stories now. It’s definitely one of the most beautiful.. And me, being a visual person, thats what I kinda relate to.

And there are lots of film makers that turn me on! Wim Wenders, actually is one of my favorites. I studied Wim a lot when I was in college.. Oliver Stone I am also a big fan of. He’s one of those people who really thinks about every moment. When I am telling a story, whats really important is, is being a good storyteller, knowing what to say when not to say it.. and Oliver Stone is one of those people who really does that well. He is one of the most talented visual designers for film that there is, which is really, really nice!