Your own work perpetuates you, it makes you go onto the next step. It's kind of an unraveling process that doesn't give you a lot to understand it . . . just to say that it grows out of a previous effort is suspect, but it does.

I have to say that it has it's own life, the kind of things that I do are based on internal states. I always reference back to various psychiatric problems that I've had, or benefits, depending on what way you look at it. That was a kind of formative thing for me, distilling the content. It's not so much an art thing but a psychological disturbance that happened in my life and art was vehicle to come out of that, and to express that, and to talk about it what that experience was like -- which was profound.

It was part of it. I was more tied up in the morass of it all -- it's hard to call it healing. That's just one aspect of it. Certainly there were people who thought that it was just enhancing the derangement. Case in point, there was this particular image that I was working on at the time, I was really obsessing over it. They, I'm meaning my parents, at the time thought that I had flipped out . They took it away from me, protecting me.

All that I know is that that I don't know. As an artist all I'm doing is acting, and I don't really know what the meaning of it is. I just feel compelled to do it, whatever the action is. In reality I think that's all that anybody is doing anyway. I guess the benefit of the artist is that they're honest, they're clueless. Other people who are scientists, business types, whatever . . . They have a pragmatic thing. They think that they're employed, they're making money to get a house . . .

When you look at the foundation of what life is, what does that mean? I don't even know what this body is. I think that there's a certain honesty in artistic expression because it's not rooted in practical bias, so that it may be a role as a relief. Certainly people need a relief from the mechanics of existence, that's what most people are working with. For me it's an exploration, I do something, create something to see what it is.

On one level yes, but in terms of my work it's less important. There are political artists. I don't really see myself as a political being. My work, whether it's an illusion or not, it's a transcendent. I make no conjecture on knowing ultimate reality, all I know is that the things I do [and that] I believe in. They have a reality and that reality is parallel to a pragmatic political world. It's not about that kind of machination. Is the direct approach the best? Politics, even science, is it trying to approach something directly. I see my course as being a meandering one, it may achieve that end, it does not actually go for it in a Machiavellian sort of way.

I believe that inorganic objects have consciousness, and that, what it is, I don't know. So that it's part of the life-force. Technology is growing. I know we build it, but it is growing in the same way. It's some kind of Yin- Yang relationship. Certain cultures have that bias more. . . The point being, what we're doing is an unraveling or perceiving of something. The future is already there. WeÕre just going down that time line so to speak.

What is in front of us? -- which is not to say that there isn't free will or anything like that. All possibilities are already there. It's like a solid. The time as a solid. Instead of one rod at a time, it's all directions. We as individuals are experiencing one of those tracks, so to speak. That has to do with the role of technology. That determines the shape that we'll have in the future. Just as a city is growing in the sense as much as a plant grows. I feel that the human and technology is of the one being. I don't pretend to have any idea when that's going to manifest itself.

One of the things that I do that is different about my art process is, I'm actually trying to articulate something that I think is real, but is not your normal day to day reality. I'm not trying to make art I'm trying to illustrate something that I think exists and that is the distinction. People in art history think that's some kind of symbol, but I think it has a parallel universe.

From what I can tell it's absolutely clueless. We in this room, in this house have been aware that this has been going on for years. It's just now that the art community is acting like something's going on. Unfortunately I haven't kept up with the art world's reaction to it. My involvement with this thing has crippled my financial powers. I'm hoping that they'll catch up with it so I can make some money with it.

(laughter, lots of it). The adage that I have is all that I know is that I don't know. When I was younger I thought that I had some sense of what it might be. I don't feel some sense of great anxiety if I don't know what it's all about. A lot of people feel like they have to have it pinned down, the nature, this whole topic. There's something honest about being ambiguous because that's the nature of it.