Rod Hatfield
Hatfield is co-director, with "mad genius" Pedro Alexander, of spaceboat.tv. Their big event, featuring music and new media ("a party inside an installation") is on January 11 at EMP's Sky Church.

I've read your press release about six times and I still don't understand what it is you do. "Well, it's a bit convoluted, and we're developing things as we go. It's an evening of specially composed music with a highly stylized multimedia landscape on the Jumbotron. For a video artist that's the most exquisite canvas possible--three stories high."

Who are the video artists? "There's Franklin Joyce, Iole Alessandrini, Spinwire, and a bunch of artists who have hyper-pseudonym names. They're architecting and composing these new media landscapes."

Are they actual landscapes? Or is it like Planet STIFF, where everything is up for grabs? "This is much more composed, where Planet STIFF was kind of random. This is going to be presented theatrically, a play in three acts."

With narrative? "With an implicit narrative."

This is maddeningly elusive. What is the narrative? "It's 'Chrysalis, cocoon, butterfly.'"

Why bother to webcast this? Why not just have a live show? "We're also working on this idea of multi-local origination and exchange, where we create live streams with other contributing hubs. We have friends in New York and Barcelona and Tokyo. If we can get it going, eventually we'll have them send a stream out with our stream, and we'll project them onto the Jumbotron. It's something visceral, tangible, in 3-D space, something that can be shared online with a global community."

Is that what Meetspace is for? "In a sense. Meetspace was conceived as a research and development laboratory. We're really into the idea of the emergent--we discover what we're doing as we do it. We've had Meetspace for the last 10 weeks, and through that process this narrative has emerged. The idea is that we put out invitations to electronic musicians and new media artists, and we all plug into each other--this takes place at ConWorks--and it was improv at the beginning, and then we began shaping it. Then it takes on a life of its own, then you get out of the way and let it happen."

Interview by Emily Hall