Title of Article: Mogel's Rad RaD Man Interview. Phear!@#!@ Writer: Mogel Appeared in: Jonas E-Mag, Issue #6, 4/27/95 `Mogel's Rad RaD Man Interview. Phear!@#!@' =------------------------------------------= Well, I was board on IRC. Big surprise, eh? At any rate, I was sitting there and along comes RaD Man. I figure 'Hey! I can do something evil! I'll ask RaD Man a bunch of questions about other groups and get him to slander the other groups and have it logged! Then I can give the quotes to Jonas and all and havok can break loose! Or not.' At any rate, I began to ask the questions and at a point I discovered that RaD Man really _has_ been at this a long time. I definately am NOT an 'ANSI-person' by any calibre, however, after a complimentary mention of the godly 'zine cDc, I realized that RaD Man, was, infact rad! Heading the biggest ANSI group is a big job. Before I continued I looked at my logs and they were all mysteriously corrupted. I decided to take RaD Man to another channel and interview him, strangely, he agreed to it. RaD Man has changed my opinion of the ANSI scene more positively in many ways after this interview. Anyhow, Here's the result: Mogel: 'Okay, thanks for doing this. Here we go. I guess to start off, we'll start at the beginning.. What was it that first pulled you into the ANSI scene?' RaD Man: 'I saw some ANSIs by the artist Chips Ahoy, the first guy who actually gave me the idea that ANSI could be used as a medium for visual arts. At the time ('88) I was just another lamer with his own h/p/a group, and I drew up an ANSI logo combining two colors with the shading blocks, a logo for 'HEaT', this stumbled into the right hands (the president of ), and I was quickly accepted. Mogel: 'Back then were you (or....are you now) into the WaReZ scene at all :>?' RaD Man: 'Back then, there was no ANSI-art scene, and I didn't really see any difference between warez and p/h/a, except that you needed a bigger hard drive to be a major warez affiliated board, and you didn't to carry text files. Other than that, I felt they all went hand in hand.' Mogel: 'What is your history with ACiD? How did you hook up with them, etc?' RaD Man: 'Well, after a while in , things started to become stagnant, minus the two other most active artists who were 'recruited' into by myself. It was a unanimous decision that a newer, more structured group was needed.' Mogel: 'How exactly did you pick your Nick (alias)? Any implications to the term 'k-rad'?' RaD Man: 'Basically, I thought up the nick when I was at a young age, with much '80s influence no doubt (bmx biking and skateboarding).' Mogel: 'What exactly are the things that interest you? Do you like ANSI, VGA, K0deing, RIP, LIT, Sounds? Any preference in these arts?' RaD Man: 'All of the above I like, except for lit. It is quite rare that a piece of LIT will catch my eye.' Mogel: 'I agree. I'm not a fan of the 'poetry lit' stuff. I do like to read the story and essay aspects of it however.' RaD Man: 'It's come in handy when I needed to turn in some homework, heh.' Mogel: 'Heh. What do you do nowadays the most? Programming? ANSI? Or are you mostly busy keeping everything from falling apart?' RaD Man: 'Not necessarily keeping things from falling apart, but organizing, yes. There are alot of projects that the group has to stay on top of.' Mogel: 'I'm sure a rad guy like you has a life...heh. What sort of real-world interests do you have. I think I heard you mumbling about weight lifting. Are you a b1g d00d?' RaD Man: 'Well, I have a full-time job, and am employed by an unmentioned Fortune 500 company, and lift weights 2 1/2 hours a day straight each morning.' Mogel: 'Wow. I don't wanna fight you then. You said before that you found Beastie to be the guy you find the 'coolest' in the scene now. Why is that 'zactly?' RaD Man: 'It's tough to explain. I will put it this way -- I'm not sure if he seems to have the best grasp on what 'the scene' as a whole, what it's really all about, or if he just shares alot of the same fundamental ideas and concepts as I do. Mogel: 'What do you hope to see for ACiD in the future?' RaD Man: 'I hope to see us continue to expand across all types of artistic platforms and to continue to grow, while never sacrificing our integrity.' Mogel: 'Do you have any big project(s) in store that you can give me a little el33t sneak preview on?' RaD Man: 'We have a big WWW home page project under development, ACiD T-shirts within the month, and just recruited Jazz, author of Sinister offline mail reader into the group.' Mogel: 'ACiD is by far the most well known by name ANSI group around.. do you ever feel pressure or competition? Do you ever get cocky when you see the 60-million little l0zer wanna-be groups?' RaD Man: 'I can't say I feel pressure, because I don't allow any to be placed upon me. Of course I see competition, ACiD thrives upon it. It is healthy for groups, practically necessary for their existence and growth to have competition. When I see the smaller alternative groups, I see both sides, their pluses and minuses (you're going a little too fast.. heh). The pluses are such that they bring out new up-and-coming artists that many people may never see otherwise, and that they help expand the ever-growing art scene. I also think they remind us all where we all came from. The downsides are that some people get too carried away. Alot of them are built upon hype and propaganda, many never to or past pack number one, and that some of them can tear apart what could have or should have been potentially great groups. I could go on forever arguing for either side.' Mogel: 'Sorry about the speed. I'm a little hyper off Vivarin right now. At any rate, you have been through basically all of the changes and developments of the ANSI scene over time. Is there any one serious lesson or advice that you've learned that you think would be helpful for someone to know?' [My IRC script tells me the time is 06:00AM.] RaD Man: 'I've learned that alot of people can ruin the scene for themselves by taking it too far or too seriously. I've seen alot of good friends and acquaintances quit the scene over silly reasons. The worst I see are people with their scene-pessimism, that spend their free time complaining about how much the scene sucks. If you are that deep into the scene, so deep that it actually DEPRESSES you, REALLY, then you need to go outside and take a break.' Mogel: 'How caught up are you on the ANSI-related e-mags? Do you think that there are too many? What's the best and why?' RaD Man: 'There are tons of great ANSI mags still in production, some of the greatest (in my opinion of course) are Continuum, Bitchslap, and for the soft-hearted, Emigre is a very cool ANSI mag, and has a great interface. The worse ANSI mags out there are the review mags that proclaim that they have figured out the CORRECT, right, and only way to review. They are so high up on themselves they believe they are the bottom line and last word of all that can be said on critiquing artwork, when in turn these usually turn out to be the shoddiest magazines of them all.' Mogel: 'Did you ever read Jonas by Edicius of cia? :>' RaD Man: 'No I didn't.' Mogel: 'I know you don't wanna give opinions of how ACiD measures up to other groups for diplomatic sake, but could you give me your general feelings of certain groups as I list them? [i.e. 'good ANSI, bad vga, okay rip']. How about iCE?' RaD Man: 'iCE has great ANSI at the moment, the VGA dept could use some help, and their RIP dept is non-existent.' Mogel: 'How about the all-around goody two-shoes, CiA?' RaD Man: 'I'm not really familiar enough with the group to comment.' Mogel: 'Spastic? (Pretending that the wizard wasn't with them ;>)' RaD Man: 'Spastic's only artist is eerie, actraiser is gone.' Mogel: 'UNiON?' RaD Man: 'They've lost much ground after their 'union vs. the world' incident a few months ago. Now that t2, tc, ld, et al are gone, they've gone back to 'fun', that's a cop out.' Mogel: 'Are there other groups out there that you are knowledgeable about that you would like to praise or critique that stand out?' RaD Man: 'Yes, DARK, a local canadian based group which has been able to consistently break the rules and turn out great artwork on their own time. That's about it.' Mogel: 'A lot of people recently complain that the scene is 'so much worse' now than ever before and whine endlessly about it, what are your feelings on the scene as a whole now?' RaD Man: 'Those people can go get a life, quit complaining, quit the scene, or take part in the movement and start doing something about it. Whining won't get you anywhere, just the label of a whiner.' Mogel: 'What would you like to see mature from the entire scene in the distant future? Would you like to break the labels that people give to ANSI people (like 'd00dleb0yz' or 'art ph4gz')?' RaD Man: 'The scene is great, the only thing I would like to see come to an end is the seperation of different underground scenes. Through communication, I'd like to rid of the mislead preconceptions, the ignoramuses who perpetuate them, and the negative connotations that various parts of the underground hold. I figure if you give respect, you will get respect.' Mogel: 'Thanks very much for this interview. I really appreciate it. It's by far the most intelligent ANSi interview I will ever read (not as if there was any stiff competition in interview quality). Do you have any last comments?' RaD Man: 'Well, you're lucky you caught me in one of my creative moods (weird hours in the morning).' -m0g3l [a la 'zine h03]