Interview with Lionel Williams
Zurich — Los Angeles, 15. July 2015
Questions: Roberta Fischli
Answers: Lionel Williams
[22:12:16]
Hey there!
Hallo! Since I was born on a computer it’s nearly therapeutic for me to just type out thoughts, thanks for allowing me to do so in context of this interactive piece.
So if it was up to you, everyone would be walking around with those massive glasses they made me put on in order to walk through your extremely captivating world.
Not all the time! But momentarily, it’s healthy to encounter spaces made to represent other star systems & life forces outside of our cognitive mechanism.
If you’re talking about life forces outside our cognitive mechanisms, how do you incorporate those into your work?
I don’t know what I’m incorporating, because these forms we’re talking about are immaterial. But they’re felt presence is undeniable and can be regenerated if you allow them to regenerate themselves through their own effort, an interfacing of sorts.
Let’s break down the complexity. What does „Xol“ stand for?
It means „Soul“.
And what happens to those who enter your world?
I allow them to create compositions in space, based on the movements and motions of their head.
You also recorded 500 different sounds for the experience … Were they natural or artificial, or both?
All of the sounds were created with a modular synthesizer. The patches were self-generative, so the electric current running through it could make its own spontaneous choices, per se. So I’m not sure what the threshold between artificial & natural is.
Does it feel like you’ve created something bigger than you can actually comprehend yourself?
Xol is the project of its kind I’ve ever created. I can only glimpse into its complexities and haven’t been able to nearly harness it.
II
[22:51:26]
Do you dream?
Absolutely!
And what do you see at night?
I don’t dream of these sort of realms
My dreams are always as mysterious as they are trivial, and magical as they are mundane.
The virtual creations are oppositional reactions against so many things, namely my dreams.
III
[23:25:54]
There are lots of archaic elements in Xol. Have you ever been to sacred places like Angkor Wat?
I have not, but I constantly go on Google Views to digitally visit, as well as imagining being there.
Which places have you virtually visited?
So many!!! Uncountable!
Many many mosques in Iran, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia. Strangely luxurious hotels in India surrounded by graffiti. New Zealand mountain tops.
Searching, searching
So you encounter the world from your flat in a warehouse in LA and create the whole universe in there, too. What does it look like where you live?
No sunlight in here!
No ever?
I’m in the land of sun.
And yet no sunlight entering. It’s all filtered out.
It’s a constant strobe between the outside sun, and the inside representational sun, the ones made in other star systems, existing on screens
If you could live in any of the world’s places, past or present, where would you want to be ?
I would live in Ir
The first known city
It was the first settlement in what became Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq. It’s thought of to be, at its era, 3800 BC — a place of celestial splendor. One of the first constructions toward an utopia
Just like the one you created yourself.
Yes. That is why. It is closest to that place.
Lionel „Vinyl“ Williams, 25, is a visual artist and musician living and working in a very dark warehouse in sunny Los Angeles, USA. He’s recently been signed to Toro Y Moi’s label Car Park Records. In recent years he has been producing music videos and live visuals for Medicine, Tears for Fears and Crystal Fighters.
