ICI magazine, quebec '02

EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE

it's innacurate to put the unclassifiable I Am Spoonbender in the electroclash basket, or compare this San Francisco group with, say, the British Ladytron: "unlike Ladytron and others, we're not out to recreate the past", insists Dustin Donaldson."they're fine, but their ideas are from such a specific place of origin... it's very 2002-by-way-of 1982. they have clear cut musical heroes, and as such, resemble them. too closely, we think. we're more interested in making our own world, and (among many things) furthering some unexplored ideas from the late 70's, as opposed to recreating and repeating. Yes, we are inspired by people like Laurie Anderson, Young Marble Giants, Brian Eno or Devo, but we don't actually sound like these artists. we've been inspired by them to sound like ourselves."

In fact, IAS is especially influenced by the mysteries of science and its innumerable possibilities, as much as by the objects which surround us. "speculative fiction (as opposed to science fiction) is attractive," acknowledges Dustin, a quantum physics enthusiast and faithful reader of New Scientist magazine. "What seemed impossible yesterday is reality today. Take teleportation, for example; it is now possible to teleport a quantum particle! this has actually happened- this isn't star trek from 30 years ago. clearly, we're getting to the point where it's becoming safer to say that anything we can imagine can become real... but as far as technology goes, it's important to remember that we invented machines to serve humans- not the other way around. it seems to me that society is becoming more acclimated to working around what machines need, not what humans need. i'm also very interested in how humans appear to be blind to the fact that we're here in time to witness the beginnings of the next evolutionary step- artificial intelligence. machines are the children of humans. i think it will be more clear looking back from the future: like man came from monkeys, machines came from man." - ICI magazine, montreal, quebec