I’ve just seen the immensely sad news about Galt MacDermot’s death. He was a musical genius whose impact on modern music cannot be understated.

Fifteen years ago, I was commissioned to write my very first ever feature profile for Dazed & Confused magazine about Galt. Back in 2003 we still used tapes to record phone interviews. As a crate digger, I was beyond excited that I had managed to persuade the magazine to let me write a Cult VIP piece about the man whose music had been sampled by my heroes Premo, Pete Rock, Madlib and Da Beatminerz.

I had done all of my research, listened to all of his records, and was ready to ring The King of Breaks. The interview was incredible. We had the most wonderful, insightful conversation about his entire life and career. Infact, I filled up both sides of my C90 with Galt gold. However, when I hung up the phone and checked the tape, it hadn’t recorded a thing! I was shook, literally. My journalistic career was destined to be a shortlived one. My editor told me to remain calm and write down everything I could remember, but it was no use.

So I made the decision to ring Galt back and tell him what had happened. He told me that he’d had more than his fair share of recording mishaps in his life and that I shouldn’t worry. He then graciously answered some of my questions again. I never forgot that.

Rest in peace, Mr MacDermot. Thanks for all the revolutionary music and for giving me a break of my own.

As a teenager in the 1940s, Canadian-born composer Galt MacDermot was turned on by the jazz era, eventually making his fortune writing the soundtrack for the hit 1960s counterculture musical, HAIR. But these days you’re most likely to recognise his music as the backbone for an entirely different countercultural movement — hip-hop. Decades after composing “Let the Sunshine In”, MacDermot’s lesser known work has been cut and spliced into dozens of modern rap masterpieces, from Run-DMC’s “Down With the King” to “Woo-Hah! Got You All In Check” by Busta Rhymes. But how did this unassuming son of a Canadian diplomat become hip-hop royalty?

Born in Montreal in 1928, MacDermot was encouraged from an early age by his piano playing elder to embrace different forms of music, which led to his first experiments with a recorder at the age of five. By the time he was a teenager, MacDermot had become proficient on the violin, but like most children of that age, he just thought of it as a fun thing to do between him and his father after meal times. This was all to change around 1942 when a new form of music started to become popular, “I never took music seriously till I started hearing Boogie Woogie and Jazz,” he confesses down the phone from his New York headquarters, “Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington overwhelmed me. It was then that I said that’s what I want to do. So I picked up the piano because I wanted to play Boogie Woogie.”

“Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington overwhelmed me. It was then that I said that’s what I want to do. So I picked up the piano because I wanted to play Boogie Woogie.”

This new American sound hooked him straight away and converted him into a lifelong jazz enthusiast, which is obvious from the structure of many of his later compositions. Dedicating himself to perfecting his playing, MacDermot would use every minute not spent on schoolwork to hone his technique.

After graduating from college with a BA in History and English, MacDermot and his family were moved to South Africa by the Canadian government, who had appointed his father as the High Commissioner for the region. This was to be an extremely influential period for the 21-year-old pianist who immediately enrolled in Cape Town University’s music program. Crawling the clubs and streets of the city after class, MacDermot immersed himself in the African music scene, revelling at their use of rhythm — especially the relatively loose style of drumming they employed, and the complexity of their vocal arrangements — a style that flew in the face of everything that jazz had up to this point taught him. Witnessing groups like The Manhattan Brothers, who at that time had just recruited “Mama Africa” Miriam Makeba as their lead vocalist, MacDermot began to translate some of these new approaches into his own music, although it wasn’t until 1955, after he had moved back to Montreal that his music career actually started bearing the fruits of his hard graft.

After being asked to write some music for a play entitled My Fur Lady, MacDermot, who at the time was working as a church organist, attracted the attention of the CEO of Laurentien records — the company which had released the musical’s score — and wound up with a recording contract of his own. At last his devotion had paid off and the following year saw the release of his first record, Art Gallery Jazz. The album was not a massive seller but this ceased to matter when the song “African Waltz” was picked up by the influential bandleader Johnny Dankworth (and later covered by Cannonball Adderley), whose version was receiving significant rotation on Britain’s airwaves. MacDermot won a pair of Grammy Awards for the composition.

Seeking to capitalise on this achievement MacDermot jumped ship and set up a camp in Wembley, West London, where he met lifelong friends such as Bill Dumaresq, who would later ask him to score the BFI production of Duffer. However it wasn’t as easy as he had thought to get paid,

“It was an inspirational time in London at that point, but work for composers was very scarce. We would get paid 10 shillings for a song, but that wasn’t enough to live on. So after about a year and a half, I moved back to Canada for a while and then down to New York.”

“It was an inspirational time in London, but work for composers was scarce. We got paid 10 shillings for a song, but that wasn’t enough to live on.”

Arriving in the Big Apple in the mid 60s, MacDermot started to adjust his sound once again, after realising that the swinging jazz sound which had been so popular in Britain had been overtaken by rhythm and blues in the affections of American youth — a realisation that would, in a few years time, seal his place in entertainment history.

One of the first people who hired him was producer Rick Shorter. When he asked MacDermot to write a ska tune for Thundering Herd bandleader Woody Herman, the young composer impressed Shorter with his diverse musical chops. Shorter then started to give him regular work and introduced him to the future members of his Mid Manhattan Rhythm Section, including the much-sampled drummer Bernard Purdie, guitarist Snag Allen and bassist Jimmy Lewis, all of whom, like MacDermot, were working as session musicians for music publishers at the time.

Using what cash he had amassed by this stage, MacDermot started up his own label, Kilmarnock Records, to try out different compositions and phrasings with his band of musical brothers. The first release was 1966’s Shapes of Rhythm, a collection of songs that are now widely regarded as gold by record collectors. But it wasn’t until the following year that a chance meeting with publisher and wannabe musical writer, the late Nat Shapiro that MacDermot would reach the pinnacle of the musical landscape.

Shapiro was friends with Gerome Ragni and Jim Rado, a pair of actors who had just written an LSD drenched musical based on the hippy movement and the war in Vietnam entitled HAIR. One day Shapiro approached MacDermot with a proposal that would change everything,

“Rado and Ragni had got a commitment from the producer Joe Papp to do a rock n’ roll show. He said, “‘I’ll do the show if I like the music’, but they didn’t have any. So they talked to Nat who was sort of a producer himself and he said ‘I know this guy Galt MacDermot who could probably do this,’ because he had heard some of my stuff. So we met and he asked me if I could get it done for Joe. Of course, I said yes and wrote it as quickly as I could. Although it wasn‘t really rock n‘ roll, it was funk.”

Three weeks later he had produced one of the most influential musical scores of all time, although it wasn’t initially a success. However, after the play had been adopted by the powerful Broadway producer, Michael Butler, the show’s popularity went through the roof and was soon being performed around the world, in a multitude of languages, each with their own soundtrack covering MacDermot’s original music.

Now finding himself with a free rein to try out less commercial ideas, he enlisted other funkateers like Idris Muhammad, Charlie Brown and Wilbur ‘Bad’ Bascomb to help record the sounds his fingers where producing. Classic albums including Haircuts, The Nucleus, First Natural HAIR band, as well as visionary soundtracks like Cotton Comes To Harlem and Women Is Sweeter emerged from his pool of talent over the following years, as did a fuller sound to his lush orchestrations. In 1971, MacDermot composed Two Gentlemen of Verona, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical a year later. It wasn’t all good news though, as many of these Kilmarnock recordings, including Billy Butler’s Via Galactica, ended up not on the turntables of the public, but in dusty crates below his house, where they would remain for decades.

Undeterred, much of the 70s saw MacDermot collaborate with the Trinidad based playwright, Derek Walcott on some new works, as well as produce the 1979 soundtrack to the film version of HAIR. This led to the formation of his New Pulse Band, comprising of many of his old sparring partners, which still performs annually to this day.

By the time the 90s arrived, MacDermot had resigned himself to recording the occasional film score, playing with the band, and just enjoying his home life with wife Marlene. He hadn’t counted on Hip Hop.

Pete Rock, the young producer du jour stumbled upon a Broadway recording of HAIR and looped a segment of “Where Do I Go” as the foundation for Run DMC’s 1990 comeback track, “Down With The King”. This opened the floodgates to the MacDermot renaissance. Soon enough strange song titles were creeping their way onto his play sheets from ASCAP, as he now recalls with a smile, “I’d tell ’em that I never wrote a song called, “Written On Ya Kitten” (Naughty By Nature). But they insisted it was my melody so I didn’t bother about it. Then people started coming over to the house. The first person that really met me was Rashad Smith.”

“I’d tell ASCAP that I never wrote a song called, ‘Written On Ya Kitten’. But they insisted it was my melody. Then people started coming over to the house.”

The Tumbling Dice producer was the first in a series of loop diggers who hot-footed it over to his converted schoolhouse on Staten Island to be educated in MacDermot’s brand of funk. For homework, they would go into his basement and sift through the racks of untouched vinyl and select a few to feed into their MPC samplers. Before he knew it Kilmarnock was selling out of records again and interpretations of his songs were all over the Billboard Hot 100, especially one produced by Smith, entitled “Woo-Hah!! Got You All In Check.” One can only imagine the look on his face when he first heard Busta rhyming “Ya ya ya, ya ya!” over the top of his “Space” composition from 1974.

Other classics emerged, including the Large Professor-produced “Halftime” from Nas’s iconic debut album, Illmatic; “The Truth” by Handsome Boy Modelling School; “Loop Digga” by Madlib’s alter ego, Quasimoto; “Timz-N-Hood Check” by Smif-N-Wessun; and “Uncivilized” by The Beatnuts amongst many others.

As he has done so many times in his life, MacDermot embraced this new musical form when most people his age were shouting it down, as he points out as our conversation comes to an end, “Age doesn’t mean anything, if you’re listening for the same thing, which is feeling and these guys know what sounds good.”

Now with a new collection of unreleased tracks compiled by his friend, employee and manager of Stones Throw Records, Eothen “Egon” Alapatt giving new food to the next generation of beat makers, it looks like MacDermot’s relevance and innovation is set to continue well into the new Millennium. Maybe it’s time someone made a Hollywood musical about him…

Dedicated to the memory of Galt MacDermot
December 18, 1928 — December 17, 2018.

Copyright 2003 Tim Noakes

Galt MacDermot was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Out of all the people I’ve interviewed, my encounter with Science Fiction Grandmaster Brian Aldiss will always be one of my favourites. I first met him at a party at Stanley Kubrick’s Hertfordshire mansion in 2010. We were there to celebrate a book about A.I, Steven Spielberg’s version of Aldiss’s short story, Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. Kubrick and Aldiss had initially developed the script together, but sadly the director didn’t live long enough to realise his vision on the big screen and left it to Spielberg.

Mr Aldiss was standing on his own in Kubrick’s red walled library in front of a shelf that contained the director’s personal copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. He professed to not being much of a fan of Spielberg’s interpretation of his book, which made us both laugh. We sipped champagne and arranged to do a proper interview at his house. A week later I was driving down the M40 to visit him in Old Headington.

He welcomed me warmly, and gave me a tour of his house, starting in his office. Brian pulled out the solitary copy of his autobiography, The Twinkling of an Eye, on the cover of which he sat naked astride a sewage duct in Burma. I pointed out what a massive pipe he had between his legs, and he cracked up. We then talked about the stories behind his paintings before going outside to soak up the summer sun. His garden took my breath away. It was lush and totally overgrown At the end was a swimming pool that had become a pond through years of inactivity. It seemed fitting that the author of Hothouse owned a plot where the plants had taken over its human obstructions.

We then went to a local bar, which was exhibiting a collection of his paintings. I bought us a bottle of white wine and we chatted for hours about his life, collaborations and writing. It was one of the most entertaining afternoons I’ve ever had. We stayed in touch a bit afterwards, as I proposed doing an exhibition of his book covers, but sadly we both never got around to it.

This afternoon, the sad news came through that Brian has died, aged 92. He was a true master of science fiction, and one of the greatest raconteurs I’ve ever met. In tribute to this miraculous man, I’ve dug up our interview and published it here in full for the first time.

Rest in peace, Brian — see you in stars sometime.

Tim Noakes, 21 August 2017

At Home with Brian Aldiss, 2010

“I’ve been writing stories since the age of three, although I’ve no idea what they were about. They’ve happily vanished with time. I was brought up in the middle of Norfolk in a dull town. It had a cinema, and very few other cultural activities except the damn church. My parents were religious, and I thought I was too because I would go around praying all the time. It was only some years later I realised it wasn’t faith. It was neurosis.

When my sister was born, I happened to have whooping cough. Now, whooping cough is bad enough when you’re 5, but when you’re a baby it’d probably kill you, so I had to go. That I perfectly understood. What I couldn’t understand, or rather what I couldn’t accept, was the way in which my parents did it. I was shipped out to my granny’s in Peterborough and naturally enough she didn’t want to have a little boy who was sick and ill and coughing and throwing up. I can’t blame her. When I finally went back home I was very upset. I was a mixed up kid. I thought I’d been up in Peterborough for 6 months. It was only 6 weeks. Nothing to make a great fuss of but that was the way it was. And instead of treating me with love and kindness they were furious with me because I was unhappy. So they sent me off to a boarding school which certainly wasn’t bad, but certainly wasn’t good. And from there they sent me to public school.

I enjoyed visiting my Grandmother. Peterborough was a civilised city. It had beautiful swimming baths, libraries and in particular, a museum that my uncles would take me to. Thank God for my uncles. It had a big long glass case and I was just tall enough to stand on top toe and look into it. And in there they had a full and perfect dinosaur skeleton that had been fished out of the mud of the river Nene which you could see it from the museum windows. This creature had actually lived there! I cannot tell you how much I loved that creature, I thought it was so marvellous. Whenever possible I would go and see it, count its spines. So that there was a better place to live in than the town in which my parents lived. My imagination caught fire.

Then the war came along. That seemed to catch everyone’s attention. I left school and volunteered to join the army. I went to see a recruiting sergeant, who had a little cabin on the high street. I went in there and said I wanted to join. He looked down his list and he said “Well what do you want to join?”. I said “The Royal Signals, I think I’m quite a good communicator”. So he said “Royal Signals don’t have any vacancies. How about the submarine service? We’ve got plenty of room there”. Come on, sergeant! I wasn’t born yesterday — or maybe I was — but I was no fool. Of course there was room in the submarine service. Jesus Christ! They were sinking left right and centre! So I joined the army and I was almost immediately drafted into the Signals.

“I believe all SF writers have got a quarrel with something.”

I believe all SF writers have got a quarrel with something. I suddenly had a quarrel with Britain because I’d been through this business in Burma. I’d been over at India, full of shit and flies, then I was in Sumatra. I spent a year there. I ran a theatre. I kind of got out of the army, they gave me a theatre to run that I could decorate. The idea was we could entertain the locals, dance with the women, have film shows, all the rest of it. All that was very pleasant and sweet. I had a nice year there. Nevertheless then I was back in India, at monsoon time where every puddle was full of 2 frogs copulating and the whole place was rife with snakes. A miserable place. And at that time there was a general election in England, the one that got rid of Churchill and got Clement Attlee in instead. I wasn’t allowed to vote because I wasn’t 21. This turned me against England. I thought, ‘what a rotten shitty place’. I had been out in India for 3/4 years, enduring God knows what, malaria, all sorts.

When I returned, I got on a train to Oxford. What I knew about Oxford was that it had bookshops and libraries and was a good place to be as a writer. What I found later was that there were all sorts of other benefits including the fact that when you submitted a story with a covering letter to a magazine in the United States, that word Oxford rang a bell. It wasn’t as if you were saying you were in Clifton Hamden or some fucking place like that. Oxford! Oh this guy comes from Oxford!? So that immediately a sort of good impression was created. And I think that was quite a help to me really although it wasn’t for some time until I realised that it looks quite good in an address.

When I first met Kingsley Amis he came down to Oxford to give a lecture. Lucky Jim had been very successful but he was still kind of amateur. He came down and gave a lecture, at Exeter College. It actually wasn’t a particularly good lecture, he got better at it later, with practice, but he asked for a round of questions and I liked this guy, I thought he was fun, but I felt embarrassed for him, because no one would ask any questions. I’d never met him before, I said, “Mr Amis, can you tell if you think anyone could make a living writing SF?” and I forget what he said precisely but it was something to the effect of, well, there’s luck in this as with everything. Okay. Safe answer really, as we were all filing out, he was standing by the door thanking everybody for coming and so forth. He asked me my name, and I said, “Brian Aldiss! Are you the guy that wrote Outside?”. Jesus he actually read Outside! I knew that was a good story, maybe my first good story, whatever that means. It was called Outside and the first sentence was, “They never went out of the house” so you know there’s a conflict there at once. Kingsley had actually read my story, I’d never met anyone who had read any of my fiction before. I think it was 1955. We had a drink and got smashed and we became friends from then on.

My first wife was just impossible. She had a mother who had ruined her life and I hated her [mother]. I thought she was a woman out of hell. To try and mend this I said ‘Well lets go and see marriage guidance, see if they can’t sort us out”. She wouldn’t come. Jesus. I wrote Non-Stop when I was in that dreadful situation. I was trapped in this own tight-arse little world and these people are trapped, and they’ve been trapped for several generations, in these spaceships, they believe it to be the world. Now, when that was translated into Polish it went to number two on the bestseller list. So I went over to Poland to see if I could find out and they said, ‘Oh yeah of course Brian, we know very well you were writing a great big metaphor for the way we are trapped in the communist system.’ ‘Oh fuck was I really!?’ That is the value of Science Fiction — it is the metaphorical quality that what I thought of as one rather narrow thing could apply to a whole society.

“By the time Hothouse came out, I was really broke, between marriages and I was living in one room in a little Oxford slum, which was quite fun.”

Afterwards I sold my house and gave all the money to my wife. I went to live in one room slum. That’s life isn’t it. By the time Hothouse came out, I was really broke, between marriages and I was living in one room in a little Oxford slum, which was quite fun. I was a friend of C.S.Lewis’ because he was very keen on science fiction. Lewis got hold of a copy of Hothouse and liked it very much and said “Oh Brian this is tremendous” I’m going to send a copy to my friend Tolkien, and everyone in Oxford knew Tolkien in those days before he was famous, he’d walk about in suits with his Anglo-Saxon grammar and a very vague expression. So he read it and he actually sent me a letter to say how much he’d enjoyed it and how much of a wonderful feat of the imagination he thought it was. And of course I was very chuffed with this, but I about a month later I got another letter from Tolkien saying “I’ve re-read your novel again and I don’t think I’ve praised it enough, its absolutely splendid.” Now those two letters from Tolkien, I could live for a year on them if I sold them, but of course I lost them in the slum, being drunk. I mean, two letters from Tolkien and I lose them! God!

I had a son and a girl by my first wife and then a son and a girl by my second wife. My kids are a terrific lot. Without them you hit the buffers. You get old, you fucking want to die and there’s nothing there. But family goes on. Next week my first granddaughter will be born. I’ve already got 6 grandsons but now there’s going to be a granddaughter. My family thinks it’s absolutely marvellous that Jimi Hendrix liked my books. I never met Hendrix but there’s a photo of him reading one of my novels. I was greatly chuffed when I saw that, although he looks a bit puzzled by it.

“My family thinks it’s marvellous that Jimi Hendrix liked my books. I never met Hendrix but there’s a photo of him reading one of my novels. I was greatly chuffed when I saw that, although he looks a bit puzzled by it.”

I wrote Super Toys as a direct reaction to my formative rejection by my parents. Five years before I was born my mother gave birth to a still-born child and she so fantasised about that, she was seized upon that, paralysed by ‘I was never going to be as good as that wonderful child was’. So that’s the way in which you use something possibly without knowing it and that’s what gives your writing power actually. You use whatever tools you’ve got, whatever is there, and put it into a story.

I know so many writers who will plan everything out beforehand and then they will write it out. I could never do that. Of course it takes you a year, you know, to write a novel and so, it’s an adventure- you start out you’ve got an idea and you think, ‘I could see this one out.’ You start writing it. Christ it’s an adventure. You enjoy it.

One time, very early in my writing career I was taken to lunch at All Souls, which is an old collegiate college in Oxford, to have lunch with Mr and Mrs Agatha Christie. She was terribly nice, a bit grand it’s true but she had every right to be grand. And eventually far into the meal and the second bottle of wine someone said to her, ‘Agatha do tell us, your novels are so complex, how do you manage to work out this crime.’ And her answer was so marvellous, she said, rather dismissively, ‘Oh, I go ahead and right an ordinary novel about a lot of people and it’s only when I get to the penultimate chapter that I stop and think, ‘Now who’s the least likely person to have done this crime!’’ So she says, ‘Alright I pick on this guy and all it needs is to change a time on the timetable that he arrives at such-and-such a place and perhaps his relationships have to be altered- this girl that he knew that could be his sister or the sister could be a cousin or something like that.’ And she says, ‘and that’s it, it’s done.’ Absolutely marvellous.

I believe that secretly that the ‘middle classes’ think that SF is for the working class. Is this a viable theory? I’ve no idea. The number of times I could have been invited to do something on television or whatever and I’m not. Why? Because I write Science Fiction. And so I know those are decided decisions against it. For instance by P.D. James, the old cow. And Stephen Fry too. Another old cow. The fact is if you’re still able to write, that’s a great thing because my life does depend on my writing. I would never be stifled as I wasn’t. I don’t think I’ve been shitty enough. I think I should’ve been a lot more shitty to a lot of people.

I suppose one of the best SF films ever is Alien. Ridley Scott knew what he was doing. When you get on that planet it, oh God it really is awful! But I really thought AI was a drivelling sort of movie. And I wondered actually working with Stanley if he hadn’t run out of creative energy. He’d made so many films that were absolutely startling: 2001, A Space Odyssey, Dr Strangelove and above all Barry Lyndon. Barry Lyndon is a great cut-glass vase, a wonderful film, never praised it enough. The fact was Stanley gave a shit about lighting it as it would have been lit back then, by candle light. After you’ve seen that film filmed by these strange lights you’re never going to believe a historical movie again where the lights are overhead and glaring down because Stanley did it for real. With just a lens and one candle. The effect is mind-blowing really. You have to envy and admire Stanley for that.

I once called Stanley the greatest SF writer the age, but I was probably pissed at the time. When we were working together my wife Margaret said to me ‘Oh God darling why are you putting yourself through this’. And I said’ ‘Well I always wanted to work with a genius’. And I never thought it was going to be easy and indeed it wasn’t easy. But there were so many compensations, including Stanley’s marvellous sense of humour. I mean many a time we were rocking with laughter. So that was good, And we spent all the day- it’s no wonder he died- smoking and drinking coffee, arguing about what was going to come next. And every now and then he would give up and we would tramp through the halls and go and see Christiane and getting her smile and her calmness and when we’d go back to work.

A guy would come and collect me in a limousine — a slim, Italian guy- and so we’d get to castle Kubrick about the time that Stanley was coming down-about sort of 10 o’clock in the morning. Perhaps he’d say to me ‘Brian do you want some fresh air’, he’d open the door and there was all the fresh air of Childwickbury, he’d light a cigarette, we’d walk about the length of a cricket pitch, he’d say ‘That’s enough’ and we’d go back in. And that’s his fresh air for the day. He died of it. He died of it. His dedication was such he died of it, his dedication. I think you have to be pretty fond of a guy like that, I mean come on. I think Stanley had a certain style.

“Spielberg offered me £24,000 pounds for one sentence. The sort of advance that I would’ve got for a novel. It was a very good sentence.”

Stanley couldn’t finish A.I and in the end it came down to Spielberg. I wrote to Spielberg when he was thinking it over and said ‘I looked at my contract with Stanley, or with his lawyers, and with every turn there was this phrase ‘in perpetuity’. Oh Jesus! I’d lost all rights to that. So I wrote to Spielberg and said I had an idea how you could finish this film and it is as follows, and I told him. He wrote back immediately and said “there’s one sentence in your story I would like to buy from you and for that I will offer you — I forget it was — 12 or 24,000 pounds.” One sentence. The sort of advance that I would’ve got for a novel. It was a very good sentence. It was a sentence that tells how eventually the robot child meets the production line where other robot children just like him had been turned out. And it blows his mind. That was what Spielberg liked. Paid up immediately. Because he was already making the film. And so I am actually the only guy that has sold material to both Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg.

I was very happy that Stanley thought that some of them were worth preserving. There were many stories of mine that he loved and wanted to make into films, a lot of the early ones- there was one I’d written called All The World’s Tears, he thought that was terrific. But several of them yeah. He liked Science Fiction, he liked the quality of Science Fiction, he liked this boldness that it throws away the present and gives you something else, he liked that, of course he liked it, you can’t help liking it if you’ve got any intelligence, I like it. But the story you make out of it doesn’t always work.

I hope people will always be fascinated by the unknown but really the unknown includes what is in your own mind. I have had various arguments and disagreements with Science Fiction writers. They’re far too concerned with machines, not enough with actually the human predicament which is much more interesting. And, if you don’t mind my saying so, I hate the term sci-fi. Those people who like to think they’re in the know, refer to science fiction or SF as sci-fi. Now sci-fi, there are some guys I guess who even write sci fi well they do that they’re very welcome to it, I don’t do it. I do SF. Sci-fi is a slum, a nursery term it was coined by an American number one fan called Forrest Ackerman who later made public apology for coining this term, sci-fi because it makes it sound like something out of a fucking nursery.

“Science Fiction writers are far too concerned with machines, not enough with actually the human predicament, which is much more interesting.”

I still do firmly think that we actually have to go to Mars. It’s so beautiful out there in space, the rings of Saturn, the extraordinary difference of the whole thing. Homo Sapiens are only 45 million years old, it’s got a long way to go and I think that -among other things- it has to go outward because if you’re standing on Mars what are you going to think? You’re going to think differently aren’t you. It would just broaden people’s minds, change us in a way who knows we can’t tell. I’m sure they must because it is one of the dreams. I think it’s necessary. For one thing, who knows what catastrophes are going to overcome earth. How many, are there now 7 billion people? Far too many. Eventually they will be ejected the way you squeeze peas out of a pod, if indeed you do squeeze out of a pod I’ve not much experience about that I realise.

I’m too old even to go to the moon, I’m almost too old to go to Norfolk. I think that one reason to go to Mars is that Mars might seem to not have much to offer but no doubt when we get there we should be surprised about that. But, the fact is that Mars is the stepping stone to Jupiter and Saturn, in particular to Jupiter where there are 4 moons that are viable entities- Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and the other one. They are very very far away but there may be better modes of transmission later on, who knows. Even now people are being terribly resourceful in finding all sorts of ways to make a car go, it doesn’t have to be petrol, it can be hydrogen and electric. People will be using bird shit before so long.

Will A.I overtake human life? It doesn’t seem to me that you could construct a machine that would have the equivalent of a spiritual life. They wouldn’t see the need of it. And so they would be totally alien from the human race from which they sprang. Perhaps they will, I don’t know. If 50 years ago you were told they were going to develop a technique whereby they’d cut you open right by your heart and would stick something in there and seal it up again and that it was going to have a battery that would last for 8 years? Come on! There was no way in which 50 years ago you could possibly thought of a pacemaker. It’s just extraordinary how quickly that’s gone down to this little thing and now you can make these batteries that last for so long. 50 years ago you would be talking absolute balls if you posited what I’m now wearing. That’s the way life goes. I think we should be much more prepared to be surprised for these things.

I don’t do humble very well, but I think I’m modest. There was a time when I was frustrated that I was not a household name. It cut very deeply in me because I felt I had done better work than had been generally acknowledged. But I got over that, what the hell. For instance, when I got an OBE that was very good for me. In 2005 we went to Buckingham Palace and the Prince of Wales was doing this stint. I noticed — watching from the sidelines, — that he would always have someone behind him who would whisper ‘The next guy who comes on has just saved 50 lives in an aircraft t disaster and he’s lost his balls in the process and so he’s a marvellous man and he’s getting a CBE’ or whatever. So when I got in front of him he said all this about ‘You’re a distinguished career and you’ve been working for 50 years’ and so it’s my turn to say something so I say, ‘Yes Sir I’ve been getting away with it for 50 years’ and he burst out with laughter he was so used to bullshit, you know. I was very pleased with that.

“I wake up at about 3 o’clock in the morning and then I’ll go make myself a cup of tea and take it back to my bedroom and lie there in the dark drinking it, thinking and figuring out various things. Everything from the state of the universe to one’s own character. Why you do what you do.”

At the moment, I wake up at about 3 o’clock in the morning and then I’ll go make myself a cup of tea and take it back to my bedroom and lie there in the dark drinking it, thinking and figuring out various things. Everything from the state of the universe to one’s own character. Why you do what you do. I’ve actually got a bit of a clue, but it seems to me that there must be a lot of people that must wonder about themselves, why they are, how they are, and doing what they’re doing. Are they free to do that or do they have some sort of compulsion? Could be it genetic? One doesn’t know. I think that genetics suck really, it can determine certain things, but it doesn’t determine how you deal with the different intricacies of life. I think that you will never quite figure out exactly how the mind works. But I am still enjoying life tremendously at the moment. What do I have to complain about?”

In Memory of Brian Aldiss 18/8/1925 — 19/8/2017

Brian Aldiss was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Before becoming a photographer, Jill Kennington, who just turned 74, was one of Britain’s most iconic models. She appeared on the cover of Vogue three times and was shot by the likes of David Bailey, John Cowan, Terence Donovan, Helmut Newton, and Richard Avedon. Her prolific modelling career, in particular her work with Cowan, led to a cameo in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup, a murder mystery set in London during the swinging 60s. In the half century since its release, it has become widely regarded as one of the most influential fashion films of all time.

Was Blowup a faithful representation of being a model in Swinging London?

No, not at all! For a start, I never stood still like a dumb mannequin, as they do in the film. The fact that we had to be very stupid was not a real representation. I also never saw any girls end up naked on a studio backdrop paper. But who knows, I worked with very above-a-certain-level photographers, maybe there were others who did all sorts of things. I wouldn’t know. It was a film director’s fantasy. It wasn’t a true representative of London, it was a mystery film.

Blowup was partly inspired by the life of David Bailey. How did you find working with him?

Bailey never got the best out of me. I would get asked to do these things with him, but not a huge amount. I didn’t say yes very often because I found I worked better with other people. He always had his leading lady, there was always somebody else that would get the best spreads. So, I’m sorry, David, but there we go.

You shot a lot with Helmut Newton, who was renowned for his sensual imagery. What was he like to work with?

He was fantastic. He loved to work on storylines and was a terrific photographer. I did go off him a bit when he started doing the S&M looks. Standing in a leather coat at night under a streetlight with your coat open and you’re not wearing any knickers, that kind of thing. I didn’t particularly go for that. That’s probably because of my decent, moral upbringing in rural Lincolnshire. There were certain things I wasn’t able to make myself do. It didn’t particularly suit me, so we started to ease off after that. I worked with him over about 15 years, and created some wonderful spreads.

One of Blowup’s classic scenes was when Veruschka [von Lehndorff] was shot writhing around under a photographer. Were you both friends?

I had a big kinship with Veruschka, we got on like a house on fire. Before Blowup we went on an African trip together and spent a month together — lots of talking and laughing around a bonfire, as well as the work. I remember when I went to Africa thinking, ‘Oh my god, Veruschka’s 6' 1" and I’ll be completely dwarfed by her.’ But I carried it off, I don’t know how — our differences were embraced.

“I’ve been true to myself and honest about my work, so there’s a truth there rather than pretending to be something else.”

Were you always comfortable with being sensual in front of the camera?

It’s lovely to maintain a sense of sensuality. I know I’ve got something which is interesting. I was often being told, or knew, if something was too risky or too sexy. It was much more controlled when I was doing it. Now you can do what you like, you can be as sensual as you feel — which can be gorgeous. Sensual is different from today’s hard celebrity stuff. Sensual is a nice word, I love it.

How did you stay grounded back then?

I’m not vain and I don’t have an ego. I don’t think about the façade — façades are dangerous.

Did you find it hard to accept that people wanted you for how you looked?

Yes, when I lived in Italy, in the late 70s, before I thought I needed to stop, I was beginning to feel like the piranha fish were at me — everybody wanted me and I was getting tired by it. Being wanted, wanted, wanted isn’t a nice feeling.

Surely it’s better than being unwanted?

[Laughs] Not being wanted is probably very good for people, including myself, because you learn about your true self and your inner strengths, and then you can come up for air with something else. I don’t know what age people decide that they’re going to put their feet up, but I can’t comprehend retirement.

“I don’t think about the façade — façades are dangerous.”

What was the riskiest shoot that you can remember?

Lying on creaking ice in the North Pole. That was quite scary because we had no control over the ice float that was creaking and groaning. If you fall in you’ve got, like, two minutes before you die of exposure. That was great. There’ve been some hairy moments, but nothing that has been too dangerous.

The 60s were a very hedonistic time — did you embrace that lifestyle?

No, I was clean, strange as it may sound. At the age I’m at now, if somebody said, ‘Is there anything you regret never doing?’, well, I was never a true hippy because I didn’t have time. If you’ve got a spread in a magazine to do, that’s what my focus was on — it was not about taking drugs. In fact, I didn’t mix with people who took drugs.

So you didn’t hang out with all the bad boys?

I didn’t play that game. That probably means I’m a stuffy old girl, I don’t know [laughs]. I’m happy the way my life’s gone. I never used to think about it, but I’ve been true to myself and honest about my work, so there’s a truth there rather than pretending to be something else. I think it probably adds huge pressure if you’ve always got to think, ‘Oh my god I haven’t been in the papers in the last week, I better do something’. Can you imagine that pressure? It’s a road I don’t want to be on. I know people who have died jumping out of a window on an acid trip in New York. It’s ghastly, but luckily I’ve got to this age and I’m hapy with that.

You’re currently preparing a new exhibition. Who are your favourite subjects to photograph?

Women. I love men, but I find women endlessly fascinating — how they manoeuvre their way around life. There are some fantastic women around, aren’t there?

Originally published at thefifthsense.i-d.co.

Jill Kennington was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For the 2015 general election, I conceived the idea and exec-produced this alternative party political broadcast with Game of Thrones’s anarchist-in-chief — and first-time voter — Maisie Williams.

VIDEO: Maisie Williams was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As part of my FKA twigs cover story, I worked with her to create a Dazed Digital takeover, which included executive producing these two exclusive videos. The first is a remix to her song “Ache”. The second is about Wet Wipez, her favourite dance collective. It also marked her directorial debut.

VIDEO: FKA twigs was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With the cost of VR kits tumbling and over 52 million virtual reality headsets predicted to be sold in America over the next year, by the time 2020 rolls around most people will have access to an affordable virtual world. But what how will it impact out social lives? And what does this mean for artists, filmmakers and musicians? Who better to answer these pressing questions over a casual coffee than Henry Stuart, the CEO of Visualise, a company that specialises in telling stories through the medium of VR.

Tim Noakes: Let’s talk VR. What are you setting out to achieve in virtual reality?

Henry Stuart: The direction we’re approaching this industry from is primarily telling stories through virtual reality. Immersing people in other places — whether it’s a real place that we’ve captured or an entirely imagined, virtual world. What we want to do is take people through that experience in a way that tells a narrative so it’s not just a sort of disjointed tech demo. It has to be deeper and more meaningful.

Yes, it had reputation for being a bit gimmicky.

Henry Stuart: What happened was, VR kicked off and the first thing that came out was rollercoaster demos. They just wanted everyone to scream and fall on the floor and that was the best thing possible. Fly over cities, go on a Formula One car, all those things. And there is value in that — maybe it could lead to VR theme parks, but that’s not what we’re in it for. We are storytellers primarily. Our head of VR, Will, he’s a Cannes award winning documentary filmmaker. The majority of the team here is production are focused in telling stories and come from a film background, so that’s really where our hearts are at. That’s where we differentiate ourselves. Our mission is crafting meaningful realities.

What have been the big steps in terms of getting you where you need to be in this journey?

Henry Stuart: Funnily enough it started in 2006 for me. I started a company to produce panoramic photos for virtual tours, as they were called back then. I was doing virtual tours of schools, hotels, all that kind of stuff. I grew that and started experimenting in more advanced forms of tech. One of them was called Gigapixel, these massive panoramas you could zoom into and find tiny details in a huge crowd, which I did for the Royal Wedding. Then I got picked up by Getty to shoot the Olympics, as the world’s first immersive content producer at the Olympics in 2012. So I shot 360 footage there and that’s how I got into 360 degree video, by playing around with that. Which is an amazing thing, but it was still stuck on desktops or mobile, it wasn’t really moved around, so it was limited. In 2012, this Kickstarter was started for the Oculus Rift, by this guy Palmer Luckey (below). He had produced this VR headset in his mum’s garage .

“Oculus Rift completely turned my world upside down. I realised this was a whole new medium. A new medium hasn’t come around for generations. It’s a completely new way of experiencing media.”

So we put 360 video on one of those headsets and it completely turned my world upside down. I realised this was a whole new medium. A new medium hasn’t come around for generations. It’s a completely new way of experiencing media. To be inside a film or to be inside a new virtual world is something completely amazing. So that’s when Visualise was founded — 2013. We’ve tried to gather some of the world’s best producers of VR from literally all around the globe. People moved over here to work with us.

Work + Life: How has the business changed since then?

Henry Stuart: Since 2013 we’ve produced over 100 different experiences in VR. The majority are 360 degree based, but we’re starting to do more and more of what’s called CGVR, which is Computer Generated VR, which are more interactive experiences. It’s more abstract than augmenting reality with those ones. Right now we’re working on a project for Christmas where you put a headset on and you’re in a hot air balloon floating over this American style mid century snowy village. In the hot air balloon you’ve got this present-o-matic machine where you have to pull a lever and throw presents out down the chimney to deliver for Santa, who’s ill. It’s just a kind of fun game we’re making, but it’s that kind of thing. It’s using a device called the HTC Vive, which allows you to walk around so you can walk over to the edge of the basket and look over down at the village. You can adjust your height by pulling on different strings to let air out of the balloon or let more flames in. This is all virtual.

So do you have to wear gloves or use VR wands?

Henry Stuart: It’s got these kind of wands. What you do is you set your boundaries in a real room and then when you put these different peripherals on you can walk around. Then as you get to the edge of the real room, get to a window or a real wall, a grid comes up so you know you’re about to hit something. There’s one company that built a ‘walk the plank’ experience. And someone who tried it on wanted to prove they were really brave and could do it without teetering along so ran across the plank, but of course there was a wall at the other end, and he broke his nose apparently.

“One company built a ‘walk the plank’ experience. Someone wanted to prove they were really brave and ran across the plank, but of course there was a wall at the other end, and he broke his nose, apparently.”

So fabricating virtual worlds is where it’s all going?

Henry Stuart: There’s this whole other world of virtual reality which is interactive. In virtual reality there’s a term that people use called ‘presence,’ which is the experience you’re getting is so good and so real that you feel transported. There’s only so far you can go down that road at the moment in 360 video. When you get into interactive VR, even if it’s a cartoon, the idea that you can see your hands in there, even if they’re controllers, and you can pull things and interact with them it makes sense to you and it’s as you would expect it to happen in the real world, and the fact that you can move around the place, stand up physically, that’s when you get true presence. That’s where your mind starts to get tricked and you suddenly lose yourself, you’re playing in this virtual world as naturally as you would in the real world. That’s an image we’re really excited about.

“Your mind starts to get tricked and you suddenly lose yourself, you’re playing in this virtual world as naturally as you would in the real world.”

What associated tech are you excited by?

Henry Stuart: For us, when we expand our abilities in CGVR, the real excitement is the crossover between the two. Technologies like room scanning, photogrammatory, where you can get a perfect model of the real world by capturing it with thousands of photos from every different angle and every different object. Or putting laser scanners down and recreating from millions of dots the exact world, and then exploring that with one of these headsets, walking around in this perfectly captured place. So those types of technologies are all stuff that we’re starting to get excited about.

The applications of room scanning must be endless, particuarly from a military point of view

Henry Stuart: Forensics as well. Imagine police investigations where you can capture exactly what the crime scene looked like, before anyone had been inside it. And then you could look at it at a later date. People can reopen files ten years later, put a headset on, look around the scene and discover new things,

What are the pros and cons of being able to immerse yourself in a world that’s not real?

Henry Stuart: First of all, it’s a while off before we can get to that Matrix style thing. For example, to be able to see vision like we do now, you need to have 16k per eye on the VR headset. Right now it’s maybe 2k. The idea of having a 16k TV screen squashed down per eye is going to be in ten years time. So it’s a long way before we have that lucid reality view of looking around. There’s always going to be that knowledge in the back of your head that it’s not quite right, but that’s going to change obviously. I think once we get there I think it’s really exciting.

VR is having a renaissance in pop culture too.

Henry Stuart: There’s huge amount of VR dystopians that are going to come out — Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, is coming out as a Spielberg film next year. But ultimately what they’re doing in that is escaping a broken real world and going into this metaverse where you can be whatever you want, you can fly on a dragon, you can be a wizard, whatever tickles your fancy. The present seduction of virtual reality is that you’ll be able to do incredibly practical things too, like meet people, have experiences that you could never have in real life. But also the practical aspects of running businesses. Imagine a construction project where engineers from all over the world are able to collaborate, draw shapes on the road about where they think cranes are going to be deployed, move times forwards or backwards to see what the construction will look like at a certain point. As a very practical business tool it’s going to be huge. Also medical applications as well, there’s a huge amount of medical applications happening right now and these things are only going to get more and more valid as the stuff gets more and more real.

“The present seduction of virtual reality is that you’ll be able to do incredibly practical things too, like meet people, have experiences that you could never have in real life. But also the practical aspects of running businesses.”

Have you heard about how people are using VR to deal with post traumatic stress? They’re recreating the experiences that cause people to have their trauma and exposing them to it, which seems to me counterintuitive, but apparently not. This is a proven way of people dealing with stress and getting over it. In the past what they’d do is go and visit the location and reenact stuff, which sounds awful right? But they recreate these virtual worlds in VR and put people in them, and the people explain ‘that wasn’t quite right, I think there was someone there, or closer. And then the bomb goes off there…’ or whatever it is. So making those things more real is going to make the medical applications more powerful. You can use VR to help take away pain in patients with burns. They’ve made these ice worlds that they put people in so when they’re having treatment on their burns what they can see is this very fun, cartoony ice world.

“You can use VR to help take away pain in patients with burns. They’ve made these ice worlds that they put people in so when they’re having treatment on their burns what they can see is this very fun, cartoony ice world.”

So you see VR as overwhelming positive?

Henry Stuart: I think there are huge benefits to it, because school kids being able to see nearly extinct animals, tourism that doesn’t endanger the planet, all those things are really valid, really amazing things. There’s a huge amount of positive things from VR. Of course, there are things that people like to get really fixated on really, which are the negative aspects — like teenagers who just wanna spend all their entire lives in this virtual world where they’re basically a super hero.

So reality is always going to be a let down when they take off the headset?

Henry Stuart: Well this is the thing — I think they can live quite happily side by side. I think the idea that you can give your child for Christmas a drive around a race track in a Ferrari rather than a scalextric is really quite fun. That would be really amazing and might make real life things quite boring to a lot of people. But I just think that that’s the way that the world’s gonna move. People are gonna go into VR for these kinds of kicks, doing base jumping or wind suit diving, you can just put a headset on and do it. Sit with friends and be at the court side of Wimbledon and all these incredible things just like you were there. But there will be people who abuse it and who stay in there too long. I think that’s a side effect of any kind of addictive virtual world, like World of Warcraft or whatever it is.

“ People are gonna go into VR for these kinds of kicks, doing base jumping or wind suit diving, you can just put a headset on and do it. But there will be people who abuse it and who stay in there too long. I think that’s a side effect of any kind of addictive virtual world.”

We don’t even know the impact of smartphones on the human condition. We had them less than ten years ago and everyone is addicted to them. We don’t even know what the mental repercussions of that will be yet.

Henry Stuart: And if you think it’s hard now, imagine what it’s going to be like with AR. Whereby it’s always there. It’s going to be nuts, isn’t it?

How do you think AR will actually manifest itself? Through contact lenses?

Henry Stuart: First of all it’ll be through glasses. Ray-Ban and people like that are working with Google at the moment very closely after the failure of Google Glass. It’ll come back. VR is meant to be worth 20 billion by 2020, AR is meant to be 100 or something like that. That’s the industry that’s going to go bananas because it’s got an immediate application for every part of our daily life, as opposed to something you might tap out and into for practical or entertainment reasons — VR takes over the real world. AR is information overlaid, making the real world rich, more informative, more useful and making you more efficient in a lot of ways. It’s got business applications and life applications — it’s basically going to replace the smartphone I think eventually, because you won’t need to reference a tablet or anything to be there. First of all it’ll be a pair of glasses, then it will evolve into the contact lens, whatever it is. I think it will become a lot more invasive and interesting, and I think actually that’s a much more frightening thing.

“First of all AR will be a pair of glasses, then it will evolve into the contact lens. I think it will become a lot more invasive and interesting, and I think actually that’s a much more frightening thing.”

Have you seen Hyperreality, it’s a video about what AR could look like in the future? It’s really frightening. As funny and frightening as that video is, it’s things that happen in that video, like, where they’re standing on the pavement and the light goes red and cars start coming, or you’re walking through the supermarket and there’s a little cartoon banana bouncing around on top of them because they’re on special offer, those kinds of things.

I guess the barrier to both AR and VR is that technology is also hardware — those big headsets. What are the big barriers that you foresee?

Henry Stuart: There are a lot of big barriers. The biggest issue is that it’s seen as being incredibly isolating, quite rightly so. You put a headset on, you can’t see the people you’re with and can’t really in any way interact with the people you’re next to. That’s the single biggest issue, but that’s going to change because in the future it is going to be one of the biggest social enablers. The thing is, we’re going to be interacting with people in a totally different way which is a behavioral change as well. So not only do you have to put on this big headset that blocks out people around you, but then you have these avatars of people that are versions of people in this virtual world. We need to get used to how you interact with people in there.

Boiler Room are starting their own virtual music venue. How do you see virtual reality impacting on the music industry in the next couple of years?

Henry Stuart: Well first of all, I think the music industry is one the industries set to benefit most from VR. For an industry that’s had so much of its revenue decline because of streaming. It means that for a lot of big bands and big labels, they want to do big tours. And you get these huge stadium tours that go and there’s limited size to each of the stadiums, a limited amount of tickets to be sold. But if you can capture an event where you can be onstage with the artist, you can be backstage with them you can be in the best seat in the house, then that’s huge value to people. Whether or not, you’ve been to the real thing, you might prefer to go onstage or backstage. Those are things you’ll never do in the real world. That is something that people will genuinely want to pay for, I think.

Is there a different way we can start using the technology to start benefitting the artist performing beyond different camera angles?

Henry Stuart: You see artists like Björk being really clever, because they’re not just looking at it from a film, 360 based viewpoint, they’re looking at creating immersive experiences that are often interactive and that represent the tracks they are played with. So it’s this abstract experience where you go in and be part of and experience it all around you which is a different vision, a different interpretation of a video.

“Artists like Björk are being really clever, because they’re not just looking at it from a 360 based viewpoint, they’re looking at creating immersive experiences that are often interactive and that represent the tracks they are played with”

Are you saying that there is a possibility of people customising or creating a musical experience?

Henry Stuart: Yeah. The idea of a music visualiser which is interactive, whereby you can have all these different shapes around you, and picking up a shape and combining it with another shape, getting a beat going and then pulling something else out of the environment, and then as you do that pulling it all around you depending on what kind of music you make or pace or tempo or the way you move these shapes around. This world gets created, and its unique every time, you get a different track every time. It’s something we’ve been playing with as an idea, there’s a huge scope for it.

Hollywood must be the ultimate VR entertainment destination in the short term, right?

Henry Stuart: Yes, it’s the same trajectory that films are going to take. We’re finding that people end up feeling dislocated from the experience if they are just watching something around them — and it’s got a name for it, it’s called the Swayze effect, after Patrick Swayze in Ghost. The idea that you’re in the background of the scene, you can see what’s happening but you can’t influence it, and nobody can hear you.

“People can end up feeling dislocated from the experience if they are just watching something around them. It’s called the Swayze effect, after Patrick Swayze in Ghost.”

So what native filmmakers have started doing in VR to avoid the Swayze effect is to break that fourth wall and have one of the actors talk to you at some point, or people acknowledge you or allow you to do something or make a decision in the film. At that point the film stops being a film and it becomes an experience, it becomes something you can do, something you can interact with, or people can talk to you in, which effects the outcome of the final thing. In that same way, if you take that template into music then it’s a really really powerful thing.

When do you think that the price point of actually getting into VR will become atractive for the masses?

Henry Stuart: For mobile devices to reach that Oculus quality, I think it’s going to be 4 or 5 years. I spoke to Google yesterday and they showed me Project Tango, this huge Lenovo phone, an incredibly powerful device, moving everything around you and this virtual world grew out of the floor around you, with deers walking through the Google cafe we were in and stuff like that, it was quite an amazing thing. It won’t be long until this kind of stuff. But in the short term, I think the PlayStation VR headsets are hugely important in terms of driving more consumer adoption, it’s a single peripheral to an existing platform that’s already in millions of people’s houses. So I think that’ll be a great way of turbo charging the VR industry in terms of uptake of consumers. Then, if you have applications like music or film, they’ll slot into that existing platform that ecosystem.

Who do you think will challenge Oculus and Vive’s supremacy?

Henry Stuart: They are going to remain as specialist pieces of equipment — but they’re expensive and they need a PC computer to go with them, which never runs easily. But there’s also premium mobile headsets like the Google Daydream which has just come out and that’s a fantastic piece of kit, it’s like another Samsung Gear VR but it’s got a more open system. There will be any number of phones that will be Daydream ready, so it’s not just for Google Pixel phones, it’s also going to be for the Samsung Ranger phones and other phones from other brands. In that headset they’ve got this really clean interface, really amazing experiences that they’re creating, and that’s cheap as well. I think it’s 90 quid or something. That’s something that a lot of people are going to be getting.

But what good is the hardware if you’ve got nothing good to experience — there needs to be a lot more people like you, right? To create an industry that actually matches the demand of the tech.

Henry Stuart: That’s right. VR needs its killer app. Apparently there’s a twenty year old guy, that’s made this shoot ’em up game in VR which is called Onward. It’s for the Vive. he sells it at 18.99 per unit and he’s sold 20,000 of the game already. I think that’s the highest. He’s a twenty year old kid working by himself, he’s produced this multi-player VR game. So yeah, I could say there should be loads more people like us but equally if kids, well he’s twenty years old and he’s made it by himself, and it’s been AAA makers in terms of sales, then that’s incredible. You just need more people trying.

We need a few more geniuses. My 5-year-old son tried VR at Second Dome’s Kids Day in London Fields and was totally immersed. By the time he’s fifteen, all of this will be normalised.

Henry Stuart: That’s it. We see it as behavioural change, as the behavioural norm. Put a headset on as much as you would sit down to watch TV. I can totally understand why there’s a general fear of people getting too involved in VR. I think it’s one of those disruptive technologies that people just aren’t going to look favourably on in terms of people just staring down this tunnel at a screen. But life’s going to be different. There’s going to be different things we get our kicks out of. There’s going to be experiences in the VR world that are just going to be so much richer than anything we could ever get in the real world. We could be face to face with dinosaurs. Imagine that?

Interview: Tim Noakes / visualise.com

Originally published at medium.com on November 29, 2016.

How VR will impact everything was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In a place where dreams are in short supply, DeJ Loaf’s rise from the ashes of Detroit is a fairytale forged from tragedy. I collaborated with BOGIE on this short documentary, in which she took us on a soul searching trip around her once beloved Motor City.

VIDEO: DeJ Loaf was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

VIDEO: Empire of the Sun was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2010 I met up with Ninja and Yo-Landi of South African zef rap rave phenomenon Die Antwoord for an exclusive tour of their home city, Cape Town. Starting with an interview over a milkshake in Golden Acre, we then went to their friend Dragon’s house for a photo shoot and ended up at the home of Afrikaans gangsta rap pioneer Isaac Mutant for pizza, beers and a freestyle session. This is a film of my day spent on the zef side.

VIDEO: Die Antwoord was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I went to LA to produce this film on DJ Mustard with director Nick Walker. I also wrote this feature on him and commissioned this Mustard mixtape by Tanner. It’s so good! Listen HERE.

VIDEO: DJ Mustard was originally published in Tim Noakes: Interview Archive on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.