Q: Are you Doctor Plasmatron?

A: no, I am one of the Doctor's research assistants, and sometimes a test subject.

Q: Why do you look like that?
A: The standardization of my appearance has evolved for several reasons. By adopting a very basic colour and utilitarian presentation I remove myself from western society's attempted mastery over plumage, to settle on a consistent manifestation which hopefully downplays messages sent to others, and forces them to pay attention to the person in the clothes, rather than their interpretation of the clothes (always a noise riddled message depending too much on relative interpretation, i never said what i was doing worked as intended).

Q: Why black?
A: Initially it came from being around theatre stagecrafters a lot. People behind the stage wear black to avoid attracting attention when going about what they need to do; their presence is in support of the main attraction, not the attraction its self. Growing up I found I enjoyed being a component of the background functions rather than a point of attention, so I adopted the black clothes of the stagecrafters. All the world is a stage and all... This way I felt i could similarly use the dark colour to blend with shadows, corners, and dark rooms, allowing me to interact with a situation with less direct influence on it. Perhaps this could be thought of as trying to measure the experiment of life without stewing the data too much with my own influence on the parameters.

The clothing is largely utilitarian, favouring strong fabrics, well placed pockets, strong stitching, and durability. This is because i feel clothing does not need to be replaced nearly as often as the fashion industry would have us believe. Good clothing will last a person for years, and if the colours fade they can be dyed back down, so having the same set of clothes for 5-6 years at a time (and longer) obviously lends its self to consistency.

I also find black to be the most neutral colour in our society, if worn exclusively. A person can get away wearing all black in our culture and not be noticed that much, whereas someone dressed entirely in any other uniform colour will tend to stick out. Black has long been associated with evil and/or hipsterism, so there are some projections which must be accepted with that, but nothing is perfect.

Q: Why dress the same all the time?
A: Consistency is another component of neutralizing fashion. It is also reflective of a consistency i try and maintain in other aspects of my life. I see no reason to develop and maintain numerous presentations of myself when i am not my clothing. If people were shown a consistent appearance, they would hopefully come to ignore appearance in their own heads when interacting with me. However this practice backfires if consistency is not maintained; variations can attract extra undue attention due to previously perceived consistency. (affinity and contract can sometimes bite you in the ass)

There is some variation in my clothing, mostly for utilitarian purposes (hot/wet/cold weather), but occasionally there are social reasons. In our society people are conditioned to appear in context to the social environment as well as the natural one (i.e. dressing up for the opera). While I am generally opposed to this, I understand that fighting it vehemently can attract unwanted attention, negating other reasons for my consistent dress. Therefore i have struck a balance by adopting a colour and style which can blend into many situations, and requires minor adjustment in more extreme circumstances. I can look sharp, casual, working class, art school, bourgeois, tough, sensitive... The cultural ambiguity of black dress can allow me to be in a wide range of environments without sticking out too much like an interloper. The lack of labels and logos keep the clothes timeless in a culture of seemingly scheduled fashion trend consumption.

I also find that consistent and neutral dress can provoke people to project their own appearance and personality assumptions onto me. This is an undesirable side effect which can help understand more about the projector. I frequently find that when a person gets a strong message from the way i look, it is often a message which tells more about them than it does about me.

We are also in a society which uses costume to develop and project a persons personality. I disagree with the dominant images of personality and the image-based categorization of people's drives and values, so by dressing consistently neutral i try to avoid falling into stereotype traps, and am left to develop my individuality through the contents of my beliefs and actions, not through projected behaviour associated with a particular look.

Besides, buying clothes in bulk saves money, makes doing laundry a snap, and uses time more productively than being out shopping for clothes. Shopping malls are horrendous places.

Q: Are you a skinhead?
A: I shave my head because i'd be bald otherwise anyway, and this also fits with consistency of a neutral appearance. A shaved head can look intimidating, but can also look soft/infantile, or intelligent. The dominant culture images of bald men do tend to be thugs and aggressors, so I accept that the majority of assumptions people may make about my appearance may be intimidating, there is nothing I can do to combat this except for being a nice person when interacting, those assumptions are their problem (though i may suffer the consequences). I have tried to think of a way to combat this assumption of aggression, but ultimately any solutions (growing some hair, styling it somehow) offset other reasons for keeping it shorn. I figure aging will take care of it eventually though.

Q: What's with your glasses?
A: I wear glasses because i wig out poking myself in the eye with a contact lens. I chose the style of frame in accordance with the rest of my dress; consistency and neutrality were key. I used to have thick 'buddy holly' frames which I felt would convey a sense of timelessness and avoid fad, however i found that they attracted undue attention, so i have since moved to a lighter frame which is both less expensive as well as more common. Since i have a health plan at work which allows for glasses each year, i have obtained several copies of the same frame, acting as "backups" and retaining a sense of consistency to my presentation for years to come.

Q: Do you like Andy Warhol a lot?
A: what I know of Andy Warhol I don't like. I think his reasons for dressing as he did, with consistency, was to _build_ a projected personality, not neutralize one. If anything, i feel i am anti-Warhol, though my presentation can not be understood as such unless a person sees past the presentation to understand it's reasons, because of the work Andy Warhol did. If someone were to dress like me for emulation, they are missing the point.

I also do not agree with Andy Warhol's ideas on the art industry and production. I am a hands-on person who feels the act of creation is the reason to create (see below) so mass producing something makes no sense beyond a money making effort. i do not manufacture culture, I make stuff for people. The art industry (which Andy Warhol made an artwork of its self) relies mostly on the cult of personality and assigning abstracted value to cultural souvenirs made of the ideas the purchaser was not a part of. That doesn't inspire me.

Q: Who are you trying to be?
A: Myself. I admit freely that my identity is consciously (and unconsciously) constructed, I make no secret of my "real" name and do not downplay the fact that "olo J. Milkman" is a constructed identity. This is part parody of the entertainment industry's presentation of falsity as reality to make celebrity life more desirable. I also feel we construct our identities largely consciously, though few like to admit such conscious steering, and by hyperbolizing my presentation i make this obvious so that people can both see through it as well as appreciate it for the feedback sent by it. Hopefully they will then also see their own personality constructs and can learn to better form their own identity instead of allowing market forces and cultural pressure to build it for them.

Q: Do you sell much art?
A: Almost none, i prefer giving things i make away to people i know and interact with. The objects i make are sometimes souvenirs of people's interactions with me, and that interaction is really the creative component of the object. So, to keep from having a room full of my own crap, I give the products away to those who appreciate both their appearance and the act of their creation. I don't oppose selling things i do creatively, but more often than not i find people want a product for the personal connection it represents, and strangers don't "get it". So if someone wants to buy something, I'd rather befriend them first to figure out what to give them, than just take the cash and crank out something they want.

Q: Why are you so big on creativity?
A: Creativity is a part of human nature we all have the capacity for, but mass culture seeks to suppress the creative drive and supplant it with a consumptive drive, in order to support a smaller caste of creatives in a hierarchical structure. Creativity should not be an industry, it is ideally a component of everyone's daily life, so commonplace as to be largely meaningless to anyone outside of the person directly experiencing the creativity, or products thereof. I try to be creative in everyday life as a functioning component of everything i do; from modifying objects I purchase to suit them to my use, to generating new creative projects/moments. Advanced creativity is one of the factors that separates us from other earth animals, our awareness and use of it have brought rapid development to technological mastery which in turn leads to planetary mastery and further into universal mastery. If god made us in its image, I see god as the "creative drive", and we are in its image because we partially understand and use creativity to evolve our species and manifest new ideas. Therefore "artworks" are god's "leftovers", the meal being the thought process.

Q: Why did you start Product Of Neglect Art Collective Ltd.?
A: initially it was formed to parody institutionalized creativity, and offer friends an umbrella of "legitimacy" in the parody to collaborate with me. However, very few other people were interested in participating in my creative endeavours, so i decided the parody could be extended to show how one person could fill the numerous roles of an arts collective. Since I feel creativity is not limited to one skill or discipline, putting the myriad of forms my cultural souvenirs took under one name, gave the appearance that there was more than one person behind it all, while at the same time it's satirical nature made it fairly obvious (to me at least) that everything was coming from a common ideology or person.

PONACL was also used to parody creative people who feel a need to form groups to support each others creativity. Perhaps it's fierce independence on my part, but I feel people's creativity should be able to stand on its own, as it is a manifestation of their person overall. I feel collectives are primarily a social construct, the social support being its main function (though yes, it also pools some resource and can spread skills), and I am not looking to be a member of something I feel i provide for myself (developmental encouragement and engagement in what i am doing). That said, collaboration is an enjoyable and useful creative activity, it just doesn't need to have a collective title applied to it, as labels define borders, so why put up those walls?

Q: Why didn't you turn it into an actual collective?
A: Collectives tend to form social "scenes" which isn't my motivation to create. Social movements are another thing altogether, as they are made up of individuals with a common purpose working towards a common outcome. I characterize social scenes as mob mentalities making decisions based on maintenance and growth of the social structure, maintaining established (or establishing) social hierarchies. That said, i do not rule out recurring collaborators or hanging with those of like mind. What interests me is recognizing recurring participants with common interests but different approaches. The law of averages dictates that I am not going to line up ideologically with an entire collective of people, I'll want to psychically pimpslap many of the people in the group, and they'll kick me out for belligerence (or more likely i'll just stop showing up).

Q: So PONACL was just used to promote art by olo J. Milkman?
A: PONACL, presented as a "collective", was meant to distract "identity attention" from the idea that the entire effort was one person, anonymizing the activities through aliases (olo J. Milkman itself an alias) to represent the many sides of creativity and personality which can make up a single body of work. It also attempted to disarm egomaniacal projection. I know; it was all a kind of contradictory parody; one person as collective to show how collectives could be meaningless while at the same time using the anonymity of a collective to downplay the singular initiative, ...but life's like that sometimes. By keeping a consistent theme/style/overtone to the output of PONACL, I wanted to show people that a person could do many creative things, that creativity is not a single discipline, and creative individuals are not defined by their skill set. Rather it was an array of manifestations and skills which could be learned well enough through iteration and error to express a desired outcome, and that this capacity in a creative person is ongoing. Creating in only one medium gives a person a limited vocabulary to deal with, so PONACL told this by its self being a product of a primarily singular creative effort, but speaking in many tongues.

Q. You got something against art school?

A: When I asked people who had been to art school what the most valuable thing they got from it was, every single one of them answered it was the friends they made. I do not deny that certain scientific skills are taught in art school which can broaden the language a creative person has to speak with, but by and large it seemed to me that people went to art school for social reasons, and I don't agree with paying for that experience. I would much rather learn to make ceramics by spending time with a friend and working on something together, or just asking them to teach me. This requires having a friend who does ceramics in the first place, but I feel that in a healthy community, if there is a desire to explore something, there will be someone around to click with on that level. That said, I'm not saying that anything i believe works as planned. Socio-cultural borders can keep people of like mind from bridging the "cool" gap or whatnot, so that's where paying someone to put you in a classroom together can come in handy. It can be just as effective to walk up and say hello for free though.

Q: So what's with the whole cult and science references along with the art stuff?
A: Art, science, and religion tend to get stuck in tradition, assumption, and ritual. I like to combine them all, and more, to show harmonies between the ghettoization of groups. Art requires Science for it's manifestation of Religion, and all three can fall into the same traps of; expected result (mistaking the tool for the reason behind its use), hierarchal knowledge, and position... These problems can manifest whenever a group is formed, potentially betraying the reason the group was formed in the first place. So the groups present in my creative output are a play on those ideas.

Q: What is with the boots?
A: Shoes are a person's interface to the planet, and while I would like to be frolicking barefoot amidst the fall leaves and clover meadows, the world we have constructed requires other attention. I choose to put a thick degree of protection between me and the planet, as well feel the weight of heavy feet which keep me firmly planted on the ground. I buy my boots used from army surplus stores, standard issue Canadian army parade boots (and one set of 14 hole garrison boots for when the buildings fall). I find it's best to have two pair, and since you're not paying insane $100+ amounts on a single pair of 'sneakers' you can afford a backup set of boots. Reason being; if you alternate boots from day to day, you avoid smelly feet and shoes. Allowing a pair of boots to lay fallow for 24 hours will kill off the nasty smelling bacteria's, so the next time you put them back on they're not a moist pungent parameceum playground. Parade boots will last you years if cared for at a minimum. All it takes is a boot polishing once every couple of months and they will keep from cracking. Also, a steel toe is a really good thing, unless you live in a very cold climate. Pre-worn boots also take less time to break in to your own feet, and i find it's usually a day or two of discomfort before they fit you like a glove for the next 6-7 years. You'll want to re-sole them every couple of years and this will effectively give you a new pair of shoes, and i highly recommend changing the sole from the flat parade sole to a hiking or "commando" sole for better grip, especially in icy climates. Parade boots are also multi-function. Shine them up nice and they can pass as formal wear, scuffs and worn patches can give an impression of bohemia.

Q: Do you believe in compromise?
A: Yes, i feel at this point there are few people who do not have to accept compromise. My ideological utopia could never exist within current human society, so instead of push like hell to make that happen and fail, i accept that it will not happen in my lifetime (and potentially never) so in the words of Patti Smith: I don't fuck with the past but I fuck plenty with the future. I do this by trying to affect today in a manner so as to make tomorrow (hopefully) more accepting of things i would like to bring to humanity. Consider a petrie dish with two cultures of bacteria in it. Both cultures eat away at the agar from their different sides and eventually bump into each other. One culture is stronger than the other and slowly begins to swallow up a larger percentage of the agar, squeezing out the weaker culture to eventually destroy it and have the petrie dish to its self. The weaker bacteria has no chance of surviving as-is, the stronger bacteria requiring the weaker's agar to expand it's footprint. So the weaker bacteria takes the only route of survival available to it: mutation. It tries to affect the stronger bacteria enough to seed its own qualities on the stronger culture. It will not be the exact culture which existed before, but it will also not cease to exist entirely. It is a sad realization, but one i suspect many kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers would understand. Sacrifice for a larger effect. Thus, i don't think i will ever get to live in a culture I find engaging, positive, understanding, etc... but I can instead try and make what I don't like a little less of what I don't like, and if enough people also do the same there is a chance the stuff we don't like will eventually be unpalatable on a larger scale, and the balance can shift. This is only a chance though, buying a lottery ticket, it is not an expectation that this plan will eventually "win" and create the utopia. The utopia is lost (for me) and now all we can do is make sure there's a corner of the cave we're allowed to sleep in, and that Tor won't bash our heads in with a rock when we do the fire dance he doesn't understand, but watches every full moon anyway.