Kathe Koja Returns With More Futureshock in Dark Matter

It's my personal opinion that more people in the immersive community should be reading books about the field. This doesn't just mean picking up Lisa Messeri's In The Land of the Unreal, it also means checking out what fiction authors have to say about technology in the spatial age as well. Did everyone stop dreaming of the possible after Ready Player One? It's time to buy more books. There's a lot more to say about cyberspace than that.

Kathe Koja is such a delight for this reason. In her three-book series, Koja tells the tale of two entertainers making it in a world awash in cyberspace, augmented reality, and a music and club industry that never changes no matter what year it is. While the writing focuses on the romance between stars Ari Regon and Felix Perez, Koja fills her tomes to the brim with casual prophesies about how people will be using immersive tech in the future.

You should definitely read Dark Factory if you haven't, but today we're speaking with her about the upcoming latest installment of her cyber-rave adventure, Dark Matter. The book ships on December 2nd from Meerkat Press.

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METACULTURE: One of the reasons Dark Matter (following Dark Factory and Dark Park) are so fun to read is because it reminds me of art and music scenes that a lot of people find themselves in the middle of in some point of their life. What music and art scenes in real life have resonated with you to form this world?

KOJA: The Dark Factory world turns on an axis of energy and change: like techno’s advent in Detroit and Berlin, and the wild glam scene right before the churn of punk, Basquiat’s art and McQueen’s fashion, the times when an established world is uprooted by something more alive. When what is is overtaken by what needs to be.

And I’ve seen again and again how that creative energy is a constant, it’s always seeking expression somewhere—when two or three films pop up at the same time about the same subject, often an unlikely subject, we think What are the odds? but it’s that energy working to find its expression—like mycelium, another facet of the Dark Factory story, the idea of ceaseless growth and connection constantly happening somewhere deep, and the fruiting bodies on the surface are the dance tracks and art shows and books, all sprouting and flowering at the same time.

There are a lot of characters you’ll meet in a scene like this, from social climbers to—well, we won’t give away the story for Dark Matter, but it’s definitely prominent this time. If you could get rid of one archetype of scenester, who would that be? What would make that world better if they simply disappeared?

For some people there’s a real determination to be part of a scene, but when that’s powered by what can this do for me? rather than excitement or love or the urge to collaborate, it’s corrosive and it can eat up the scene from the inside. And those people are often used by the ones who are really only there to monetize whatever art is happening without any interest in the work being made. For both types of people, go away, and come back when you can give rather than take.

The world of tech has been on a roller coaster ride lately. How much does tech permeate your real life? What do you love, and what do you ache to avoid?

All technology is a tool, right, it’s developed and exists, presumably, to make living easier, to make doing the shit we need to do easier: connect with each other, find the things we need, share the things we make. When it becomes about itself, when it turns into greedy commercial absurdity, or degrades into suppression or oppression, that’s when we have to remember that the tool’s not supposed to use its user, and act accordingly.

I use whatever tech I need to enable me to do my work and accomplish my life, like a basic little Android phone, and a Mac Mini and iPad, and a car that can’t do much except drive. Tech can be as simple as the tofu press that changed my cooking life, or the recyclable pens I’m addicted to, or apps like Blip and Signal. And I try to remember that limitless electricity is not always a given, and freedom lies not only in what we have but what we can do without.

You’ve made some deep comments in this book about artists who are looking for their place in the world and the different ways they go about it. Specifically I spied some commentary about uninspired DJ sets that don’t go as hard as they should. I wanted to ask: what are some of the best sets you’ve heard this year? What DJs are making you excited for the world of electronic music and beyond?

Ah the music, there’s so much! The lineups at places like Nowadays or Subclub or Renate (who are sadly closing), and Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago’s thoughtful, left field stuff, and sui generis artists like Justin Snyder that create exactly what you didn’t know you absolutely needed to hear.

Then there’s the developing story of all the worlds and platforms of the internet in Dark Matter. In a way, the internet in this book is its own character. What do you think of current immersive platforms, what do you think is going to be the moment our current internet begins to match Dark Matter?

I love the idea of the internet being a character in its own right—we treat it that way already, don’t we! And I’m extremely curious to see how fully immersive media will finally flower for a critical mass of users, and a little surprised by the lag, the time it’s taking for a reliable, comfortable delivery system to develop/evolve. This is an art form very much in search of a venue.

In Dark Matter, in all three Dark Factory books, Ari the producer wrestles with that issue all the time, from underground warehouse parties to divey little bars to the flashy Factory nightclub, then into a wider world of music festivals and gaming, then the top tier arena of VC-fed 24/7 media platforms, he’s forever chasing the best place, the right place where everyone who wants to can come and dance and enjoy. What’s a party without guests? What’s art without engagement?

And that restlessness is a good thing, it’s the best thing, because when the makers get restless, we’ll finally get our immersive platform happening.

In Dark Matter, we encounter a character who's so into niche knowledge that you describe them as "containing multitudes". Despite the internet's current "dead theory" state, there are real people like this around. What spaces or people have you met that reflect the information-gathering mindset online?

Where are they not, right?! Think of a branching, swirling spiral of a subreddit, or the obsessive drilldown comments on film and TV shows, or the three-hour podcasts about the most arcane subjects possible—the urge to know all of something is huge. And the parsing of larger topics into smaller and smaller branches of knowledge, like caving tunnels that finally can admit only one person at a time, can become mesmerizing and, depending on the topic, actively hazardous. In Dark Matter, Charmskool is the one who seeks all the paths, and as a classics scholar and a lifelong gamer, she’s most at home in those niche spaces that actually turn out to be as big as the world. So she’s comfortable with big ideas, like positing that there are actual human beings in every era who incorporate, embody, the aspects of eternal gods like Krishna and Kali and Shiva. Because she’s found the data.

There's something to be said about fame and being psychologically ready to put yourself out there, as there's a little of that in Dark Matter this time too. What's your style for dealing with being perceived online with the public? What tips would you have for someone who wants to engage publicly with art, but fears being perceived and the consequences of that?

I’ve been offering my work for public engagement for a long time, and whatever response I got I’ve always considered fair game, good or bad it’s part of the gig. But personal engagement is a different level of exposure. I love that I can go online and meet readers and other writers and creatives and collaborators—it’s really a gift to be able to do that easily, daily—but we all need a firewall, we all have to construct one for ourselves out of what feels safe, and sustainable, you don’t want your online life to turn you into your own sorcerer’s apprentice, or into someone you’re actually not. Because what happens online can be viewed through all kinds of prisms, and misinterpreted, or deliberately twisted, to twist reality too.

Just like Felix the DJ, who found celebrity so threatening that he constructed a very steep and stringent firewall of privacy, online and in real life, and he wants it, expects it, to apply to his husband Ari, too—but Ari’s not a private kind of guy. And this friction runs hot through Dark Matter.

Let's touch on the queer community for a second. We're everywhere now--from sitting in powerful positions in tech and politics to simultaneously being as poor and disenfranchised as we were decades ago. It's confusing for anyone who's been on this earth long enough--certainly for me. Do you see being queer as something that might eventually fall away from personal politics, as much as our past dreams didn't exactly encompass this current vision?

I do, and I don’t. Human equality exists in a societal milieu that’s always going to be political, as long as human beings make law that apply to other human beings.

As technology advances, some people are also looking back at some of the real bangers of invention that never should have left our personal inventory. This is especially true as design elements--blockiness, curvature, color--are all considered in what feels cozy to the user. What decade of electronic design is your favorite and why?

To be honest I don’t feel a lot of nostalgia for tech, I don’t love the smell of old books and I relinquished my vinyl records without a care, and I don’t hanker for past design. But I do believe design is the ultimate unspoken emotional response to whatever humanity is feeling in the moment, so the fact that I’m a lifelong fan of brutalism (check the insanely cool Dark Matter title font for proof) probably says something quite specific about me :)

I want to leave some room for anything you'd like to tell our readers that you think is important to know right now. Please promo whatever you want (we got the book covered!), or say what you like here.

When I first started working on the Dark Factory project, almost six years ago, I had no idea what shape it would take, or where it would take me, or what it would do—but I knew I wanted to take a chance on making it. And Tricia Reeks, my collaborative partner at Meerkat Press, was ready to take that chance with me. As Tricia and I shaped Dark Factory’s online home I met other artists and makers (like you!) who were intrigued by that concept and that world, and wanted to be part of it too. From the shared art to the live events to the ongoing plans for VR, it all proves—again!—that taking a chance on the work we feel we need to make is always, always the right thing to do.