ID: There are some great excerpts from that assignment in the book.
YO: Yeah, there are wonderful life stories too. [Assignment #14: Write your
life story in less than a day] Every one is amazing.
ID: How did the book come about? Why turn the website into a book?
YO: We’ve always wanted to make a book. It was just a matter of time before
we had enough work to curate from. We always pictured the work being shown
in book form, because it’s sort of enveloping. You can really lose yourself
in these different images, and words and stories. So the book form just
seemed like a natural extension of the website, in that you can see things
printed, you can hold it, you can keep it around, you can revisit it.
ID: You mention how engrossing the projects are. The site is dangerous. I
lost myself for hours there, more than once. How did you weed through over
7,000 submissions to come up with just a book’s worth of work? It seems
daunting.
YO: It was a daily exercise going through submissions. The thing about the
book was because everything is printed, things needed to be of a certain
resolution, suitable for printing. And because we’d always asked people to
send in things for the web, a lot of times we couldn’t get our first picks
because they just didn’t have high enough resolution for printing. That made
it pretty challenging, but it also helped facilitate the process or choosing
images. It was a big learning experience for us.
ID: Were you involved in the book design?
YO: No, Brian Scott did the design.
ID: How did the website design come about? It fits the overall theme very
well; it’s somewhat organic, but also very odd.
YO: [laughs] Thay’s good. I don¹t know. We’ve had the same design for almost
five years. We haven’t really changed it. I think we will, so everything is
against white, instead of brown. We wanted colors that were a little
unexpected, and we also wanted things to feel a little clunky, not polished.
The design couldn't get in the way of work; it couldn't be an obstacle. At
first people were a little bugged by the highlighting behind the text. But
now everybody does that, so it doesn’t bother as many people now. It’s
pretty simple.
ID: Are there any plans for further expansion of LTLYM?
YO: Well, I know we’re going to add more assignments. I think we’re only
going to keep accepting work for another year, then stop and archive it.
There will always be web archive of the work, but we’re not going to update
it past one or two years from now. We can't go on forever... we could, but
everything is out of pocket, and I spend alot of time working on it.
ID: So before the project is over will LTLYM relatively remain the same or
are there any plans for continuing exhibitions and new projects?
YO: It would be nice to have more exhibitions. I think we’d like to publish
another book as the project progresses. A part two book. I’m not exactly
sure when we would do that. Plans are just, we don’t really have concrete
plans in terms of the site. We just see how things go. See if we get money
to do new things.
ID: Has the release of the book had an impact on the site, has it changed
participants view on the site, are there more submissions?
YO: Yeah, I think it’s gone up a little bit. Not a ton. When Miranda’s film
came out there was spike in activity. A lot of people will discover the
project through Miranda’s site, or through Miranda. Little things like
Radiohead posting a link on their site would jump up the number of
submissions. So it¹s usually through things like that, not so much the
book although that came out pretty recently, so we’ll see.
ID: Do you have plans for any new collaborative projects after the end of
LTLYM?
YO: Yeah, I think I’m going to be working on another project with Harrell
pretty soon. Another audience participation site.
ID: What will that be like?
YO: I¹m not quite sure of the details. I think it’s about documenting
interesting people. But that’s all I know.
