Episode 018: Cy X

Show Notes

This week’s show features artist, musician, herbalist, and community builder Cy X, whose  work encompasses installations, digital instrument building, live audiovisual performances, and their broader interdisciplinary practice blurs boundaries between art, community building (Including co-founding Synth Library NYC), healing work, and music. Tune in to hear Cy’s journey from working in marketing to experiencing a creative awakening and finding place (and making space) in NYC.

Links from the conversation with Cy
> https://www.instagram.com/cyberwitch666
> https://cyberwitch666.com
> https://cyberwitchcoven.com

Join the conversation:
https://twitter.com/ArtObsolescence
https://www.instagram.com/artobsolescence/

Support artists
Art and Obsolescence is a non-profit podcast, sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and we are committed to equitably supporting artists that come on the show. Help support our work by making a tax deductible gift through NYFA here: https://www.artandobsolescence.com/donate

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ben: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host Ben Fino-Radin and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. Welcome back folks. I hope you're having a lovely holiday season and staying healthy and safe. Much like last week, this week on the show, we're chatting with someone who is very much shaping what the future of art and technology looks like. 

[00:00:23] Cy: Hello, I'm a Cy X and I'm an artist, a cyber witch, a musician, and herbalist. 

[00:00:30] Ben: I first met Cy a few years ago when they were an intern at Small Data and ever since then, I've been enthralled with the work that they are doing, not just in their own interdisciplinary, creative practice, which includes installation, digital instrument, building and live audio visual performances and more, but also in their practice as an herbalist and healer and community building as well hear that Cy is doing through, co-founding a super rad organization called Synth Library NYC, which we will hear all about later in the conversation.

Before we get started, though, I just wanted to remind you all that art and Obsolescence is listener supported and that in order to continue supporting artists that come on the show like Cy I need your help. So with the new year upon us, if you are looking for some year end tax deductions through charitable giving, well look no further. You can make your tax deductible donations to the show through the New York Foundation for the Arts by heading over to artandobsolescence.com/donate. You can find the link in the show notes. If you are in a place to give, I hope you'll consider and if you're not, there are free ways you can help support our work. You can leave a review on Apple Podcasts, tell folks about the show, anything helps and either way I deeply appreciate you for being here no matter what. And now folks, without further delay, let's dive into my chat with Cy X. 

[00:01:49] Cy: I didn't study visual art growing up, that wasn't really something that was encouraged and I didn't really have many examples of people doing that, but I was in the orchestra kind of by accident. I wanted to play the drums and I remember like showing up on the first day to band class being like, can I play the drums? And I got turned down. that was in sixth grade. but I ended up joining the orchestra and I said that I wanted to play the cello and so that's what I did from middle school until part of high school. In high school I also started to dabble in music production. So I kind of had this interest in music that was definitely sort of all through middle school and high school and, part of my life now it's like sort of been the thread. I went to college and studied film and media studies and so that was my sort of first foray into the visual arts and did a lot of video production and at the end of it, I was definitely very jaded and thought I would never do video art again. And that also has come back. The film and media program that I was in was very Hollywood focused and I think I realized pretty early on that, that wasn't a path that I wanted to take. I think sometimes when boundaries around art-making are really strict, I find that I like feel a lot of tension and push up against that. 

I moved around a lot growing up. I had a lot of friendships that were maybe for a very short amount of time or maybe friendships that ended up being mostly online. So being in a place where I was there for four years, that's where I met some of my closest friends who are still my friends today. And I think having just like that really nice intimacy of knowing people, especially in a very intense environment of like a small liberal arts college, where there's not much going on, there's like four blocks. And what really matters is the people that you're with. I think I was just, was really moved by intimacy. Really moved also by the environment that we were in. I went to college in Colorado. It was very beautiful. There are mountains. And I think that intimacy of the world that I was in really informed how I want it to showcase my work. People wanted me to still put it in the theater where everyone's going to sit down and watch it on a big screen. And I kept fighting being like, no, it's not meant to be viewed that way. And there was so much tension with that. And so I think by the end of it, I just felt sort of lost and knew that I didn't want to make video in that sort of like Hollywood style format, I didn't want to move to LA and try it out. That just didn't seem appealing to me, but I didn't have, many other examples. I hadn't really come across much experimental work at that point. So I think I definitely felt very lost with video making at that point in time. 

Throughout all my time in college and undergrad, I was very involved with the radio station at my college. I was the manager there. I planned so many music events and concerts and so that was very much my world, what I was doing for like three years nonstop, planning 10 events per year. When artists were coming to Colorado, they generally would come to Denver, which was an hour away and not make their way to Colorado Springs. And so a big part of that was that, Colorado Springs was sort of like, just like missing on a lot of artists coming through because maybe they didn't think it was worth it to also do a show in Colorado Springs. And so I think a big part of the work as a college and as someone planning events was thinking through, how do we bring artists here? How do we make it something that's beneficial for not only the college, but the community, and also incorporate different learning experiences. And also how do we tap into the artists that are present within the college and community, and also give them a platform to showcase what they're working on and to collaborate. And so, yeah, that's what I was doing for my, my three years. 

[00:05:58] Ben: That's awesome and did you have creative license over who you were inviting and shows you a book and stuff like that? 

[00:06:03] Cy: I did it honestly was very amazing. They gave me like a ridiculous amount of money and control. I think part of it was that I was just very committed to planning events and so I had got really good at it and was very trusted by the community. And they knew I knew how to plan them and I knew how to think through security. And I knew all of the different steps that I had to take. And that was very helpful as well. But yeah, it was very nice to not have to think through like, oh, we have to sell ticketing and if we don't sell enough ticketing then what does that mean? We were able to give the artists we were bringing like a set amount of money, which was very nice. It just really felt special and I think there was something about being in a small community and being able to bring artists from all over and enjoying that moment with community that I was very fascinated with. I didn't think in the beginning that I would say in Colorado, but I felt very moved to do so. I was thinking of maybe this could be a place where I could start my own music space and was sort of thinking through those ideas and so wanting to stay in Colorado a bit longer.

But I had to find a job first as is the pressure of graduating. All of my work that I had done and event planning, and managing a radio station, and all of the work that I was also doing from studying film and visual art, I had really sort of began to teach myself a bit more about design. I was well versed in social media and very good at thinking through how to make connections and so my first job was I was hired on as a social media manager for this company that was really thinking through how can we develop relationships with these personalities who are talking about current events. So they thought I would be a great person to, to manage those personalities and to help manage their social media presence. That whole job is like a whole long explosive story. 

[00:08:05] Ben: So, how did you go from that to making the decision to double down on your creative practice and like give that a real go 

[00:08:11] Cy: what ended up happening was that I had begun to encounter social media in a way that I never had before, beforehand I was using it for connecting with friends and people in my life. And maybe sharing about the events that, that I was managing. So I was doing this marketing and really tapping into Facebook and really being confused, like, how do they have all this information about us? How am I able to target all of these people? And all of those questions begin to loop through my mind. And that sort of pushed me into becoming very curious about technology and how it was functioning beyond what I could see in the platform. That's sort of how I got interested in wanting to learn more about technology and at first I didn't know about creative technology, so I thought maybe I wanted to learn how to code. And so I was looking into that and then. I also was like going deeper into teaching myself design. And so maybe I wanted to learn how to design. I think throughout all of that began to find sort of these moments of people doing creative work with coding, which I hadn't really encountered before. And also people doing creative work with coding and design and algorithmic things and start to go down those threads a bit more. I had come across this person named Ari Melenciano who actually went to ITP and so I had come across her Twitter account and she's a creative technologist and designer and she was just doing such fascinating work. That's where I learned about P5.js and how you can make visual work with coding. And she also was doing work with sound and creating these sonic sculptures. Somehow coming across her Twitter, I was like, whoa, there are people doing this creative work and she posted basically being like "Apply to ITP" and I saw it late and sort of freaked out. I was like, oh my gosh is it too late. ITP is a grad program at NYU. It stands for the Interactive Telecommunications Program. They had just extended their deadline for applying and I had like a month to do it. And I was like, Oh my gosh I have to do it now and I was contacting everyone and pulled it all through, submitted my application. Just coming across this world opened so much up for me and really allowed me to think through how I could incorporate all of these things that I had already been working with, like visual art and video, but take it another step forward. Also with the curiosities I already had about what is technology? How is it working? How is it functioning? And how I could explore it all creatively, so that was sort of the beginning of really beginning to see technology in a new light. It all felt very magical. 

I thought I would never, ever want to live in New York city in my life. I thought I would be too anxious for it. I was like, why would I ever go to a place where I would be stressed out all the time? I got the chance to visit New York before ITP through my job. I think people saw that I was being very curious about technology and I wanted to learn how to code and was vocalizing that, and my boss recommended that I check out this conference and that they would fund part of it. And it was like the Lesbians Who Tech Conference. And so they funded for me to go. I just had to find housing. I like slept on a random person's couch and then went to the city and it was very chill. I was like, oh, I can actually see myself here. And it was a lot easier to get around and do things and it sort of like validated once I applied to ITP that I could actually do it and be fine and actually enjoy myself. 

I applied to ITP with the identity of the Cyber Witch and I never called myself, a Cyber, Witch before that, but throughout my application process of trying to figure out why I wanted to go to ITP a big part of that was really wanting to figure out what magic and technology had to do with each other. We had to make this video as part of the application. And I think my whole video was just like, I'm a Cyber Witch I should come to this program because I'm a Cyber Witch. And that was my application was like me talking through like what a Cyber Witch was how I was a Cyber Witch and why I should come to ITP to further become a Cyber Which that was like the whole thing. At the time, I don't think I had as expansive of an idea that I have now, but I was very interested in magic and have always been for as long as I can remember. It was sort of this curiosity that was there throughout the whole time. At the time that I was applying to ITP, I had been thinking through herbalism and if I wanted to go down that path. This is a common theme that happens in my life. The intersection where I have to decide or where I think I have to choose between something that is nature based and something that is more tech based. This has happened many, many times in my life. And it was also happening at this point when I was applying to ITP. I was still wrestling with, I wanted to learn more about technology, but I also kind of wanted to stay in Colorado and falling in love with Colorado and if I didn't get into ITP, what I was thinking about was connecting with plants and I found this class and this mentor who I talked a lot about plants from a very magical perspective. And so I was beginning to think about these things and plants and magic and how magic can be infused in our daily life. But it was still such a seed of a thought that I still didn't fully know what it meant. I had moments before of trying to do magic and love spells in the past that curse me for a week and just not great experiences, but it was still very curious.

 I knew magic was real, all of my early experiences and trying to do magic showed me that it was real. I felt it through me. I felt energy moving through me and even though maybe the end results were unexpected or not, what I wanted, it's still opened me up to this feeling, this like sort of embodied sense that magic was real and was something that I should move closer to. and I think that intersection of feeling like I had to choose between doing something that was nature-based or doing something that was tech based, made me want to think through what if I didn't have to choose and what if they could be related. And my application, I think, was coming from that place of feeling like I had to decide, not wanting to decide and wanting to figure out what it can mean to have them come together. Even though I didn't know what that meant. And I didn't know other cyber witches or people who might've called themselves cyber witches at the time. 

 I didn't have any answers, but throughout my two years, I was figuring that out through making work and through fabrication, through video art, through sound art and all of that. And so I would say that's the biggest part of my ITP experience was that commitment to the Cyber, Which and I think also I started to have more tension with technology and really had to think through my two years there, what technology was. I knew I was immersed in technology all the time, but I was like what is it, and what is it not. I think the essential question of what are we doing? Are there ways that we aren't thinking through how we could be working with technology? In a way, I think it brought me back to like baby steps of trying to figure out technology from like a very essential question of what it is. And then it also sort of expanded beyond that of me also trying to figure out technology also trying to figure out what a Cyber Witch was. And so there are these two sorts of, I think, essential questions that were pushing and pulling me throughout my two years while I was also in a magical playground of learning a bunch of new things with all of the work that I was doing there. 

ITP is very expansive it's really thinking through the relationships between art design and technology, and has a lot of classes where you can really explore that and figure out how you want to work through those mediums. And it's really thinking through how we can push through what is possible and use our imagination and rethink what technology can be and provide these interactive experiences through all of these mediums. I learned fabrication and was able to explore new ways of making physical objects. I rethought what maps could be and how art could be maps to new realities. I learned how to code. I made websites to showcase some of my research and also use coding to create interactive experiences. I fell back in love with video, which I had never thought would happen. I got really interested in the idea of maps and portals, and that is sort of a thread that is pretty continuous throughout a lot of the work that I do. I was thinking through how I could create a map that could open a portal to a new reality. The first time I explored that was through digital fabrication and also through textiles. That first project, um, it's called Portal Open. I saw that as me trying to from a very embodied and like sensorial perspective, think through time and my connection to time, my connection to place my connection to ancestors and have all of these connections sort of infuse what I was doing. And if I place all of these things together in a piece and left space for there to be a projection that maybe that could be to opening a portal. Then I created a portal mapping device where I created something that looks more like a map that people would interact with through a magnet and by moving this magnet that magnet would change the different projections that appear on a screen either through asking questions, showing imagery, showing video, and that was the first time I would say I became very interested in, such like an embodied way of listening, and a magnet as thinking through attraction and how the things that we pay attention to guide us and how, where we're guided and the things that come up, could show us information and that information could lead to new realities. And that was the first time where I sort of went back to video and also the first time I began to incorporate writing very heavily in my work, that project had a zine that I made with it. Then also began to do more sound work. I learned about Max MSP and that opened up a lot for me. First of all, It helped me think through what video could be and how I could shift the way that I had been taught to think about video and its limits and its purpose and also helped me rethink through sound and how sound could relate to video. And so I created this piece where the sound that I was composing altered the video, and there was this like direct sort of relationship that was happening there and I was able to use that, to think through this idea of the glitch. And I became very curious about glitch art and the glitches that can happen on a screen, but also taking that a step forward to think through the glitches that can also happen in real life. The glitches that happen every day, the glitches that are happening right now. So that was me trying to figure out an answer by performing and by, seeing effects and code and altering those codes with my body and seeing how that felt in my body. Yeah, there were so many, so many different projects and I think the thread from the beginning to the end was that I was being pushed toward a more embodied way of thinking through a lot of the work that I was doing. In the beginning it seemed like in my classes, and the ways that we have been taught to think through technology, there's this sort of impulse to forget about the body and that was very confusing to me because the body is the reason that we are doing this work. The body is everything and I sort of went back to thinking through what information the body could have and how to approach technology from a more embodied place. And how to see maybe the computer as an extension of my body? And if I relate it to my computer, that way, how that might make me feel differently about it and the technology that I was using. 

So that is sort of like the big thread is like the body and a lot of sound work, especially because I think it's important to say that the pandemic happened while I was in grad school and so over a half of my program was remote and that was something that I didn't expect at all and definitely shifted the things that I was doing. Whereas before I was very interested in performance and installation and fabrication, being confined to my room definitely shifted me more to doing video and sound work. And I remember right when the pandemic was happening, I was like, okay, I'm going to try and do the sound thing again, because I had always wanted to be a musician and just could not figure it out. And it was such a struggle to try and figure out how I can make my own music. I would just sit there with Garage Band and it just didn't make sense, and then I got Ableton, and I know it was just like, there are many more possibilities but also many more question marks. Yeah, I really wanted to figure out, okay, I have to shift how I'm making work now because of the limitations of the world. 

[00:22:42] Ben: So it sounds like in some ways the past, three, four years has been kind of a real creative explosion for you in a way?

[00:22:50] Cy: It has been, yeah, like I've always thought of myself as a creative person, but I don't think I always had many creative outlets, and ways to really think through all of the many thoughts that I had in my head. I honestly feel like it feels a bit easier sort of exploring all these different mediums because I didn't have formal art school training, my undergrad program, it was just so very strict, and video and Hollywood focused and to the point where it didn't really consider multiple mediums. And even though it was a very interdisciplinary program, technically, they didn't really teach us that much about sound. Sound was very much neglected. Lights were very much neglected. Doing other forms of art felt very discouraged and I didn't have formal art school training growing up. And then ITP was sort of a big playground where you don't have to choose at all. And for some people, I think that could be. Very frustrating or make you feel very lost. But it felt very freeing and it allowed me to be able to choose classes solely based off of my curiosity, without having to think through the end goal of what kind of artists am I going to be? What kind of job am I going to get? Of course that was on my mind but I think the most important thing for me was to figure out what art could look like and what art felt good to make. And I also wanted to figure out the limits and also the affordances of every medium and why you choose to do any medium, what each medium has to communicate. And in a way I feel like I kind of do the same project over and over, but in, a different just like I try it out in different mediums. I'll read a lot and do a lot of research and then maybe write some reflections on that or write some new thoughts. And then those thoughts that I have might inform the way that I approach it from a sound perspective, and bringing it to that place opens up new possibilities and new ways of thinking about it. And then maybe I'll move it from sound to a more embodied place through movement or performance and I think like each change and each shift brings new wisdom. I think it's like that asking questions and trying to figure something out and I think the more you ask questions, the closer you get to the answer, you get more questions, I think that process is just so appealing to me and like just doing it over and over and over again. It feels almost fractal you think you're getting closer and then you zoom in and it's like, oh wait. And then you can keep zooming in and keeps zooming an and there's just like an infinite more possibilities. I think that process is very, very moving, and really important to me. 

[00:25:35] Ben: So much of your work engages with a real interwoven relationship to Blackness and transness, both in terms of gender, but also trans humanism and queer identity and, I'm curious if for you media specificity or just media in general lends anything in particular to those conversations. 

[00:25:57] Cy: That's a good question. I think something that I've realized is that. If anything, it just shows how gooey all those things are. A lot of things aren't fixed and even if we think they're fixed, there is room for play and so I feel like through exploring all of these ideas, queerness, Blackness, and trans identity through media, it feels almost like you get to be the explorer of the space between maybe the imagined and the material and between the inner thoughts and how they translate outwardly. You get to feel maybe the boundaries between the self and your version of yourself and like another's projection. I think that is what is appealing to me about exploring these ideas and really thinking through the boundaries and also seeing how they shift over time and how they shift in understanding and how exploring them through different media provides like a different perspective. Seeing how queerness looks visually or how queerness feels when approach from a sonic place or how performing queerness feels. I think that like the boundaries just don't feel very fixed and within that what I have learned is that there's just so many possibilities available to us all and new worlds and new ways of being that we haven't even dreamed of. I think that has been the most freeing things, just seeing the beauty and the chaos, but also a space where we like don't have to shrink, but expand and. How we can continue to move towards more like liberatory ideas and more embodied ways of being, through this room that exists when things are perhaps a bit gooey. 

[00:27:44] Ben: Wow. I think very much related to that is the question of context and place and where people experience your work. Similar to how your interdisciplinarity in your work, you're somebody who performs your work, shows your work in a lot of different contexts, you know, like in an art setting or in a club setting or a community setting. When it comes to your performances, you know, your media, music, performance sound performance. What do you envision as the kind of ideal context for that kind of work?

[00:28:18] Cy: I feel like this question has been coming up and been something that I have been, trying to think about, especially since now I've graduated from my grad program and I'm trying to figure out exactly where I want to be and what is the best place to show work. I think maybe in the past I had a very strict idea of what my context was or what it should be, and it feels a bit less strict now. And now when I imagine it, I just imagine these like really immersive environments and a space where all different types of art are present, where it isn't just one thing. And so I imagine like physical spaces, perhaps, and in those physical spaces, there are comfortable chill zones. I feel like that's something that has become really important to me. Like thinking through comfort and space where people are taken care of as being a starting point, regardless of what I'm doing. I don't think I'm interested in spaces that are like, you have to sit in chairs and you have to face forward. That doesn't really appeal to me. It's like, I want a space where if there is seating, it's comfy and there's the option to sit if you want. And there's nourishment, there's food and there's plants and there's people of all ages and there's different zones and like breakout spaces to be. If you don't want to listen to sound, or if you need a different type of sound, you can just go and relax. I think a lot of this is informed by my experience being an event planner and this is how I think through events, is how to make spaces that are comfortable for people to be there and where people feel great being there. I guess my ideal context also from that place of, it's less about maybe where the context has to be a specific audience, but more so about how people feel when they're in the space. I think that feels the most important to me. I think I have this like desire also to make work, and consider like other than human beings. I think I also have to just continue to think about, how do all human beings feel comfortable in spaces? And so like accessibility and also thinking through, what other than human beings are present. So maybe that's technology and plants and, designing spaces that also consider like birds and I think I just want to create these environments that consider the things that maybe are forgotten about a lot of times and that feel, I keep saying more nourishing, but I think create spaces and contexts where what happens after it's just as important as what is happening during. Where people don't feel depleted afterwards, people feel energized where people feel seen. And I've been trying to figure out yeah, my ideal context from that sort of place. Maybe I don't know exactly what that looks like immediately or now, or maybe it's not as specific as like a museum, but I think regardless of what space I show work, I definitely want to always approach it from a place of care and be considerate of how people are able to show up in the space.

[00:31:31] Ben: You recently, co-founded an incredible organization called Synth Library NYC, so I was curious if you could tell our listeners about it? 

[00:31:40] Cy: Yes. Synth LIbrary NYC, it's this beautiful beautiful organization where we're thinking through access specifically with synthesizers and electronic music equipment and we're putting these instruments directly into the hands of people who maybe wouldn't be able to afford them, or, who are curious about learning new instruments and maybe don't want to invest in them right away. Maybe they're unsure about it. Maybe there are newcomers to learning about synthesizers and it's intimidating. And so the things we're thinking about are access. And so we have this library portion where you get to check out a synthesizer for three weeks and bring it into your home space and you get to do it for free.

And then we also do workshops, because that's also an important thing when it comes to access. It's like, now you have the synthesizer, now, now what? And so that access looks like having different workshops, intro to synthesis workshops, workshops that can help you figure out, okay, how do you set this up with your current setup? And we also have a discord community, where we're also offering advice and support with people while they're figuring out these instruments and how they can incorporate it into their life. So there's also direct support that way, and we are a membership based organization. Our members go through an orientation and there's code of conduct. What's really been nice is just seeing how people are just so supportive of each other, everyone has their own experience and knowledge that they can bring. Maybe you don't have that much experience with synthesizers, but you're really good at visual art or you have experience doing community organizing and there's just space for like everyone to show up wherever they are in their journey. And it feels very supportive in that way. And especially having that ethos of being welcoming to newcomers makes it so approachable to people. We get people who have no idea what a synthesizer is, and maybe this is our first time really hearing about it, or really seeing one and wanting to learn about it anyway, and feeling like this is a space where they can do that. And we have people who have a ton of experience and they're all in the same space and like seeing them interact and seeing that joy that just comes through being able to experiment and go a bit deeper than maybe you were before has just been such a beautiful and like fulfilling experience. Anyone can be a musician like It doesn't have to be approached from this professional sense of you have to tour and you have to release music and you have to do all these things. if you're thinking about music and if you're experimenting with it, you can approach it from that place. That feels very important for me to remember because I feel like there are like a lot of stories around like, who is and who isn't a musician and how there aren't a lot of gender diverse musicians or whatever, whatever, like stories, you can be a musician if you want to and just approach it from this place of experimentation and like really just getting something out of just playing with music and having it be approached from a place of like joy and curiosity, even if you aren't touring or even if you don't consider it to be your career. 

At the moment, we're focusing on broadening our membership and increasing how many people we can accommodate. Because we are a new organization here in New York City. We had to really think through what a synth library looked like here there are other synth libraries in places like Portland, and in LA there's Fem Synth Lab and so we were able to see their model and how they were functioning, but those models are also very specific to their locations and their places and their community. And we had to figure out what that looked like, especially here in New York, when people don't have cars, for instance for carrying things through and so that impact our inventory and how we were thinking through how to get these instruments into people's hands. And also, how do we make it a ccessable so that people can easily bring it home without having to like call a Lyft or an Uber or something like that. And so we launched with a hundred initial members, and we were able to get donations from different companies to like launch with that many members. And we tested out our systems with that group of people and everything worked well. And so we've been slowly expanding basically at a pace that we increase our inventory. And so we're still continuing to field donations and increase our inventory so that we can continue to accommodate people. We have a wait list that we have to get through. And so for the most basic sense, that's what we're doing. Longterm we also are thinking through what a physical space could look like for us. At the moment we are residents at Power Plant and Power Plant is located in Bushwick, and they're an amazing community of artists who are thinking through digital access. They have a computer lab, they do a lot of workshops around art music and creative technology. And so we are residents in that space, and they have been just really amazing, sort of our support system through this first year of existing, helping us with things like fiscal sponsorship and also providing the space where people will come and check out equipment. This has been like really helpful for us to like have the support system, but as we're thinking, long-term, we're considering. How amazing it could be if we had our own space, we've had donations of synthesizers that are a bit bigger than, what might easily be transportable on the subway. And we have ideas of starting a resource room where we do have maybe some of the larger snyths and vintage synths that are there, that people can come into the space and use and how that space could also be a place where people can collaborate and jam out. And also a space where people can come record things. We started a working group and there's a small group of us that have been thinking through this question of what a physical space could look like. What we would need to make it happen. What are the things we want to consider? And so many amazing ideas have been generated through that. I'm really excited to see how Synth Library expands in the many years to come and how we can also continue to invite more people into this community, and really allow Synth Library NYC to be a space and a platform for others, if they have ideas. If there are things that they're excited about, they can also do under this umbrella and have the support of other people who are also part of this community. 

[00:38:40] Ben: Wow. That's so exciting. Aside from synth library, what's coming next for Cy?

[00:38:48] Cy: One thing that has been sort of brewing is that I want to start a experimental cyber coven. So that has been in the works. I have an introduction to cyber witch practices that I've been writing as part of my Processing Foundation Fellowship that finished up. And that should be coming out very soon. And I'm really excited about it because that was me writing, very intentionally and very thorough for the first time, why we should engage in cyber witch practices and what those are. A lot of that work has been informed by my practices now as an energy worker and an herbalist, which are like newer things that I have been engaging with, from a very different place than what I was when I first came into ITP, for instance. So I've been writing this introduction and that introduction is going to help launch this cyber coven. I want the cyber coven to be a space where there are readings and performances that are happening monthly, where multiple people are gathering together to think through ancestral knowledge and ritual practices, from this place of being curious about technology, but re-imagining like what our cyber powers are and how magic is also a form of technology, how our ancestral knowledge is also a form of technology. And so that is coming up and I'm excited to continue to go deeper with that. And I'm continuing the projects with my Culture Hub residency that I'm doing now. I also have this dream of writing a book about cyber witch practices and it's going to take some time, a book takes time, but I've been starting the foundation for that and thinking through what might be the different components of that. Especially now, I just really want to provide a launching point for other people to also see how they can be a cyber witch and, how we can continue to reimagine what technology is and we don't have to just relate to technology based off of what we are told or what we are sold, but we can decide what it is and how we want to use it and have healthier relationships with it and more embodied relationships with it. And that's the work that I'm planning on doing for, for the rest of my life. 

[00:41:19] Ben: What advice would you give to your younger self, who might be listening to this episode?

[00:41:25] Cy: The first thing that came to mind is that you can do it all. Just because you are being made to pick between things doesn't mean you actually have to pick between them. Sometimes you can do both and sometimes you can do both and more, and sometimes you don't have to do either. Just approach everything from that deep sense of curiosity, but also that inner knowing, because that inner knowing is the thing that is helping you decide what you should give attention to and what deserves attention and maybe what also needs to be put on hold or put on pause or, just connecting to that inner knowing and that curiosity and letting that lead you instead of false binaries and false limitations that are based off of scarcity.

[00:42:13] Ben: For those who want to follow along and keep up on all of your new projects, where can they find you?

[00:42:19] Cy: You can find me on Instagram @ cyberwitch666 It's also the name of my website, For the cyber coven, if you're curious about following, along with that, you can head to that website, which is cyberwitchcoven.com. 

[00:42:37] Ben: Cy thank you so much for coming on the show. It was so great to catch up and just to hear the rest of your story.

[00:42:43] Cy: Thank you. This was really, yeah, really great and also helpful for me. I feel like I learned a lot. 

[00:42:49] Ben: And thank you, dear listener for joining us for this week's conversation. If you liked what you heard and want to hear more artists like Cy I hope you'll consider supporting the show by heading over to artandobsolescence.com/donate, where you can make a tax deductible gift. If you are not in a place to help reviews on Apple Podcasts are free and help just as much. Of course, you can always share the show with friends and keep the conversation going on Twitter and Instagram. You'll find us @artobsolsecence. Thanks again so much for joining me this week friends sending you all of my best wishes for the new year and looking forward to seeing you in 2022. My name is Ben Fino-Radin and this has been Art and Obsolescence.