Interview with David Dowling, Dennis Svoronos and Brady Scott

Dennis: I feel like contemporarily we’ve been disempowered in our relationship to where we get our energy. The way our energy is distributed. Nobody really has any comprehension of the way electricity works. I mean, people take the holes in the wall for granted. You know, and uh, I feel that in what we’re doing, taking steps back, understanding the underpinnings of where all this comes from, we’re empowering ourselves against that sort of planned ignorance.

David: To use the technology you have to know how it works. You can’t just passively use it. So it’s not that the technology is different. What we’re doing is more about taking back a way that people use their technology and make it.

Dennis: What we do, I mean what artists do. What makers do. Um, is take humble stupid material and make them valuable. Much like lead into gold. Much like water into wine. You know, um, sort of a power of making things valuable. Making things better than they were. Being able to infuse an object with an idea or a purpose. And I think it really lends to that because from the outside, people that don’t know the language, don’t know the tools, don’t know the culture, don’t understand it. It seems like reading tea leaves. Divining from exterior sources. Sort of a mystical quality about it.


David: I think most critically about Ignatius is that it’s a high pressure boiler built with the simplest tools that we have access to. And the simplest materials that we could find. The whole idea of deriving something from nothing. Or derive something from as little as possible.

Brady: I guess the metal working and the steam aspect was interesting in terms of an exploration of old timey histories and technologies. I mean, we may have these advanced machines but we’re still turning dials and counting numbers in our heads. And, it’s how they did it. That’s what interests me about it. Sticks and stones. Sticks and stones.

Dennis: I mean, I think that just goes to show how difficult of a task it is, even using all these modern technologies and equipments, we’re still struggling. We’re still trying to figure out how things are done properly. With all our power, we’re still infants at this unfortunately.

David: Really what artists do and specifically talking about fire and steam and metal work. And that’s the permanence of those media. Materials are protiant. Materials are fungible. And that’s really the great thing about craftsmanship and the great thing about being a maker and the great thing about creative people… is that ideas are just ideas and you can turn ideas into things. But without people applying ideas to objects, to make those objects have some resonance, then they’re nothing

Dennis: There’s general societal concern about what we’re doing. Legally… and uh, I say “Fuck them.” But. Really, I think it adds more to that mystique. That sort of, uh, black magic idea. Like, “it’s dangerous. Don’t touch it. Don’t do it. Oh my god, what are you doing?” Um, it seems like its out of people’s comprehension that is something that can happen… that can be done yourself. Can be done within their means. And I think because it seems so far off, so out of reach, it seems dangerous. It seems like something only professionals should do.

David: It’s fun to play scientist. It’s like what you were saying before about how these are things experts are supposed to do. When there are entire legislative systems in place to keep people who are not scientists from doing science. Because science is what scientists do. There are systems in place to control this kind of behavior because it’s dangerous. But that’s kinda the point… that it is dangerous. Its always been dangerous. You know? Science couldn’t be that controlled and organized and blacked out. It’s a genie. Let it out of the bottle.