Cab: You’re very prolific in terms of making work and also collecting references. How much time do you spend doing this stuff? Is it ambient?
Damon: All of these are intended to be ambient. Partially because I have a full time job. The way in which I work is inherently fragmentary. I need to be able to interact with these things only in passing.
Like many other artists, I collect ideas. And every morning at 10am, I get a random text message containing an idea that I’ve saved in the past. Ambiently, it surfaces itself into my life every morning, usually while I’m working out. It’s something to think about.
I also have a “new tab” page, Diptychs, which pulls two images out of my archive randomly, and places them side-by-side. So when I am about to switch contexts, I’m presented with a problem, which is a nice thing to have.
In all my collections, I have a random button. So if I’m looking for something to do, or something to think about, I can just hit “random” multiple times until I find something.
In creating these systems, I make it very easy for myself to always capture. The speed at which I can capture something is really important. All of these systems need to be as fast and unobtrusive as possible to work well.