ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Jay Springett talks with first-generation digital filmmaker, artist, and The Spirited Man creator Van Neistat about aphantasia, the mind’s eye, YouTube filmmaking, and the imagination as an editing bay.
Together they explore cinematic “hard cuts” in thought, visualising lost objects in physical space, text and video as raw material, setting creative boundaries with AI, and why the YouTube algorithm might ultimately be a mirror of ourselves.
Also in this episode:
* Typewriters, ribbon ink, and treating text as physical raw material
* Why traditional cinema is Formula One, but YouTube is professional skateboarding
* Van Neistat on The Spirited Man, Tom Sachs, Casey Neistat, and first generation digital filmmaking
* Visualising to find lost items in physical space
* Creative constraint, AI boundaries, and the “good enough” threshold
* Tom Sachs’ Crusty Seal of Approval
QUOTES
“The camera is a hard drive, and the way you write on it is by showing it things.”
“The algorithm is us. That’s you buddy. You have a problem with your algorithm? That’s you.”
“The cinematic world either works like the real world, the perception world, to such a degree that we aren’t even conscious of how we go about perceiving things; or it just works like the dream world.”
“A feature film is 70 ideas. These long form videos are 20 ideas, and figuring out how they fit together, that’s a fun part of the process.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
A pioneer in digital filmmaking, VAN NEISTAT made his first internet video, The Holland Tunnel, in 2000. He went on to collaborate with New York City artist Tom Sachs, directing a series of short films shown at the Guggenheim Museum in Berlin. Van has since directed dozens more films for the Tom Sachs Studio. In 2010 HBO aired The Neistat Brothers, an 8-episode series of short videos made entirely by Van and his brother Casey Neistat. For the past decade he has collaborated with masters and traveled the world as a journeyman filmmaker, conceiving and writing his latest project: THE SPIRITED MAN.
LINKS
* Kevin Munger’s YouTube Apparatus
Subscribe to Experience.Computer
* Spotify
If you enjoy Experience.Computer and want to support Jay’s independent research and production, consider supporting his work or picking up a copy of his zine, Start Select Reset.
Permanently Moved is an audio-only podcast about computers, their consequences, and the worlds they make possible. Written, recorded, and edited by Jay Springett since 2018, this long-running podcast explores techno-social systems, artificial intelligence, social media, world-running, fandom, and life in the shadow of the stack.
ABOUT THE SHOW
In 2022 writer and host Jay Springett discovered he had aphantasia - the inability to voluntarily create mental images in one’s mind. For 36 years he thought "picture this" was just a metaphor.
Experience.Computer is slow radio about high tech. An interview show exploring perception, experience and expression. The show examines how people perceive the world, and how they work with the creative tools they use to make their work with.
ABOUT THE HOST
Jay Springett is a strategist, producer, and cultural theorist. His professional work focuses on how worlds of all kinds are run; shaped, steered, and kept coherent over time. He has hosted the personal essay podcast Permanently Moved since 2018, and Experience.Computer since 2023.
Jay is currently working on his first book Slop Machines of Loving Grace and writes online at thejaymo.net
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit experience.computer
