By Jim Gladman
Around July of 2001, my employer The Furious, Inc was contracted to create a visual piece for Big Magazine, a publication with offices near the WTC. I understood that New York would be the focus of the issue, and after looking at many landmarks settled upon the World Trade Center as the theme of the piece. Over the summer, I worked on several versions of this illustration. I had created a WTC in a 3d program and went through many mutations of the building, mutating and distorting the building, creating 3d icons composed of the towers. I would take regular breaks by going outside of our Morton Street studio and getting sun, looking at the World Trade Center looming not far away.
I am one of those people who tend to listen to the same CDs over and over again when I work, and this summer there were two that I listened to exclusively: Glenn Branca's Symphony nos. 8 & 10 (The Mysteries) and Muslimgauze's "Salaam Alekum, Bastard". Both are purely instrumental music, very hypnotic. I knew Branca was going to play at the WTC in the fall, and was a big fan of his work since the early 80's. Muslimgauze was a one-man-band obsessed with middle eastern politics: "The political facts of Palestine, Afghanistan and Iran influence the music of Muslimgauze" states one of their covers. I had only a mild interest in those issues. I just liked the music.
As the work on the piece for Big Magazine progressed, I attended various meetings with the client. Initially, a piece with the two towers in extreme perspective were chosen. Later we changed our minds and went with a 'cross' composed of intersecting WTC towers.
At about this time Branca and his orchestra played at the base of the World Trade Center. I brought a video camera. It was the first time I had spent any time there. I videotaped the piece, but I was so awed by the towers that about a third of the tape is simply shots looking up at the towers. I felt the WTC, New York, and Branca's music formed a completeness of my vision of New York. The WTC seemed like a big tuning fork resonating the city to the music below.
In late August, a change was made to the piece for Big. I had been experimenting and had made an abstract image that they wanted to use.This abstraction was created by punching out the windows on my WTC model, 'charring' the superstructure and distorting the pieces into a geometric tangle.
It was published early September 2001.