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“Check these guys out,” he said “this is how you build communities on the web. Do it passionately, where your interest on your sleeve. And for God's Sake develop a niche that's new.” Or something to that effect based on my recollection. Since then Giant Robot has developed a hundred fold into a space, both virtual and otherwise, where their founder's passionate interest and that of their community act as spectrometer of Asian and Asian American culture. The key word here is culture, because Giant Robot, though a storehouse for objects and other media forms, is not so much about objects or media as it is about the moment that surrounds them — a moment defined by the culture that collects, uses and interects with it. From this point of view GR has an ear to the ground listening intently for the faint rumblings of cultual usage and interest but one that always matches their own passions. They do what I don't have time for, exploring the earth of a culture to find personal gems, whatever shape and size. Of course, they find these gems — which inevitably are watered-downed and put on sale at MEGASTORE or making films with such intriguing titles as THE TUXEDO. These are the "gems" most people find. Walking into Giant Robot on March 1st, 2004 was like walking into somthing between a bookstore and a toystore or that friend's house you always wanted to go to when you were a kid because he just had way better stuff than you did. “Eric,” I ask “do you spend a lot of time looking examining trends and looking for that NEXT new thing." 21st century cool hunting I was thinking to myself. I imagined a blacked out Honda Element driving up to a street boutique in Tokyo. Several men getting out dressed in white radiation suits holding radtiation spectromenters, clicking an chirping. Walking up to a dazed shopkeeper the spectrometers identifies an object with a static infused audio approval. Snatching it up and hustling it into a plactic bag they pile back into their caravan of cool and screetch down the street. “No, not really,” he responds. “We just look for things we are intrested in. Simply follow what we like. We were covering Jackie Chan years before he was popular in the United States, once he got big here and became a trend there was nothing new there. We didn't lose interest it just wasn't as important as other things. We moved on.” I wanted to ask him if he saw the TUXEDO, I refrained. Looking around the Robot, eying their curation, I find a mix or art, design, product, and clothing. Certainly an eclectic mix, but somehow through their choices and their displays there was the presence of a nuanced thread tieing together the graphic novel to a puppet and that puppet to a toy. I look under some magazines to find where this thread began, but it eluded me. “Your business has grown from photocopied 'zines to full color magazine to website and now retail spaces,” Peter interjects. ”Can you talk about that for a minute?” “Was that a plan,” I mutter under my breath. “No it really just evolved, slowly,” Eric mused., holding up a black and white photocopied 'zine and their latest four color issue, “it took years to go from this to this. We never knew where it was going.” Not so inspiring for a media designer who has to have a plan for everything and research to back it up. Where is it going now I wonder to myself. I glance around the magazine rack and seeing a roughly put together photocopied 'zine, I ask,“I see you have other people's 'zine’s here, do you continue to support that culture?” “Sure, people come in often with they're projects, we see how well they have executed it and so on and we'll put it out, some sell well other's don't. That is where we came from too, so we see that connection.” In some ways that tattered 'sine is both the beginning and the end of that thread. GR's past displaying the cultural present they are intent on indexing and curating. “But we have now finally gotten to do something we have always wanted to to do, and that is a gallery space.” I take some snapshots of the space and some of the items before I meander over to GR2 with the rest of the group. The second space was more of a hybrid of gallery and store. It was small and a narrow like the first store, but here I saw something much different — the merging of the commercial artifacts of a culture and a gallery space presenting a view or idea of that culture. I saw here what Giant Robot really is and why they have created such a viable community. It's not so much about their evolution or their transmedai approach, or even their interest in the objects themselves — it is their passion for the moment, the culture of the present, their place within that moment and how to index it. And God forbid it happens to be somthing you can't find in Best Buy (which happens to be three blocks down the street). Thumbing through the postcard invites to future exhibitions and a fresh of subitting my email to their mailinglist Tina asks,“What is that computer in the corner?” .“Oh,” Eric chimes, “That's our webcam. Right now we're broadcasting you onto our website.” “Now that is something a media designer can get behind,” I muse to myself. Not only can you be part of a community online you can see it at work in real-time in real-space. Of course what I find more interesting, I coninue to think, would be web cams of people shopping in the SF store. We see them, them see us. Massive flatsreens. Two little cults in the know, shopping. A cultural moment of cool watching itself at work. I can feel the cool dripping of me. Inspired, I dig through the t-shirts, small market means my hip shirt has less likelihood of staring back at itself somewhere on Melrose. I can't decide. I'll come back another time. Which of course is now the point. Once you find the place you can always come back. It is a moment that is always there for you thanks to Giant Robot.
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