Besides all those whaling details, Moby Dick is about someone who's looking for something so huge, something they've wanted all their life, yet they know when they find it, it will kill them.

A lot of the work in United States is highly critical of technology. I'm using 15,000 watts of power and 18 different pieces of electronic equipment to say that.

People are really suffering these days. There's a lot of corporate triumph and a lot of personal despair as they wonder what are they working for.

You know, I can see two tiny pictures of myself And there's one in each of your eyes. And they're doin' everything I do. Every time I light a cigarette, they light up theirs. I take a drink and I look in and they're drinkin' too. It's drivin' me crazy. It's drivin' me nuts.

Technology today is the campfire around which we tell our stories. There's this attraction to light and to this kind of power, which is both warm and destructive. We're especially drawn to the power. Many of the images of technology are about making us more powerful, extending what we can do. Unfortunately, 95 percent of this is hype, because I think we're powerful without it.

I see and write things first as an artist, second as a woman, and third as a New Yorker. All three have built-in perspectives that aren't neutral.

Art can be engaged in the world without being specifically politically engaged.