About

control apparatus is the brainchild of josh steinke. after years of being bombarded by marketing and advertising programming i became intrigued by how easy it is to program people through the use of audio and visual campaigns. the control apparatus is the machine which propagates the message. when i am in control i can manipulate my audience, but instead of using this for evil i have turned to the commercial industry. everyone needs to advertise... i am willing to do the dirty work, if the price is right and the message is worthy.

increasingly the people around us are releasing control of their live's and ambitions - so now more than ever a sheep herder is necessary. string grew up in a protestant lutheran household, run by a somewhat strict air force colonel. he was a fancy air force fighter pilot and lived the life of tom cruise in top gun. we moved around alot, 18 times before i moved to wisconsin in the winter of 2002. i was in college during the dot com boom and was offered a job early on as a production manager for a weekly newspaper in oklahoma city in 99-00. i then worked later for saxon publishers in norman oklahoma, starting as a page layout production artist for k-12 text books. shortly after starting there i became involved with the new media department and received training from the dan ablan studio out of chicago for lightwave. i worked 60hrs/wk as a 3d modelor and animator and had the opportunity to learn to model mouth morphs for speaking parts as well as techniques for taking a video/audio clip control 3d models rendered on a 40 computer render farm of macs. this was a lot of fun, but the dot com crash released their new media staff first - they cost the most. then 9/11 happened. then no one could get a job, because everyone that had graphic/media skills were unemployed, the market was saturated with novice photoshop and illustrator users.

after struggling in oklahoma i moved up here, onto the quiet lake sherwood south of wisconsin rapids. the peace was at first disturbing. in the winter you could hear the ice cracking and making strange sounds... owls calling, deer running withing 5 feet of you. i began to rebuild and refocus my life after coming back from the edge. i found meditation and learned to be happy alone, embrace my anti-social nature and enjoy my surroundings and what i create. "turning the mind into an ally" by sakyong mipham put everything back into a new perspective for me. in america we don't learn about discipline. bad kids go to therapy. get drugs they don't need and then get really messed up. buddhism philosophy does not have to be treated as a religion, but more of a guidebook for how to control your own mind, emotions, and focus your thought and energy. learning to accept reality is important, compared to the american/christian perspective of "just feel guilty about it and ask some fairy tail creature to fix it for you" - faith requires total blindness... complete ignorance of the real cause of problems and the rejection of logic and scientific process.

media does the same thing. you think the news you watch isn't biased? heh. you think there's a reason the government runs the schools? everything you see and hear about your "reality" is someone else's story... it is so important to not be a sucker for letting other people do the thinking for you. you have a mind - use it. think for yourself about shit, as the late john balance said, "I've changed my mind, THATS what its there for."

my art is for me primarily, i want the world to enjoy it, but i'm happy if i'm the only one who can enjoy it. with my texture pieces i want the viewer to see it and have the URGE to touch it, but be forced to feel it with their eyes. with my more cartoon style paintings... i am working towards converting my ink sketches into colorful paintings that are impactful and both grotesque but some how pretty. ultimately... i do what i want. i'm not getting an art degree to impress anyone, i just want to learn to paint better and work on my pieces.

in addition to oil and acrylic paint, i also use charcoal, ink, varieties of texture gel, liquin/oil mediums, wires, lots of masking tape, and many types of varnish. i am always trying to create something out of pieces of discarded wires and whatever i happen to find. i draw in ink, charcoal, shoot artsy photo stuff, and i have lots of leather bound books.

i play video games, build websites, do digital video, write music, record music with a variety of digital and analogue synths and samplers, and generate 3d when i have time. my wonderful girlfriend marmalade does web design and music, and other digital artwork with me and we have a lot of fun. we also play ps3, wii, nds, and psp! i will be posting a ridiculous amount of content soon, so look for updates.