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Digital Artists
BY TAXI
BY TAXI
Exclusive Highlight on TAXI Design Network
Interview with Han Hooger Brugge
Han Hooger Brugge >> The plot comes first but most of the time the characters will ruin the plot once they enter the scene. And I listen to them because they know best what they should do. They are in control. I just follow. I don’t make up my characters they are already there waiting for their turn. I talk to them and ask them what they would like to do. That’s it.
TAXI >>You have made some promotional videos for music acts such as Dead Man Ray’s “Landslide” and the Young Punx’s “You’ve Got To…” Could you describe the approach towards such aural projects?
Han Hooger Brugge >> It starts with stone cold fear. I listen to the song and think my god I’ll have to make an animation of more then 3 minutes. That’s so much work. So first I’ll try to convince the band the song would be much better if it would be shorter. And they are like, ‘shorter?’ This is already the short version!’.
I start thinking about the rhythm of the song and try to find images, settings, backgrounds, colors, etc, that I think will fit. Then I cut the song into small pieces and start thinking of what kind of movements I want for each piece. The small pieces also take away the fear of the 3 minute monster a bit. From then on it’s a big struggle to get it all together, to make sense out of it.
TAXI >>How has your work processes evolved since the days of 28k modems and GIFs?
Han Hooger Brugge >> Not much. I mean that’s how it feels like. I still do the same things more or less. (I sometimes feel like one of my characters doing the same thing over and over again.) But then again every time I start something new I have the feeling that this time I am going to do something different. But when I am finished it looks very much like my work. It can be very frustrating.
On a technical level the difference between 28k modems/gif animation to broadband and Flash is huge. I can work with both. In that sense, I am very practical. I can go back to 28k modems/gif animation anytime and still able to do what I want. I am not that much interested in technical stuff.
TAXI >>Although it seems that your work is predominantly black and white, it is not true to say colors do not come into play at all, like the pink pile of pigs, the yellow car and the orange wig in Nails and the clown’s red lips in Hotel… they all seem to add a touch of accent. So let’s solve the debate once and for all: Are you using colors or black-and-white to make your statement?
Han Hooger Brugge >> You might be right, because I don’t use color that often. It seems that when I do, it means something special. And it does. I use color whenever I am told to. I always start with black and white and grey because I don’t have any color ideas to start with. The pigs you mentioned were grey at first, but that didn’t look good, it made no sense. The animation told me to make them pink. Colors are special. I am afraid of color and I only use it if I am absolutely sure it’s going to work, if it means something.
TAXI >>Your characters engage in bizarre violence. Do you think their fates lie in your hands or in the viewer, since a mouse click or one rollover executes the action?
Han Hooger Brugge >> Their fate lies mostly in the hand of the viewer. I just make the set-up. If a visitor decides to click it’s their responsibility. That’s how it should feel for a visitor. It’s a perverse game. You could say I am the inventor of the violence but as a user you’re in charge of executing the ideas I came up with. So who’s the sick person? Me who came up with the idea or you, the user that execute my ideas? I can think of many ways to torture a person but it doesn’t mean anything if my ideas aren’t executed. Once my ideas are executed who’s to blame?
TAXI >>I’ve watched Hotel. Please enlighten TAXI: what does the Mickey Mouse ears symbolize?
Han Hooger Brugge >> That’s a rather personal story. In Italy they call Mickey Mouse ‘Toppolino’. I found out about that when I was a little kid through an Italian Uncle. He had Italian comic books which looked odd to me and I couldn’t read them because they were in Italian. He also had a few Mickey Mouse comics which I recognized of course, but I couldn’t understand why Mickey Mouse had a different name. My uncle couldn’t explain it, I asked him many times. For him it was strange they called ‘Toppolino’ Mickey Mouse. I couldn’t understand how Mickey, my Mickey, suddenly spoke Italian and had a different name. For me Mickey Mouse was Dutch. I felt betrayed, but only I didn’t know by whom. Mickey couldn’t help it; he was just a comic figure. That much I understood, it was very confusing. I no longer trusted comic figures.
That made me decide to introduce the Toppolino boys in Hotel.
TAXI >>What is the WORD, which you think would reside and reverberate in the design world for the next 10 years?
Han Hooger Brugge >> ProStress.
..........................................................................................................
Exclusive Highlight on TAXI Design Network
Interview with James Paterson
James Paterson >> 'Insertsilence' is actually a function found in sound programs that you use to place gaps of silence into a piece of audio. Amit and I liked the idea that inserting 'nothing' into 'something' could be such a useful operation.
TAXI >> Like many pioneering digital artists, you were self-taught. Given your extensive experience, do you think computers have gained acceptance as a fine art medium today?
James Paterson >> I think that computers have gained acceptance to a certain degree, but every new medium that comes along is met with resistance from the art world, it is a tradition! Whenever a new kid comes along it gets shoved around and picked on for a while, and then finally is accepted.
I think it is the work of creative and outgoing gallerists in collaboration with their artists to push these new mediums through and find ways to present the work and sell it. I am proud to be represented by bitforms, a NYC/Seoul gallery that in its own words is "devoted to emerging and established artists who embrace new media and contemporary art practice - resulting in new languages and artistic experiences."
TAXI >> In an interview with Youworkforthem.com, you mentioned that you would store away the day’s unfinished work and move on to another one the next day. I’m curious. Why won’t you complete it the next day before moving to something new?
James Paterson >> The first 20% of time spent on a project are deceptively fun and gratifying. It always feels like I could just breeze right through the whole thing and be done in a few days. But inevitably I find that the middle and the end of a project become exponentially more difficult to pull off.
So its a bit like biting the heads off the asparagus and leaving the rest, I just want all the tasty bits and none of the hard work! Reconciling this bad habit is one of the greatest challenges in my creative life. On the other hand having tons of half finished scraps of ideas lying around has its benefits; it allows me to live with my work for a while and really think about what I want to do with it and how it all fits together.
Also, finishing everything that I start just because I started it would take forever. If I just finish the best one out of every 10 projects I start then I can cover more ground idea-wise over time.
TAXI >>You also said you wished to bid farewell to commercial work and concentrate on self-initiated projects. Shaking off the shackles of big bucks is a dream for many a creative practitioner. Did you achieve your goal? If you did, what helped? If you didn’t, what could have helped?
James Paterson >> I would like to not have to work commercially anymore, but right now it is the best way to earn myself the free time I need to concentrate on my personal work. The best I have managed to do is get my commercial work time down to about half the year and spend the rest working on my own stuff. I am trying to figure out how to live exclusively on self-initiated work, but these plans take a lot of time and experimentation to get in place and running.
I am just trying to be patient and enjoy myself as much as I can along the way. When I do work commercially I try to become as personally involved as I can and make the work my own. Often I become really fond of my commercial work and get a lot of ideas for my personal work out of it.
TAXI >>You work predominantly for yourself and you get business when clients like your work and make job offers. Clients who want more for less — do you see it as a problem in the creative industry? How do you separate personal and commercial work?
James Paterson >> I don't see clients wanting more for less as a problem in the industry. There are companies that specialize in giving more for less, and they are great at it. I don't feel like my team and I fall into that category though, I think that we are willing to accept the stress of trying to produce something really amazing and unique for anyone who has hired us, but only for a price that is fair to us. Otherwise it is a much better use of our time to work on our own projects and wait for clients who are more appropriate for us.
How do I separate my personal and commercial work? There is a time and a place for both, but I am lucky in that I seem to be able to find personal interest in a lot of unusual places, even client work. Sometimes solving a problem for a commercial client will force me to work and think in a way that I may have been too lazy or set in my ways to do with my personal work.
Then I have expanded my creative horizons and I have discovered new techniques and ideas that I can inject into my personal work. The best of days doing commercial work are like being paid to do R&D for my personal work.
TAXI >>I’m looking at the kinetic abstract banner design you did for FlashFoward Conference 2007. What is the longest time you have spent on your work? Could you share with TAXI your approach to projects?
Several projects I have been working on for the past 5 years and are still no-where near completion, others can be dreamt up and finished all in a matter weeks or even a few days; it all depends on the size of the idea. I love tidy little ideas that I can bang out quickly, they are very gratifying. But I also like the slow burn of something that I fiddle with and modulate over years, there is an immense sense of satisfaction seeing something like that finally come to together.
TAXI >>What is the WORD, which you think would reside and reverberate in the design world for the next 10 years?
James Paterson >> BOOBS
..........................................................................................................
Exclusive Highlight on TAXI Design Network
Interview with Daniel Brown
TAXI >>Do you see art in interactivity or interactivity in art?
Daniel Brown >> Well all art and design is interactive in the sense that user has to decide if they like something or not. But that’s academic. My desire in creating interactive work is to allow the user – any user, any age, from any background – to be able to create something, and feel that they were jointly responsible for its creation. That’s where the name Play-Create comes from. There’s no more a sense of wonder or beauty than when someone realizes they are capable of doing something they didn’t know they could. I’m funny about using the word Art, more often that’s how other people refer to me. Designers tend to think I’m an artist, and artists think I’m a designer. As long as people think my work is pretty and keep paying for it I don’t mind too much!
TAXI >> I noticed that your interactive animations are inspired by nature. It seems that your present work seeks to eliminate the feel of technology without eliminating the use of technology. Why?
Daniel Brown >> Because it is technology that allows immersive interaction, but in itself it is not very interesting. I like to make work that can be used and understood by people of all ages and cultures. If you ever see someone using a computer in a gallery, they’re always nervous, flustered, and afraid of being watched. I like to make pieces which are immediately understood, where the interaction is almost instinctive – and impulsive. It’s more approachable.
TAXI >>Your vast body of work includes projects for Conran Architects, Sony Playstation, BBC, Volkswagen and Sanrio. What kind of project rocks your boat?
Daniel Brown >> It changes from time to time, but right now I’m really enjoying large format (projection /video wall) and video input for the interaction. Its beautiful, people walk pass and think ‘hey, I’m doing that!’ and within seconds they’re doing cartwheels and playing with other people in the space…
In terms of visual content, I’ve very much become obsessed with generative systems - that is, writing computer code that can generate unique, never repeating images/animation.
TAXI >>Creative Review called you one of the “Stars of the New Millennium”. London Design Museum chose you as their Designer of the Year in 2004. You represented the best of British design in Design Council’s “Great Expectations” show in New York. On your personal website, I found a section “Software As Furniture”. Could you elaborate more on the project? What was the motivation behind it?
Daniel Brown >> Many years ago, I realized that one could take a room, with furniture, decoration, posters, crockery etc, and paint it all white. Plain white. Then, with the right number and placement of digital projectors, you could simply project all the style back on – the wall color, the wallpaper, the color of the sofa, the patterns on the plates, and the images in the picture frames.
Now here’s the nice bit. You could change it all every day. One day your walls are blue, the next day red. Your plates are rococo one day - minimalist the next.
For me it was one of those moments. I realized that in the future, technology – screens, projectors, digital paper, 3D printing, rapid prototyping, offshore manufacturing - would mean that we could have ever changing, and infinitely customizable, possessions.
If you combine that with generative systems (as discussed in the previous answer) you have a situation where you can offer every person on the planet a unique, personalized and customized style to adorn their world.
Software As Furniture…
TAXI >>“Mathematics is the Language of Nature”. Could you explain to TAXI the link between numbers and nature?
Daniel Brown >> When Darwin first invented the theory of evolution, a bio-mathematician called D’arcy Thompson reasoned that if the theory was true then there must be a way of using the models of mathematics and physics to explain the relationship of one species to another – to define how one thing ‘evolved’ into the next. He went on to painstakingly model each creature, and the structural relationship to its ‘ancestor’. In his book ‘On Growth and Form’, he outlines this. What struck me was that these underlying mathematical rules are so simple.
In my own work – especially the Flowers series – I set out on a similar path – to combine many simple patterns and rules to create a much more complex and rich aesthetic.
My ‘Flowers’ series of work is titled ‘On Growth and Form’, as homage to this.
TAXI >>If Joshua Davis is the l’enfant terrible of web design, the Jackson Pollack of multimedia, what about you?
Daniel Brown >> I’ll let my good friend, journalist Andy Polaine, answer that one as he did for a recent magazine article, introducing me as Dan(ny) Brown, The Da Vinci Coder!
On a serious note, to be fair to web designers everywhere, I don’t think it quite correct to call me a web designer any more. Sure, my projects often have an internet component, and I use the web to promote myself, but it’s quite rare you’d find me doing HTML etc these days.
TAXI >>What is the WORD, which you think would reside and reverberate in the design world for the next 10 years?
Daniel Brown >> China.
..........................................................................................................
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© 2003 - 2007 by TAXI Design Network. All rights reserved.
Interview with Han Hooger Brugge
 | TAXI >>Hello Han. Your background lies in painting and cartoon illustrating. Obviously, there are lots of advantages of digital art — such as its interactivity and its accessibility — but is there anything you miss from painting and illustrating? Is there anything digital media cannot replace?
Han Hooger Brugge >> The only thing I really miss is the smell of oil paint in the morning. You enter your studio and there it is, that overwhelming ‘eau de painture’. Whenever I go to an exhibition and there are fresh oil paintings, the first thing I do is get really close and sniff that wonderful smell. TAXI >>But you haven’t really left your roots in cartoons behind, have you? You have got it integrated into your Flash stories. How do you juggle storytelling in the mix? Do you develop the plot first or the characters? |
Han Hooger Brugge >> The plot comes first but most of the time the characters will ruin the plot once they enter the scene. And I listen to them because they know best what they should do. They are in control. I just follow. I don’t make up my characters they are already there waiting for their turn. I talk to them and ask them what they would like to do. That’s it.
TAXI >>You have made some promotional videos for music acts such as Dead Man Ray’s “Landslide” and the Young Punx’s “You’ve Got To…” Could you describe the approach towards such aural projects?
Han Hooger Brugge >> It starts with stone cold fear. I listen to the song and think my god I’ll have to make an animation of more then 3 minutes. That’s so much work. So first I’ll try to convince the band the song would be much better if it would be shorter. And they are like, ‘shorter?’ This is already the short version!’.
I start thinking about the rhythm of the song and try to find images, settings, backgrounds, colors, etc, that I think will fit. Then I cut the song into small pieces and start thinking of what kind of movements I want for each piece. The small pieces also take away the fear of the 3 minute monster a bit. From then on it’s a big struggle to get it all together, to make sense out of it.
TAXI >>How has your work processes evolved since the days of 28k modems and GIFs?
Han Hooger Brugge >> Not much. I mean that’s how it feels like. I still do the same things more or less. (I sometimes feel like one of my characters doing the same thing over and over again.) But then again every time I start something new I have the feeling that this time I am going to do something different. But when I am finished it looks very much like my work. It can be very frustrating.
On a technical level the difference between 28k modems/gif animation to broadband and Flash is huge. I can work with both. In that sense, I am very practical. I can go back to 28k modems/gif animation anytime and still able to do what I want. I am not that much interested in technical stuff.
TAXI >>Although it seems that your work is predominantly black and white, it is not true to say colors do not come into play at all, like the pink pile of pigs, the yellow car and the orange wig in Nails and the clown’s red lips in Hotel… they all seem to add a touch of accent. So let’s solve the debate once and for all: Are you using colors or black-and-white to make your statement?
Han Hooger Brugge >> You might be right, because I don’t use color that often. It seems that when I do, it means something special. And it does. I use color whenever I am told to. I always start with black and white and grey because I don’t have any color ideas to start with. The pigs you mentioned were grey at first, but that didn’t look good, it made no sense. The animation told me to make them pink. Colors are special. I am afraid of color and I only use it if I am absolutely sure it’s going to work, if it means something.
TAXI >>Your characters engage in bizarre violence. Do you think their fates lie in your hands or in the viewer, since a mouse click or one rollover executes the action?
Han Hooger Brugge >> Their fate lies mostly in the hand of the viewer. I just make the set-up. If a visitor decides to click it’s their responsibility. That’s how it should feel for a visitor. It’s a perverse game. You could say I am the inventor of the violence but as a user you’re in charge of executing the ideas I came up with. So who’s the sick person? Me who came up with the idea or you, the user that execute my ideas? I can think of many ways to torture a person but it doesn’t mean anything if my ideas aren’t executed. Once my ideas are executed who’s to blame?
TAXI >>I’ve watched Hotel. Please enlighten TAXI: what does the Mickey Mouse ears symbolize?
Han Hooger Brugge >> That’s a rather personal story. In Italy they call Mickey Mouse ‘Toppolino’. I found out about that when I was a little kid through an Italian Uncle. He had Italian comic books which looked odd to me and I couldn’t read them because they were in Italian. He also had a few Mickey Mouse comics which I recognized of course, but I couldn’t understand why Mickey Mouse had a different name. My uncle couldn’t explain it, I asked him many times. For him it was strange they called ‘Toppolino’ Mickey Mouse. I couldn’t understand how Mickey, my Mickey, suddenly spoke Italian and had a different name. For me Mickey Mouse was Dutch. I felt betrayed, but only I didn’t know by whom. Mickey couldn’t help it; he was just a comic figure. That much I understood, it was very confusing. I no longer trusted comic figures.
That made me decide to introduce the Toppolino boys in Hotel.
TAXI >>What is the WORD, which you think would reside and reverberate in the design world for the next 10 years?
Han Hooger Brugge >> ProStress.
..........................................................................................................
Exclusive Highlight on TAXI Design Network
Interview with James Paterson
 | TAXI >>Hello James. Before you began to create your renowned hypnotic hybrid of traditional and digital media, you studied printmaking. After the transition from sketchbook to computer, is your Flash your only weapon of choice today?
James Paterson >> Flash is my primary weapon of choice for my finished work yes, but I still do all of my original idea work and drawing with pens and paper. I don't think anything will ever be able to replace pens and paper for me as the best way to bang ideas around and come up with stuff. TAXI >>Insertsilence.com is a showcase of your collaboration with Amit Pitaru. He is a jazz pianist-turned-programmer who, like you, didn’t have a start in interaction design. You told Designmuseum.org that “music first and foremost” inspires you. Why the moniker Insertsilence then? |
James Paterson >> 'Insertsilence' is actually a function found in sound programs that you use to place gaps of silence into a piece of audio. Amit and I liked the idea that inserting 'nothing' into 'something' could be such a useful operation.
TAXI >> Like many pioneering digital artists, you were self-taught. Given your extensive experience, do you think computers have gained acceptance as a fine art medium today?
James Paterson >> I think that computers have gained acceptance to a certain degree, but every new medium that comes along is met with resistance from the art world, it is a tradition! Whenever a new kid comes along it gets shoved around and picked on for a while, and then finally is accepted.
I think it is the work of creative and outgoing gallerists in collaboration with their artists to push these new mediums through and find ways to present the work and sell it. I am proud to be represented by bitforms, a NYC/Seoul gallery that in its own words is "devoted to emerging and established artists who embrace new media and contemporary art practice - resulting in new languages and artistic experiences."
TAXI >> In an interview with Youworkforthem.com, you mentioned that you would store away the day’s unfinished work and move on to another one the next day. I’m curious. Why won’t you complete it the next day before moving to something new?
James Paterson >> The first 20% of time spent on a project are deceptively fun and gratifying. It always feels like I could just breeze right through the whole thing and be done in a few days. But inevitably I find that the middle and the end of a project become exponentially more difficult to pull off.
So its a bit like biting the heads off the asparagus and leaving the rest, I just want all the tasty bits and none of the hard work! Reconciling this bad habit is one of the greatest challenges in my creative life. On the other hand having tons of half finished scraps of ideas lying around has its benefits; it allows me to live with my work for a while and really think about what I want to do with it and how it all fits together.
Also, finishing everything that I start just because I started it would take forever. If I just finish the best one out of every 10 projects I start then I can cover more ground idea-wise over time.
TAXI >>You also said you wished to bid farewell to commercial work and concentrate on self-initiated projects. Shaking off the shackles of big bucks is a dream for many a creative practitioner. Did you achieve your goal? If you did, what helped? If you didn’t, what could have helped?
James Paterson >> I would like to not have to work commercially anymore, but right now it is the best way to earn myself the free time I need to concentrate on my personal work. The best I have managed to do is get my commercial work time down to about half the year and spend the rest working on my own stuff. I am trying to figure out how to live exclusively on self-initiated work, but these plans take a lot of time and experimentation to get in place and running.
I am just trying to be patient and enjoy myself as much as I can along the way. When I do work commercially I try to become as personally involved as I can and make the work my own. Often I become really fond of my commercial work and get a lot of ideas for my personal work out of it.
TAXI >>You work predominantly for yourself and you get business when clients like your work and make job offers. Clients who want more for less — do you see it as a problem in the creative industry? How do you separate personal and commercial work?
James Paterson >> I don't see clients wanting more for less as a problem in the industry. There are companies that specialize in giving more for less, and they are great at it. I don't feel like my team and I fall into that category though, I think that we are willing to accept the stress of trying to produce something really amazing and unique for anyone who has hired us, but only for a price that is fair to us. Otherwise it is a much better use of our time to work on our own projects and wait for clients who are more appropriate for us.
How do I separate my personal and commercial work? There is a time and a place for both, but I am lucky in that I seem to be able to find personal interest in a lot of unusual places, even client work. Sometimes solving a problem for a commercial client will force me to work and think in a way that I may have been too lazy or set in my ways to do with my personal work.
Then I have expanded my creative horizons and I have discovered new techniques and ideas that I can inject into my personal work. The best of days doing commercial work are like being paid to do R&D for my personal work.
TAXI >>I’m looking at the kinetic abstract banner design you did for FlashFoward Conference 2007. What is the longest time you have spent on your work? Could you share with TAXI your approach to projects?
Several projects I have been working on for the past 5 years and are still no-where near completion, others can be dreamt up and finished all in a matter weeks or even a few days; it all depends on the size of the idea. I love tidy little ideas that I can bang out quickly, they are very gratifying. But I also like the slow burn of something that I fiddle with and modulate over years, there is an immense sense of satisfaction seeing something like that finally come to together.
TAXI >>What is the WORD, which you think would reside and reverberate in the design world for the next 10 years?
James Paterson >> BOOBS
..........................................................................................................
Exclusive Highlight on TAXI Design Network
Interview with Daniel Brown
 | TAXI >>Hello Daniel. I’ve read that you drew your early inspiration from the video games you played during your childhood. You grew up among computers, watching your father who himself is a pioneer of computer graphics. Today, you are one of the leading practitioners in interactive and digital media. Is the computer more of your weapon of choice than the drawing board then?
Daniel Brown >> Well, ignoring the fact I’m disabled so couldn’t use a drawing board even if I wanted to, yes - I sidestepped the whole hands-on-side of design. I’ve used a Mac since about age 11. Before I became disabled, I must confess I did feel a bit guilty that I couldn’t even draw. But, saying that, I’m sure if I had been able to, it would be one more thing I’d regret not being able to do any more. I do still do the odd ‘lo-fi’ thing though, with a ‘computer twist’ to it – we’ve just made a cardboard pop-up card for the Victoria & Albert Museum. |
TAXI >>Do you see art in interactivity or interactivity in art?
Daniel Brown >> Well all art and design is interactive in the sense that user has to decide if they like something or not. But that’s academic. My desire in creating interactive work is to allow the user – any user, any age, from any background – to be able to create something, and feel that they were jointly responsible for its creation. That’s where the name Play-Create comes from. There’s no more a sense of wonder or beauty than when someone realizes they are capable of doing something they didn’t know they could. I’m funny about using the word Art, more often that’s how other people refer to me. Designers tend to think I’m an artist, and artists think I’m a designer. As long as people think my work is pretty and keep paying for it I don’t mind too much!
TAXI >> I noticed that your interactive animations are inspired by nature. It seems that your present work seeks to eliminate the feel of technology without eliminating the use of technology. Why?
Daniel Brown >> Because it is technology that allows immersive interaction, but in itself it is not very interesting. I like to make work that can be used and understood by people of all ages and cultures. If you ever see someone using a computer in a gallery, they’re always nervous, flustered, and afraid of being watched. I like to make pieces which are immediately understood, where the interaction is almost instinctive – and impulsive. It’s more approachable.
TAXI >>Your vast body of work includes projects for Conran Architects, Sony Playstation, BBC, Volkswagen and Sanrio. What kind of project rocks your boat?
Daniel Brown >> It changes from time to time, but right now I’m really enjoying large format (projection /video wall) and video input for the interaction. Its beautiful, people walk pass and think ‘hey, I’m doing that!’ and within seconds they’re doing cartwheels and playing with other people in the space…
In terms of visual content, I’ve very much become obsessed with generative systems - that is, writing computer code that can generate unique, never repeating images/animation.
TAXI >>Creative Review called you one of the “Stars of the New Millennium”. London Design Museum chose you as their Designer of the Year in 2004. You represented the best of British design in Design Council’s “Great Expectations” show in New York. On your personal website, I found a section “Software As Furniture”. Could you elaborate more on the project? What was the motivation behind it?
Daniel Brown >> Many years ago, I realized that one could take a room, with furniture, decoration, posters, crockery etc, and paint it all white. Plain white. Then, with the right number and placement of digital projectors, you could simply project all the style back on – the wall color, the wallpaper, the color of the sofa, the patterns on the plates, and the images in the picture frames.
Now here’s the nice bit. You could change it all every day. One day your walls are blue, the next day red. Your plates are rococo one day - minimalist the next.
For me it was one of those moments. I realized that in the future, technology – screens, projectors, digital paper, 3D printing, rapid prototyping, offshore manufacturing - would mean that we could have ever changing, and infinitely customizable, possessions.
If you combine that with generative systems (as discussed in the previous answer) you have a situation where you can offer every person on the planet a unique, personalized and customized style to adorn their world.
Software As Furniture…
TAXI >>“Mathematics is the Language of Nature”. Could you explain to TAXI the link between numbers and nature?
Daniel Brown >> When Darwin first invented the theory of evolution, a bio-mathematician called D’arcy Thompson reasoned that if the theory was true then there must be a way of using the models of mathematics and physics to explain the relationship of one species to another – to define how one thing ‘evolved’ into the next. He went on to painstakingly model each creature, and the structural relationship to its ‘ancestor’. In his book ‘On Growth and Form’, he outlines this. What struck me was that these underlying mathematical rules are so simple.
In my own work – especially the Flowers series – I set out on a similar path – to combine many simple patterns and rules to create a much more complex and rich aesthetic.
My ‘Flowers’ series of work is titled ‘On Growth and Form’, as homage to this.
TAXI >>If Joshua Davis is the l’enfant terrible of web design, the Jackson Pollack of multimedia, what about you?
Daniel Brown >> I’ll let my good friend, journalist Andy Polaine, answer that one as he did for a recent magazine article, introducing me as Dan(ny) Brown, The Da Vinci Coder!
On a serious note, to be fair to web designers everywhere, I don’t think it quite correct to call me a web designer any more. Sure, my projects often have an internet component, and I use the web to promote myself, but it’s quite rare you’d find me doing HTML etc these days.
TAXI >>What is the WORD, which you think would reside and reverberate in the design world for the next 10 years?
Daniel Brown >> China.
..........................................................................................................
Read OTHER INTERVIEWS on DESIGN LEADERS
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