Journal
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We seem to have become obsessed with how quickly things can be done. How quickly can we build the website? How quickly can we create the concept? How quickly can we write the code? And increasingly, how quickly can AI do all of the above? Speed has become one of the easiest ways to measure… Read more
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I remember kaleidoscopes mostly from museum gift shops. Not necessarily the expensive museums either. Science museums, little local museums, National Trust gift shops — anywhere that had a rack of slightly educational toys alongside pencils, gemstones and things that glowed in the dark. I always thought kaleidoscopes were brilliant. You’d point one towards a window,… Read more
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Pidge started as one of those ideas that didn’t really have a grand plan behind it. I wanted to make a character. Something simple, physical and a little bit scruffy. Something that could exist away from a screen. And eventually, Pidge appeared. From an idea to an actual object I’ve always liked making things. A… Read more
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Almost everything is an iteration of something else. An artist sees another artist’s work and takes something from it. A musician hears a sound and pushes it somewhere slightly different. A designer borrows a layout, a typeface, a colour combination or an idea. Architecture responds to architecture. Fashion circles back on itself. Religions develop from… Read more
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I’ve always liked map contours. There’s something about those repeated lines wrapping around hills, valleys and changes in elevation that feels both technical and strangely abstract. Take away the labels, roads and place names and they become patterns in their own right. For this little Processing experiment, I wanted to take that idea and make… Read more
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There’s something quite nice about watching a solar eclipse through a Pringles tube. For all the technology we have around us, our preparations for the eclipse involved raiding the recycling and making pinhole viewers from cereal boxes and Pringles tubes. Very similar, really, to the sort of thing I remember doing at school in the… Read more
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Sometimes an idea for a generative art project starts with data, a mathematical rule or something I’ve deliberately gone looking for. This one started with an ornament sitting on my desk. It’s one of those liquid motion ornaments filled with coloured sediment, oil and air. Turn it over and gravity takes care of the rest.… Read more
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I’ve been making birbs. They started life digitally, as a very simple 3D model. I deliberately kept the form minimal: a rounded body, the suggestion of a beak and two eyes. Just enough information for your brain to decide that, yes, this little lump is probably a bird. From that original model I created a… Read more
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There’s something wonderfully low-tech about watching a solar eclipse through a cardboard box. I remember being at school in the 80s and 90s and making simple pinhole viewers — cardboard boxes, a tiny hole and an image of the Sun projected safely onto the inside. No screens, no apps, no live streams. Just a little… Read more
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Sometimes an idea for a project doesn’t come from looking for one. I was doing the washing up after breakfast and noticed the sediment left in the bottom of a cereal bowl. The liquid had drained away, leaving behind a strange collection of stains, particles, darker edges and almost vein-like structures. I took a photograph.… Read more
