Biography

introduction

I've been using this personal website as my digital home (here's an old postcard of my real home town) since around 1998; adding to it, leaving work in progress lying around, and rearranging/redesigning like the rooms in a house. For some reason, I'm sometimes getting over 7000 hits a week, so if you read this (and can be bothered) contact me saying what you like or dislike. Feedback might just (and often does) encourage changes to the site.

I don't know how to describe what I do, except to say that I'm a creative generalist (and I'd say an art of any kind is the medium for a creator), mixing special interests and long-term lines of inquiry with artworks, research and paid work, a process that spawns new directions and ideas in a recursive process.

This site is arranged in three main sections (all containing more than first appears) plus this biog, each with it's own coloured links throughout the site (see top of page). I like the tradition of easter eggs, so some links might not be obvious. Other sections exist only as web peninsulars with maybe a single link from some page or other, and not much of a way back (you know where the back button is :-)

what I do

I produce art, music or sound, and also text - mostly short stories - roughly in that order at present, but it varies. I'm a self-taught hacker in certain areas of mathematics and programming, and an information addict with a huge interest span and an almost pathological aversion to specialisation. I've stopped worrying about appearing naïve in any one sphere - focussing on only one discipline is admirable but I simply can't do it; I'd miss what's gained through multi-threaded approaches. Other artists working with technology have highlighted this issue of disciplinary homelessness for 30 years or more; the venerable Leonardo magazine is testament to their tenacity. From 1998-2002 I was a visiting researcher at CCRS with many other artists. I've delivered seminars on emerging interfaces and their implications for artists/audiences and accessibility, and for many years had a special interest in art-technology and disability, being one of the people turning DisabilityArtsOnline into an independent site under Arts Council England funding and reporting on emerging technology and disability, delivering seminars to various special interest groups. I research techology and culture, and teach under- and post-grad New Media part-time at DeMontfort University, Leicester.

what I'm interested in right now

Always nearly too much, but right now or recently: recent experiments with artist Aidan Shingler, some songs and a short novel, papers and essays on technology, programming and culture (following and watching trends in web programming and trying things out), and affective computing in art. A couple of papers (both in collaboration), one just published in the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media on conditions for emergence in collaborative art (adapted from a rough essay) and another on 'cultural nervousness' around the Web 2.0 label (yes, coders, tehcnically, I know it's nonsense) that has just been accepted for publication in Media Culture and Society. I am a research fellow at De Montfort's IoCT, Transliteracy and research into visual representations of tagging, and Creativity Conversations projects. I occasionally contribute to events such as the Knowledge Sharing Synergies Workshop for the Attainable Utopias Open-Design think-tank at Goldsmiths. I'm just tidying up for a new phase of artworks after completing a mid-career development plan under an Arts Council England grant. Tired? Yes, not that I'm complaining, one person just doesn't have enough resources to do all the fascinating things that can be done, which is why I love collaboration.

Much professional work undertaken as the Eco Consulting Partnership (download resume).
Artists' statement available as Word or PDF (art site in progress).