Here is a short review of Joshua Davis‘s conference at Flash in the Can on oct. 23th 2004. Hope it can give you some sort of the vibe i had leaving this conference.
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Joshua Davis –
Dynamic abstraction
praystation.com – once-upon-a-forest.com
J. Davis skills as an artist and programmer are both strong enough to make any flash wannabe like me totally jealous.
His powerful mixture of talent in arts and programming might be the secret leading him to these astonishing, original and lively, computer generated artwork.
During the flash in the can conference, he talked mostly about his latest print work done for the Maxalot Gallery in Barcelona, and feeded us about what was behind it: the creative process he has been going through ’till the final product, mostly all beautifully randomized graphics generated with flash.
A really brief explanation of his working process:
He basically choose a color palette – often coming from a picture that he scans and then get down to 8, 16 or 32 colors. He then use shapes he had a crush on – mostly elements coming from nature and surroundings, and combine these into random flash generated patterns, spacebar clicking until the right shape pops up.
‘I’m pretty much into not being in control of the results. There is a part of my work which is controlled and part which is not… I’m pretty interested in trying to ‘control’ accident’
He talks allot about ‘accidents’ and ‘changes’, trying not to have control over stuff he does.
Listening to him, it seems to be all about making friend with imperfection, spontaneity and mistakes – that which i completely agreed with. I do think mistakes often shows us a different path which might lead us to the original piece we are looking for, or a new solution. An open and curious mind, playfulness and strong intuition are for me the most important qualities of a good designer/artist – at least, that is what i am always in the look for.
I was really amazed by the presence of this guy and his way of presenting his work process. He definitely has lots of fun and no doubt he is passionate about what he is doing. Reminded me of Matt Owen’s conference at Berlin Beta – these kids have fun, that is why their work is so original, fresh and new.
At last, here’s one more quote from J.Davis, which he repeated to us at least 3 times –
only to hear this was worth to get up at 8 on a saturday morning.
Designers/students/artists, open up your eyes and keep that one close in mind:
‘The type of work you make (or show) is the kind of work you’ll be hired to do’
… this does the job, does it?
cheers.