Please give us a short introduction about yourself and your work.

My name is Joshua Davis, I live in New York with my wife and daughter. I founded "Joshua Davis | Studios" with my partner Branden Hall. The studio, in New York and D.C., produces a wide range of very tailored and specific projects for clients, on and off the web, focusing in web, print, video, custom software, gallery and museum installation, lectures and workshops.

Did you have a formal design education or are you self taught?

I have a formal background in communication design (focus : Painting and Illustration) I attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Yet started experimenting with computers at a very early stage using Linux, a 286, and 386 DX266 - and starting with Linux helped me get into a path of self-taught programming/comp sci. over a period of time, my background in painting and this new exploration of programming would come closer and closer together. I often tell people... I'm still fundamentally the same artist, just computers and programming replaced the brush and the pigments.

Joshua Davis and His Books

New Masters of Flash

Flash to the Core

How did you get into Flash? Since which version are you working with Flash and what drove you to deal with flash so intensively?

Although, 80 % of our projects are developed using Flash... and aside from the fact that both Branden and myself have written Flash books - it does bother us a bit that artists, designers, and developers using Flash are always associated with the use of the technology.

Flash for me is just a tool to get my ideas executed - and originally coming from a JavaScript/DHTML background it frustrated me that I had to spend so much time and effort merely to determine "platform" and "browser" (remember this is IE 4 / Netscape 4 days) to either write multiple versions of a site or dumb experiences down to be viewable in all situations. So while I have used and played with Flash since version 1 - I didn't really take it seriously as an alternative to DHTML until 4.

I think building and growing with Flash since 1 has given me great conformability and ways to bend/hack into Flash to help me arrive at destinations - conceptually and creatively, especially now since we're using the open .swf format to write custom software like vvs.1 and vvs.2 joshuadavis.com, see broadcast for details).

You mentioned your vector video suite and the project one cross. How do you come up with experimental ideas like that? what's the background for such software or DVD?

I believe that inspiration and ideas are never on short supply - I think it's a matter of disciplining yourself to see things differently every time... no matter how mundane or familiar the situation might be.

For example... When I moved to New York 1992 I had never ridden a subway. I was in total enlightenment that I got to take this underground rollercoaster (the closest thing comparable to the feeling I had) everyday for $1.25. However over a period of a few months I become like every other New Yorker, half asleep on the train as it merely takes me from point A. to point B. How did something so exciting become so mundane ?

Complacency. I had closed my eyes to seeing this experience like I did for the first time.

So... there are a million little scenarios, movements, forms, paths, and systems at play all around us - I've just gotten really good at seeing things, writing them down, assessing the limitations of the technology I use and trying to recreate them.

This is how things like vvs.1 and vvs.2 get created. We first started with static images, however Flash was unable to perform all tasks, so we look outside of Flash into technologies that might be able to start a process that Flash can finish. Initially we used PHP for image translation (grid, pixel averaging, and saving data as a text file) Then using Flash, inputting this text based image data and redrawing the artwork in flash using either the drawing API or our own custom vector pixels (MovieClips).

Finally porting this idea to be able to process video, required us to re-think and re-write the entire process as a stand-alone APP. At this time the APP has no GUI yet, runs on both macs and pcs... via command line. However we do have plans to integrate a GUI and offer the software for public consumption at some point when we have more time.

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