“Code is just as artistic as using paint and a brush”
Joshua Davies is a New York-based designer who has been working with code as his medium since the mid-1990s. In 1999 Davies started to produce Praystation.com, an online diary\blog\forum for experimentation that turned many heads by taking Flash into areas where few people seemed able to tread at the time.
Looking back, Praystation still seems pretty cutting edge – perhaps surprisingly so given the comparative limitations in the tools available at the time. This was pretty early days for Flash where its potential as an interface tool was poorly understood and rarely explored. The extra clean, monochrome aesthetic set a certain standard that became pretty de-rigeur for the hipper website about town back then.
Since then Davies has moved on to develop a number of techniques in vector-based artwork, producing output of considerable complexity. He calls it “dynamic abstraction” – a method where he sets parameters and rules but the output is unplanned and often surprising. Code is his brush – he works by developing endless combinations of programs and experimenting with the output.
His commercial work, loathe though I am to dwell on paid work, is pretty striking. He clearly gets hired by those marketing departments who are a) under 50 and b) flushed with cash. Much of his work carries on from a number of the concepts first touched upon by Praystation, particularly in terms of developing new approaches to interfaces and information flow.