My fascination with patterns and chaos theory began in the early 1990s with a Commodore Amiga, AMOS Basic, and magazine cover disks that included tools like fractal generators. Inspired by the Demoscene – an international computer art subculture – and fuelled by books on fractals and dynamical systems, I spent countless hours coding experiments, from interference patterns to interactive art, and competing/collaborating with a friend to push what we could do. By the time I was doing my sixth-year physics studies, I was not only programming but also wiring analogue circuits to display strange attractors on oscilloscopes.
That blend of art, maths, and electronics carried through my studies. After a joint degree in Electronics and Computer Science, I returned to visual and interactive work with a Masters in Multimedia Technology in 1997. There, I combined code and hardware in a Science Festival project with solar inventor Kerr MacGregor, developing an interactive kiosk where light sensors controlled digital displays. Through my use of electronics, that project opened the door to industry work on early portable solid-state music players and digital music distribution at Memory Corporation / DigMedia.
Through the 2000s my work was focused mostly on the online music industry, but I never lost sight of the visual. By 2007 I was supporting local artists through an arts collective and exhibitions, which reignited my own creative practice. From 2009 to 2011 I explored recursive and generative systems with Context Free Art, Processing, and shape-packing algorithms.
In the 2010s, collaborations with painter Trevor Jones pulled me further into the intersection of art and technology, blending digital tools into his traditional practice. A decade later, in 2021, I reintroduced my own algorithmic works to the world via NFTs – some from the 2009-2011 period, others resurrected from those original Amiga floppy disks of the early ’90s.
Since then, my practice has expanded into EEG-driven generative art, interactive installations, and collaborations across academia, online collectives, and theatre. A thread runs through it all: the teenage drive I felt to make sense of chaos and uncover hidden beauty in mathematics has stayed with me, continually reshaping the way I work with art and technology today.
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