From about as soon as I first understood how to use a computer back in the 1980s, I have been trying to use them to create if not "art", then at least "stuff".
On the BBC Micro it was trying to squeeze music out of three channels of bleeping and one of white noise, and then distributing the output as downloadable program files on BBSs (Napster my arse). Latterly there was an ultimately doomed attempt to build a MIDI interface to control a Casio CZ-101.
Then came the Atari ST with its built-in 5-pin DIN and Steinberg. Macs at University in the Student Union offices with Freehand and PageMaker gave me my first real experience of tools to deliver visual output, I found Photoshop at the LSE, and then when I eventually joined the BBC in 1996 I was able to get my hands on some really interesting tools. One of the first projects I ran there was to implement a Media100 offline edit suite which (from memory) cost about £60k, much of which was for a then enormous 50GB hard drive array.
In the nineties and early naughties I did a bit of djing, and also tried to bring in some audio visual elements using tools like the wonderful Cthuga alongside backwards loops of black and white art house movies. By the last few times of djing, everything had moved to the laptop.
These days, one of the last major projects that I have been involved in at Imagination has been to put a global licensing deal in place for the Adobe Creative Suite.
Whilst my new role will undoubtedly involve even more creative use of technology, I'm going to miss being responsible for providing the tools that make the creative core of the company I work for work. It has always been more interesting for me than spreadsheets and databases…
mmitII 