Joshua Davis (web designer)
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
web designer, author and artist in new media
New media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
. He was an early pioneer in the use of Macromedia Flash as a tool to generate Art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
. He is the author of Flash to the Core (2002) and was featured in the seminal book New Masters of Flash (2000).
Biography
A proficient illustrator and painter with a passion for technology, Davis’ work brought an entirely new dimension to art. Utilizing randomizationRandomization
Randomization is the process of making something random; this means:* Generating a random permutation of a sequence .* Selecting a random sample of a population ....
in controlled environments, or Chaos Theory
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
, Davis established a new and unique perspective on visual communication and creative expression, pioneering an area previously unexplored in graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
.
In January 2001, as part of issue #100 of K10k.net, Davis posted an autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
— a revealing look at his personal life in the New York City art/club scene in the early 1990s, his drug addiction, and his ability to overcome it to pursue his goal of being a full-time artist. Davis wrote that once he left the club scene, he aspired to be a writer and illustrator of children's books. It was at the Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
that Davis began to delve into writing HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
, working under Thomas Noller in 1995. Soon after, he began to experiment with Macromedia Flash and its early scripting language, and further with ActionScript
ActionScript
ActionScript is an object-oriented language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. . It is a dialect of ECMAScript , and is used primarily for the development of websites and software targeting the Adobe Flash Player platform, used on Web pages in the form of...
programming.
Joshua Davis' work became a major influence in graphic and web design in the "Y2K" era of the Internet’s dot-com
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
explosion. Davis himself was distinguished from other web designers by his many tattoo
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...
s, leading to his reputation as being a web design "rockstar" — a label he dismisses. From 1998 to 2001, he worked with the web production company Kioken. When Kioken folded, Davis became an independent web designer and artist, touring the world to speak at various graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
conferences, such as SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...
, Flash Forward, FITC, BD4D, OFFF, Graphika Manila and others.
In 2003, he was asked by Tool
Tool (band)
Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. Since 1995, Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist, replacing their original bassist Paul D'Amour...
's Adam Jones
Adam Jones (musician)
Adam Thomas Jones is a three time Grammy Award-winning Welsh-American musician and visual artist, best known for his position as the guitarist for Grammy-Award winning band Tool. Jones has been rated the 75th Greatest Guitarist of all time by the Rolling Stone and placed 9th in Guitar World's Top...
to take over their websites. The band's official site was replaced by an intro page designed by Davis, but has since been changed.
In 2002 he teamed up with developer Branden Hall to form The Department of Notation Studios, a media development studio. The company was disbanded in 2006 when Hall left to form Automata Studios Ltd. with fellow developer Keenan Keeling. Despite the separation Davis and Hall continue to collaborate on various projects.
As of 2007, Davis lives in New York with his wife and daughter. He is a professor at New York’s School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...
, runs his own design studio, and continues to lecture and lead workshops in design conferences.
In addition to his work as a graphic designer, he also runs Mau5ville, a Minecraft Server owned by Joel "Deadmau5" Zimmerman.
Influences
Davis was strongly influenced by Jackson PollockJackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, an abstract expressionist whose work came of age in the 1940s and 50s. Pollock splattered paint (as well as other items) across large canvases with the idea that his art was the process of its creation rather than the final product. Embracing the computer as a tool for generating his work, Davis wrote code that randomly distributed, arranged, and distorted his artwork, essentially creating new work as a final result. Other times he generated entire pieces practically completely at random. That is, the art is the code that produces the final result rather than the final randomly generated works themselves.
Davis was also influenced by his love of classic video games, including using a sprite
Sprite (computer graphics)
In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...
of an alien from Space Invaders
Space Invaders
is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to...
as his logo for Praystation.
Praystation
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
Flash files
SWF
SWF is an Adobe Flash file format used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript. Originating with FutureWave Software, then transferred to Macromedia, and then coming under the control of Adobe, SWF files can contain animations or applets of varying degrees of interactivity and function.,...
.
The second year of Praystation.com was compiled into a CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
called PrayStation Hardrive, which included source files, photos and miscellaneous items that Joshua Davis worked on during that time, distributed in limited quantities by IdN magazine. The disc included a 32-page booklet and was packaged in a plastic casing modeled after the PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
.
Dreamless
Dreamless.org was the site of a popular Internet forumInternet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
, hosted by Joshua Davis from 1999 to 2001. Its minimal design, understated Web presence and hidden registration page all added to its intrigue, and for a while it was a gathering place for many graphic and web designers and programmers. "Photoshop Battles" were a popular activity among forum members, leading into the internet phenomenon now referred to as Photoshop tennis. The community of Dreamless traveled past the boundaries of the Internet — impromptu local meetings ("riots", as Davis called them) were arranged for Dreamless users to meet face-to-face and exchange ideas. Threadless
Threadless
Threadless is an online community of artists and an e-commerce website based in Chicago, Illinois since 2000. Co-founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart started the company with $1,000 in seed money after entering an Internet t-shirt design contest....
founders Jake Nickell and Jacob DeHart met while active in the Dreamless community, and started Threadless after Jake won a t-shirt design competition run by Dreamless.
One notorious forum on Dreamless was "08 - Meaningless and Shallow", a topical free-for-all which led to numerous flame wars, post floods and user-led XSS
Cross-site scripting
Cross-site scripting is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in Web applications that enables attackers to inject client-side script into Web pages viewed by other users. A cross-site scripting vulnerability may be used by attackers to bypass access controls such as the same...
vandalism
Vandalism
Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...
. After several "meltdowns" and member disputes, Davis closed Dreamless in July 2001.
Websites
- Joshua Davis Studios
- Once Upon A Forest
- PrayStation.com - Year 2, version 4 archive
- Hype Framework - A collaborative project with Branden Hall
Awards & accolades
Joshua Davis was the winner of the 2001 Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica in the category “Net Excellence” and has exhibited his works at the Tate ModernTate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
(London), the Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...
(Austria), the Design Museum
Design Museum
Design Museum is a museum by the River Thames near Tower Bridge in central London, England. The museum covers product, industrial, graphic, fashion and architectural design. It was founded in 1989 and claims to be the first museum of modern design...
(London), le Centre Pompidou (France), the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
(London), PS.1 MoMA (New York), among others. In December 2006, His work will be inducted into the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum, a subsidiary of the Smithsonian Institution, is the United States' national museum of design history and contemporary design and the only museum in the U.S. whose collection is solely focused on contemporary and historic design...
’s "National Design Triennial: Design Life Now" exhibit.
External links
- Joshua Davis Studios
- Joshua Davis' weblog
- Praystation, Cyphen, Dreamless and Antiweb-Chaos are defunct; each URL redirects to joshuadavis.com.
- Once Upon A Forest