Joshua Davis: Once-upon-a-forest

Joshua Davis has announced a new series of workshops somewhat cheerfully called Get Creative. The subtitle packs more of a punch: “Using dynamic abstraction within Macromedia Flash MX to build art making machines .” Only London remains on his tour, the dates are 4-5 November and the gig is organized by FITC.

Apparently, Davis will walk participants through the process he follows when creating works like those seen on Once-upon-a-forest. He will even provide them with code: “Attendee’s of this lecture will leave with a renewed creative outlook…and an enormous collection of reusable art making machines (Flash Components) written by Joshua Davis which he uses on most of his client projects.” Not bad for £400, cheap by design industry standards.

I’ve always found Davis’ generative illustrations (like those seen at Accident Happy) more fascinating than his design work. I think he has a much more unique “voice” as an artist than as a designer. His art works have a great deal of detail and texture to them that is often lost in his clean-line Modernist design projects. Granted, the recent Stardust.tv web site maxes out on kitschy charm and technical wizardry, but I still find much more personality in the print works. So a workshop exploring his techniques for generative composition doesn’t sound half bad…