Profession:
Technical Director, Pixel Addicts Ltd

Date & place of birth:
December 29 1977; Staffordshire, England

Your first job after full-time education? 
For five years or so after I graduated in Computer Graphics Imaging & Visualisation at Staffordshire University, I worked in the field of Machine Vision. This is the industry that applies image processing to industrial automation, which encompasses everything from facial recognition through neural networks to production line quality analysis. Interesting stuff, if you’re a geek.

What initially attracted you to the world of visuals?
An old school friend of mine, Mark Calvert, who was my flatmate at the time, and is now co-director of Pixel Addicts, was running events and I saw somebody VJ’ing at one of these events in 2000. I remember thinking, ‘I could do that’, and probably a lot better than him. Eighteen months later we were doing that guy’s job.

And how has your career path steered you towards a career in visuals?
VJ’ing and visuals are just part of what we do. We also make our own media server ‘The Addict Server’. We take on production management of the entire light, sound and visuals installations at events. We produce custom graphics, and we also VJ. All of these elements integrate seamlessly to produce one package, which is much greater than the sum of its parts.

My part in that process is the programming — writing the software. That has been a natural progression from my background in machine vision, because the tools, languages, disciplines and constraints are very similar, even though the end result is quite a different piece of software.

What’s the most exciting thing about the industry at the moment?
The thing I always harp on about is immersive visual environments. For me a really exciting experience is one where I escape normality and find myself in an environment that is totally unfamiliar.

For years, lighting has been working towards creating surreal and beautiful spectacles on stage, and video more recently has begun to play a part in those shows, too. But gradually these stages are getting bigger and bigger, and increasingly surrounding the viewer.

Integrated lighting, video and sound creep off the central stage and begin to surround the viewer more and more, and then the experience becomes more immersive.

This is where it gets exciting for me. It’s something that we are only beginning to chip away at the surface of really. In matter [the venue at London’s O2], we have a pretty powerful visual system, which integrates very well with the lighting and produces an immersive experience. But this is still only a step on the road to a completely immersive visual environment.

You started out with VJ team inside-us-all, but then formed Pixel Addicts. What’s the difference between the two and what instigated the latter?
‘inside-us-all’ is the name for our VJ team. ‘Pixel Addicts’ is the name of our company, which takes on AV installations, full production management and custom content for broadcast and live applications.

What qualities led to you being awarded the best VJ team by DJ mag in 2008?
A big mailing list? But the people who receive the mail have to be willing to go and vote. I think what has got us the most attention is our determination to break out of the traditional screen set-ups at events. People are sick of seeing a couple of simple screens in predictable layouts with logos plastered all over them constantly. In fact, I think people don’t even notice this sort of thing anymore, they just ignore it completely.

Does the 360° video installation technology for matter at the O2 — controlled by your Addict media server — translate to live shows?
Totally. The Addict Server is designed as an incredibly flexible, yet simple and intuitive way of controlling any kind of show — from a simple single screen VJ output to an Olympic opening event with hundreds of screens and lighting fixtures all working in perfect harmony.

How will live performances use visual mapping technologies in the future?
Creating unusual shaped objects out of reasonably cheap materials, then pointing a good projector at the stage and video mapping these structures is a very cost-effective way of making a high impact, lightweight and quick rig installation. Providing you have the right software system.

What occupies your free time?
Building a beautiful home with my fiancée and daydreaming about what’s next.

Your favourite record of all time?
1200 micrograms by 1200 micrograms.

First gig you ever attended?
The Lemonheads at Wolverhampton Civic Hall.