What an amazing first week here in the Pervasive Media Studio. Although its been quite jam packed, for me there has been a refreshing breather from the usual bustle of client work and making to allow me to network, converse and most importantly, think and reflect on my practice and my portfolio.

Disecting ideas to find where on the cultural and political landscape I might sit as an 'artist' was quite a revealing experience. Vunerable, naked and unusually out of my depth, this exposing process has helped me examine what it is about being a technologist, and also a geek for hire, that fires my creativity and makes me tick. Ultimately what IS my practice, what am I trying to say and where/what might I explore over the next few weeks here.

There is no doubt that I feel at home here in the Studio. Surrounded by exciting, passionate and creative individuals from all artstic disciplines straddling private and public sector, I can feel the support, encouragement and self affirmation all around me. It's clear that my ability to make and create using a multi array of technologies is strong.

This week I have made a colour changing LED strip for photography shoots, built a snack alarm to guard my biscuits on my desk and tweet me if moved, constructed/coded noise toys from digital circuits and dabbled with online 3D webGL. 

Im reminded of Zach Libermann and his quote... "make poems, not demos" and the artist/developer hybrid in me that tries to forge work that combines art, architcture, design, software all with a computational and logic inspired approach that places technology at the centre of the experience and the process. However, just because I can take an api, some hardware and throw something quick together doesn't mean I don't need to think about why... at least sometimes anyway ;-) .

There is nothing wrong with demos though, how else do technologists learn if not through creating demos, and the sheer act of making is creative in itself (above is my first hour ever using three.js to create 3d moving image glitch art in the web browser) however for me this time is now about taking the chance to take things beyond that and completing works that I feel truly represent what I am about beyond R+D prototypes, often things I want to complete but never have time to explore beyond that quick demo. This residency will give me that oppurtunity to work on something conceptual with thought, reflection, more depth and meaning; rather than add more tools to my knowledge.

For me, pressing pause on my career and workload this week has been so rewarding, and i'm looking forward to collecting thoughts and pushing on with decisions into my second week.