The Observer films are the latest in your RND# project - a planned series of 100 works. When - and how - did you come to embark on the series?

The project kicked off in 2000 when I was an artist in residence at the design firm IDEO. I spent about six weeks at their San Francisco office working on a few films there. I think I got seven made. I was really invited out there to question technology and its impact on the end user.

The thought occurred to me that I should have experimental R&D work running throughout my career, so I decided to make it a lifelong project with a goal of 100 films. Since then I’ve delved into the project whenever I’ve got stuck, frustrated, inspired, restless, inquisitive. It’s served me well over the years and it’s reached 27 films.



Vimeo didn’t exist when you started the project in 2000, but now that is where the works are shown - how has that affected your thinking and approach to making work?

I don’t think Vimeo has managed to influence my thinking or approach quite yet but it’s good that the platform exists and the project can have a permanent home. Vimeo is the perfect place for the ‘creative experimenter’ I think. The RND# project is the sort of project I’d create today because Vimeo exists. Or to put it another way, it’s the sort of platform that the project has been crying out for since I started it.
 


You’ve worked across a range of filmmaking ‘genre’ - short fiction, animation, and now ‘art’. How different are those things - in making them, funding, producers etc?

From a personal, creative perspective I don’t see much difference any more. I just follow the right creative process to serve the needs of an idea. In terms of funding, they’re all different groups of people, so you have to maintain relationships across the different divides. Some fall into disrepair while you’re on a separate adventure, so it’s a case of reminding people you still exist and that you’re still relevant.

It’s interesting that you pick up on producers – because the biggest struggle working between disciplines is finding the right collaborators. It’s partly working out other people’s experience that makes it difficult; and partly that I forget the terminology that specialists deal in. It’s something that trips me up - I forget that most people have quite a - purposefully - strict field of expertise. Get someone too commercial and the art side scares them; get someone too arty and the commercial side scares them. I think I sit more or less right down the middle, while most people usually come down on one side of the fence or the other. It can be tricky.


Exhaustion, made for AV Festival, seemed to mark a shift in your work - not least in that it’s not primarily storytelling, and now, with the new works, things have moved even more so towards an interest in shape, form, movement - abstractions, but mysterious, organic. Now what do you say to that...

I wouldn’t say Exhaustion doesn’t have a narrative, but I’d concede it is more abstract than the majority of my work and these latest RND# films are a further shift away from narrative. Personally I hadn’t read too much into that... but perhaps I should! Maybe I’ve gone ‘all abstract’ because away from my visible work, I’m working on feature scripts and they’re all story, story, story! And that implies logic, order and planned decisions. Maybe my latest films are a reaction against that; a bit of realignment and rebalancing. I guess you can only have so much structure in your life at one time!


Technically, with the Observer films, what are we looking at?

You’re looking at macro photography of simple, physical processes. Quite straightforward to set-up, but I suppose the art is in finding the beauty in that; And finding that beauty whilst filming; which really is nothing more than working in a completely intuitive and experimental way (and affording oneself plenty of time).
 


Do you have any particular influences?

No not really - not people influences anyway. I have a long list of people I admire but I hope my work is ultimately my own. I’m increasingly driven by my own impulses and wants so I think I’d be fairly offended if someone said your work is like such-and-such’s; unless it’s purely coincidental of course - then that’s fine! Being progressive and original has always really mattered to me. It’s hard of course, but it’s a good start if what drives you is your own voice and your own creative journey.

How about the next works in the series?

I never really know what I’m going to make next for the RND# project; although I do have a folder where I collect up things that appeal to me and may then form the subject of a future film. The last few things I put aside of interest were –

• D-Wave: Is $15m machine a glimpse of future computing?
• Robot warriors: Lethal machines coming of age
• Scientific researches conclude video games increase cognitive skills
• Privacy ‘impossible’ with Google Glass warn campaigners
• Stop The Cyborgs Movement (Ban Google Glass)
• Working gun made with 3D printer
• A dark magic: The rise of the robot traders

And what else are you working on?

Features, features, features; although let it be said that that world seems to operate by a completely different set of rules to anything else I’ve encountered! I hope to emerge with something at some point though!