Stuart Childs interviewed.

An interview Andy “HexJibber” Sykes did with Stuart Childs . . . What more do I need to add? . . .

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by artist and inventor Stuart Childs, so I sat down with him last week to return the favour. Stuart is one of the featured artists, this week at prestigious Digital Media Labs project, which is taking place at Hull College of Art and Design between October 24th and 30th and will focus on touchscreen technology as a medium for delivering interactive artworks in public and healthcare settings. I started off by asking him the “6 ultimate questions”, devised by 6Music’s Adam and Joe…

Who are you?

Stuart Childs.

What do you do?

Lots of things. Organising things. Carrying things about has been my main occupation recently.

Who do you do?

Lovely people… that want to do me back.

Faves?

Skateboarding, noise, good music, cigs.

Worsties?

Dickheads (Stu showed me this video to explain). And people who wash over what you are trying to say with “Yeah, yeah, yeah” (does impression of impatient marketing type).

Jedwood?

No, thanks. How about a hardwood, or a softwood? Windward? Westwood?

MDF?

I prefer HDF actually, you know, high density!

Why Leeds?

I came here to study. I was quite stubborn I guess. I worked in Manchester after leaving High School and really liked it there. Then, after a year of employment, at a not particularly high wage and being treated like “an employee”, I decided I was going to go to Uni.

I applied to Leeds Met, to study Creative Music and Sound Technology. I liked Leeds. The music scene was good and the skate park was a big draw. Now I’ve got loads of mates here and loads of great people to work with. It’s not so far from Manchester, so I can go and see my family.

What is FriiSpray?

FriiSpray is a virtual graffiti project, that I set up with Dave Lynch and Richard Garside. We set it up in Red Erics, in Burley, where Dave’s workshop was at the time. Both of us freelanced at the Old Broadcasting House with Richard, who is a software wizard, with an interest in arty projects. We asked him to create the drawing software for FriiSpray.

Then it all went crazy. Loads of interest, loads of bookings. As a result, we set up the Jam Jar Collective, so we could do more interesting projects, as well as FriiSpray, under one name.

The one big thing about FriiSpray, is that we wanted it to be open source, because we were using a piece of open source software in it, (see Johnny Chung Lee’s WiiMote Whiteboard). We thought it was a really nice way to share the work with other people.

What appeals to you about making open source stuff?

It seems to be quite a nice way to work. The whole concept of sharing ideas and not just having a finished product at the end, that you are going to sell, or make people buy.

Or go on Dragon’s Den with?

Yeah, or confuse people with, when they ask how it works.

I have always been interested in how things work. I mean anything. An object I can take apart. A sociological system. I am just quite curious about how things work. So open source is a way you can show people how your “thing” works. If you can work out a way of making money, whilst still being a able to tell people how it works, and encourage people to make their own, I think  it’s a good thing.

I’m inspired by a lot of people like The Graffiti Research Lab, or the Arduino project for example. The internet is also a big factor in it. It lets you share stuff quite easily.

It’s funny because you speak to a fair amount of business people and they say “What do you mean you encourage people to make their own for free?”. My response is; it works for us, so why wouldn’t we do that?

Also, it I think it can contribute to the quicker development of stuff. If you share knowledge, then you can build on other people’s knowledge and development picks up speed. Like when scientists first started publishing their findings. As part of that, they have write up how they did the experiment, so other people can test it out. Ultimately, you will do a better job if other people can see your process. It’s a reason to do things better.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’ve got loads of things going on at the minute, which is really nice!

I have just finished a Tag Tool box. Tag Tool is another open source project. It was originally made by these guys called OMA International, who are based in Vienna. It incorporates  a graphics tablet, an Arduino board, which is a small electronic circuit board with inputs and outputs, that you can plug into your computer and program. The Tag Tool Box has a series of faders, rather like an audio mixing board. They control the colour, size, opacity, and the darkness of the brush. It’s an interface for drawing on your computer, but it’s designed for performance. You plug it into a projector and one person can be doing drawing on the graphics tablet and another can use a USB gamepad, to animate sections of the drawing. I built that to take out and do projections with people. If you hook it up to a projector, then you can then draw on the side of a building. Tag Tool is another example of why I think the open source stuff is great. We have shared FriiSpray openly, but I can also take other people’s open source projects and build cool stuff with them. I recently worked with the OMA guys along with a handful of others from different countries in editing their wiki – the TagTool site that has all the instructions on how to build and use it. It was cool to be in a chat room with people in different places working together to build a better resource for people to use and make stuff. We’ve got another day of wiki editing planned on the 1st of December. You can see it – and get involved if you want here.

Jam Jar Collective are working in partnership with Pilot Theatre in York. This part of a 4 year European Theatre project called Platform 11 +. The idea behind the project is getting 11-15 year olds into doing creative stuff, both performing arts, theatre and artwork. It’s a really interesting project. There are 12 countries involved, so we got to meet all these crazy people from all different places. We got to see how they work, find out about their culture, but also work with them as well. This summer I did a three week residency in Portugal as part of the Platform 11+ project and did an installation with an Italian artist – Ilia Ariemme. We based our work around the four elements, and a fifth element – time spent with others and relationships with other people. We symbolised that by making a space to share a cup of tea with others.  The Platform 11+ project is ace because I have seen so many new things and now have friends around mainland Europe that I can work with in the future.

I’m also working on a lighting control system for an NHS building in Hull, with an artist called Benedict Phillips, who is based in Leeds as well. Basically, it is a digital thermometer. It takes a temperature reading of the locality and that changes the lights on the front of the building. There is a bit of design in there and a bit of electronics. It is great to have piece of work that is permanent, that I can go and see in situ. It is a nice challenge to create an art installation that will last a number of years.

I’ve been doing some workshops in Armley, teaching kids how to make podcasts. Right from the conception of their radio personality, creating interesting content, to the more technical side of the sound design, and how to upload it onto iTunes.

I’ve been working on a personal project called “60 seconds”, which is essentially using an app on my phone to record ambient or interesting sounds that I hear. The thing that interests me is that they are geo-located. So, I’ll record a sound and it will be automatically put onto a Google map. You can add a picture to it, add some tags to it and a description. I’ve been doing this for about 9 months, so you end up with a load of sounds that you recorded in different places.

It is weird, because videos have sound, but there is something about just having a sound recording and a still image, that is different to watching a video clip. A big part of my degree was sound technology and the use of sound. It’s something I have been into for ages.

Something that came along recently is this thing called UK Sound Map, which has been created by the British Library. This is basically a public and open version of my 60 second project. Although, I’m sure they didn’t base it on my project. It’s nice to see something like that, where loads of people are contributing to it, so that there are thousands of sound recordings. I’ve managed to add a lot of mine to that.

I’m interested in this sort of blurred boundary, between technology and art. New technologies are coming about all the time and people are taking them and using them in different ways. Often in ways that they aren’t designed for. It fascinates me, seeing what people do with what they have access to.

I am going to present my 60 second project and to TEDx in Leeds on 10th November. It’s a free ticket event, at The Mint Building in Holbeck. It’s organised by a guy called Imran Ali who is quite involved in the tech scene in Leeds and he organises lots of events and meet-ups.

I’m looking forward to presenting at it.  TEDx is an independent branch of these things called “TED Talks”, which is a big technology/thinkers conference. The strap line is “Ideas Worth Spreading” (check out www.ted.com). It’s been going for quite a few years now and there are loads of cool talks on there that you can watch for free, on really wide variety of topics. I’m really getting into it at the moment.

How did you get into inventing and taking things to bits?

I always have done, since I was little. You look at a circuit board, or a computer, or a machine and it looks wicked. I like knowing how things work and that’s why I take them apart. As I continued to do this, I thought I’d best find out a way of putting them back together!

You mentioned the skate park earlier. Do you think being a keen skateboarder and skate culture has influenced your work?

It’s definitely influenced my life! I remember starting skateboarding in Macclesfield and being introduced to loads of people through it. It’s quite funny, because I view skateboarding as a sport and a lot of people wouldn’t. Skateboarding is “me” time, even though I’ll skate with other people. It’ a complete getaway from the real world. It’s just me and my skateboard and I don’t have to think about other things. I guess that keenness for something has then filtered through and influenced my work.

One thing that interests me about skateboarding is that it seems to be quite accepting of all things. I think the one thing that binds all the skateboarders together is their love of skateboarding, not a type of music, or a particular culture.

It’s really funny, the other day I was skateboarding across town, on my way to a friend’s art exhibition. I was waiting a pedestrian crossing and this guy shouts out of the window of his car (in so many words) “Stop skateboarding! What are you doing on there?! You should be working! You’re too old to be on a skateboard!”. It was 6pm on Friday evening, on a sunny day. I don’t feel oppressed or anything, but a lot of people see someone on a skateboard and immediately associate it with vandalism or being a “reckless youth”. I don’t know what it is, but it was really weird to get abuse just because I happen to be rolling along with this bit of wood, with wheels underneath. It was really bizarre and I bade him farewell in an appropriate manner. It got me thinking. Why do people do that? Why do people assume certain things about you because of how you look?

You do quite a wide variety of work, music production, inventing, teaching. What unifies all these things?

A desire to work for myself and a desire to try to do things that I find interesting. I’m fascinated by technology and computers. I really like learning new stuff. When I came to the end of my degree, I thought I could go and study a Masters, but I didn’t really want to. I wanted to go and do my own thing, rather than jumping through the hoops of a Masters course.

I really enjoy the teaching that I do, because I like to try and inspire people to do stuff. If I can get one of the people in group to try something that they wouldn’t have tried otherwise, then it’s a success. It ties into this whole idea of sharing and being able to get people to do stuff that isn’t just run of the mill.

It sounds like there is a desire for creative and personal freedom which runs through everything you do…

I was fed up of going to work and feeling like I was wasting my time. I’ve had a couple of jobs where I felt that the person that was telling me what to do, hadn’t really got the right idea. It was frustrating being told to do something that I could in a better way myself, or I thought was completely wrong. Life is quite short and I didn’t want to get to a stage in my life where I thought “Fuck! What have I done for the past x amount of years?!”. The whole working for yourself thing; you might go through periods of not having much cash, especially to start with, but you can work hard at finding ways of making money through things you actually want to do. Although I have to make some compromises, it’s all leading in the right direction. I didn’t want to end up doing something that didn’t really lead anywhere.

I enjoy the travelling around aspects of what I do and not having a routine. I like being able to work in different places, with different people. Seeing and learning new things.

You seem to know a guy for everything (laser cutting, electronic wizards etc). If you could have a guy for anything, fact or fiction, what would it be?

Maybe teleportation would be good, because I don’t like being late. It really annoys me. I don’t like rush hour and will avoid it at all costs. I’m quite happy getting up 2 hours earlier of a morning, so I can beat the rush hour. Or, if I can shift my working day to avoid rush hour, I will. I think it is crazy that everyone drives to work at the same time anyway. Why does everyone do that? Why is that the way things work? It’s madness!

So I suppose if you could have any superpower, it would be teleportation then?

I dunno, maybe if I could be plugged into the internet… (whole room laughs)

For example, if I don’t know how to do something, I’ll ask my mates, or I’ll Google it. If I am baking a cake and I don’t know the recipe, I’ll ring my Mum, or go online.

So you would be Internet Boy?

Yeah, maybe not the internet, but some kind of vast vault of knowledge, that I knew was true.

If you weren’t inventing, what would you be doing instead?

If I wasn’t doing what I am doing right now, I’d try and find a way to work abroad. Or to earn money whilst travelling. I like seeing how other people live and I think it is quite easy to just accept where you live as normal, or the way your country does things are normal. Whereas there are loads of weird ways people live and different cultures and stuff and that fascinates me. So probably a travel blogger, or something equally cheesy.

A question from collaborator Richard Garside: If you were going to paint something on Wednesday this week, what would it be?

(Laughs) Well, it’s funny that you say that! It was this (shows me a painting of a lady’s bottom).

That’s a very nice bottom.

Thanks!

I’ll tell you the story because it’s funny. As part of the Jam Jar Collective stuff, we wanted to have some chill time, and a break from meetings and real work, with just the 3 of us (Stuart, Dave Lynch and Richard Garside). Dave suggested we do something called “Band Practice”, where we have some social time together and do something like painting. I’ve not picked up a paint brush for years and I was actually quite intimidated by it, in a weird way. With a computer, you’ve got undo and with electronics, you can just build another circuit. Whereas, if you’ve got a canvas in front of you and a paintbrush you can’t. It was really nice. I’d had a really busy day and so I sat down with Richard, with some oil paints and brushes and had a think about what I was going to do. I thought I would do something abstract at first, but decided that was a bit of a cop out. So I thought, “I’ll paint something I am really into: Bums! I’ll paint a bum! A lovely woman’s bum!”

It was just a really nice experience to sit down and work with paint. Next Wednesday, I don’t know what I’ll paint. I guess it just depends on what mood I am in. We’ve got some cans of spray paint and I want to really get into the techniques of using aerosol paint. It’s so hard. I’ve got lots of respect for people who can control a spray can and get good results out of it.

Check out Stuart’s websites below:

Personal Website: stuartchilds.com

Twitter: @sc_r

Jam Jar Collective: jamjarcollective.com

FriiSpray: friispray.co.uk

Andy Sykes.