Hasta La Ideas

pemStarting Out is a new series by Core77 about designers who have recently struck out on their own. More than a string of studio visits, the series profiles talented, risk-taking professionals all around the world. We hope their anecdotes will inspire your own entrepreneurial spirit./p

pFirst up is Stewart Smith of a href=”http://www.stewdio.org/”Stewdio/a, a designer, artist, programmer and American transplant in London. We visited him in his shared studio space in Dalston. Read the interview below, or click through the jump to see some of his projects./em/p

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pemTop: Stewart Smith. Bottom: Browser Pong is a traditional Pong game played not *in* a browser window, but *with* browser windows. Play a href=”http://stewdio.org/pong”here/a./em/p

pbCore77:/b What do you do exactly?/p

pbStewart Smith:/b I’m a graphic designer, programmer, and artist. At the beginning of the year I relocated from New York to London. I run my own little shop called a href=”http://stewdio.org”Stewdio/a and share work space with architect a href=”http://archipelago-architects.co.uk”James Payne/a and fellow designer / coder / artist a href=”http://scratchdisk.com”Juuml;rg Lehni/a./p

pbC77:/b What are you working on right now?/p

pbSS:/b I’ve got three kettles on the stove. The first is a low-fi, computer-generated music video for a href=”http://tomashalberstad.com”Tomas Halberstad/a, a musician in Gothenburg, Sweden. The second is a data visualization piece for SFMoMA’s upcoming exhibition a href=”http://sfmoma.org/exhibitions/406″”How Wine Became Modern”/a that opens in November. Finallymdash;and a bit further down the roadmdash;is a data viz piece for an exhibition titled a href=”http://globalartmuseum.de””Global Art and the Museum”/a that will open at ZKM in Germany next summer. The latter two are collaborations with musician / engineer / architect a href=”http://warning-office.org”Robert Gerard Pietrusko/a. Meanwhile I’ve also become very excited about Juuml;rg’s a href=”http://scriptographer.org””Scriptographer”/a tool for Illustrator. He and I have just been talking about how we might channel that enthusiasm./p

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pemTop: Stewart shows us some data visualization sketches in Processing. Bottom: a href=”http://stewdio.org/work/terrenatale”Exit (Terre Natale)/a is a 45-minute immersive visualization of human migration data in six narratives./em/p

pbC77:/b Describe your toolset./p

pbSS:/b I’m handcuffed to my MacBook Pro. From the moment I wake up to lights-out I’ve got it open, grinding away on something. Email and video chat take up an appalling slice of my daymdash;coordinating projects and syncing up with collaborators in various locations. Although I’m up early I usually arrive at the studio late because by morning coffee I’m already hooked into solving some aspect of a project. Sometimes it’s difficult to push things aside long enough to put myself together and walk over to the studio space. /p

pRight now my one-two software combination is TextMate plus Terminal. Recently I tried to answer this question about what tools I use but found myself failing miserably. I code quite a bit, but I’m increasingly interested in writing. There’s an oft neglected connection between the two. Writing good source code is like writing poetry. One wants to be concise but also expressive. (Did I mention I’m a rather big fan of a href=”http://ruby-lang.org”Ruby/a?)/pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/starting_out_stewart_smith_designerartistprogrammer__16954.asp”(more…)/a
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