What is your background in design?
Before I came to London I went to Falmouth University in Cornwall. During my three years there I was mainly doing experimental documentaries.
Do you think university helped you in creating your own style?
Yes, absolutely. University was a great place to be and I always regarded it as a platform to experiment. It is a platform rather than something super useful. I just went there to do art while trying out different things.
Do you have any role models or people who are inspiring you and your work?
Chris Marker is the first one who comes to mind. Sans Soleil is without a doubt one of the greatest films I've ever seen. And also Dave Hughes who created the TV series Off the Air on Adult Swim. It only airs at 4 o'clock in the morning so the only audience it has is people who are waking up in front of the TV. It's also a bit fashionable because it uses datamoshing and glitching.
How would you describe your work to a blind person?
I would say I'm creating things which aren't there from things which are already there. In one of my recent videos I took a really thin slice of tomato and stuck it to a window so you could still kind of see through it. I think I'm often making something odd from something recognizable. It's abstraction. It's trying to find something new and interesting in everyday things.
Would you describe your workflow as more digital or analogue?
What I do is not really based in analogue. It's more like seeing the digital workflow as analogue. Glitching and datamoshing are kind of a translation from the digital into the analogue. You take these bits of video and put them through different codecs and if you can read this digital language you can start to mess with it. If you watch a datamoshed video you see the codec reinterpreting the original video. You see nothing new, it's just reevaluating itself and I think that's interesting. I guess the only analogue part of my workflow is the preproduction because at that point I decide what media I want to use to be digitally edited.
The full interview is available in the printed issue of Point of View.
- San Soleil - The First Minute