Joshua Davis - praystation.com

2000

Artists: Joshua Davis · Year: 2000 · Medium: Flash-based generative design website, daily/weekly experiments in algorithmic visual design · Substrate: Adobe Flash, ActionScript; published as a continuously-updated website; source code distributed via Praystation Hard Drive CD-ROM collections · Place: New York, USA · Institution: Independent (praystation.com) Joshua Davis's praystation.com, active from 1999 through 2002, was the most-visited creative-coding website of its era. Davis posted Flash-based experiments in generative visual design, dozens of small pieces each year, each a focused study of a particular algorithm, each with the source ActionScript published alongside the working demo. The site attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors at its peak and became, for a generation of young designers and developers, the template for what a creative-coding practice could look like online. Praystation's commitment to publishing source code was central. Davis treated each experiment as a teaching tool as much as an artwork; visitors could download the ActionScript, modify it, remix the designs, publish their own variants. The resulting community of Praystation-influenced creative coders became the 2000s Flash-design industry's aesthetic backbone, and Davis's influence on commercial graphic design in the early-to-mid 2000s was substantial. Davis also published two CD-ROM collections, Praystation Hard Drive (2001, 2003), that compiled the site's best pieces into physical media. These were sold through Rhizome and other distribution channels and remain among the best-preserved artifacts of the pre-Processing creative-coding era. Davis continued making work after Flash deprecated; his later career has involved commercial-design partnerships (with BMW, Nike, and others) and occasional fine-art exhibitions. He remains active. Lore Joshua Davis was a self-taught designer from Pittsburgh who moved to New York in the late 1990s and worked as an underemployed Flash developer doing freelance corporate websites. PrayStation began as a personal blog in 1999, a daily upload of one new Flash experiment, that he ran from his Brooklyn apartment alongside his commercial day job. The site won the 1999 Flash Forward Festival's Site of the Year award and brought him sustained design-industry attention; his book Flash to the Core (2002) became a bestseller in the Flash-developer community. Davis married the artist Kristina Vodanovich in 2007 and they had a daughter shortly after. He continues to live in Long Island and is one of the few 1990s Flash-era artists who has successfully transitioned to NFT-era practice. Sources • Davis, Joshua, joshuadavis.com • Praystation Hard Drive (CD-ROM compilations, 2001 and 2003) • Rhizome, Praystation archive