For 12 years, I was the main room resident DJ at Pacha Ibiza. Looking back, I think those years taught me just as much about art as they did about music.
I moved to Ibiza in 2001 and had the incredible privilege of playing alongside artists like Frankie Knuckles, Pete Tong, Swedish House Mafia and David Guetta.
One of the most valuable things I learnt during that time was how to read a room.
When you're DJing, you become incredibly sensitive to the energy around you. You know when to build tension, when to let it go, and how something as simple as a bassline or a perfectly timed breakdown can completely change the atmosphere.
You're essentially working with people's emotions, using sound as your medium.
When I returned to painting in 2019, I started to recognise how much of that experience had stayed with me.
There's an interesting relationship between musical and visual composition. Both involve rhythm, balance, tension and knowing when something feels right.
My father, an acclaimed artist specialising in leatherwork, taught me to look for anything in a painting that unnecessarily pulls the eye. If something feels out of place, you need to resolve it.
I find myself applying that same thinking to music, painting and now animation.
Sound has become an important part of my augmented reality artwork. Each AR experience has its own audio, developed specifically around the movement, atmosphere and emotion of the piece.
And it's fascinating how much sound can change what we see.
Take exactly the same animation, give it two completely different soundtracks, and you can create two entirely different emotional experiences.
After all those years behind the decks, I suppose it's inevitable that I approach animation with a DJ's brain.
I spent 12 years learning how to make people feel something through music. Now I get to explore those same ideas through painting, animation and sound.
It's all about the feeling.
