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