About me

This is me! White male, age 37. Brown hair. Tall. Goofy but genuine smile. Inquisitive eyes, often turned to crescents with laughter. A nose ring signifying the early explorations of appearance as a form of self-expression (I think it looks cute).

I make computational art, which to me is about making meaning from systems of behaviour. That is to say, my artworks do things, what they do has some underlying structure, and the combination of the two has something to say. I work with code, but I also use electronics, music, drawing, 3d printing and whatever else I can.

I’m infinitely curious. I’m always asking questions and I genuinely want to understand the answers. I’m so intrigued by the things I don’t know and the lives I haven’t lived. It feels like somewhere between an itch and a calling to find out what’s over the next hill.

I’m thoughtful and analytical. I love breaking things down, thinking them through and talking about them. However, I'm also aware that I use intellectualism to keep things at a safe distance and understanding to help me feel in control. Leaning on that too much can make me feel like an abstract concept rather than a person in a body in a world. Lately, I’m trying to stay vulnerable and grounded in my own experience.

I’m caring and generous. I like being good to people. I like helping, and it feels good to have enough to give. Probably the most challenging thing for me is to stay grounded when I’ve hurt someone and not let the pain of my own reaction stop me from listening.

I have ADHD, aka manic pixie disease. For most of my life, this was an undiagnosed curse frustrating my every intention but also making me fun at parties. These days it's a diagnosed curse that only frustrates some of my intentions. It’s been a difficult journey; nobody prepares you for the self-esteem impact of an invisible disability that alternates between feeling fake and debilitating. Really knocked the gifted-white-boy-with-infinite-potential right outta me!

I’m a feminist. I wasn’t always; it took me a long time to understand how different things are for women in ways that I don’t see. Partly I just needed to develop enough empathy and humility to stop seeing my experience as universal, but also some of the shit women deal with is honestly just so bad it feels like it can’t possibly be real. I’m also for whatever the actual equivalent of feminism for men is (ie not misogyny with a fake nose and glasses, but a movement by men to liberate ourselves from patriarchy and define a healthy masculinity).

I used to be an individualist. Perhaps it’s not surprising that a theory of society built on the heroics of exceptional men used to appeal to me. I think a lot changed for me when my Dad died, still in denial that anything was wrong, haunted by anxiety, running from his childhood all the way to his grave. What individual excellence could have saved him? Why does it fall to us to fix ourselves when we’re broken? If we want a better world, I believe we have to heal each other.

I’m a storyteller and a performer. I love making people laugh. I love feeling like I can hold an audience – even you, dear reader! – in the palm of my hand. There’s a kind of magic to it; a beautiful and gentle domination. Take my hand, won’t you? Entrust me with your attention, and let me take you on an adventure that leaves you delighted and transformed.

I’m also sometimes avoidant, which I think is the dark side of storytelling. I tend to work backwards: what I want to say tells me what I need to do in order to be able to say it. The problem is that when reality doesn’t cooperate, my instinct is to try to change reality rather than communicate something I’m not happy with. That makes me more isolated and less vulnerable than I’d like to be, so I’m working on it.

I’m a programmer. I’ve been fascinated by software since I was a child – I still have code I wrote when I was 8 years old (it wasn’t very good). I’ve worked professionally as a software developer and I’m quite good at it, but the functional goals of software development don’t really capture what I love about programming. To me, a computer has always been a machine for building worlds out of ideas.

I’m an artist, though it took me a long time to realise that. From my earliest code, I was always trying to do something creative. But my background was engineering, not art, and I spent a long time in the weeds knowing I wanted to make certain things but not knowing what to call them. Not-useful things, beautiful things, curious things, things that help us understand, things that bring us together, things that show us a better world, things that take us on a journey, things that leave us delighted and transformed, things that build worlds out of ideas.

My email is sam@samgentle.com – say hi!