Dan is a BAFTA-winning creative technologist and digital artist, who’s worked for and alongside the likes of BBC Childrens, BBC R&D and Havas. He’s built neat stuff for the likes of HOME, TATE Liverpool and Cornerhouse, and is a prominent member of the Algorave livecoding movement, regularly performing live with home-grown tools at large scales. Nowadays he’s a freelance creative tech gun-for-hire, and is currently one of the selected artists on FutureEverything‘s cutting-edge new program FAULT LINES.

What influence does music have in your life as a creative?:

Music is my everything. It’s rare there isn’t something soundtracking what I’m up to – I travel a lot, and when I’m actually in one place most of my work takes place while sitting under a pair of large Sennheisers. I vary wildly in what I listen to, depending on the context and my mood: I’m a raging metalhead at heart (ask me about my Amen tattoo sometime), but I also listen to a lot of electronica, hiphop, jazz, all sorts. I’m constantly on the hunt for new music, and hate to dwell on the same albums and tracks all the time – it seems crazy to me that you’d hammer the same tunes over and over when we’re living in an age when almost all of humanity’s music is open to you, and there are so many lovely algorithms that are so good at showing you new stuff, right? I’m a total playlist monster too, it was hard choosing just one to start this project off!

Tell us about your playlist:

I was very tempted to pull out some terrifying metal selections, or two hours of experimental hiphop or something, but decided actually it might be nice to share some of the music I listen to while working, given the nature of this project. Most of my work is technical, with lots of programming, so I find it really difficult listening to anything with singing or rapping in it as it throws my game off massively. I keep a sort of living playlist going that’s about 6-8 hours long, made up of chill electronica and various oddities that I’m digging – I keep this playlist fresh and delete old stuff, so it sort of reflects what I’m into right now. My playlist here is a selection of 25 tracks that sum up what sort of stuff I generally work to right now. Although these are all very chilled tunes, I keep it nice and loud most of the time – there’s something nice about enveloping yourself in sound while you’re working (and of course it keeps kids and co-workers out beautifully too!). The full living playlist is also public and can be found here.

@danhett
http://www.danhett.com