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The interview is by Barbara Sansome, and it is published in Computer Graphics And Publishing, Febriuary 2005 issue (edition dated March/April 2005).

You can view all editions of CG&P for 2005 here, and there is an online version of the article (pdf, 500k) here. Note that CG&P is an Italian publication, and the text of the article in the PDF is also in Italian. Nevertheless, the article displays some of my previously unpublished artwork.

For those who can't read Itailan, here's some edited highlights from the original (English language) interview:

Q: Can you tell me your studies and your training? It seems that you know a lot about visual art, music, math, video and so on...

A: Unlike many designers, my formal training was purely technical. I was trained as an engineer, and am also chartered (and still am). A lot of the work I did following training was design based though - creating screens for safety critical computer systems (the sort of thing you see in aircraft cockpits and stuff), so there is a strong link between the work I did then and the work I do now - it’s all user interfaces.

I thought I would be the only engineer in web design, but there's lots of them around - yugo (www.yugop.com) and voxAngelica (www.voxangelica.net) are also trained engineers or architects who are well known in Flash web design for example.

Q: Who or what inspires your work?

A: I spent a lot of time working on Soviet designs in an earlier career. That’s not Soviet graphic design but industrial stuff - Nuclear power stations and other stuff like that - but I really liked the way everything they built was so over engineered and huge. I was part of a team of 6 engineers that was tasked with reviewing some of their nuclear designs to Western safety standards and advise them, but I think a lot of knowledge went the other way and affected me in terms of aesthetics.

In particular, their use of big bold designs and lots of color - the whole Constructivist thing. Also, the former Soviet Union saw science, process and design as art itself, something the western world is only starting to realize.

I am also lucky enough to have an immediate family with a very creative bias. I have two brothers, and one is a dj and record producer (he's had one number 1 and a few top ten hits in the UK and parts of Europe), and the other has been a graphic designer all his working life. We meet as a family for dinner once a week, and I pick up a lot of their ideas and thoughts, so I guess I must be influenced by them as well.
I was also in bands when I was younger. I played bass in a few rubbish goth bands in the early 1990s, and some of that shows in earlier work such as Draconis Coy and 'Beauty is only skin deep (but with her it starts from the bone)'.

Following strong style movements like that are good when you are younger (because they make a lot of decisions for you) but as you get older they become constrictions, so I don’t really go for that sort of stuff as a design style in my work now.

Q: Is hacking your life philosophy?

A: Everything is a hack when you are being creative, because new ideas have not had time to have rules attached to them, and that’s what hacking is all about - taking something and working with it in the absence of any rules.
Flash web design is all about hacks, because when you start, you begin with a bandwidth and performance limited environment. The trick is to make the user think you have all the bandwidth you need, and create something responsive and cool despite the limitations. To do that, you need to be hacking against all the problems all the time, coming out with new ideas and shortcuts. So yeah, design is all about hacking old ideas and thoughts to come up with better, new stuff.

Q: What software do you use more often and why?

A: The software I use the most in everyday design are Flash, Photoshop, Audition and SoftImageXSI. At the moment, I am also learning Combusion. I guess the last two might surprise a few people. For me, It’s an obvious progression.
Macromedia and others will tell you that the next big thing Is Rich Internet Applications. I think that is the case, but the concept of the RIA is looking at the supply side. Looking at the consumer side and thinking about what the user actually wants from their web experience, I think it will be video and live streams.

A: You're a great programmer. How do you like programming? Do you think that's a creative activity? In which sense?

A: flash is almost two applications in one. There is the stage and the graphic creation tools, and there is ActionScript. Although you can create content without ActionScript, if you do it that way, you lose the ability to create truly interactive content that uses the full facilities of the Flash player. So, for me, programming with ActionScript isnt something that is important for the sake of itself. Rather, it is the ticket that gains you entry to a treasure room full of all the high end features offered by Flash.
Knowing how to use ActionScript therefore gives you far more design options. there have been many people who have come from a design background and learnt ActionScript. The big change in their designs is obvious. Its like an artist who only knew about black and white paints suddenly discovering color. the creative possibilities suddenly go up in a very large way!

Q: Has new media and the Internet changed the art field?

A: I don’t think internet art has really 'broken through' yet. Traditional art is referential, because every famous traditional artist is part of a movement, or their work Is related or derived from other historical artist. There Is actually a hierarchy in art, and because web art doesn’t fit this hierarchy, it hasn’t broken through.
I think another big reason that web art doesn’t break Into fine art is because it is very quickly consumed by traditional web design and becomes part of graphic design rather than fine art. If you look at a lot of the Javascript based web art that was popular in the 1990,s you will see many of those ideas now adopted in traditional Flash UI design.

Q: A retorical and maybe banal question, but always provoking curiosity: what do you think that art is? Who's the artist, what does he do? Do you consider yourself an artist?

A: I think there are actually three parts to the creative process, and they are always lumped together incorrectly as 'art'. The three are design, art and storytelling.

Design is about creating. Art is about feeling. Storytelling is about narrative.

Design is about creating something that is there to be used, so by definition, all websites are primarily about design. When a website makes us think and gives us an emotional response, then it has artistic merit. If it tells us a story, then it is also a narrative.

so the answer is that I don’t consider myself an artist, because I create web sites, and they are a designed thing...so I am a designer. But in design, you will always crossover into art and narrative.