Till Nowak is a young digital artist, designer and a film maker from Germany. His studio, frameboX, produces digital artwork, design and animation for creative agencies, film productions, and independent projects. His work has been exhibited in hundreds of international film festivals, featured at SIGGRAPH 2006 and 2007 and has been awarded with more than 35 first prizes, including that at Annecy or at the AFI Fest Hollywood. His latest project entitled “Edges” is a series of tricky light installations for architecture. In this exclusive interview he shares his experiences and views on merging art and the digital realm.

Besides his studio work, Nowak has given lectures about his workflows in international events at Universities in Korea, Australia and at the NIFFF in Neuchatel and worked as a jury member in various film festivals. Nowak will be speaking at 361° - The Conferences under the track titled “Rebels” and will share his journey towards innovation.

Q. By the age of 19 you founded your own studio, frameboX, and began your professional career 10 years ago. During this time you have always worked independently. Tell us about your journey. How did you get into computer graphics?
A. I grew up in a family of artists, so I was always surrounded by art and creativity. I got my first computer when I was 12 years old and began to play with cameras and graphic software very early. I became so fanatic about the possibilities and I was lucky by having friends and connections, which brought me quickly to the attention of media and creative agencies. While I was still at school, I had my first major TV production job which forced me to found a little company and gave me the money for my first equipment and software licences. From that day, I have never stopped working, usually on five projects at the same time, but the focus and philosophy in my work has changed over the years. Within the first 3 or 4 years I recognised that my personal independency and freedom is the most important aspect for me. I am constantly rejecting great job offers from big film studios or big companies, just because I love it so much to have my own little studio, produce my own projects and always decide freely what my plans for the next months are. Today my working spectrum goes from 3D visualisations for TV, commercial work, industrial visualisations, independent artwork, experimental projects and animated short films to light installations on buildings. So far the biggest milestone for me was my short film “Delivery”. Released in 2005, it has won many awards worldwide and brought me a lot of international attention.

Q. How do you define art? What is your take on the use of computer graphics to produce art?
A. For me art is like a big game of communication and influence between people: We create something, not only for ourselves, but to show it to other people, enjoy the reaction of the audience and try to influence. So it is another form of communication, like talking to each other, but sometimes more powerful, more difficult, more international, more playful and more subtle at the same time. I am not someone who says that art always has to be critical and serious, I think it can – and should – also be fun and entertainment. But in fact I practically don’t think about theoretical definitions, I just do what crosses my mind and where my feelings lead me.

I don’t draw lines between art forms; I think computer graphics, photography, film, music, traditional painting or sculpting is all part of one art world and sometimes even the visible borders between them disappear. For me computer graphics became the perfect medium for my art with its efficiency and endless possibilities because I am just too impatient for any other art form like traditional painting or sculpting, even though I admire them. I am happy that a tool exists that gives me the efficiency to create almost directly what’s in my imagination without any physical limitations. I trained myself to work so fast that I don’t have to wait long until the visual results become interesting, and this fast progress became very important for me to keep up my motivation. But the efficiency of CG could also be a negative aspect: it is so easy to create visuals with a computer that have never been produced before; I mean everybody can do it. So with computer graphics, it becomes even more important to focus on the idea and content behind the surface.

Q. What inspires the concepts for your work?
A. I am on a continuous search for ideas, which bring existing and known aspects of our living environment together in a new twisted and weird combination. The challenge is to find new, but simple ideas. A lot of existing films, architecture, culture, nature or art fascinate me and I am just waiting for the moments when suddenly a visual idea jumps into my mind which reinvents them in a not-before-seen way. The physical world that surrounds us is very often part of my work, so my work is often based on “sampling”. Not only in a visual or technical meaning, I am sampling and remixing aspects of culture, nature, art, and so on… For example in my artwork "Salad" I combined the old technique of Giuseppe Arcimboldos vegetable portraits from the 16th century with the creations of H.R. Giger, at the same time I combine the style of an oil painting with modern digital art and I turn around the relation between vegetation and flesh. Besides these conceptual aspects my visual style is mainly inspired by movies, because cinema is my big passion.

Q. When and what was your first major project? Tell us something about it and your experience from the whole project.
A. Due to my early professional start, by the age of 18 I had reached a level that came close to basic professional TV production. Accidentally an editor from Europe’s biggest TV station, who was a guitar player in my band and twice as old as me, saw my work and asked me if I could produce an opening sequence for five prime-time TV documentaries. I accepted this offer and together with a friend I founded “frameboX” and directly jumped from nothing into a really big job. Finally we did a good job, but during the production it sometimes looked like a bit of a disaster, because from today’s point of view I knew nothing about professional production. Today I realise how much trust the TV editor must have had in me. This way I trained myself for the professional animation business while I was already working in it, which sometimes seemed a bit risky because this way of working was based on stepping into a project that often seemed a little too big for myself so I had to always expand my capabilities quickly. This way I learned a lot, but at the same times it created a lot of stress and pressure. From there on I was always involved in projects and started from scratch with my own studio, so that there never came a chance or a need to work in another company, not even as an intern. I am very thankful for the invitation to “361°: The Conference”. I am very much looking forward to the interdisciplinary exchange and inspiration and excited to bring my perspective of crossing visual borders into it.