Dave Griffiths

Dave Griffiths is a founding director of Then Try This, an independent non-profit research organisation he runs with Amber Griffiths, in Cornwall.

His current interests include bringing technology back into our hands and the earth, and he develops experimental open source & hardware technology based in textile cultures, he weaves using ancient methods (tablet weaving), and runs workshops for families exploring mine waste in Cornwall, searching for naturally grown semiconducting crystals they make into cardboard based noisy circuits.

He works with Alex McLean on his Alpaca (Algorithmic Pattern) fellowshop, which is hosted at Then Try This. He occasionally works with Aphex Twin on strange music projects (e.g. Samplebrain and Midimutant). He has been interviewed live by Cerys Matthews on BBC radio 6 music talking about Sonic Kayaks (remote sensing, citizen science and sound art for visually impaired people - a collaboration with Kaffe Matthews).

He has picked up some awards associated with his work: the Soil Association innovation award with the Duchy College and Rothamsted Research for the Farm Crap App. He won the Fundacion Telefonica VIDA Art and Artificial Life award with Marloes de Valk and Aymeric Mansoux for Naked on Pluto, a game that reflects on the invasive means used in the development of “social software”, which has been exhibited in Madrid and Taiwan.

Dave was eased away from a previous corporate existence by FoAM, initially working with Maja Kuzmanović and Nik Gaffney as part of their Brussels based studio before setting up FoAM Kernow with Amber Griffiths in the UK, then to become Then Try This.

From 2004 to around 2019 he was an active live coding performer, and appeared (usually with Alex McLean as part of slub) at events like VIVO festival Mexico City, Mozilla Festival UK, Sonar Barcelona, STRP Eindhoven and The Secret Garden Party UK. With Gabor Papp and others, he developed Fluxus - a game engine for live coding 3D worlds into existence.

He teaches quite a bit in various capacities and institutions - has been an Associate Lecturer in Electronic Music, Computing and Technology at Goldsmiths University of London, Assistant professor for Critical Programming at the Institute For Music And Media of the Robert Schumann School of Music and Media in Düsseldorf, and also teaches programming, electronics and critical approaches to technology with primary school children, young families, school teachers in Cornwall.

In the more distant past he was a senior programmer for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, researching computer vision for the Playstation 3 EyeToy, previously to that he was working in film post production with credits on Troy and Kingdom of Heaven. Originally he worked at William Latham's game company, Computer Artworks doing a lot of Playstation 2 development for The Thing (2002) and Evolva (2000).

Contact me: dave@thentrythis.org