Qizzio - Meet the Artist

tl;dr

70s kid raised with computers and gasoline. After decades of motorsport photography now creative in the digital realm with pixel, vector and AI.

Like for many of us my computer experience began as a child with a Commodore C64 hooked to the family TV. I had an early love for photography too and got my hands on an analogue SLR when I was 15, but the two - computer and photography - were still far apart in the 80s.

My computer journey was fun but slow. I remember the revelation of the first WYSIWYG software - still on monochrome monitors and dot matrix printers. It was a nice challenge to squeeze everything out of those pixels - on our stand-alone Computers, who didn’t know anything about Internet in these early days.

In the mid 90s homepages slowly gained traction and I started to experiment with Geocities and learned the basics with Unix and TCP/IP in order to run a local Apache installation.

The real turning point came in 2000 with my first digital camera and the setup of the first homepage on my own domain. archive.org even has a 20 year old snapshot - I would prefer they didn’t ;)

Publication and documentation became now possible, which opened a complete new world. The first digital SLR came shortly afterwards and since then it has been an intense digital journey with lots of Motorsport related projects and several 100k of pictures. It was not always fun, I got in trouble when fighting for the good cause (to keep the historic Nürburgring racetrack in public hands).

I grew up at a petrol station and started racing motorcycles as soon as I could afford it. Not very successful and harmful to my body, but incredible fun. I stayed close to motorsport for the decades to come and produced various media under my renn.tv label - for my own publication, but also for customers in the industry - from photography and articles to complete film production including DVD sales.

For me, the artistic part has always been photography: capturing the moment in such a fast and dangerous environment is a satisfying challenge. You get a feel for what the picture should look like, especially if you’ve raced yourself.

Fast forward to 2020: Motorsport has become big business, the show is more important than the sport and my craft was only rated as ‘nice pictures’ - although I prefer more to be an artist than a high-performing 3rd party with due dates and cheap prices.

I was eager to bring back the fun - and also wanted the challenge of something completely new - a fresh start. Which gave birth to “Qizzio” in 2016 to allow creations outside of everything I have done before. I was hoping for a unique, but nice looking name complete with URL and social handles. QIZZIO fits the bill nicely.

Simplifications have my love, I like to push boundaries to the limit of recognition. With crisp colours and sharp contrast - which explains my love for large pixels and vector graphics. I’m experimenting a lot, learning new tools and software along the way. The idea of skewed pixel evolved - to question our standards by twisting the pixels 45°. I might be the first to play with this, couldn't find any other reference. Pixel stands for “Picture Element”, so “Skewed Picture Element” I chose to coin Skewxel.

This is just the beginning and it feels like I’m back in 2000 when photography and computer were suddenly able to work together. Today it is the combination of Photoshop, Inkscape and FCPX that makes me happy.

I still have my photography kit, it is idling for a while. I love shooting, but I love more to learn something new and explore new grounds. Also blame Corona and Hic et Nunc! My first OBJKT is 30635 from Apr. 12th, 2021. (Hic et Nunc started March 1st 2021.) To make a clear cut I decided to take my Motorsport publications offline (in Aug 2021) - the only thing left is the N-Sticker, which I created in 2002 and it has connected the community since - literally an artefact. (The N as a symbol for Nordschleife, red-white colours for the curbs - with a black line on the outside for the asphalt road surface).

I am so much looking forward to the journey ahead - it has been a lot of joy already. I've met many communities in racing, but digital creators are another level and super-nice to hang out with. The IT proficiency is mindblowing!

IRL I’m husband, dad, cat owner, motocross rider and singlespeed cyclist living in Cologne/Germany. I have been working as an IT project manager in automotive industry for almost 30 years after graduating at Uni of Hertfordshire (near London, MSc Manufacturing Engineering).

I love to connect - please meet me at Twitter, Instagram and Discord. I publish NFTs in 2 locations on Hic et Nunc / Tezos Blockchain: Qizzio main and the Qizziobugs collection. Our daughter Mia has started minting too, which is great IT eduction - you can find her here.