Working as a professional Industrial Designer with 12 years professional experience Richard is now a practicing new-media artist, freelance illustrator, graphic, web & product designer and audiovisual performance artist.
Richards new-media practice fuses his talents for drawing, painting & sculpture with light & video projections and incorporates real-time sound, movement & data interactivity through custom made electronics and software programming. Collaboration, human interaction, dialogue and unconventional communication with the performers and the public priorities of his practice.
His work is presented through live improvised performance, installations & exhibitions and attempts to uncover subtle, intimate visual rhythms by engaging a dialogue with human movement, dance and behavior in an improvised and natural manner. A sense of discovery is often present when experiencing his work.
Richard lived in Tokyo and Berlin throughout 2009, developing new artistic works, projects and collaborations. The result was 3 group & 1 solo art exhibitions in Berlin, 3 performances in Japan, and on my return to Australia a series of performances & exhibitions in Sydney & Brisbane.
Richard’s major project, Sound.transmission.light is an audio responsive new media performance, is a collaboration with On-Yau Lui (Austrlian artist based in Berlin) and many location-specific musicians. The project has performed in Berlin, Tokyo, Sydney & Brisbane to date.
In 2010 Richard was awarded a 4 month Artist in Residence at The Edge, n Brisbane, The State Library of Queensland’s Digital Culture Centre. There he worked on continuing development of Sound.transmission.light enhancing music, movement and data interactivity. The residency was very successful with 2 performances, an installation and production of a DVD and HD Bluray live recording of the project outcomes. More information can be found at Richard’s residency blog http://edge.richardbyes.tk
A graduate of Industrial Design from the University of Canberra, working for 12 years at Design + Industry, a leading Product design consultancy in Sydney, Australia, in the roles of concept designer and Creative Director, he is a specialist in production level 3D surface modeling (Autodesk AliasStudio) & visualisation (Autodesk Showcase).
Since 2003 Richard has also performed under the name VJ Superlight – a performance video artist - www.superlight.tk
Performance highlights are; the Sydney Opera House, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Australia and Sydney Festival, and 2 tours of Japan and the legendary Frigid music club.
Richard is also a freelance photographer on occasions, most recently for the 2009 Sonar music festival in Barcelona for Cyclic Defrost magazine. Visit Richard’s flickr page www.flickr.com/photos/superlight/
If you would like to commission me for any photographic, illustration, performance or new media please contact me