The mini biog
David
Liddle
I've always been interested in science, technology and visual communication. My early career as a photojournalist in the late 1960's coincided with the start of the 'long war' in Northern Ireland. I covered 'all sides' of the conflict. My efforts at the time won acclaim from both colleagues and my employers - the Belfast Telegraph , then part of the Thomson empire.
Forced to leave the province in 1975, after working for a period in London I moved to Edinburgh and Scotsman Publications. The Sunday Times asked me to expand its Scottish coverage. One result was a growing interest in performance arts - my production photography for the world famous Traverse Theatre between 1976 and 1987 was recently donated to the Scottish Theatre Archive at Glasgow University.
Commercial photography included numerous assignments for UK Government Agencies such as the Central Office of Information, Manpower Services Commission , Training Agency and producing pictorial 'case studies' for international public relations companies - I travelled extensively throughout Britain, Europe and the Middle East for clients such as Shell, ICI, Chief Executive, Stena and Wang.
Working for Wang exposed me, in the mid 80's, to the then coming computer revolution. Being unable to afford the initial high costs I discovered a worthy alternative - the undervalued Amiga system. Looking back it is fascinating to remember that the Amiga, with its talented software and hardware designers, for a while lead the game.
We discovered and learned to used multi-media before it became known in the wider fields. Our machines, powered by the same chips to be found in the control circuits of washing machines, to produce realtime broadcast resolution 32 bit TV graphics and render 3D animations . Whilst London based newspapers spent a fortune on installing expensive dedicated systems to transmit still images we used the freely available jpeg format to compress filesizes. The subsequent history of the platform following Commodore's demise is well known.
I continue to expand a skillbase which includes 2D & 3D animation, electronic design, digital audio & video, and multi-media authoring.
Local and wide area networks offer enormous potential for communication and marketing. As in print media, content is all - familiar tensions have reappeared over the balance between editorial / information / advertising. Between 1996 and 2000 I worked to develop an ultra low cost in-store television information and advertising system using Amiga technology. Unfortunately we were several years too early. Promised major funding from the USA and UK collapsed weeks away from the start of production.
More recently I have been creating multi-media and multi-lingual DVD material, and am working to launch an e-publishing operation for the Scottish Academic Press. In September I hope to be filming and material and creating a three centre holiday web-site featuring villa and apartment rentals in Majorca, Morocco and Croatia.
Also planned is a stimulating new on-line resource which will combine elements of Who's Who and Private Eye in listing Scottish personalities. With the growth in broadband - over 50% of those online in the UK - the potential for local issue 'citizen journalism' and the online distribution of creative material is enormously exciting and will impact heavily on the traditional broadcast and print media.