200OK

PEOPLEText: Naoko Ikeno

200OK produced the cover design of this issue. They are based in Berlin, Germany, and explore changing environment in New Media. They also work on big projects, making program-based interactive works. 200OK with the slogan ‘Fight the Flashism’. We interviewed them about their style.

First of all, please introduce yourself as well as your background.

Gblahak and Hnehls 200ok – Fight the Flashism – Berlin.

What kind of activities are 200ok currently doing?

During the summer we took some time to relax and gather some ideas for collaborative projects. for the last few weeks we were working on a booleanbased searchable linkcollection. Heavy stuff. Stay tuned.

How was 200ok started?

Originally we have never been into web design that much. We started developing interactive applications and services in the University of Fine Arts Berlin with the focus on exploring and understanding the fundamental changes in new media and defining a grammar for it. After 3 years we had an enormous stock of unpublished projects, so we decided to present a selection of it online.

What is the most important significance of ‘Fight the Flashism’?

We define fight the flashism as a kind of movement for a reflection about internet, design and moneymaking. Fight the Flashism is not a critique on a certain tool, but its more or less a critique on how this is used. How moneymaking implements the stagnation of design. Flash but as well wysiwyg editors enables us to work in the medium without even understand its structure. and that is a questionable point for the further development of design. We even have done some Tshirts.

Please tell us about your recent projects.

As mentioned above we just finished a tool for administrating a huge amount of linkdata, making it easyly explorable, which will be online soon. Now we start to gather sites that we like to feature there. Gblahak is developing his diploma project, an installation that deals with digital realtime video manipulation and facerecognition. Hnehls just finished a work in which he changed the common purpose of a paint roller and transformed it into a tool, which enables you to play music with. Its just fun.

Where does your inspiration and idea from?

Fortunately our interests are very widespreaded. We donot focus on one major topic. On the other hand we both have a different personal background, that works quite profitable together.

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