You have created many high quality sites. Do you have any Hi-ReS! original process when you do a client work?

I guess the common denominator in our process is that we try to always approach a project from a conceptual and not necessarily from an aesthetic angle to begin with.

We need to be sure of what it is we want to say before we think of how we want to say it. Tthat’s why it is important for us to be allowed a big amount of freedom in the development phase of a project and we have been very lucky so far with our clients.

Everything we do is based on a simple (and sometimes not so simple) idea, something that we came up with in the first few days of a project. We then start to refine this idea, adding detail and slowly getting a feeling for the aesthetic that would suit the concept. And if the idea still stands after a week or two, it’s worth doing it and you know you are going to enjoy working on it, even if it means late nights and weekends.

Those projects where you aren’t convinced or where you try to compensate gaps in the concept with graphics are the ones you shouldn’t do in the first place.

You have created many film sites, such as “The Business of strangers” and “Donnie Darko” as well. Do you think you can effectively use your experiences of scripting or directing that you gained in works related to films?

This is an interesting question, especially as my background is in film. I used to direct music-videos and commercials before I got into interactive design and have always regarded the web as a place where I would like to continue storytelling, but in a very different way.

I think narrative is still one of the focus points in our work and we would like to be able to extend the narrative beyond the web, by involving many other forms of media in the narrative, by combining all of it to tell one big story. but this needs a client who is willing to take a chance and go all the way.

On the other hand, we are still very much interested in traditional film-making, we just have not found the time to get back into it.

You positively participate in many conferences, such as “Macromedia DevCon 2002 Japan” held in last November in Tokyo. Do you enjoy of flying all over the world?

It’s the most amazing byproduct of our work and stands in stark contrast to the way we usually spend our days and nights, hunched in front of a screen. it’s great to get out, it’s great to be able to travel and see other cultures and most of all it is extremely rewarding to meet other people who have a similar passion and be able to exchange views with them.

Tokyo was certainly one of the highlights of our travels so far. we fell completely in love with the city and the people we got to spend time with.

I would like to know about Massive Attack site you recently made. How did you take this production forward? Are there any special experiences that people can experience only in this site?

Working on massive attack was in many ways a dream come true for us. not only have we been huge fans of the band since day one, but we also knew that they value the creative input of others to a great extent.

And in many ways, the site was done in close collaboration with 3D (Robert del Naja), who is a very accomplished artist in his own right, but also with UVA, who did the visuals for the live show and Tom Hingston who designed the cover for their latest album.

The site itself is based on the idea of delivering and representing data, both relating to the band and the outside world. To achieve this, we created a pretty complex submission system which will allow them to update the site constantly while on tour, uploading sounds, videos and images from each location they are at.

This input is juxtaposed with live data feeds we get from scripts that search the web for news images, earthquakes, stock-data, keywords, colours, etc. And the site was always meant to have two sides, innocence and experience, raw accessible data and the bastardised version of the same data, mixed with data-feeds.

The site has furthermore a general emotional state which is set by the band, based on how they feel, and this is reflected in the site as well.

It is an ongoing project, we are still adding content to massiveattack.com and 100thwindow.com, for example you are now able to send messages from the site to the live show you chose, which will then be projected on a giant LCD screen before and during the show.