Mike Ling - Poser Extraordinare.

I really don't consider myself a great or exceptional graphic artist...I will make no such illusions. The knowledge that I do have in webdesign was all gained through the help of extensive experimentation and excruciating boredom. I started out with a copy of Photoshop 4 during the historical warez days of my sophomore year in high school and progressively I went from creating extravagent filterfest imagery to simplistic more refined pieces. Surfstation and Shodown were major contributing factors, as I was completely swept up with the graphic design community during my junior and senior years in high school and I haven't seemed to put it down yet. My childhood was a simple yet sweet one. I grew up in Flushing Queens New York and spent a great majority of my time playing street Hockey on Kissena Blvd. Even though I love NYC for all it's wonders and glory, I have to say that I experienced one of my hardest times in 3rd to 5th grade. Part of it was being the only child from out of town (I went practically to Long Island to go to elementary school) - the harrasment became too much to take so young. After the area started to get rather shady, my family decided to move to a small quaint town in Norther New Jersey where I would continue my education. For the most part, I liked Bergen NJ. The people were nice enough, however everything was slightly more affluent. That was the only aspect that me and my family could never really get used to. We didn't keep up with the jones' and we certainly didn't flaunt our money openly. We were the poor people heh. High School came and went rather quickly, and I gave it my best shot. I wasn't very outgoing, and probably will never be, call it a defining characteristic? I went through with the whole college spiel...got my 1230 on my SAT and decided to go to none other than the state university of NJ - Rutgers University. Although it is a HUGE school, there are still a great amount of opportunities here, and it's dirt cheap to enroll if you live in Jersey. In terms of my social life, it somewhat bloomed, and I went from never being able to see myself in a relationship to one that has lasted almost 6 months! (Hello Sarita =)That's pretty much the basic facts of my life.

One of my greatest interests, aside from graphic design and web junk, has to be music and films. Music to me is the divine form of art - a flawless medium for creative output. I took 6 years of Violin, which I still somewhat to a degree regret dropping...not so much because I barely have time for it these days. I started with 80s to early 90s pop music (Ace of Base, Bon Jovi, John Mellencamp) and taping Z100 and Mix 105 radio broadcasts to hearing Nirvana and the Seatle Grunge sound (included bands like Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins) for the first time after a family friend of ours, Yian played "Nevermind" Needless to say I was swept. I lived that whole grunge/alternative rock style up until I heard Prodigy's Fire (sunrise edition) on Imagineradio.com. I never liked electronic music until I started to listen to the Prodigy. I started listening to the mainstream acts such as Fatboyslim, Fluke, and Underworld and was further enveloped in it's sonic brilliance. That initial interest branched off into Drum n bass, house, trance, trip hop, and lounge music.

As far as films go, I was recently astounded by Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World, a film about two antisocial teenagers faced with life after high school. It made me an even greater fan of Steve Buscemi and Thora Birch. I also loved David Fincher's Seven and Fight Club which I felt were very imporant films; they greatly influenced me to use more grunge in my artwork (yeah yeah grunge, it's almost a curse word in the design community these days), but it really did. I also like, as my roommate would put it, "weird movies" which include Darren Aronofsky's Pi, Alex Proyas' Dark City, and Christopher Nolan's Memento. All films worth checking out simply for the pure poetic genius behind their screenplays and direction.

Until next time, that's all I have to say.