Ian Hays - owner ianhays.net

Ian Hays. Working with Mark Coates on a New Version of the Site Reading Joyce Reading Duchamp 2009

Working with Mark Coates on a new version of the original website was a creative interaction between an artist and writer and a really kind and thoughtful engineer whose responses to my work were always constructive, and inventive, and which over time became a thought-provoking activity in alignment with what I thought I needed for a site, what he thought was possible in line with my thought, and how best to modify my own unordered and seeming preferences into a more flexible and easier-to-read format for all people to understand. This new site was worked out by email over a period of some weeks from the middle of October until the end of November and I was surprised by the amount of work I needed to undertake through Mark's delicate prompting in order to bring the images and texts into a form that would help any reader to begin to come to terms with work I have been studying for over 8 years.

Mark had more "tricks up his sleeve" than I imagined were possible in order to bring this site to the condition it now enjoys, and what was so impressive was his sensitive appreciation of the work I am doing and how this work needs to be altered as the site continues to be morphed throughout its life. My work takes the form largely of being shown and read as an internet site, but also as hard printed copies of original works that can be exhibited largely at Conferences on the subject of Art and Literature, and at University Venues, rather than the usual Art Gallery as such.

My own recommendation regarding Mark's obvious abilities turn on his professionalism, his indelible insights into the requirements of the customer and his no-nonsense approach to what is possible and what may not be possible to deal with on the internet keeping an always open-mind as to strategies that can be put in place if and when the original strategy becomes actually impossible.