Sometimes the limit of someone's work isn't obvious. You can't see how much skill or effort has gone into it and how much background thought there has been developing ideas. With Manchester born Michael England the boundary is clear - the man is only limited by the technology he has to hand and hours left in the day. So what if you could attach a microscope to the highest end digital camera available and make British summer time twenty-four hours long? We caught up with Michael to see what makes him focus and click.

Steal-Life.com - Your working with Skam Records at the moment, is music an important part of your work?
Michael England - Music is very important. I'm lucky that I work with people I have respected for some time. Image and sound are constructed in very similar ways so you can apply the same principles to either process. Electronic music is sparse regards narrative, so imagery suits it, especially in live situations and even more so than with a band for example. You're free to construct stories or visual rhythms to accompany music. I think music is one of the last areas left for visual expression and that's even dying.

SL - Is your work for Skam a visual reflection of the electronic music?
ME - Sometimes, but it depends on the music itself. The music I work with doesn't have lyrics so it tends to be reliant on structure, rhythm and melody instead, which suits design to a T. Lego basically. It can be a reflection of one specific track on the release, or sometimes it's based around the form or mood of the music as a whole. I get to do pretty much what I want, so it can end up being all kinds of reflections.

SL - You're working with Bola, Gescom and Meam on animations and live visuals for their gigs, how do you maintain an individual identity for each of them while retaining the labels image?
ME - Work crosses over all the time, its usually reflective of what I'm currently working on as an artist. Form and concept do differ but it's my technique that defines the visual angle I take for Skam. Other designers work with Skam too, so it's not like my style defines the label completely. If you look at Wieve Stonder or Bhat for example, you realise that there isn't a definitive identity, it's the artists that define the image of the label.

SL - You were recently commissioned to create portraits for Warp's Autechre, what was the idea behind it?
ME - Autechre asked me if I wanted to do their portraits for their coming album, Draft 7.30. Their request was to be unrecognisable. They always tend to look serious in other shoots so I tried to make them into a family of genetic mutations of themselves; some more realistic than others, some stupid, some agro, some intelligent and some funny. The process of combining people's features isn't particularly new, but it was nice for me to get into their expressions and to show the diversity of their personalities in single characters. The distortion is with lenses rather than computer manipulation, so it could be considered as more real.

SL - You use a lot of digital stills, how do you find the new technology?
ME - I've had a digital camera since the early stages of the technology and I can honestly say that digital photography has changed my life. I use the photography as a starting point for much of my work and then process or re-built in the Mac. There's a lot of quality lost in scanning, digital is hyper clean with no loss at all. I love film too, but for different reasons, the quality mainly. There are no processing costs with digital, which means I can shoot more. It'll be nice when the resolution gets higher.

SL - You've recently had the opportunity to travel with your work, how was that?
ME - It's been really good. I'm lucky to have seen some obscure places; a lot of stress in parts though. Touring with Skam and dealing with people who are aware of what you do was interesting in comparison to the British Council dates where most people hadn't seen image and sound together or come across electronic music and Skam Records. There were some baffled faces, but on the whole there was always a good response.

SL - Did you have a favourite place?
ME - Not one place in particular. Mutek festival was really interesting and Montreal is a top city. Tokyo we played at the Liquid Rooms with Bola before it closed, which was good. Romania was interesting too and South Africa was an education in itself.

SL - What is the work you've submitted to us?
ME - I don't know really, mostly stills from in-betweens while touring and other random stuff. My usual work differs a lot from the work on this site, but that's nice. I don't think the web suits animation generally, not what I do anyway. I like high res. so the work submitted is about stills more than anything else.

SL - How did the Arts Council projects come about?
ME - Through Shane at onedotzero. He put them in touch with me after they saw the imagery I'd been making with Meam. They took us on tour with a Gescom DJ and Skam Records.

SL - What's next for you?
ME - Although it can be good sometimes, I'm a bit bored of working with quality restrictions, I'd like to get into higher end kit. In the mean time I'll be working on Bolas new album and DVD and some other DVD releases for Skam. We'll put out our first DVD/CD-DVD/vinyl for Meam in February. It's great as Skam has given me an opportunity to release imagery rather than my visuals just being packaging. I'd like to do some film credit work too.

Hollywood?!
http://www.skam.co.uk