GordonMARTIN DRUCE, artist, writer, multimedia producer passed away peacefully in New York City, his home since 2016. A private Celebration of Life was held there last week. UK services are in Bath November 24; Shropshire November 30. For details contact emilygdruce@gmail.com.
Born in Wellington to Stephen and Doreen Druce, his passions for art and music were evident from an early age and took him around the world. As he liked to say, they "opened his eyes to the world." No place was too far or remote to go for good art, film, music or simply inspiration. He travelled extensively, was proud to have set foot on 6 of the 7 continents.
Future Publishing brought him to Bath. After his time there he founded Modified, an award-winning new media company producing groundbreaking work on CDRoms and the web. FrEQuency and Chillas became the first creative entertainment titles to make audio-visual mixing possible on home computers and the internet. Modified also produced interactive in-store projects for high profile partners including Virgin and OurPrice. FrEQuency received the Gold Award from PC Plus Magazine in June 1996.
After Modified he worked on various television projects for ITV, Channel 4 and Granada TV. These included an award-winning documentary "Love Will Tear Us Apart", a history of the Hacienda dance club in Manchester, "Race in the Media" and the Royal Television Society's award-winning "Unknown Soldiers" - the story of Black and Asian soldiers fighting for the British in WW1 and WW2. In 2000, as Art Director of Future Publishing's entertainment portal Futurenet, he worked on the design and development of two of Europe's biggest music and technology web networks: Intermusic.com and T3Network.com (New Media Age magazine award winner). His artwork and design-related writing has been featured in magazines and books around the world, including Wired, Mac User, Creative Review, Mac Format, Understanding Hypermedia 2000 (Phaidon), 'Branding, Graphic and New Media Design (BIS publishing).
For the last 15 years, his company Mospace focused on his interests of technology, art, video and music for clients worldwide. Recently he transitioned to spending his time on "labours of love" rather than strictly commercial ventures. He had begun digitizing a private collection of piano rolls from the 1930s, re-mixing and modernizing them; a film about Inwood, his much loved New York City home.
He is remembered as wildly creative with an endless intellectual curiosity, a great listener, a generous mentor, devoted husband, son, brother, uncle, friend. His sharp wit made him a great conversationalist and writer.
His father preceded him in death. He is survived by his wife Emily, mother Doreen; brother Michael; sister Barbara Fill.
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