Two more pieces featuring Adam. The first is a set of stills (animated GIF) featuring Adam from a periodic QuickCam movie from New Year’s Eve 1995. Make your own with a webcam set to take stills every x seconds (17 is good). Some camcorders now do similar things too.

The second is a QuickTime VR object movie which lets you spin Adam around on a chair. This is from 1997, around the same time we were mucking about with QTVR and came up with the idea and concept proof for Identikit, which I finished for Stuff-Art 1998. Adam’s in that too.

I’m delaying dinner, so I’ll be brief. Here’s a photo from the last time I saw Adam, in 2002. Living overseas does mean you sometimes miss out on the most important things.

Adam Neykoff-Davies

I was on the wrong side of the planet to deliver this in person, and the funeral has now taken place. I’m sad this wasn’t said at the right time and place, but this is what I wanted to say, my eulogy to Adam.

If Adam wanted to do something, he’d do it himself. If that din’t work out, he’d find someone who could, and convince them to do it for him. If that still didn’t work – through lack of funds, planning, or legal issues – then he’d store the bits in his warehouse.

Adam wanted to do everything, and luckily enough, knew everyone. Only at Adam’s could you find a German DJ playing a chillout set for fun, enough silver foil to cover the dancefloor, a bubble machine going mad and several mirrorballs to light it all up. At any given time, someone new would be sitting in a corner, cutting out stars.

My whole family knew Adam. My father and he stayed awake all night in conversation, my sister sold beer at his O-Week events while underage, and my mother, among other things, made Adam an enormous, red, spiral codpiece.

To me? Adam was the best kind of friend: true, loving and honest. My future life, as many others, now has an Adam-shaped hole. Nobody can fill that gap, but I’ll always try to imagine what he would have brought, and do the best I can.

This is hard. On holiday, escaping, walking around the Cotswolds and Wales, and I’ll gather and share thoughts on all of that later on. But right now it’s all on hold.

First, though, I’m sorry that I don’t have everyone’s phone number with me, and I’m really sorry to say something like this in words on a screen, but there’s never a good way to say it.

One of my best friends in Australia, Adam Neykoff-Davies, has been killed in a car accident, along with the driver and another passenger. They were all students at QUT, returning from Carnarvon Gorge on Saturday night, when the driver swerved to avoid cattle on the road.

Adam was a crazy guy in the best way. He inspired love, friendship and creativity, brought the right people together in the right way, the glue that made creative things happen. I’m glad to have been able to call him my friend, and desperately sad to lose him.

If you knew Adam, you’ll know what we’ve lost. If you live in Brisbane, he’s the one who sold glowsticks at raves for many years, wandered around Strawberry Fields in a spacesuit, stilt walked in Jackie Chan’s First Strike, wore gold body paint in an art event with Pope Alice, and scared small children covered in red body paint wearing an enormous codpiece that my mother made. Raise a glass. He’s irreplaceable.

Work is over. Three months wandering await. In Southampton, on to Mottisfont Abbery and probably the Cotswolds tomorrow. Will keep you posted when I’m conscious and with a coherent thought process. Cheers all round.