Mark Nugent, RIP. Artist of the realms of consciousness, perception, alchemy, mysticism and quantum physics

Our friend Mark Nugent, who has died of a heart attack aged 48, was a prolific British and Canadian filmmaker and digital artist. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Mark moved to Canada with his family when he was seven. He graduated with a BFA (bachelor of fine arts) in film production from Concordia University, Montreal. He went on to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a scholarship and obtained a master's in fine arts for film production.

As a multimedia artist, Mark found- ed and toured with Roughage, a Montreal-based mixed media performance group. He also briefly worked for Chicago's H-Gun, producing commercial music videos. His art occupied a genre that rarely (and sadly) attracted critical attention from anyone other than his peers. In the late 1980s, Mark travelled with the Canadian band Fat to Morocco and collected super 8 footage that would later be used to create notable and dramatic videos for the British band Coil and Elliott Sharp's Carbon.

Mark produced a large number of critically acclaimed hallucinatory films in the early 1990s, combining his acute ability optically to process seemingly abstract images and colours. With super 8 footage and film sources he explored some of his fascinations: the realms of consciousness, perception, alchemy, mysticism and quantum physics.

Mark also created films for a number of post-industrial bands and projected his work live, to great effect, on the Download tour of Europe in 1996. He had an enthusiastic spirit that enlivened the internet for many years.

In 1997 he founded the website Psilence Image Environments. For the past 10 years he had worked tirelessly on an endless stream of digital images and cut-up writings, collaborating on several projects such as the film Alchemical Conversations (2001), along with numerous websites and commercial CD releases.

Mark was an intelligent, joyous, warm-hearted and articulate man who maintained his joie de vivre despite the numerous setbacks that he encountered. He is survived by his mother, Margaret, and brothers Paul and David.

[ From Mark Spybey, Meghan Dufresne, John C McDaniel and Zev Asher. Printed in The Guardian, Sunday 10 January 2010 ]

Eight films by Mark Nugent.

A visual collaboration between Aaron Campbell and Mark Nugent: Liquid Atmospheres.