Month: October 2016

Eyeo 2015 – Jake Barton from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

Jake Barton is an American designer, and the Principal and Founder of Local Projects. The firm is an experience design and strategy firm for museums, brands and public spaces based. His work focuses on storytelling and engaging audiences through emotion and technology. They usually create some interactive facilities in the buildings like museums to inspire visitors to memorize what they see by creating their own experience. Barton believe, the learning and thinking that happen in body are most strong. Therefore for the future of memory, they way those museums make people think and engage. I found his idea really inspiring because he makes a innovation to the current mode of museum and enriched visitor’s experience by the way people iterate.

Jake Barton, the founder of Local Projects, “an experience design and strategy firm for museums, brands and public spaces in New York” (Wikipedia), gave a thought-provoking presentation called “Like Falling in Love” at Eyeo 2012. After graduating from Northwestern University with a degree in performance studies, Barton started designing sets on Broadway then worked for Ralph Applebaum Associates then finally founded Local Projects.

Barton works on making installations and public spaces relatable to visitors/viewers through technology. Though not highly discussed in his Eyeo speech, Barton was co-leader of the team that figured out how to list the names of the 9/11 victims on the new memorial. Instead of going alphabetically, he and his team found a way to list the victims through personal connections. As mainly a humanities, writing, student, I’m very interested in the ways that technology can bring people together and make things like art and perceptions more accessible to everyone.

When he presents, Barton is confident. He goes chronologically through the production of a project, sometimes even discussing the failed ideas. He gives multiple real life examples and uses visual aids. I’d like to learn to be as relaxed while presenting as Barton appears to be.

Wikipedia Page

Webpage

Eyeo Speech

James George was the first artist in residence at Microsoft Research in Seattle and had a background as a computer scientist. He describes himself as an artist and makes software that documents the world in unconventional ways. He and two others founded Specular studios and aims to apply design to emerging technology. Exquisite City was a project done in April 2015 that documented places using photography and built a 3D model of an imaginary city by putting these “building blocks” together. This project was inspired by Exquisite Corpses, surrealist drawings of people made by multiple artists. Some of his other works include Clouds, an interactive installation done by openFrameworks and Specular Portraits that changes the lighting on geometric portraits. What is most interesting about George’s is that he is trying to change from “an artist making things that reflect his vision of the world, to an artist making tools that allow other people to see as they see.” as said by Kevin Slavin. One way that George presented successfully was by playing videos to further explain his description of the project. A lot of art, especially good art is unconventional and the only way to make people understand is showing them.

Here is James George speaking at Eyeo Festival 2015:

Links:

James George Website

James George at the Eyeo Festival

Other works by James George:

Exquisite City

Clouds

Nicky Case is an interactive video game designer. He relates a lot of games to real social problems or psychology. He is a Singapore born and moved to Canada with his family. He is now working in the US. Here is the link for Nicky’s games I admire his work for the reality reflected in the games. He said in his speech that the question he keeps thinking about is if the thing(video game design) is meaningful. By integrating his concerns of the world into his work, he tries to motivate the users to be aware of those issues. One example is “Parable of the Polygons”. It addresses the necessity of diversity in our living environment.

When presenting his work, he tried a lot to relate his personal experiences to explain the cultural differences from the listeners (such as Asian parents’ homophobia ) and used a lot of jokes.

Here is his speech.

In Eyeo Festival 2015, two presenters talk about their work to protest against police violence. Their research can be found here.
Deray Mckesson is a protestor who used to live in Minneapolis and tweeted a lot. He strives to tell stories in a different way as police and officials demonstrated a shocking inability to provide the public with the information needed to fully understand police violence in America. Deray also mentioned race and ethnicity issues along with police violence. I like how Deray’s work is persistent. He and his team continues posting stuff on twitter to make an impact. He is serious about his job and collects evidence and information from many sources on social media and newspaper. His presentation is effective because he uses personal stories and real events and screenshots to display to the image. Which are good presentation techniques that adds to persuasion and connects the audience. Samuel Sinyangwe is a researcher and activist and promotes telling the story differently by using data and research. I like his way of presentation because he uses current events which many people know about. He pulls up data on people who were killed by police. He went to great length to code the database by race and 304 black people were killed in 2014, which is 3 times more probability than white men. This data shows the significance of his research and proves the point that police violence and race is correlated. Both of the presenters talk in confident and empathetic tones which brings the message across well. Mapping Police Violence, Eyeo 2015

benfry.com
fathom.info

The presentation was by Ben Fry. He’s an expert in data visualization and part of Fathom which is a design and software consultancy in Boston. He also codeveloped Processing which is an open source programming language and IDE. He received his Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab and was also the chair of design for Carnegie Mellon’s School of Design.

Some things I noticed about his presentation was that he used a lot of useful infographs that attract the attention of the audience. He starts off very basic and also uses a little bit of information shock value to grasp the audience’s attention. Afterwards he goes into a little more detail about his actual project. I think I can take a lot away from this presentation, however, there were some things I wasn’t a fan of either. Some slides were a little too packed with information and it wasn’t possible to internalize all the information.

The main project that Ben is working on is to take their clients data, and create patterns and narratives that the audiences can relate to. Allowing better understanding of topics like global gender gaps to gas turbine rhythms. Essentially trying to make more sense of the world.

 

Hyphae Crispata in Growing Objects

Kinematics Dress

Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jess Louis-Rosenberg are the co-founders of Nervous System in 2007, a design studio that applies cutting-edge technologies in design through scientific research and computational graphics. Jessica graduated from MIT with degrees in architecture and biology, while Jesse also attended MIT majoring in mathematics, and he previously worked as consultant in building modeling and design automation.

What’s fascinating about their works is the degree that they employ the computational design and digital fabrication in products that can be manufactured. A lot of their projects such as the Growing Objects draw inspirations from the forms and biological pattern of plants. During their presentation, they illustrated the process of abstracting essential forms and adding complexity and details through algorithm. Different experimentations and simulations had been done to produce the dynamic and interactive system that generates one of a kind for each product.

The 3D printed textile for the Kinematic project is also interesting because of the 2D flatness of each module in contrast to the degree of customization, variation in three dimensions that conform body curve, and the flexibility of movement in the final dress.

Eyeo 2015 – Jesse Louis-Rosenburg and Jessica Rosenkrantz from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

Mimi Son

Mimi Son studied at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design for Interaction Design, and got her MA in Interaction Design from the Landsdown Centre of Middlesex University in London. She is both a teacher, of Interactive Storytelling at Kaywon School of Art and Design, and an art director at her own studio, Kimchi and Chips.
I really admire Son for her work. As a woman excelling in the fields of both art and technology, she’s created some incredible works and has gained recognition for it. I really admire her tenacity to gain such a breadth of education in such a specialized topic, teach it, and create her own studio.
Son has a natural charisma when she presents. She makes jokes, is charmingly self-deprecating, and creates a good relationship between her and her audience. I think I can really learn from her techniques, and work to cultivate a atmosphere of interest and humor in my presentations.