Jessica Rosenkrantz is a lecturer at MIT’s school of architecture. Her talk from 2011 (and her work) is about computationally grown visual forms, based on plant growth structures. I have followed her Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/nervous_jessica/) for a while, and was so excited to see her name on the list. One thing I find most interesting about her work is that she wants to design products that intrigue or reveal a little bit about how it was made. She likes to use the generated forms to create material designs in the real world, as opposed to keeping them in digital space. Another concept that she’s working toward is designing material reactions that have extremely precise properties, so the materials can naturally grow into the form, rather than being 3D printed from a grown model. One product I specifically find interesting is a puzzle that has no edge. She designed a puzzle that can be put together in a very large number of combinations!

Nervous System – Eyeo Festival 2011 from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

Eyeo 2015 – Deray Mckesson and Samuel Sinyangwe from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

Work of Deray McKesson and Samuel Sinyangwe link: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

Deray and Samuel are both American civil rights activist and supporter/ member of Black lives matter. Interesting fact of Deray is that he has launched the Campaign Zero, which is a policy platform to end police violence. It is a website with ten proposals that are aimed to reduce police violence.

Samuel was also part of the launching Campaign Zero platform. Since the Protests emerged in the wake of 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Samuel worked with Deray since then to work and develop solution to address police violence in America.

I admire their work particularly because of addressing such a crucial and controversial problem that occurs often in America. I personally had close relationship with African-Americans back in California. I was there when my fellow friends were scared of police violence. In order for the information to spread and let people know of the matters, what they are doing such as protests, creating map of police violence and creating visualization of the data are best way to provide awareness to people who have access to digital medias. Their works are straightforward and logically laid out, allowing people and me to understand their challenge, solution and main issue to address.

Artist: Sarah Williams

Year: 2014

Link to the Artist’s Website: http://civicdatadesignlab.mit.edu/

Link to the Brief Bio of the Artist: http://eyeofestival.com/2014/speaker/sarah-williams/

Sarah Williams is currently an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and the Director of the Civic Data Design Lab at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Her work at Civic Data Design Lab focuses mainly on digitally visualizing urban patterns and data for the purpose of making them more accessible to the general public.

I was amazed at the scope and the variety of data that her team and she have created in the past. The scale of her maps range from few blocks in the city to the entire country and include general topics like population, transportation and urban growth as well as some less familiar topics such as natural disaster and the route of the New York Fashion Designers. However multifaceted the topics and ranges of her maps may be, they all have a single purpose: to deliver the information in the most efficient and helpful way. She creates these informational maps to solve the growing urban problems such as traffic, congestion, pollution and other social problems and to inform the audience of how their city looks like in both quantitative and qualitative terms.

In her presentation she mentioned that there are 6 elements of data visualization. This was a good way to organize different aspects of data visualization and to offer a clear steps to how you may visualize the data on your own. I was impressed by the fact that she included the “being open with data” as one of the elements because it seems to imply how open and friendly the society has become, that information and data is something to be shared and not to be kept secret from others.

Currently the Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture and Design as well as the Director of R&D at The Museum of Modern Art, Italian born design visionary has curated multiple exhibitions emphasizing the connection between design and innovation. Antonelli received a laurea degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano university in 1990 and eventually went on to lecture at several institutions including the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard University. Although having never worked as an architect, Antonelli’s focus on maximizing functionality through design resonates with the mindset I have as I pursue a degree in architecture. Her exhibition “Safe: Design Takes Risk”, utilizes aspects of design that are both creative and functional. Consisting of conceptual models of automobiles, articles of clothing, and other everyday objects, the exhibition truly brings to the light the direct relationship between the way an object is designed and it’s efficiency.

I looked at the 2012 lecture given by Fernada Viegas and Martin Wattenberg. Viegas is a Brazilian scientist who focuses on information visualization, she attended MIT. Wattenberg is an American scientist who is known for his data visualizations for companies like IBM and Google, he attended Brown, Stanford, and UC Berkeley.

I find what they do incredibly interesting and important. It isn’t to obvious how imperative data visualization is, but if data is not shown in a way that people can understand or are attracted to, they will not look at it. What I admire about how they work it that they account for the attractiveness of the visualizations, they go beyond just making the data legible. For example, with their visualization of wind speed and direction, they chose to depict the invisible force of wind in a way that actually makes they viewer “see” it, I knew that i was looking at wind, even though I, nor anyone, have never seen wind before. What I like most about their presentation is that they show the process work, the steps to their final product.

I specifically like the Wind Case Study (around minute: 17:30)

Martin Wattenberg: http://www.bewitched.com/

Fernada Viegas: http://fernandaviegas.com/

Jake Barton is a pioneer in blending technology, digital media, and architecture into emotional and engaging digital media experiences for museums, companies, and public places. He received a Bachelor in Science of Speech from Northwestern, and then continued his education at NYU where he was awarded a MPS in Interactive Telecommunications. He is the founder of Local Projects, a firm based out of New York City specializing in creating innovative story-telling experiences that captivate audiences. In his own words on Local Projects’ website, he and his firm “create bold new ideas and bring them to life.” I admire the fact that he utilizes an interdisciplinary team of artists, coders, and architects to create his work because it recognizes that fact that collaboration is key to success in art and in life. Out of all his amazing projects, I enjoy his work for the National September 11 Memorial & Museum the most. In this project, he brings victims’ stories to life which inspires personal connections between them and the visitors. This strategy of appealing to qualities of humanity is something that I can utilize in the future to engage my audience with my work.

Zach Lieberman at Eyeo 2011

Zach Lieberman actually holds a degree in the fine arts, and says that it was mostly by accident that he fell into working with technology. He’s become somewhat of a giant in the art and coding industry, as he was one of the co-creators of openFrameworks and open source C++. As an interactive new media artist, he describes his three muses as drawing, movement, and magic.

I chose to watch Zach’s first Eyeo presentation firstly because I remembered watching clips of his earlier presentation in lecture, and I recalled really enjoying his presentation style. However after watching this first presentation I’ve come to truly admire him for the creativity combined with the innovation of his works. A throughline comparing his projects would demonstrate that a common theme in his work is the relationship with and the effect it has on people. He stresses the humanity behind his work, and creates these sort of exhibits where people can come together. This is also evident in his Open Source materials and his Poetic School for computation.

I enjoyed Zach’s presentation because you felt how sincerely he cared about his work. He wasn’t professional and cold on stage, performing with gimmicks and flashy graphics like some might. He let his work and the reactions people had to it speak for itself. He conversed with the audience in his speech, rather than talking down at them, and he let his humor show through. That’s why his talk was able to pull me in for an entire 50 minutes, rather than bore me to death in the first 15.

Night Lights 2009

Person: Kyle McDonald

Kyle McDonald terms himself as an “artist working with code”. He, I believe, is based on Los Angeles, California and studied computer science and art.

Honestly, I didn’t find his presentation to be too great, both content and presentation wise. First of all, he did not even have a presentation ready, rather he had folders with images and videos he showed to the audience through the Macbook’s preview function. But I guess, as he emphasized in the beginning of his speech, this was a more “informal presentation”. However, after looking through a couple of his projects, I was captured by his creativity and coding sense.

For example, he had an installation/project in Korea and Japan where he connected the two countries through facial recognition. I found it intriguing that he, someone who had experimented with facial swapping since at least 2011, was able to develop his knowledge within this field enough to categorize and match people so fluidly through merely positioning and expressions.

Much like this installation he had projects that made a computer force a person to draw themselves in contour (blind) where the program and machine moved the hand of the person based on what facial features and shape the machine was able to grasp.

I listened to the lecture given by Kate Hollenbach, who works at Oblong. She is a media programmer and artist based in Los Angeles. She works with interactive media and systems involving gesture and space. I appreciate that she is both involved in art and programming, because that’s something I have not explored before taking this course.

She discussed how their group works with gestural and spatial interactions in products and installations. I find it so interesting and inspiring that we are at a point where we can manipulate displays and interact with them, simply through gesture. I think it adds an interesting dimension to how people interact with the visuals they’re looking at- whether it’s video or pictures. It makes you involve your body’s behavior more thoroughly, I think, than the action of swiping through screens with your fingers does. It also creatively reimagines how designers can change the relationship between the user, the product, and their environment, and how the user can be enjoyably immersed in their experience.

Hollenbach presented Oblong’s projects by showing people actively experiencing their products. They also addressed what value their projects could add to the users’ experiences. I appreciate that she talked about how people harbor fear about their projects, and that part of their objective is to get people to trust the interfaces and systems they’re interacting with.
I liked the pointer they they produced because it has subtle differences from an average pointer, yet has a lot of personality as a result of their efforts to make it feel organic and responsive. The little movements of the pointer and the responsive nature makes it feel fun and endearing. It’s not something that moves the world, but it is delightfully designed. It’s in the video below.

INSTINT 2014 – Kate Hollenbach from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

http://www.katehollenbach.com/

Kyle McDonald

Kyle McDonald is a Los Angeles based media artist who is working with code. He is one of a contributor of Openframeworks which is the open source arts-engineering toolkit for artists who utilize code in their creative practice. With his strength of proficiency in coding, he had worked on many projects such as computer vision, 3D sensing, and interactive media installation. In many cases, he had worked in collaboration with several other professionals and learns through the experiences with them. Also, in videos, he introduced a lot of his projects and shared the work-in-progress for each and what he learned so far in the project. His sharing about his own learning and progress shows how he builds his interests, skills, and his career as a media artist. One of the projects that he showed is ‘Missing’ which is an interactive installation. It explores the concept of The xx’s new Album named coexist through the relationship of human and machine. In this installation, 50 speaker players follow visitors while it is playing the song of The xx ‘Missing’. I think it is a very effective installation to deliver new musical experiences.

Kyle Mcdonald Website

INSTINT 2014 – Kyle McDonald from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.