Alexandra Kaplan – Looking Outwards 08

 

Lecture at Eyeo given by Neil Mendoza

  An artist that stood out to me is Neil Mendoza, who has an MA in math and computer science from Oxford University and an MFA in design media art from UCLA. He only started to self-describe himself as an artist in 2014 and often imbues his art with humor, which is why I really like his work. I admire his approach to his work, in his lecture, he often talks about getting a simple idea from a single idea or object, thinking about it, then expanding upon in a whimsical way.

An example of Neil Mendoza’s work I found particularly amusing.

    One project that really stood out to me was his “Hamster Powered Hamster Drawing Machine. His thought process started with the idea of selfies, which led down the rabbit hole of why selfies are limited to humans. He then took this concept and built a contraption that, when a hamster runs on its wheel, it draws a picture of a running hamster. The way it combined technological software (the cams were needed to draw a hamster) and the physical (a hamster controlling the drawing device) is really inspiring and opens my mind to the different possibilities programming, code, and computer science can offer even outside the technological world.