Category: LookingOutwards-08

Paul Greenway – Looking Outwards – 08

Refik Anadol is media artist who heads his own design studio focussed mainly on public art driven by site specific parametric data. The studio is based in Los Angeles California and as a result, Anadol is also a lecturer and researcher at UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts. With degrees in Fine Arts and Media Arts, Anadol describes his work as a hybrid between physical, architectural spaces and digital media.

Refik Anadol’s body of work is largely made up of exhibition / public installation projects that visualize data in dynamic and interesting ways. I was initially drawn to his work because of the unique aesthetic quality of his projects but after looking further into them, I found the data driving the designs to equally important. One of the projects that I feel showcases Anadol’s work best is the installation called Melting Memories.

In the Eyeo Festival presentation, Refik Anadol began by explaining the inspiration behind his works and how he initially got into data visualization and media art. Then after providing context for his work, he presented his work with a combination of images, animations and text to fully convey his intentions to the audience. The dynamic nature of many of the projects meant that animation was an ideal format to showcase the work.

Eyeo Lecture by Refik Anadol

Fanjie Mike Jin-LookingOutwards-08

Meejin Yoon is an architect and designer. She currently serves as the dean of the school of architecture at MIT. She got her bachelor of architecture education from Cornell and a master of architecture degree from Harvard GSD. She is truly a pioneer in designing interactive public space and she regarded her projects as bridges that engage technology in the public sphere. Her works that were presented in the talk really showed that she has successfully and effectively integrated technology to the architecture that aligns with the purpose and context of her projects.

One project that I really admired is MIT’s Collier Memorial. There are a number of concepts that are associated with this memorial. The form drew from MIT’s motto, “Mens et Manus,” Latin for “mind and hand.” Five radial stone walls form the hand’s fingers connecting by a vault; the palm and the open hand represent Collier’s spirit of helpfulness, and the space under the vault represented his absence. She successfully synthesized some really meaningful memories aligning with the core values of MIT and finally produced an elegant and beautiful memorial.

Eyeo 2015 – Meejin Yoon
Höweler + Yoon Architecture, Collier Memorial

Chelsea Fan-LookingOutwards-08

Leah Buechley is a designer, engineer and educator. She is the developer of LilyPad Arduino Toolkit, smart textiles, and other soft circuit solutions. From 2009 to 2013, she was an associate professor at MIT Media Lab. There, she directed the High-Low Tech research group. Currently, she runs a design firm exploring the intersection of technology and design.

Buechley’s body of work embodies a new trend of “making.” I admire that she relates her work to “making,” a bigger idea of how building and”making” relates to the world. She discusses how “making” things defines who and what humans are. In addition, Buechley’s work is different from the normal artists we talk about. This talk doesn’t discuss her own gallery of art pieces. Instead, it discusses how she writes papers, gives talks, and seeks to educate others about everything she has done and learned. This talk is a great example of how she is using her knowledge to share her understanding of “making” and the world and the new trends we see through the connection of the two. In her talk, she discusses “who” is a maker and how they’re not representative of the actual population.

Buechley speaks comfortably and casually. Which helps makes the audience feel at ease. Rather than a monotone, she speaks with passion and emphasis on certain words, which helps engage the audience. She also uses hand gestures to show her involvement and enthusiasm in her talk. These are all good strategies that I can use to make my presentations less boring and un-engaging.

home
Link to Leah Buechley’s website
Leah Buechley’s talk on how Thinking About Making (2014).

Alec Albright – Looking Outwards – 08

Brian House is currently an Assistant Professor of Art and Studio Head of Digital Media at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He holds a PhD in Computer Music and Multimedia from Brown University. His artwork primarily involves the relationship between natural rhythms in the human body, the environment, and technology. He describes some of his current interests as “extractive industries and urban rats,” attesting to his research-oriented artworks.

His work is particularly admirable to me because it is largely data-driven, often incorporating music as well. One of his works, “Decomposition”, was a series of double bass music pieces derived from data describing the thousand-year process of plastic decaying if not properly disposed of.

His presentation skills involve a lot of trying to make the audience understand his methods of thinking throughout his creative process, embedding first point of view videos, quotes, etc. that make his presentation very intriguing. This could definitely be helpful for me in the future.

His website can be found at https://brianhouse.net/ .

Xiaoyu Kang – Looking Outward – 08

The artist Rachel Binx introduces herself as an only child who grew up in Mexico. And her work started with her dream of becoming a world traveler by herself when she was younger. She would handwritten the location CSV of every city she travels to and tracted that information for years. What she did with the data was that she generated an image from all the places that she has been to through programming. She started collaborating with a jewelry company that use shapes that are generated from places to make jewelry, and the idea of the whole project is to take people’s experiences as data points and visualize them, thus summarizing someone’s life through the medium of a map. 

As the first project became successful, she started to create more products. For the people who didn’t move as much in their lives, she connects the streets that people walk every single day to generate patterns and creates them into jewelry. She also incorporated maps into other items such as skirts and pillows. 

In addition, she also did projects that used programming to document her life. For example she programmed her laptop to take pictures whenever she uses her laptop in a new environment. All of her works focused on data journaling, either through automated data or memory. What she was trying to do is to take the data points that are important and personal to people and turn the data points into something visual and physical.

The speaker talks about her project by connecting her work to her own stories and experiences. In this way, she made the lecture much easier to understand and much more relatable since a lot of her experiences are commonly shared among many people.

https://rachelbinx.com

Taisei Manheim – Looking Outward – 08


Refik Anadol is a media artist and director born in Istanbul that currently lives in Los Angeles. He is the co-founder and creative director of Antilop, a technology-driven creative design studio operating at the intersection of audio-visual performances, moving images, and interactive installations. He creates site-specific public art that uses a parametric data sculpture approach, as well as live visual or audio performances within immersive installations. His work often creates a hybrid relationship between architecture and media arts with machine intelligence. As someone that studies architecture, I appreciate how he uses light as an architectural median in order to create buildings with memories that can learn, dream and remember.

My favorite project by him was WDCH Dreams, a project in which he projects visualizations onto the Walt Disney Concert Hall. In order to make the building “dream” he collected 45 terabytes of data from the LA Phil data archives. He then applied machine intelligence to the digital archives in order to create a computerized mind that processed these memories to form new combinations of images and ideas. I admire this project because of the amount of preparation that went into the project, from remodeling every detail of the Disney Concert Hall from old Catia models to processing all of the data. In addition, the Disney Concert Hall is a building that I admire and it is fascinating to see a new layer of meaning on top of it.

Eyeo 2019 – Refik Anadol

Mihika Bansal – Looking Outwards – 08

The creative person I am analyzing with this post is Rachel Binx. Currently Rachel Binx is working at Netflix with the Content and Data team in Los Angeles. Before that Rachel worked at Mapzen, NASAJPL, and Stamen. Rachel describes herself as a data visualizer, developer, and designer.

In the lecture, Rachel specifically talks about new ways to visualize data, methods that transcend the way that we have typically thought about data in the past. She emphasizes the importance of the practicality of the manner in which the data is visualized, not just creating something that is “eye candy.” One of her projects that I find to be particularly interesting is the GPX Jewelry project, which creates interesting jewelry based on maps that she has used before.

She is a very engaged presenter which makes it more interesting to watch her work being presented as it engages the user and the audience.

Link to website: https://rachelbinx.com

Rachel’s Lecture

lee chu – looking outwards 08

Nervous System is a design studio that works at the intersection of science, art, and tech. Founded in 2007 by Jesse Louis-Rosenburg and Jessica Rosenkrantz, Nervous System focuses on creating generative online applications in which users can co-create products resulting in infinite design possibilities for homeware, lighting, jewelry, and most fascinating, clothing. Some of their simpler 3-D designs can also be downloaded and printed at home. Check out their website here.

One of their more interesting designs is of a parametric dress which is fully 3-D printed using smaller modules that can fold and make the dress malleable and form-fitting. In addition, they implemented an application which accounts for body shape and size so that almost anyone can rock this dress.

dress in motion

Eyeo 2015 – Jesse Louis-Rosenburg and Jessica Rosenkrantz

Charmaine Qiu – Looking Outwards 08

Interactive Play In Public Space

Meejin Yoon is a designer and architect. Fascinated by the ambiguity between public and private spaces, Yoon’s work mainly focus on interactive play in public spaces that utilizes the properties of technology. In the lecture, she mentioned how based on the various cultures that people are from, we tend to define personal and public spaces in different ways, yet Yoon is passionate about exploring the boundaries of these spaces. With an architecture degree from Cornell University and a masters degree from Harvard University, Yoon created projects on museum interiors, light installations, interactive technologies, and many more. While designing, she constantly kept in mind the experiences of the users and the context of the designs, while attempting to showcase elements that portray the theme of the surroundings. When presenting her work, Yoon used many visual elements and processes to support her explanations, and I find it helpful to learn from her illustrative manner of presenting work process. The wide range of work that Yoon takes part in is very fascinating to me, and I am inspired by her flexibility in utilizing her skillset to the fullest extent. 

Here is a link to her website:  http://www.howeleryoon.com/

“Interactive Play In Public Space” on Eyeo 2015

Claire Lee – Looking Outwards – 08

I decided to read about Mary Huang, one of two joint speakers at the 2013 Eyeo festival that founded a software-based apparel creation company called Continuum Fashion. Huang graduated with a BA in Design/Media Arts from UCLA, and went on to receive a MA from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.

Eyeo 2013 – Huang & Fizel

I really admired Mary’s projects under Continuum Fashion, which served as a reflection the emerging role of technology in society while also giving the masses an accessible outlet with which anyone could design their own apparel and see it come to life. I really liked that Mary considers her work a continuation of the constantly evolving definition of “fashion” and the social commentary behind her work. I also really liked that she put a lot of effort into the user-interface design of these projects so that they were easy for people with no coding experience to use.

Strvct, Continuum’s first collection of 3D-printed shoes.

Some of the strategies in her presentation that I thought were most effective were that she gave a lot of visuals and included examples of some concepts and projects (2-dimensional pictures to knitwear, different types of weaves) that served as the foundation on which her work was based. I think it did a lot to enhance my understanding of her goals for these projects and her thought process behind them. I also liked that she went in and actually gave her audience a look inside the user interface of her apparel-making programs, so they could see some of the customizations and adjustments available for the users to make on their pieces.