Mari Kubota- Looking Outwards- 08

Robert Hodgins is an artist and coder. He graduated in 1998 from RISD with a degree in sculpture but went on to found the Barbarian Group and worked with them until late 2009. He also is a co-creator of the Cinder C++ framework along with Andrew Bell, Hai Nguyen, and dozens of developers around the world. In his website bio, he says that he primarily does 2D and 3D simulations using code and that his primary interests include theoretical physics, astronomy, particle engines, and audio visualizations.

The lecture I watched is from Eyeo 2014 but he has also talked in the festival two times before. He describes his job as creative coding but also acknowledges that his job is hard to define. In the lecture he describes the difficulties he runs into while in his creative endeavours. One project he explained in the lecture is “Planet Earth.” The project is a visualization of the earth using material texture data from NASA. The program can visualize using lighting, geography, and the atmospheric effects. 

Robert Hodgins method of presenting his work involves a lot of humor in order to engage his audience, which is a quality I admire. His work itself is also demonstrated in order to grab the audience’s attention.