Aaron Koblin Research

-MFA from the Department of Design|Media Arts at UCLA
-BA in Electronic Art at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Utilizing a background in the computer game industry
-led a course in game design for the web at UCLA
-working with data driven projects as a media designer, artist and researcher.
-currently working out of San Francisco, California
-creates software and architectures to transform social and infrastructural data into artwork
-shown internationally
-part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
-part of Google's Creative Lab in San Francisco
-focused on creating and visualising human systems.
-transforms large abstract data sets into humanly contextualized information.
-hopes to raise at least as many questions as he answers.
-Aaron received the 1st. Place Science Visualization Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation
-undertaking visualization projects at MIT and Stanford Universities.
-Using information, data, code, systems (chem, bio, informatic, physicaal etc), he searches to bring out visualization and creation that relates to the network of humans and human interaction.
-Noticed early on in his academic career
-raised question and awareness about the connection between human system and art and design.
-His realizations and transformations are often beyond imaginable but are generally meaningful.
-Aaron has contributed to projects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MIT, and Stanford University.
-In 2007 Koblin’s projects received wide exposure from appearing on ABC World News and the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, to receiving the First Place award for Science Visualization from the National Science Foundation.

Interests

truly struggling with ideas. BUT here are some things very vague ideas that have peaked my interest:

-time progression
-abstract mapping

artists we looked at that interest me:

-Aaron Koblin: http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns/
-DAIM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLikgptMD98&feature=related
-Golan Levin: http://www.flong.com/storage/experience/floccus/ http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/thedumpster/
-Ben Fry: http://benfry.com/valence/
-Marc Wattenberg: http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=V&ms=false&sw=f&exact=false
-Alison Mealey: http://alison.organised.info/unrealart/processing/
-Shape of Song: http://www.turbulence.org/Works/song/mono.html

Requirements

Writing
-code sketches
-regular sketches
-influences
-300 words

Artist Presentation
-should influence conceptually and technically
-5 min
-show work
-describe their influences
-why was this artist chosen?
-extra credit by contacting artist personally rather than just researching
-super extra credit if you can get them to come visit

Code
-must be working by the time of final critique
-must be on website as well as burned to CD/DVD to turn in
-thoroughly commented
-response to the final project and critique posted on website