In this talk Nadieh reveals the (sometimes ugly) truth behind the design process of several interactive data visualizations from personal projects to client work. The common thread they all share; they all tell a story about connections, but in completely different ways. From a royal family tree, to those existing between UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage, to connections drawn in the night skies and more. All types connections are unique and revealing the intricacies that lie within them requires a creative, iterative and custom approach.
Nadieh Bremer is a graduated Astronomer, turned Data Scientist, turned Data Visualization Designer, based near Amsterdam. After working for a consultancy & fintech company where she discovered her passion for the visualization of data, she's now working as a freelancing data visualization designer under the name "Visual Cinnamon".
As 2017's "Best Individual" in the Information is Beautiful Awards, she focuses on uniquely crafted (interactive) data visualizations that both engage and enlighten its audience. Ranging from companies as extensive as Google News Lab and UNESCO to small start-ups. From printed magazines such as Scientific American to an interactive experience for the Guardian to more promotionally focused artful visualizations for press releases, data-driven reports, and data art for in the office. As long as there's data that has a story to reveal.
Crisis conditions have infused every aspect of culture and society with doubt, but the role and efficacy of art and design as a means for change is still debated. Can artists and designers loosen power? Paul's talk emerges from this question and will speculate on new strategies for resisting normative design practices, including radical publishing, queering design, failure, and collective care. He shares learnings through new projects like QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK, a collaborative publishing effort, and URGENCY LAB, an experimental pedagogy for art and design education. Urgentcraft sketches out a position (in relation to institutions) and a set of tactics (for getting to work). It’s a signal sent out into muddy waters — a way to speculate and imagine a more just futurity in art and design.
Paul Soulellis is an artist and educator based in Providence, RI. His practice includes teaching, writing, and experimental publishing, with a focus on queer methodologies and network culture.
In late 2018, Paul launched QUEER.ARCHIVE.WORK, an urgent act of publishing that’s radical, messy, and future-looking. The first issue featured contributions from 14 artists and writers, including Allison Parrish, Nora N. Khan, American Artist, and Unity Press. Paul begins issue #2 while in residence at the Internet Archive in January 2019.
Paul is also the founder of Library of the Printed Web, a physical archive devoted to web-to-print artists’ books, zines and other printout matter. Paul has curated, designed and published print-on-demand publications that have featured the works of over 200 contemporary artists. By the time the project was acquired by MoMA Library in 2017, the Printed Web had evolved to become an important resource for the study of print-based experimental publishing in the early 21st century.
Paul is faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design. and a contributing editor at Rhizome, where he curates The Download.
In this talk Adam explores two current research projects: vframe.io and megapixels.cc. Topics include the information supply chains of facial recognition datasets, 3D-modeling synthetic datasets for conflict zones, and our forensic future.
Adam Harvey is an American artist and researcher currently based in Berlin. He is a graduate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and previously studied engineering and photojournalism at Pennsylvania State University.
Harvey's previous work includes CV Dazzle (camouflage from face detection) and the Anti-Drone Burqa (camouflage from thermal cameras). His work has been exhibited at the Istanbul Design Biennale, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, German Spy Museum, V&A Museum and published with the New York Times. He is the recipient of 2 PrototypeFund.de grants for developing computer vision software for human rights researchers and currently is creating a large-scale synthetic dataset for training computer vision algorithms on objects in conflict zones.
Engaging with the unknown and creating something new through radical translation and deep inventiveness... Sara could be talking about installation art. She could also be talking about designing missions to deep space. In fact, she's talking about both. As an artist working at JPL, she's discovered that the creative processes for these activities are uncannily similar, and that her artistic skill set is her greatest resource here. Yes, working at NASA involves learning a lot of technical complexity, and collaborating with brilliant people in a range of fields. But, if you treat it all as creative research and interdisciplinary collaboration, it is quite possible to be a full and dynamic contributor to designing a new mission, as an artist. For this talk, Sara traces through the creative processes for making a new installation and a new mission: their challenges; opportunities; generative strategies; and generally, the beautiful continuity between the work she does in art and in science and engineering.
Sara Schnadt is an artist, UX designer and software systems architect. She has been working since 2004 overseeing and designing for large-scale civic data projects alongside her installation art practice. At NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory she is Senior Lead Designer for the Mars 2020 mission, responsible for software human interface design for the ground system and system architecture for science planning. She has also developed machine learning system architecture for science planning for the Europa Clipper mission. Before JPL, Sara built the first design team at Planet Labs, an aerospace startup that is imaging the entire earth every day in order to monitor climate change and other planet-scale dynamics in real time. Other projects include designing tools for big data analytics for Science Data at Anaconda, and designing Census Reporter (a data vis interface and exploration tool to help journalists incorporate census data in their work), and OpenElections (an election data access project).
Sara's art practice is informed by her work in civic technology infrastructure development, which is an ongoing research resource, and drives her interest in the cultural impacts of technology innovation. Sara’s installation art has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as MCA Chicago, Perform Chinatown, LA, MOCAD Detroit, Free Manifesta, and the Busan Biennial.
Why did Meow Wolf succeed, and could it happen again in your back yard? This talk covers the early history of Meow Wolf as an art collective, the unique community that supported it and the lucky breaks along the way to organization. Special emphasis on the DIY technological aspects of immersive art.
Meow Wolf is an arts and entertainment group based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They established in 2008 as an art collective.
Meow Wolf creates immersive and interactive experiences that transport audiences of all ages into fantastic realms of story and exploration. This includes art installations, video and music production, and extended reality content. They champion otherness, weirdness, challenging norms, radical inclusion, and the power of creativity to change the world.
Meow Wolf firmly believes that accomplished artists must be compensated on an equal level with other skilled, in-demand professionals, and that successful businesses must give back to — and participate energetically in — their communities. They provide financial assistance, expertise, and other forms of active support, and are excited to support innovative, community-focused art and social projects. Meow Wolf comes out of a dumpster-diving, DIY past, and wants to help emerging artists and art communities around the world.
