Jonathan Harris AIGA Gain Conference
Summary:
Jonathan Harris is an artist and a computer scientist, meaning he creates his own art on the computer. Harris used to work by hand, sketching in sketchbooks that he carried around with him, but he was mugged and his sketchbook housing 8 months of drawings was stolen, prompting him to change the way he archived and worked. His work involves the exploration and understanding of humans, based on what they leave behind on the web. In this video, Jonathan talks about his recent projects as well as poses interesting questions about the web world and how it's shaping us.
Reflection:
After watching Jonathan Harris speak, I decided to explore some of his past works. One of my favorite of his is I Want You To Want Me, which was installed at the MOMA on Valentine's Day 2008. This interactive work explores the search for love and self in the world of online dating. It gathers new information from dating sites all over the world every few hours, adding to the already large compilation of data. According to the website, here is a small summary of how the work was displayed in the MOMA, "The data is presented as an interactive installation, displayed on a 56” high-resolution touch screen, hung vertically on a wall in a dark room. On screen is an interactive sky, whose weather (sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, etc.) can be controlled by the viewer. Through the sky float hundreds of blue (male) and pink (female) balloons, each representing a single dating profile. The brighter balloons are younger people; the darker balloons older. Trapped inside each balloon is one of over 500 video silhouettes, showing a solitary person, engaged in any number of activities (yoga, jumping jacks, nose-picking, air guitar, etc.). The viewer can touch any balloon to select it, causing its photo to dangle from a string and its sentence to appear in a thought bubble overhead. Touching any balloon a second time pops it. The balloons move through the sky along different paths and at different speeds, bumping up against each other, sometimes traveling together for a time, but only ever getting so close, as each silhouette is ultimately confined to its own balloon." Not only did I love the concept of this project, but I loved the overall look and feel of the project, too. I think Jonathan Harris is a very bright individual with very interesting and fresh takes on how technology shapes us and how we shape technology.
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