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Garnet Hertz - http://conceptlab.com
(Updated 2023 January 24)
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CURRENT / UPCOMING
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* [NEW MIT PRESS BOOK] This is the biggest news in the universe, ever - or at
least as far as I'm concerned: my new book Art + DIY Electronics (Garnet
Hertz, 2023, MIT Press) is now available for order! Here's the blurb: "A
systematic theory of DIY electronic culture, drawn from a century of artists
who have independently built creative technologies. Since the rise of Arduino
and 3D printing in the mid-2000s, do-it-yourself approaches to the creative
exploration of technology have surged in popularity. But the maker movement
is not new: it is a historically significant practice in contemporary art and
design. This book documents, tracks, and identifies a hundred years of
innovative DIY technology practices, illustrating how the maker movement is a
continuation of a long-standing creative electronic subculture. Through this
comprehensive exploration, Garnet Hertz develops a theory and language of
creative DIY electronics, drawing from diverse examples of contemporary art,
including work from renowned electronic artists such as Nam June Paik and
such art collectives as Survival Research Laboratories and the Barbie
Liberation Front. Hertz uncovers the defining elements of electronic DIY
culture, which often works with limited resources to bring new life to
obsolete objects while engaging in a critical dialogue with consumer
capitalism. Whether hacking blackboxed technologies or deploying culture
jamming techniques to critique commercial labor practices or gender norms,
the artists have found creative ways to make personal and political
statements through creative technologies. The wide range of innovative works
and practices profiled in Art + DIY Electronics form a general framework for
DIY culture and help inspire readers to get creative with their own
adaptations, fabrications, and reimaginations of everyday technologies." The
book ships March 30th 2023!
* "This was so fun to read, especially for an academic book. Hertz's
punk/hacker/kludge perspectives provide a truly fascinating and valuable
ride through the history of the DIY scene. Read it and be inspired!" -
Mitch Altman, Hacker and Inventor; Cofounder, Noisebridge Hackerspace
* "In this groundbreaking study, Hertz argues that the DIY electronic artists
who 'kludge' their own technologies constitute an important artistic
countercultural practice that is an urgent response to the escalating
failures of our technological infrastructures." - Tina Rivers Ryan,
Curator, Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Co-curator of Difference Machines:
Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art
* "A 'DIY Native' who has been perverting technological correctness since
1996, Hertz is the ideal guide for connecting art and DIY culture. This
book is a treasure trove of ideas and a joy to read." - Edward Shanken,
Professor, UC Santa Cruz; author of Art and Electronic Media
* [University of Colorado Boulder] Giving a talk at the University of Colorado
Boulder in the College of Media, Communication and Information for a few
different events, including Garnet Hertz: Media Archaeology + Feminism
Mini-lecture Series: Bending the Future: The Alternate Present of Media
Archaeology as an Art Methodology and as Department of Critical Media
Practices Visiting Artists and Scholars: Garnet Hertz.
* [New Students!] Happy to be examining Mohammed Ali as a doctoral student at
RMIT in the School of Design in Melbourne, Australia.
* [New Students!] Happy to be serving as a doctoral committee member for
Arielle Cerini in her a doctoral work in Electronic Arts in The School of
Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(RPI).
* [New Students!] Happy to be advising Kimia Gholami as a graduate student at
Emily Carr University, and is expected to graduate Spring 2022. Kimia
explains: "I am an Industrial design graduate from the University of Tehran,
where I mainly focused on product development during my studies. I am
currently pursuing a Masters in Interaction design at Emily Carr University
of Art + Design. My graduate work focuses on exploring the potentials
Interaction design in investigating the more-than-human space."
* [New Students!] Happy to be advising Chen XiaoTian as a graduate student at
Emily Carr University, and is expected to graduate Spring 2023. Chen
describes himself and his work as follows: "I'm a UX/UI designer from Ürümqi,
previously lived in Hong Kong and Ireland, now based in Vancouver. I relish
creativity and strategic planning. As a UX/UI designer, my typical day at
work includes wireframing, prototyping, visual design, and UX writing for
mobile applications and websites. I specialize in designing intuitive and
pain-free user experiences and appealing interface that is both functional
and engaging... In my own time, I tend to enjoy the little things in life. I
have a weakness for the science of the mind, language trivia, standup comedy,
classical music, and colour theory."
* [RE:PUBLICA 23 BERLIN] Speaking in Berlin with Regina Sipos at the RE:PUBLICA
23 CONFERENCE - Stage 6 10.06.2022, 10:30 – 11:00 "A discussion about
critical making: what is it, why is it relevant, and why we should talk about
it. In this encounter Regina Sipos, a social entrepreneur and researcher at
the intersection of society and technology, challenges Garnet Hertz, an
internationally recognised designer and electronic artist, known for his work
on critical making. In this session, Regina Sipos discusses with Garnet
Hertz, one of the initiators of Critical Making, the concept, its importance
for a sustainable planet, and the difference between different approaches to
Critical Making. The conversation explores the connection between Critical
Making and responsible innovation practices, highlighting aspects such as
gender diversity, capacity building, and openness, as well as a more artistic
approach to Critical Making."
* [Technical University of Berlin] Happy to be serving as a doctoral
dissertation reviewer at the Technical University of Berlin for Regina Sipos.
The dissertation is titled "Critical Technical Practice in Grassroots
Innovation. Intrinsic Technology Design in Self-Directed Development
Projects". This is scheduled for Spring 2022. A bio on Sipos: "Regina Sipos
studied Communications, Dutch Philology and Master of Education in Budapest
and Antwerp. She founded and set up the first cooperation platform and
incubation program of the United Nations for grassroots social-tech projects.
She supported the AshokaFoundation between 2016-17 with their digital
fellowship strategy and founded her social startup, the Social-Digital
Innovation Initiative in 2016. She is a freelancer supporting the utilization
of digital technologies, technology transfer and development cooperation and
is a fellow at the Centre for Internet and Human Rights."
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ACTIVITY NOTES
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2020
* [NEW ZINE] I made a new quick zine titled "Two Terms: Critical Making +
D.I.Y." that I will be launching at Florian Cramer's Making Matters Symposium
that is hosted by Het Nieuwe Instituut in Den Haag from November 19th to 21st
2020. A PDF can also be downloaded for free at:
http://conceptlab.com/2terms/pdf/hertz-2terms-202011181901.pdf.
If you would like a handmade hardcopy of this book, mail a physical item -
any item at all - to me and I will send you a copy as long as supplies last.
Send the item with a note that includes your postal mailing address to:
> Garnet Hertz
> The Studio for Critical Making, Room C4246
> 520 East 1st Avenue
> Vancouver, BC. V5T 0H2
> Canada
The Making Matters Symposium is described as follows:
> The three day conference is organized by the workgroup Material Practices
> (formerly known as Critical Making). Recent years have seen the emergence
> of a new kind of collective material practices that transgress the
> classical opposition between theory and practice, or thinking and making.
> These practices actively engage with our catastrophic times and yield
> collaborations that connect cultural, technological and more-than-human
> concerns. They show a potential to develop a comprehensive approach to art,
> science and technologies, driven by the necessity to fundamentally
> reimagine the relationship of humans to the world. The conference brings
> together practitioners from various backgrounds and disciplines such as
> artistic research, experimental publishing, visual art, business and
> performance. These practitioners will share their work in which thinking
> and making are entangled, and will discuss the critical potential that this
> entanglement entails. Through online workshops and presentations, the
> contributors invite a broad audience of artists, activists, teachers,
> theorists, students, designers, etherpads and other non-humans, to engage
> with diverse subjects such as alternative economies, feral ecologies,
> shared authorship, xeno-biologies, pedagogies, publishing infrastructures
> and radical collectivities.
* [Glasgow International 2020] I am exhibiting in the Glasgow International
Biennial, co-curated by Sarah Cook in Glasgow, Scotland 24 April - 10 May
2020. Details TBA.
* [Hertz & Ratto in INC Critical Makers Reader] Matt Ratto and I co-authored a
chapter titled "Critical Making and Interdisciplinary Learning: Making as a
Bridge Between Art, Science, Engineering and Social Interventions" that will
be published in The Critical Makers Reader: (Un)learning Technology,
published by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. This book is
edited by Loes Bogers (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences) and Letizia
Chiappini (University of Milan Bicocca) and is the 13th publication of the
INC Reader Series. The Institute of Network Cultures is directed by Geert
Lovink. Details TBA.
* [New Students!] Happy to be advising Kimia Gholami as a graduate student at
Emily Carr University in the Masters of Design program. Kimia explains: "I am
an Industrial design graduate from the University of Tehran, where I mainly
focused on product development during my studies. I am currently pursuing a
Master’s in Interaction design at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. My
graduate work focuses on exploring the potentials Interaction design in
investigating the more-than-human space."
* [Second Canada Research Chair Term Renewal] Happy to announce that my second
5-year term of Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts (Special Tier
2) at Emily Carr University was awarded for renewal in Spring 2019. This
provides a 0/1 teaching load until 2024 among other things. Although most
activities are outlined here, some additional information can be found at The
Studio for Critical Making which I direct.
* [4S 2019] Presented at 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science Annual
Meeting) 2019 in New Orleans on a roundtable organized by John Seberger (UC
Irvine) titled "Media Theory Meets STS". Discussants included Sebastian
Gießmann (University of Siegen), Melissa Gregg (Intel), Heather Wiltse (Umeå
Institute of Design at Umeå University) and myself. Here's the abstract:
There is much exciting work being done at the intersection between media
theory and STS. As objects become 'smart,' as in the Internet of Things,
smart homes, and smart cities, they will continue to shape our knowledge of
the objectified world we have constructed since at least the 18th century.
Contra McLuhan, but in line with the recent work of John Durham Peters, the
human body becomes medium; and scientific knowledge is dependent on novel and
emerging mechanisms of (prosthetic) sensation and perception that allow for
the observation of phenomena. This panel brings together scholars working in
this emerging area to explore how attention to media theory can inform STS
and how STS can inform the study of media theory. We invite scholars from the
fields of media studies and science and technology studies to engage in
theoretically and empirically informed dialogues, which investigate and
define the relationship(s) between media formats and the production of
knowledge in both contemporary and historical periods. Our goal in convening
this panel is to set an agenda for the productive mingling of these fields
towards an understanding of the epistemologies and possible practices that
are embedded in the media objects with which we engage. In short: to know
knowledge-as-mediation, and mediation-as-knowledge. Each panelist is invited
to bring one object (slide, film clip, written excerpt, piece of
technology...) which for them operates in both media theory and STS. After a
short presentation of each object, a panel discussion will ensue.
* [Phone Safe in Somerset House] Phone Safe 2 was substantially re-engineered
and upgraded into Phone Safe 2.1, and is premiering at the major exhibition
titled "24/7" at Somerset House in London, England, co-curated by Sarah Cook.
The exhibition runs 31 Oct 2019 - 23 Feb 2020.
2019
* [Clemenceau 2019] Visited Clemenceau, Saskatchewan in August 2019 related to
research for my forthcoming book (MIT Press).
* [NØ SCHOOL] I taught at NØ SCHOOL NEVERS in Summer 2019 in Nevers, France.
Designed as a hybrid between learning, residency and research, NØ SCHOOL is
aimed at students, artists, designers, makers, hackers and educators who wish
to further their skills and engage in critical research and discussions
around the social and environmental impacts of information and communication
technologies. I ran a daily "Critical Making Studio" with the cohort of
students with Benjamin Gaulon and Fred Paulino. Other teachers included Ted
Davis, Regine Debatty, Martin De Bie, Teresa Dillon, Sarah Garcin, Gijs
Gieskes, Dasha Ilina, Ewa Justka, Karl Klomp, Sename Koffi Agbodjinou, Lovid,
Alessandro Ludovico, Kris Madden, Nicolas Maigret, Alex McLean, Nicolas Nova,
Claire Richard, Antonio Roberts, Maria Roszkowska, Lourens Rozema, Jerome
Saint-Clair, Phillip David Stearns, Chris Sugrue, Daniel Temkin, TokTek,
::vtol::, Systaime, Jon Cates, and Janet Gunter.
* [Retrash] Worked with Patrick Casey O'Shea, Fred Paulino, Regina Sipos, and
Ewa Justka to make the Retrash Stamping Machine at NØ SCHOOL NEVERS in
Nevers, France during July 2019.
* [Digital Democracies] I presented a workshop at the 2019 Digital Democracies
Conference, with Gillian Russell and Craig Badke at Simon Fraser University.
The event was organized by Wendy Chun.
* [UBC] I presented the season opening lecture at the Designing for People
Lecture Series at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
* [Harvey Mudd] I presented the season opening talk at the Nelson Distinguished
Speaker Series Lecture, at Harvey Mudd College in Pomona, California. After
the lecture, I held a workshop titled "Re-Imagining the Now". Here's a
description of the event: "At the recent groundbreaking for the new Scott A.
McGregor Computer Science Center, HMC community members spoke excitedly about
the makerspace it will contain. To prepare for this important space on
campus, the Nelson Speaker Series will provide an arena for discussions about
promoting maker cultures that are mobile, use living materials, re-make with
recycled parts and cross disciplinary boundaries. The first event of the
series is a noontime talk and workshop on Friday, Oct. 11, by internationally
acclaimed artist Garnet Hertz." Learn more and register at
https://www.hmc.edu/calendar/events/nelson-speaker-series-garnet-hertz/.
* [Art Center MDP] I gave a lecture to the Media Design Program cohort at the
Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California on October 14th 2019.
* [UCLA DMA] I did guest critiques with MFA students in the Design Media Art
graduate program at UCLA on October 10th 2019.
* [UCI] I gave a guest lecture at UC Irvine on October 10th 2019.
* [C&C '19] New paper titled "Unpacking the Thinking and Making Behind a Slow
Technology Research Product with Slow Game" (Odom, Bertran, Hertz, Lin, Chen,
Harkness, Wakkary) was presented at the 2019 ACM Conference on Creativity and
Cognition (C&C '19) in San Diego on June 23-26, 2019. Since 1993, this
conference series brings together artists, scientists, designers, educators,
and researchers to more deeply understand how people engage individually and
socially in creative processes and how computation and other technology can
affect creative outcomes. Here's the abstract of the paper: "Motivated by
prior work on everyday creativity, we adopt a design-oriented approach seeks
to move beyond designing for explicit interactions to also include the
implicit, incremental and, at times even, unknowing encounters that slowly
emerge among people, technologies, and artifacts over time. We contribute an
investigation into designing for slowness grounded in the practice of making
a design artifact called Slow Game. We offer a detailed critical-reflective
accounting of our process of making Slow Game into a research product. In
attending to key design moves across our process, we reveal hidden challenges
in designing slow technology research products and discuss how our findings
can be mobilized in future work."
* [TEACHING: GSMD 510] During Spring 2019 I taught "Graduate Design Studio II
(GSMD 510)" which is a core studio course for the first year cohort of the
Masters of Design program at Emily Carr University.
2018
* [Speculative Design Oct 12 2018] Speculative Design open studio event at The
Studio for Critical Making @ 5pm October 12th 2018. I will host, and the
event will feature Gillian Russell, Jentery Sayers, Svitlana Matviyenko, Ian
Wojtowicz, Noel Rubin and Craig Badke. Open studio events are planned every
second Friday @ 5pm at Emily Carr University, Room C4246. (The first event
this season was on September 28th 2018.)
* [Disobedient Electronics at Nuit Noire 2018] A special edition of Disobedient
Electronics: Protest will be exhibited and given away for free in the
unauthorized Paris exhibition "Nuit Noire" that takes place in the
underground tunnels and catacombs beneath the city. An installation related
to the project will also be set up underground - see Le laboratoire
souterrain - Nuit Noire for details. The event is on the evening of October
6th 2018.
* [TEACHING: How To Find the Meaning of Life] During Spring 2018 I taught
"Graduate Design Studio II, or How To Find the Meaning of Life (GSMD 510)"
which is a core studio course for the first year cohort of the Masters of
Design program at Emily Carr University.
* [SLSA '18] I presented at the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for
Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA '18) in Toronto, Canada. The
conference was titled "Out of Mind" and was held in Toronto from November
15-18, 2018. The panel was titled "Beyond Making 2: Remaking,
Counterfunctionality, and Crapentry" chaired by Marcel O'Gorman, and
presenters included Lai-Tze Fan, Marcel O'Gorman (both from University of
Waterloo) and myself. The title of my presentation was titled "Beyond Making:
DIY Practices in Electronic Art". For more information about the conference,
see http://litsciarts.org/slsa18
* [RIT Interaction Design Workshop] I presented at the 2018 Interaction Design
Workshop at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the College of Art and
Design on March 23rd 2018.
* [Neural 60: We Need Something Better Than The Maker Movement] I wrote a short
piece for Neural magazine ("Critical digital culture and media arts since
1993") titled "We Need Something Better Than The Maker Movement". This is
published in Neural Issue 60 (Summer 2018), and is distributed with physical
stickers in the print magazine: see the sticker text at makermanifesto.com
and the publication at neural.it.
* [Sticker: Maker Manifesto] See makermanifesto.com for details - free stickers
available.
* [New Media Art XYZ] "NEW MEDIA ART XYZ" is a collaborative publishing project
that explores ideas about where new media art in the 1990s 'went'. The
project seeks submissions from old and young new media artists, curators,
festival organizers, writers, electronic artists, media theorists, hackers,
haters or others interested in the topic of how new media has shifted, moved
and evolved in the art community over the past two decades. Deadline for
submissions: December 31st 2018. See http://newmediaart.xyz for details.
* [Keynote: U of Toronto] I gave a keynote lecture titled "The 2018 Maker's
Bill of Rights: Reflections on the First Decade of Maker Culture" at the
University of Toronto School of Information conference titled "For Whom The
Medium Matters III". The event took place April 27, 2018 and was organized by
Sarah Sharma, and was held at the historical Marshall McLuhan Coach House.
The event also featured talks by Alessandra Renzi, Philippe Theophanidis,
Victoria Tahmasebi, Sara Grimes, Cait McKinney, Jaqueline McLeod Rogers, Tero
Karppi, Nicole Cohen, Natalie Coulter, Felan Parker, Helene Mialet and Sarah
Sharma.
* [CHI'18 Paper: Slow Game] Co-authored paper accepted to the CHI'18
conference: "Attending to Slowness and Temporality with Olly and Slow Game: A
Design Inquiry Into Supporting Longer-Term Relations with Everyday
Computational Objects" - see
https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3173574.3173651. The conference ran
April 21 - 26, 2018 in Montreal. Abstract: Slowness has emerged as a rich
lens to frame HCI investigations into supporting longer-term human-technology
relations. Yet, there is a need to further address how we design for slowness
on conceptual and practical levels. Drawing on the concepts of unawareness,
intersections, and ensembles, we contribute an investigation into designing
for slowness and temporality grounded in design practice through two cases:
Olly and Slow Game. We designed these artifacts over two and a half years
with careful attention to how the set of concepts influenced key design
decisions in terms of their form, materials, and computational qualities. Our
designer-researcher approach revealed that, when put into practice, the
concepts helped generatively grapple with slowness and temporality, but are
in need of further development to be mobilized for design. We critically
reflect on insights emerging across our practice-based research to
reflexively refine the concepts and better support future HCI research and
practice.
2017
* [TOUR: Disobedient Electronics: 2017 Protest Tour] I am doing a 7 country
tour related to Disobedient Electronics: Protest during September and October
2017:
* Sept 23 & 24 - London, UK - Victoria & Albert Museum
* Sept 25 - Southampton, UK - Winchester School of Art, University of
Southampton
* Sept 26 & 27 - Edinburgh, Scotland - University of Edinburgh
* Sept 28 & 29 - The Hague, Netherlands - Royal Academy of Art
* Sept 30 & Oct 1 - Brussels, Belgium - iMAL, Center for Digital Cultures &
Technology
* Oct 2 - Paris, France - Parsons Paris
* Oct 5 - Paris, France - École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs
* Oct 5 - Paris, France - Centre Pompidou
* Oct 18 - Berlin, Germany - VW Forum Berlin
* Oct 19 - 24 - Funchal, Madeira, Portugal - Madeira Interactive Technologies
Institute
* [Grad Students: ECUAD] I am principal advisor for four graduate students at
Emily Carr during 2017-2018: Rya Ding (Master of Fine Arts, 2018), Yijun Guo
(Master of Fine Arts, 2019), Zexi/Tammy Tan (Master of Design, 2019), and
Yufei/Michelle Yao (Master of Design, 2019).
* [NEW BOOK: Disobedient Electronics: Protest] Disobedient Electronics: Protest
(2017) is a limited edition publishing project that highlights
confrontational work from industrial designers, electronic artists, hackers
and makers from 10 countries that disobey conventions, especially work that
is used to highlight injustices, discrimination or abuses of power.
Approximately half of the 25 contributors are academics, while the other half
are from the broader maker, tech and art communities. Topics include the wage
gap between women and men, the objectification of women's bodies, gender
stereotypes, wearable electronics as a form of protest, robotic forms of
protest, counter-government-surveillance and privacy tools, and devices
designed to improve an understanding of climate change. As an experiment in
research dissemination, three hundred handmade copies were produced and were
disseminated for free to targeted researchers that wanted to include the book
as a part of academic curriculum, reviewers writing critical responses to the
publication, libraries and nonprofits, or curators including the book in an
exhibition.
* [EXHIBITION: Future Flux Festival - Rotterdam] Disobedient Electronics:
Protest (2017) made its European Premiere at the Future Flux Festival 2017
(Friday 9 July 11:00 to Saturday 10 July 18:00) in Rotterdam, NL. This is the
European premiere of the publication. At Future Flux Festival, you can print
and bind your own copy of the publication, and even add your own page of
thoughts on the subject of disobedient electronics. Curated by Michelle
Kasprzak. Exhibition featured James Auger (GB), Gijs van Bon (NL), Debbie
Ding (GB), Dries Depoorter (BE), Peter Flemming (CA), Garnet Hertz (CA),
Darsha Hewitt (CA), Loop.pH (GB), Matthew Plummer-Fernandez (GB/CO) en Julien
Deswaef (BE), Georgina Voss (GB), Leanne Wijnsma (NL). Venue:
Onderseebootlookds, RDM-Straat 1, 3089 JS Rotterdam.
* [REVIEW: We Make Money Not Art] Disobedient Electronics: Protest is reviewed
at We Make Money Not Art by Regine Debatty: "The booklet's manifesto calls
for more design (or art) that gets out of the sleek graduation shows and
galleries, confronts sociopolitical issues head-on and bites back. As he sums
up, "Design can be how to punch Nazis in the face, minus the punching." Hertz
isn't afraid to ruffle a few feathers... Disobedient Electronics is a great
starting point for a much-needed discussion about how art, design and
creative practices in general can challenge issues such as homophobia,
sexism, racism, economic inequalities, political status-quo, etc."
* [Powell & Hertz Go Datawalking] Alison Powell (LSE) takes Garnet Hertz (Emily
Carr University) on an abridged datawalk while discussing the upcoming
workshop "Data Walking Vancouver" on June 7, 2017:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8NtDLufj3M.
* [Spring 2017 Masters Graduates] My ECUAD masters students Matt Harkness
(MDes) and Scott Mallory (MFA) graduated from Emily Carr in Spring 2017.
Also, my advisee Arthur Or graduated with an Masters of Architecture degree
from UBC.
* [Event: Electronic Disobedience] Open studio event at The Studio for Critical
Making on April 12th 2017. Hertz's third year Industrial Design class -
"Critical Making and Electronic Objects: INDD-310-S003 Spring 2017" at Emily
Carr University invites you to see live demos of their latest work using a
combination of electronics, 3D printing, CNC machining and open source
Arduino code. We have built artifacts that explore disobedience and protest
through the development of experimental electronic objects - utilizing
physical design artifacts as the site of cultural inquiry. We invite you to
come see our work, talk to us, share food and music, and discuss the overlaps
between design, art and critical studies. Events will take place in both The
Studio for Critical Making (Room 190) and the Wearable and Interactive
Products Lab (Room 190B). For photos of work done in this class, see
https://www.flickr.com/photos/youraccount/albums/72157675274448283. For
examples of tutorials built by my students, see The Improved Chopping
Machine, Vibration Eye Mask, Hologram Display Projector, Glo Flo, Energy
Light, or Collaborative Music Making.
2016
* [National Portfolio Day - 4 December 2016] Reviewed portfolios of potential
incoming undergraduate students at Emily Carr University.
* [Art Center Graduate Graphic Design Program - Nov 2016] Presented at Art
Center College of Design (Pasadena, California) on November 1st 2016 in the
Graduate Graphic Design Program. Talk title: "Mapping Critical Paths in
Contemporary Design Practice: Critical Making, Critical Design, Values in
Design, Adversarial Design and Material Speculations". Organized by Matt
Manos.
* [SFU - Oct 2016] Gave a lecture on Wednesday Oct 12 2016 from 12:30-2:20pm in
SUR 5380 in the School of Interactive Art and Technology at Simon Fraser
University (Surrey Campus).
* [Symposium: Unhanded, Ottawa - September 17th, 2016] Unhanded: Making Under
the Influence of Digitalism - this Symposium brings together a range of
perspectives from different disciplines to discuss, debate and interrogate
what it means to make objects in the 21st century. Through a series of four
panel discussions we will explore ideas around language, materials, mistakes,
challenges and opportunities when working at the intersection of digital and
physical technologies. In this symposium, I addressed the question "What new
relationships to materials emerge in the use of digital and mechanical
tools?" with Rachel Gotlieb, Joanna Berzowska, and Greg Sims. "In this panel
we ask about the variety of new relationships with materials that emerging
with the increasing ubiquitousness of digital technologies. With the
increased complexity of tools we wonder how do we learn about materials? How
do we get to know them? How do we share this knowledge? We can now know the
molecular structure of wood or metal without touching it. Is this a more
intimate relationship than working directly with our hands? Does it matter?
If the objects coming out of digital and mechanical processes are more
removed from our handywork, how might they carry the mark of the machine?
Should we be able to read the machine in the material?". View the video of
Hertz's talk at Unhanded 2016, focusing on the tropes of technological
supersession and liberation - and comparing owning a 3D printer to an
interpersonal relationship.
* [University of Ottawa, Department of Visual Arts - September 16th, 2016] I
presented on my recent work at the University of Ottawa Department of Visual
Arts on September 16th 2016 and did one-on-one studio critiques with graduate
students in the Department. Organized by Catherine Richards.
* [INTERVIEW: Neural - Summer 2016] Alessandro Ludovico interviewed me in
NEURAL 54, MAKING IT UP in the Summer 2016 issue. The issue also features
interviews with Darsha Hewitt, Dmitry Morozov, Dennis de Bel and Davide
Quayola.
* ['People' at Triennale di Milano] A new project, titled 'People' was
installed at the Triennale di Milano at the Fabbrica del Vapore venue in
Italy from May 18th to September 12th 2016. The piece was constructed on site
on May 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st 2016.
* [Leonardo / SIGGRAPH Art Papers] I was on the selection committee for the
2016 Leonardo / SIGGRAPH Art Papers publication and conference track. Art
Papers investigate the roles of artists and the methods of art-making in an
increasingly global, networked, and technologically mediated world. Art
Papers contribute to our understanding of the history of art, inform
contemporary artistic and critical practices, and anticipate and stimulate
future trajectories.
* [New Project Prototype: Unubiquitous] Unubiquitous is an open source mobile
phone platform based on David Mellis' DIY Cellphone. Ubiquitous communication
technologies like smartphones have contributed to the rise of interpersonal
interconnections, producing many beneficial results. Yet, at the same time
this has led to the public feeling overloaded with pervasive information
technologies (Sellen & Whittaker 2010). Our project goal is to build
fully-functional design artifacts that critically frame this problem in the
digital economy and offer imaginative solutions. We will accomplish this by
prototyping and manufacturing "unubiquitous" cellular phone-like devices
that, somewhat ironically, help people disconnect from technology and
reconnect face-to-face. Our aim is to use these devices as case studies to
deliver a clearly articulated framework for 'critical making': building
creative technologies as an alternate mode of knowledge dissemination.
* [New Project: Faxbook] Faxbook is a fax-based social networking platform.
Blurb: "Tired of wasting your entire day on Facebook? Tired of apps and wish
you could return to 1986? Faxbook can help. Delete your Facebook account,
dust off that old fax machine, and get connected to us on Faxbook: a real,
working fax-based social network for social media dropouts. To get started,
download the Faxbook profile page, fill it out, and actually fax it to us at
+1-604-630-7427. We look forward to hearing from you." Federico Martelli
wrote an article titled Faxbook, il social network per i fax for Motherboard
Italy on May 17th 2016.
* [Talk: WeMake Milan] Gave a talk at WeMake hackerspace in Milan on May 16th
2016 at their Arduino User's Group.
* [New Publication: What is Critical Making - Current 07] Current is a
multi-platform design journal that exists to showcase creative,
practice-based and applied research. Current 07 takes on the theme of
"Critical Making: Theories, Models & Frameworks" with articles written around
the subjects of critical making, critical use and design, social innovation
for sustainability and behaviour change in design. Our invited authors
include Lisa Groccott, from Parsons The New School, contributing "Make Known,
Make Possible, Make Shift: the role of designing in behavior change"; Kate
Fletcher, founder of the Slow Fashion movement, in a interview by Louise St.
Pierre; and Garnet Hertz, Canada Research Chair, contributing "What is
Critical Making?" Emily Carr University faculty also submitted articles to
this issue. They include: Keith Doyle, discussing the new research area
Material Matters; Helene Day Fraser, presenting a paper on the notion of
Critical Use; and Louise St. Pierre, introducing DESIS Lab work at the
university. A number of student papers on undergraduate and graduate research
projects are also included in this issue.
* [Presentation: Insuetude, Columbia University] Presented at "Insuetude:
Conversations in Technological Discard and Archaeological Recuperation" with
Wolfgang Ernst, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Bethany Nowviskie, Steven Jackson and
others - April 28-29th 2016, Columbia University, Heyman Center for the
Humanities.
* [Exhibition: All Around Us, Wood Street Galleries] Exhibited Cockroach
Controlled Mobile Robot at All Around Us curated by Ali Momeni and installed
from April 22nd - June 19 2016. For more documentation, see All Around Us -
Hertz Flickr Photos.
* [Event: The Post-Optimal] Open studio event at The Studio for Critical Making
on April 15th 2016. Hertz's second year industrial design class at Emily Carr
University invites you to see live demos of their latest work using a
combination of electronics, 3D printing, CNC machining and open source
Arduino code. These projects explore "post-optimal" design, or design that is
concerned with more than just trying to make products easier to use, faster
or more convenient. We have built artifacts that explore critical making, or
utilizing physical design artifacts as the site of cultural inquiry. We
invite you to come see our work, talk to us, share food and music, and
discuss the overlaps between design, art and critical studies. Events will
take place in both The Studio for Critical Making (Room 190) and the Wearable
and Interactive Products Lab (Room 190B) - come on out, bring food and your
friends. Guests are also welcome to bring and demo their own projects. Photos
here.
* [Project: The World is Getting Worse] 3D printed porcelain experiments during
April 2016 using depressing data about the world to extrude bottles for
collecting tears. Research assistant: Shannon Mortimer. The World is Getting
Worse on Flickr.
* [Doctoral Committee: Emit Snake-Beings] Was on the doctoral committee for
Emit Snake-Beings, who successfully defended his PhD at the University of
Waikato (New Zealand) on February 14th 2016.
* [Event: Open Studio Feb 2016] Open studio event at The Studio for Critical
Making with Ron Wakkary's SFU students on February 4th 2016 - photos here.
* [Lecture: HCI@UBC 13 Jan 2016] Lecture at University of British Columbia's
(UBC) Computer Science Department in their 2015-2016 HCI@UBC Lecture Series,
in a talk titled "Unubiquitous Computing: Critiquing Human Computer
Interaction Through Critical Making". Abstract: New communication
technologies have contributed to the rise of interpersonal interconnections,
but have at the same time led to the public feeling overloaded with pervasive
information technologies. Hertz outlines his recent work as Canada Research
Chair in Design and Media Art, currently focused on building fully functional
technical objects that both highlight this problem and offer imaginative
solutions to improve Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Hertz is also working
to deliver a clearly articulated framework for the process of integrating
creative technologies as an alternate mode of knowledge dissemination, titled
'critical making'."
* [Course: DESN211 Critical Making - Spring 2016] I taught "Critical Making" as
a second year undergraduate industrial design course at Emily Carr University
of Art and Design in Spring 2016. Students in this course will combine
critical thinking with DIY and design methods to explore 'critical making'.
Students will implement and critique the practice of making through both
literature and hands-on studio work. Foundational literature from the fields
of design, informatics and the humanities will be explored to provide a
context for the field, including reading on the topics of design fiction,
speculative design, maker culture, values in design, ludic design and
adversarial design. Hands-on studio work will include high and low-fidelity
prototyping techniques including sketching, physical prototyping, electronics
and physical computing. Students will envision and create devices and
experiences that critically explore contemporary social and culturally
relevant technological themes such as, agency and presence, community,
privacy, intimacy, environments, health, education, economics and activism.
See the DESN211 Critical Making Syllabi.
2015
* [Jesse Colin Jackson at Studio] Jesse Colin Jackson gave a talk at The Studio
for Critical Making titled "Pixels in the Material World: From Frank Lloyd
Wright to Marching Cubes" on November 24th 2015.
* [Unstable Signal: Glitch Video] VIVO - NEW ADDITIONS #10 | UNSTABLE SIGNAL:
GLITCH VIDEO - I co-juried these videos, which were screened on November 11th
2015 at 7pm at VIVO in Vancouver.
* [Bent] I gave a lecture at VIVO (Vancouver) on October 27th 2015 - photos
here.
* [New Project in Development: Slow Game] I've been collaborating with Will
Odom over the past year on a project titled "Slow Game" - a physical video
game with a very low frequency of interaction: one move a day. The game
exists as a small 5cm cube, with a low resolution display consisting of 64
tiny white lights. The game is based on the classic video game 'snake', where
the player manoeuvres a line which grows in length, with the line itself
being a primary obstacle. The game is played by physically rotating the cube,
which turns the direction that the snake moves. By reducing the feedback loop
to a frequency of a day, Slow Game radically challenges our memory,
observation and patience. The project was initially inspired by Ishac Bertran
and is being worked on by a student research team including Henry Lin (SFU),
Sam Beck (ECUAD) and Perry Tan (SFU). We plan on releasing this project in
2017.
* [New Paper: Material Speculation] Material Speculation: Actual Artifacts for
Critical Inquiry (2015) -- Co-authored paper by Wakkary, Odom, Hauser, Hertz,
and Lin presented at "Aarhus 2015: Critical Alternatives" a decennial
conference that has been instrumental for setting new agendas for critically
engaged thinking about information technology. Paper abstract: "Speculative
and fictional approaches have long been implemented in human-computer
interaction and design techniques through scenarios, prototypes, forecasting,
and envisionments. Recently, speculative and critical design approaches have
reflectively explored and questioned possible, and preferable futures in HCI
research. We propose a complementary concept - material speculation - that
utilizes actual and situated design artifacts in the everyday as a site of
critical inquiry. We see the literary theory of possible worlds and the
related concept of the counterfactual as informative to this work. We present
five examples of interaction design artifacts that can be viewed as material
speculations. We conclude with a discussion of characteristics of material
speculations and their implications for future design-oriented research."
Available from:
conceptlab.com/writing/MaterialSpeculation-Wakkary-Odom-Hauser-Hertz-Lin-Aarhus2015.pdf
or at ResearchGate.
* [New Book: Conversations in Critical Making] CTheory released Conversations
in Critical Making (Hertz, ed.) in 2015: full book available for free
download. Abstract: Against the current of disposable technology and
estranged digital devices, critical making brings together individuals
working at the intersection of critical thinking and hands-on practice. What
follows are a series of interviews with leading theorists and practitioners
of critical making. Discussions range from the political implications of
critical making to creative reflections on the place of technology in culture
and society. Originally released in 2012 by Teleharmonium; revised and
updated in 2015 for CTheory Books.
* [New Project in Development: Critical Making Design Process Cards] The
Critical Making Design Process Cards are a physical card set built as an aid
for technology designers to sketch and prototype new designs that are
culturally relevant, socially engaged and challenging of current biases in
commercial design. They bring together critically-engaged design methods and
concepts like critical making (Ratto), critical technical practice (Agre),
reflective design (Sengers), near futures (Bleecker), critical design (Dunne
& Raby), values in design (Nissenbaum), tactical media (Lovink) and
adversarial design (DiSalvo) into a practical brainstorming tool suitable for
university classroom or commercial studio use. The cards have been tested at
Emily Carr, The New School, Univeristy of Victoria and the University of
Copenhagen.
* [New Project: Phone Safe 2] New project launched (August 2015): Phone Safe 2
is a public kiosk system built by Hertz for individuals to give up their
mobile phones. The system consists of a heavy metal box resembling a bank
safe with a slot in the top to put your phone. Pressing a button adds time
that your phone will be locked inside and there is no way to reduce your
time: you must simply wait until the timer has elapsed. Passers-by can hit
the button and add more time. The project features an alphanumeric 16
character LED display that seems to be hungry for more phones, but when the
timer has elapsed the door pops open and users can retrieve their handsets
from the plush red interior of the device. This project was exhibited in the
21st International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2015) at the Museum of
Vancouver between August 16 - October 12, 2015 in "Lively Objects": a show
that brings together artworks "that vibrate with mechanical, digital, and
magical forces. In Lively Objects, artefacts do not quietly await
appreciation; these enchanted artworks disrupt traditional museum categories
and presentation techniques. They start surprising conversations with
neighbouring objects and invite visitors to reconsider the museum
experience." Lively Objects was curated by Caroline Seck Langill and Lizzie
Muller. The exhibition featured works by Wendy Coburn, Steve Daniels, Judith
Doyle, Kate Hartman, Garnet Hertz, Simone Jones & Lance Winn, Germaine Koh,
and Norman White.
* [New Project Prototype: Phone Safe 1] New project prototype (January 2015):
Phone Safe 1 - a locked box with a slot in the top to put your mobile phone.
Pressing a button adds time that your phone will be locked inside. Phone is
not retrievable while in the locked box and there is no way to reduce your
time. This version of the project features a four digit 7 segment LED timer
that counts down seconds, which triggers an electric solenoid to unlock the
door when the time has elapsed.
* [Talks: Early 2015] I gave a number of public talks and private workshops in
early 2015. Events included:
* Emily Carr University: January 27th 2015 (3:50pm) - Jamie Hilder's course
"Art Now: Studies in Contemporary Art" (AHIS304).
* Art Center: January 29th 2015 (11-11:30) - Critical Frameworks, Media
Design Program, organized by Anne Burdick. Skype conversation with Anthony
Dunne and Matt Ratto.
* Simon Fraser University: School of Interactive Arts + Technology's
Colloquium on Febraury 4th 2015 at 12:30pm in SUR 5380 in a lecture titled
"Things to Think With: Critical Making as Research".
* The New School: February 9th 2015 (6pm) - School of Media Studies' Spring
2015 Monday Night Lecture Series in the Kellen Auditorium on the ground
floor of 66 5th Avenue in NYC.
* The New School: February 9th 2015 (2pm) workshop at the Reemergent Media
Research Lab.
* Emily Carr University: February 26th 2015 (8:30am) - Guest lecture in
Katherine Gillieson's Communication Design 4th year core class in SB390.
* University of Victoria: March 18th 2015 - The Pacific Centre for Technology
and Culture (PACTAC) Lecture titled "Rethinking Technology: Art and
Design".
* University of Victoria: March 18th 2015 - Workshop titled "Critical Making
Design Process Workshop" at the Maker Lab in the Humanities.
* Washington State University: March 26th 2015 - "Critical Making: Rethinking
the Maker Movement" Critical Making in Digital Humanities Webinar Series
organized by Roger Whitson.
2014
* [Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts] As of Fall 2014 I am "Canada
Research Chair in Design and Media Arts" at Emily Carr University of Art +
Design in Vancouver Canada. Press release and faculty profile.
* [Critical Making - Downloadable] Critical Making is now fully released online
as PDFs. Initially, one article per day was released between April 27th and
June 27th 2014 via Twitter: @criticalpdfs.
* [Material Matters December 2014] A lecture was given at the Material Matters
3D Printing Forum at Emily Carr University on December 11th, 2014.
* [ITU Copenhagen October 2014] Lecture at IT University of Copenhagen,
Technologies in Practice Research Group on Friday Oct 3rd 2014.
* [Malmö, Sweden October 2014] I gave the opening keynote at The Annual MU-RIT
Partnership Symposium, which took place in Malmö Sweden October 1-3, 2014.
This symposium between Rochester Institute of Technology and Malmö University
aims to further the partnership of the two universities through the following
three themes: 1) The Urban Environment and Sustainability 2) Interactive
Media, Visual Culture and Digital Humanities 3) Human-Machine Interactions,
Software Designs and the Designs of Software.
* [Best of CHI 2014] The paper authored by Silvia Lindtner, Paul Dourish and I
titled Emerging Sites of HCI Innovation: Hackerspaces, Hardware Startups &
Incubators, received a SIGCHI Best of CHI Best Paper Award. Info: "The SIGCHI
Best of CHI Awards honor exceptional submissions to SIGCHI sponsored
conferences. Receiving a Best Paper Award is an outstanding accomplishment.
It indicates that the CHI Associate Chairs and Best Papers committee
identified your paper as being among the top 1% of all submission to CHI
2014." The paper will be presented at CHI 2014 on April 28th at 2pm in Room
718B in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Read the paper here.
* [Critical Machines Exhibition, Beirut] Critical Making is featured in an
exhibition at the AUB Byblos Bank Art Gallery titled "Critical Machines"
curated by Octavian Esanu. The exhibition runs from March 6 - June 26, 2014.
Artists include Art & Language, Burak Arikan, Freee art collective, Janah
Hilwé, Khalil Rabah, Vadim Zakharov, André Breton, Critical Art Ensemble,
Marcel Duchamp, Andrea Fraser, Heresies Collective, William Hogarth, György
Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay (Artpool), Kenneth Goldsmith, Hans Haacke &
Pierre Bourdieu, Pablo Helguera, Garnet Hertz, Wassily Kandinsky, Allan
Kaprow, Hassan Khan, Andrei Monastyrsky, William Morris, Walid Raad, Ad
Reinhardt, Temporary Services, Gregory Sholette, Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak
Afrassiabi and others. For more information, see the Critical Machines
overview and curatorial statement.
* [FutureEverything 2014] I spoke at FutureEverything 2014 in Manchester on the
topic of critical making and speculative design. Other speakers included Adam
Harvey, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Anab Jain,
Anthony Dunne, Dan Williams, Eleanor Saitta, Golan Levin, James Bridle, Koert
van Mensvoort, Liam Young, Paul Graham Raven, Seb Chan and Tom Armitage. The
event ran from March 27th to April 1st 2014 - more information is available
at http://futureeverything.org/.
* [2014 Making Subjects] I spoke at and hosted a workshop at the 2014 Making
Subjects Conference at Indiana University on March 6 - 7 2014. The central
objective of this conference is to explicate the ways that individual people
inhabit subjectivities of information and how we as researchers can
understand, design for, and intervene upon these processes. To ground this
work, we focus on a single, important example: the emergence of the maker
identity, referring to the practices of hacking, DIY, repair, tinkering, and
so forth.
* [2014 Maker Faire Shenzhen] I spoke at the 2014 Shenzhen Maker Faire in
Shenzhen China, which ran from April 6th and 7th 2014. I also visited and did
research at Seeed Studio and Chaihuo Hackerspace in Shenzhen.
* [2014 Xin Che Jian] I spoke at and did research at the Xin Che Jian
Hackerspace in Shanghai China with Silvia Lindtner and Amelia Guimarin from
April 9th to 12th 2014.
* [PRI's The World: Zine Workshop at NYC Resistor] The zine-making workshop
that Silvia Lintner and I led at NYC Resistor (Jan 19th 2014) was featured as
part of a story by PRI's The World titled A history of the modern world as
told by everyday throwaway ephemera on February 4th 2014 by Alina Simone.
* [New Book - Inside Hackerspaces: NYC Resistor] On January 19th 2014, Silvia
Lindtner and I led a one day workshop for members of NYC Resistor - a
hackerspace in New York City that is best known as the birthplace of the
Makerbot - to produce a handmade zine in 12 hours that documented the space
and the projects that members were working on. This is a part of the
NSF-funded project "How Do-It-Yourself Makers are Reinventing Production,
Labor, and Innovation". A video and photos of the zine we produced are
available.
* [Critical Digital Studies, 2nd Edition] Now available: Hertz & Parikka
"Archaeologies of Media Art" in Critical Digital Studies: A Reader (Second
Edition), Kroker & Kroker (eds.) University of Toronto Press - more
information at U of T Press website.
* [Critical Making in Digital Humanities at MLA 2014] I was invited respondent
at the Modern Language Association (MLA) 2014 Conference on the panel
"Critical Making in Digital Humanities" on Sunday, January 12th 2014. Roger
Whitson, Washington State Univ., Pullman organized the event, with two papers
presented by four people: 1. "Theorizing Collaborative Making: Between
Writing, Programming, and Development" by Amaranth Borsuk (Univ. of
Washington, Bothell) and Dene M. Grigar (Washington State Univ., Vancouver);
and 2. "Toward a History of Critical Making in the Humanities" by Kari M.
Kraus (Univ. of Maryland, College Park) and Jentery Sayers (Univ. of
Victoria). See the overview, schedule, and archive.
2013
* [New NSF Hackerspace Grant] I am Co-PI with Silvia Lindtner on an exciting
new project funded by the National Science Foundation, titled "How
Do-It-Yourself Makers are Reinventing Production, Labor, and Innovation"
(2013-2016) Here's an overview: The contemporary landscape of information
technology production is one that has been profoundly influenced by the
emergence of so-called 'maker culture' since the 1960s and 1970s, with the
technology landscape full of products that depend upon open source and
similar alternative models of production. Society currently finds itself in
the middle of a new maker movement through a growing network of
'hackerspaces' or 'makerspaces' that expand ideas and practices of the Web
generation into hardware and manufacturing. Hackerpaces are cooperative
studios where people develop new approaches to technology design based on the
open sharing of software code and hardware designs through the use of
technology such as computer controlled laser cutters, 3-D printers, and
microcontroller kits. Hackerpaces are places where new models of innovation
are explored, where values of openness and participation are re-assessed, and
where new relationships between people and technology are forged. To
understand these phenomena, this NSF-funded project directed by Silvia
Lindtner and myself will conduct one of the first multinational ethnographic
research studies of four hackerpaces in the United States and China. The goal
of the project is to understand the relationship between cultural and
material practices in the maker movement. Accordingly, the focus is on the
daily practices in makerspaces, with particular attention to how they
experiment with models of social organization, distributed collaboration, and
peer production. Through ethnographic investigation, the project will examine
the questions of how DIY (Do-It-Yourself) making as a practice, and
hackerpaces as physical sites, contribute to the development of new models of
technical, economic, and social innovation. This exploration will greatly
increase knowledge on non-professional expertise and alternative forms of
technical knowledge, distributed collaboration, and inter-cultural exchange
of ideas and artifacts. As sites of DIY production, hackerpaces provide an
important interface between technological production and the everyday world.
At the same time, they may also represent important sites for rethinking
contemporary processes of technological and commercial innovation. This
research will help to assess and understand these possibilities, support
educational developments in this area (such as hackerpaces infrastructures
within schools), explore alternative forms of small-scale commercial
production, incentivise participation, and develop intellectual property.
This project will provide empirical and conceptual material to support social
processes around these questions. As a large-scale public practice, DIY
production provides an important forum for connecting academic-based and
citizen-based models of knowledge production, and the opportunity for
outreach into communities in which scientific and technical work is part of
their identity.
* [New Art Center MDP Students] As of Fall 2013, I am on the Masters committee
of Greg Ahn, Ian Besler, Sangwoo Han and Gene Lee who are in the Lab Track of
the Media Design Practices Program at Art Center College of Design in
Pasadena, California.
* [FabLearn 2013] Newly published, October 2013: Hertz, Hayes & Guimarin. Toy
Hacking: Preliminary Results in Creative Electronic Workshops for Informal
Science Education. FabLearn 2013 Digital Fabrication in Education Conference
Proceedings, Stanford University, published online at
http://fablearn.stanford.edu/2013/papers/.
* [Santiago, Chile] I was in Santiago Chile at Artek and Santiago Makerspace
between August 30th - September 10th 2013. Projects included producing a new
book titled "Inside Hackerspaces: Stgo. Makerspace" and a solo exhibition at
Artek titled "Santiago: Bicycle Wifi Portrait". Documentation forthcoming.
* [Moscow, Russia] I exhibited at the Moscow Art Week 2013 between September
15th - 22nd 2013, and gave a lecture titled "The Cockroach Controlled Mobile
Robot and Scientific Research Ethics Boards in the Context of Contemporary
Art Practice" and held a masterclass titled "Can Artists Generate Knowledge"
at Art Science 3, a conference on art and science. A publication is
forthcoming from Lomonosov Moscow State University.
* [Ekaterinburg, Russia] I gave a lecture titled "The Cockroach Controlled
Mobile Robot and Scientific Research Ethics Boards in the Context of
Contemporary Art Practice" in Ekaterinburg, Russia between September 23rd -
25th 2013.
* [Critical Making at LimeWharf Gallery in Hackney, London] Critical Making is
traveling with the Adhocracy exhibition to the LimeWarf Gallery in Hackney,
London for an early September opening. The exhibition will be open during the
London Design Festival (14-22 September) with an event tentatively planned
for that week. The exhibition was previously at New Museum from May 3, 2013
to July 7, 2013.
* [Critical Frameworks course at Art Center MDP] I taught a course titled
"Critical Frameworks" at Art Center in the MDP Program during Fall 2013. The
course material was an introduction to Science, Technology and Society (STS)
for designers. Readings include Sengers, Weiser, Bell & Dourish, Agre, S
Wilson, Friedman & Nissenbaum, DiSalvo, Dunne & Raby, Bardzell & Bardzell,
Gaver & Martin, The Mentor, Ratto, Chalmers & MacColl, Garcia & Lovink, and
Mainwaring.
* [Critical Making at 4S Conference] I co-organized an open session titled
"Critical Making: Material Practices, Design, and STS" at the 2013 Conference
of the Society for the Social Studies of Science ("4S") with Matt Ratto and
Peter Asaro. The event ran October 9 - 12, 2013 in San Diego, California. The
session is described as: "Increasingly, material production 'making' is part
of the repertoire whereby scholars, practitioners, and activists engage
critically with technoscience. Whether constituted as participatory,
critical, or speculative design, critical technical practice, tactical media,
or as artistic intervention, 'critical making' (understood in a general
sense) is encouraging researchers to extend beyond purely deconstructive
forms of analysis and thereby come to terms in more concrete ways with the
material nature of technological and scientific objects. This open panel
invites contributors to engage with the question of how hands-on productive
work can extends and supplement critical reflection and intervention into
technoscience. We particularly invite contributions from individuals working
between conceptual and material practice, with an eye towards exploring
objectives, outcomes and institutional issues in their hybrid practices. We
would also like to encourage multiple forms of contributions to this panel,
including 'show and tell' demonstrations of contributor's material work,
conceptual exegesis of theoretical issues and extensions, narratives and
auto-ethnographic descriptions. We hope the panel will instantiate a more
deliberate and reflexive research program on making and its role for STS
scholarship and understanding science and technology."
* [Notacon 10] I gave a lecture titled "Critical Making" at the Notacon 10
Conference, which ran between April 18th-21st, 2013. My lecture can be seen
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FfmvKq_4b0.
* [Critical Making at New Museum] Critical Making is exhibited at the New
Museum in NYC in the exhibition Adhocracy curated by Joseph Grima. The
exhibition runs from May 3, 2013 to July 7, 2013. Photos of the project in
the exhibition taken by Sarah Choukah are available.
* [Canadian Mobile & Social Media Conference] I spoke at MoSo 2013 - the
Canadian Mobile & Social Media Conference on Thursday June 13th 2013 in a
talk titled "Inversive Innovations: A Four Step Process in Creative Design".
I also hosted an electronics workshop on June 15th.
* [Fabrication critique: Montreal] I hosted a Critical Making book writing,
editing and printing workshop in Montreal on May 26th 2013 as a part of the
Sight + Sound 2013 Festival. This workshop explored the concept of critical
making and how handmade books can function as an alternate mode of academic
publishing. The workshop produced an additional booklet to Hertz's acclaimed
"Critical Making" series of handmade books released in late 2012.
Participants wrote, edited, and laid out texts on the theme of critical
making, a term coined by Matt Ratto that proposes that hands-on physical work
- making - has a clear place in enhancing and extending the process of
critical reflection. The first half of the eight-hour workshop consisted of a
lecture by Hertz on the topic of critical making followed by a "book sprint"
where texts were written by participants, peer reviewed and designed. In the
second half of the workshop, the texts will be collated into a booklet,
printed, folded, stapled and trimmed. At the end of the workshop, we had a
finished hardcopy "Critical Making: Montreal" booklet in our hands, with
copies for all contributors.
* [Processing Mega-class] Taught a programming class of 105 students at UC
Irvine during Spring 2013 titled "Game Technologies & Interactive Media"
(ICS62). This course used Processing to teach students about graphics
programming, physics engines, and building interactive media.
* [Hackerspace Tour Kickoff] I am organizing a Dorkbot SoCal 2013 Hackerspace
Tour, with the first event occuring on Sunday May 5th 2013 at Droplabs at
1pm.
* [Oblong, Scopely & Nokia Talks] I did artist talks at Oblong Industries on
April 18th, Scopely on May 1st, and Nokia Design Center in Calabasas on May
2nd 2013.
* [CHI 2013 - Reclaiming Repair: Maintenance and Mending as Methods for Design]
I co-organized a workshop at CHI 2013 titled "Reclaiming Repair: Maintenance
and Mending as Methods for Design" with Daniela Rosner, Steven Jackson, Lara
Houston and Nimmi Rangaswamy. "Technologies inevitably break, degrade, and
decline. In response, people mend and maintain what they already have: parts
are replaced and software is updated. In this workshop, we propose to explore
the fundamental work of repair and its impact on the study of design and
technology as important - yet undervalued - forms of innovation. Broadly
speaking, we hold the work of repair as acts of sustaining, managing, and
repurposing to cope with attrition and regressive change. In order to
investigate such processes, this workshop aims to bring together a range of
scholars and practitioners from across the world to expand HCI's established
views on design, development, and society."
* [Social Text Review] A review of Critical Making was published on April 30th
2013 in Social Text Journal by Michael Mandiberg titled Untying Critical
Making.
* [Videodome on The Creators Project] I did an interview with the Creators
Project on April 8th 2013 about Videodome - see The Creators Project:
Custom-Built Helmet Turns Your Face Into A Surreal Film.
* [Critical Making Review - WMMNA] We Make Money Not Art posted a review of
Critical Making released on January 11th 2012. Here's an excerpt:
"...Critical Making is also a courageous project. While acknowledging the
role and importance of O'Reilly and Make Magazine in popularizing the DIY
culture, the publication asks us to look at aspects of the DIY culture that
go beyond buying an Arduino, getting a MakerBot and reducing DIY to a weekend
hobby. Critical Making thus embraces social issues, the history of
technology, activism and politics... Critical Making is not the anti-Make
Magazine, it is simply an alternative, a forum for electronic DIY practice to
discuss hacking, making, kludging, DIYing in a less sanitized, mass-market
way."
* [Art Center - Making Critical Making] I describe the process of building the
Critical Making project online at Art Center Media Design Practices - Making
Critical Making (Garnet Hertz). This is a background to a course I taught
during Spring 2013 titled Critical Frameworks within the program. Here's an
excerpt: "...doing something yourself as a non-expert is a crash course in
understanding how something actually works, and it is the fastest way to
unpack and learn about the things that would normally remain invisible and
taken for granted. The process of being humiliated by things that you think
are easy or mindless is a valuable experience - I generally think that
innovation occurs out of porting your ideas and processes into a field that
you're not familiar with, and actually doing this on a regular basis is a
crucial part of practicing inventiveness."
* [Critical Making - Book] I have launched a new handmade publication titled
(after Ratto) "Critical Making" in the field of critical technical practice
and critically-engaged maker culture. Critical Making can be defined as
exploring how hands-on productive work - making - can supplement and extend
critical reflection on the relations between digital technologies and
society. It also can be thought of as an appeal to makers to be critically
engaged with culture, history and society. See the call for submissions or a
video of the first test print of the publication. Contributors include: Mitch
Altman (Noisebridge), Marie Bjerede, Julian Bleecker (Nokia), Albert Borgmann
(U Montana), Jonah Brucker-Cohen (Parsons), Anne Burdick (Art Center), Daniel
Charny, Ginger Coons (U Toronto), Chris Csikszentmihalyi (Art Center), Carl
DiSalvo (Georgia Tech), Dale Dougherty (Make Magazine), Tim Durfee (Art
Center), Peter Flemming (Concordia), David Forbes, Alex Galloway (NYU),
Benjamin Gaulon, Reed Ghazala, John Gilbey, Ken Gregory, Esben Hardenberg,
Natalie Jeremijenko (NYU), Daniel Joliffe (U Ottawa), Brian Kane, Denisa Kera
(National University of Singapore), Leonard Koren, Stephen Kovats, Stacey
Kuznetsov (Carnegie Mellon), Golan Levin (Carnegie Mellon), Silvia Lindtner
(UCI), Liz Losh (UCSD), Geert Lovink (Hogeschool van Amsterdam), Rafael
Lozano-Hemmer, John Maeda (RISD), Roger Malina (Leonardo / MIT Press),
Matthew Manos, Richard Maxwell (CUNY), Toby Miller (UCR), Monochrom, Rebecca
Niederlander, Mark Pauline (Survival Research Labs), Allison Powell (London
School of Economics), Fiona Raby (Royal College of Art), Matt Ratto
(University of Toronto), Real Rydaz Lowrider Bicycle Club, RideSouthLA (USC),
Niklas Roy, Craig Saper, Phoebe Sengers (Cornell), Michael Shiloh, Jay Silver
(MIT), Scott Snibbe, Kristen Stubbs, Josh Tanenbaum (Simon Fraser), McKenzie
Wark (New School), Patricia Watts, Norm White, Amanda Williams, and Kaiton
Williams (Cornell). Estimated pages: 350. Shipping November 2012.
* [Videodome in See Yourself Sensing Exhibition] Videodome made its premiere in
an exhibition with Ann Hamilton as a part of Madeline Schwartzman's "See
Yourself Sensing" exhibition at the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery at
SJSU's School of Art & Design - March 5 through April 5, 2013. Reception:
Tuesday, March 5, 6-7:30 pm.
* [Berkeley Institute of Design] I lectured at the Berkeley Institute of Design
on Tuesday Feb 27th 2013 from noon to 1pm. The title of the talk is "How
Critical Making is Done" - here's an abstract:
> Critical Making can be thought of as an exploration of how hands-on
> productive work - making - can supplement and extend critical reflection on
> technology and society. It works to blend and extend the fields of design,
> contemporary art, DIY/craft and technological development. It also can be
> thought of as an appeal to the electronic DIY maker movement to be
> critically engaged with culture, history and society: after learning to use
> a 3D printer, making an LED blink or using an Arduino, then what? This talk
> gives an overview of how Hertz (UC Irvine / Art Center) edited and produced
> "Critical Making" (http://conceptlab.com/criticalmaking/) - a handmade
> series of ten booklets with 70 contributors that explores critically
> engaged maker culture. After highlighting the publishing project, DIY
> practice will be extended as a methodology for revealing and unpacking
> infrastructures that normally exist as concealed blackbox systems. Hertz
> then proposes that the concept of reflective design (Sengers et. al, 2005),
> can be ported into a four step design process for critical making by: 1.
> identifying core metaphors of a field, 2. recognizing what the metaphors
> exclude or marginalize, 3. invert the metaphor to bring the marginalized to
> the center, and 4. build a new alternative that embodies the inversion. As
> a physical artifact, the critically made thing has a tangible legibility,
> with the potential to act as a boundary object between different users and
> communities.
* [Teaching - Art Center MDP - Critical Frameworks] During Spring 2013, I
taught SP13 Critical Frameworks with Benjamin Bratton and Shannon Herbert.
During my module of the course, students use my Critical Making project as a
textbook, with students producing written and visual responses to this work.
The module concludes with the class collaboratively producing a "Critical
Making: MDP" handmade publication - photos of producing our capstone
publication are avaiable on Flickr.
* [Geffen at MOCA] Critical Making was exhibited at Printed Matter's LA Art
Book Fair from February 1-3, at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in Los
Angeles. The opening was held on the evening of Thursday, January 31. The
event is Directed by AA Bronson.
* [Technology on Affluent Leisure Time] New sticker: Made: Technology on
Affluent Leisure Time released in December 2012. Distributed for free with
high resolution files available for download. Included as insert in Critical
Making first edition.
* [Poetic Codings] Dorkbot SoCal 51: Poetic Codings was on Saturday January
26th 2013 at 3:00pm at The Public School at 951 Chung King Road in Los
Angeles. The event featured live presentations by Casey Reas, John Carpenter,
Erik Loyer, and Jody Zellen. This event was done in collaboration with the
exhibition "Poetic Codings" - an exhibition that explores the relationship
between art and technology through juxtaposing code-based works for the wall
with those made for mobile devices. (Dorkbot SoCal 51: Poetic Codings
Facebook event)
2012
* [We Make Money Not Art Interview] I did a lengthy interview with We Make
Money Not Art which was released on December 7th 2012. Here's an excerpt: "I
think circuit bending is a great antithesis to a standardized test. It
doesn't have one right answer. It uses your hands. It makes noise and can be
dangerous. It can be very simple or incredibly complicated. It involves
genuine exploration and discovery. In a nutshell, I think it's a better model
for how life works than a test on paper, and I think the United States would
be a better place and have a more skilled and creative workforce (and more
interesting artwork) if more kids were taught things like circuit bending at
an early age."
* [Dorkbot SoCal turns 50] The 50th event for Dorkbot SoCal is happened on
Sunday, December 16th 2012 at 1pm at Machine Project. Presenters included
Michael Kontopoulos, Joy Padiyar and Aaron Rasmussen - and presentations by
some new hackerspaces in the Los Angeles area - more info at
dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal/
* [UCI Mobile & Ubiquitous Games, Fall 2012] I taught a new course, "Mobile &
Ubiquitous Games" in Information and Computer Science at UC Irvine during
Fall 2012. Students: if you'd like to register, the course number is ICS163,
and the course code is #36725.
* [Media Places, Sweden, December 2012] I presented at "Media Places:
Infrastructure | Space | Media", a symposium held in Umeå, Sweden, December
5-7, 2012 at HUMlab courtesy of The Peter Wallenberg Foundation. I was on a
panel on the topic "Making" with Johanna Drucker (UCLA) and Chris Speed
(University of Edinburgh). My talk was titled "Making Critical Making: DIY as
Revealing Infrastructure." Abstract: "The maker movement can be described as
a do-it-yourself (DIY) subculture interested in the creative exploration of
electronics, robotics, 3D printing, and microcontrollers that has been
popularized over the last half decade through the publication Make (O'Reilly
Media), open source hardware like the Arduino, and collaborative hackerspace
studios. Critical Making is a handmade book project by Garnet Hertz that
proposes that makers need to be critically engaged with culture, history and
society, and that hands-on physical work - making - has a clear place in
enhancing and extending the process of critical reflection. The production
process of printing and binding over 100,000 pages in this project also
provides a clear example of how DIY practices can be useful in revealing and
unpacking infrastructures that normally exist as invisible blackboxed
systems."
* [Critical Making "Crunch Lunch" at USC Annenberg Innovation Lab] I discussed
my new book project, Critical Making, at USC at the Annenberg Innovation Lab
on October 2nd 2012 at noon. A video of my talk is at
https://vimeo.com/50669744.
* [NSF] As of September 2012 I am Principal Investigator on a National Science
Foundation Informal Science Education Pathways Grant titled "Repurposing
Obsolescence: Teaching DIY Science, Technology and Engineering Practices to
Adolescents in Underserved Communities." In this project - which is an
extension of my "Toy Hacking" work - I'm particularly interested in reaching
out to communities that normally wouldn't have the resources in their schools
to explore art or electronics. Hands-on educational programs - like shop,
woodworking and art classes - have been removed from many schools, which in
my opinion is an incredible disservice. This project will design, develop and
test DIY-style workshops to introduce and teach middle school students in
underserved communities technology and design by customizing and repurposing
e-waste technology to make custom musical instruments... in this case, old
electronic toys.
* [Media Archaeology Lab] As of October 2012 Jussi Parikka, Matthew
Kirschenbaum and I are now on the advisory board of the newly established
Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
* [Zombie Media in Leonardo 45:5] A new paper I co-authored with Jussi Parikka
is published in Leonardo 45:5 (MIT Press) as a Theoretical Perspective -
Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method. Abstract:
This text is an investigation into media culture, temporalities of media
objects and planned obsolescence in the midst of ecological crisis and
electronic waste. The authors approach the topic under the umbrella of media
archaeology and aim to extend this historiographically oriented field of
media theory into a methodology for contemporary artistic practice. Hence,
media archaeology becomes not only a method for excavation of repressed and
forgotten media discourses, but extends itself into an artistic method close
to Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture, circuit bending, hardware hacking and other
hacktivist exercises that are closely related to the political economy of
information technology. The concept of dead media is discussed as "zombie
media" - dead media revitalized, brought back to use, reworked.
* [Occidental College, Oct 4] I provided a critical introduction to "The
Pleasures of Uninhibited Excess" by Survival Research Laboratories at
Occidental College on October 4th at 7pm. My talk discussed the work of SRL
through the concept of "re-directed technologies" - technologies that are
appropriated for a different use than what they were initially designed for.
This is part of a film screenings related to DIY culture organized by Lee
(Ari) Laskin.
* [USC IML/iMAP, Nov 9] I gave a talk at USC's Institute for Multimedia
Literacy on November 9th 2012 at 3pm.
* [Co-Director, Values in Design Lab] As of Summer 2012, I am Co-Director of
the Values in Design Lab at UC Irvine with Geof Bowker, Cory Knobel and
Judith Gregory, who recently came to UC Irvine. We are dedicated to blending
rich social theory with design practice in order to produce information
systems and technology imbued with strong social and ethical values. At the
VID Lab, we bring together doctoral students, faculty and industry dedicated
to making the world more livable and enjoyable using information systems and
technology. Our laboratory is a creative space for prototyping and testing
information artifacts - from collaborative workspaces to mobile apps to
intelligent robots.
* [Making = Thinking] I was an invited speaker at 4A's CreateTech2012
conference, themed "Making = Thinking". I gave a talk titled "Critical
Making: Moving Beyond Arduinos and MakerBots" at the Leows Santa Monica Beach
Hotel, Thursday September 20th 2012 at 1:55pm
* [VID 2012 Doctoral Workshop] I was faculty in the Values in Design 2012
Doctoral Workshop at UC Irvine (August 18-25, 2012) alongside Geof Bowker,
Cory Knobel, Judith Gregory, John Crawford, Paul Dourish, Helen Nissenbaum,
Carl DiSalvo, Matthew Bietz, Kurtis Lesick and Steve Slota. The Values in
Design Doctoral Workshop was a week-long, intensive event sponsored by the
Values in Design Program through the Department of Informatics in the Donald
Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences at University of California,
Irvine. We brought together a group of 36 exceptional PhD candidates from a
wide range of backgrounds to study and address issues of how human and social
values are embedded, built into, influence, and otherwise instantiate
themselves in information systems and technologies. By working across the
intersections of computer science and engineering, social studies of science
and technology, anthropology, policy and law, business, social
entrepreneurship, art, design, and information science, the group delved into
the theories contributing to (and arising out of) sociotechnical design, as
well as spending the week designing and building original information systems
and technologies that materialize a set of social values. I taught "Critical
Making" courses and "Interfacing Code with the Physical World: A Crash Course
in Processing and Arduino". See the OC Register's "UCI workshop explores
friendlier technology" article or my documentation of the soldering,
redesigning, interfacing code or project pitch sessions.
* [China - Maker Carnival] I hosted my Toy Hacking workshop and gave a talk at
Maker Carnival in Beijing, China at the end of April / start of May 2012. See
photos of the Beijing Toy Hacking Workshop on May 1st 2012 at the China
Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts.
* [Korea - First International Robot Art Conference] I gave a lecture at the
First International Robot Art Conference in Changwon, South Korea on May 4th
2012. The title of my talk was "Chindogu and the Value of Inversive Design in
Robotic Art". See photos fo the First International Robot Art Conference in
Changwon.
* [Korea - Seoul National / Art Center Nabi / Sejong University] I lectured at
Seoul National University on May 7th 2012 and at Sejong University and Art
Center Nabi on May 8th 2012.
* [OutRun on Discovery Channel] OutRun will be featured on Discovery Channel
Canada on the program "Daily Planet". Exact air date not known, estimated to
be in April 2012. Film date was March 21st 2012 and the producer was Ian
Connacher.
* [OutRun in Car & Driver Magazine] OutRun will be featured in the June 2012
issue of Car & Driver Magazine with an article written by John Pearley
Huffman (photo shoot / interview date was Febraury 29th 2012). The June 2012
issue hits the shelves of North American newsstands in early May 2012.
* ["What I Really Do" Meme] I made an image related to the experience of being
a contemporary artist in February 2012 that is attributed as starting the
widespread "What I Really Do" meme. This meme was supposedly the most popular
meme on the internet during February 2012, and pervasively spread through
Facebook to tens of millions of viewers. See Know Your Meme for a context for
the meme, and my Hyperallergic interview for the most in-depth discussion
I've done on the topic.
* [OutRun in Popular Science] OutRun is featured in a two-page spread in the
February 2012 issue of Popular Science Magazine, which is now on news stands.
The story is also featured on the cover of the Australian edition - download
a PDF scan of the OutRun article in Popular Science Feb 2012.
* [Jeremy Bailey Interview] I interviewed Jeremy Bailey in Vague Terrain 21:
Electric Speed. We discuss "post-internet", McLuhan, new media, Canada, and
chindogu. Vague Terrain is a web based digital arts publication that
showcases the creative practice of a variety of artists, musicians and
scholars. Electric Speed is an exhibition curated by Kate Armstrong and
Malcolm Levy through the Surrey Art Gallery of works designed for
presentation on urban screens. A catalog of the Electric Speed exhibition is
available in print or as for free PDF download.
* [Utopia / Dystopia] My work is featured in "Euphoria & Dystopia: Banff New
Media Institute Dialogues" edited by Sarah Cook and Sara Diamond. Summary: "A
compendium of some of the most important thinking about art and technology to
have taken place in the last few decades at the international level. Based on
the research of the Banff New Media Institute from 1995 to 2005, these
essays, transcripts and artists projects celebrate the belief that artists
and cultural industries, in collaboration with scientists, social scientists
and humanists, have a critical role to play in developing technologies that
work for human betterment and allow for a more participatory culture."
* [UCSD Experiential Learning Conference] I am presenting an education-oriented
paper related to my Circuit Bending workshops, booklets and experiences on
January 26th 2012 at the UCSD Experiential Learning Conference - Education in
Action: Mobilizing the next generation for social reform.
* [Belfast Doom] I am showing Doom in Belfast at Catalyst Arts in an exhibition
titled "Press Start" that runs from January 27th to February 17th 2012. The
opening reception is Thursday January 26th from 7pm-9pm.
2011
* [Dorkbot SCI-Arc] Dorkbot SoCal 47 was on Saturday December 3rd 2011 at the
SCI-Arc Robotics and Simulation Lab, with an introduction by Peter Testa &
Devyn Weiser and demonstrations by Brandon Kruysman & Jonathan Proto. The
1,000 square-foot double height robot cell focuses on multi-robot
collaboration and multi-media simulation using 5 state-of-the-art Staubli
robot systems: (2) RX160, (2) TX90, and (1) TX90L. The relatively
lightweight, six-axis robotic arms are in a range of positions (floor and
ceiling mounted) to create a reconfigurable 3D work space with many possible
applications. The adjacent simulation lab houses the Staubli TX40 robot where
students, along with their instructors, conduct hands-on training and
testing. For photos of the event, see
http://www.flickr.com/photos/youraccount/sets/72157628302749815/ and for more
information on the lab, see http://www.machinators.org.
* [Civic & Community Engagement] I am teaching Introduction to Civic &
Community Engagement at UC Irvine during Fall 2011. Students - log in at
https://eee.uci.edu/11f/87625 (UCI login required).
* [ACE] Congratulations to my student David Resnick for completing his MS in
Arts Computation Engineering at UC Irvine on December 2nd 2011.
* [Doom premiere & OutRun in Denmark] A new project, Doom will premiere in
Denmark, and OutRun will be live and in the streets of Aarhus. The festival
run between August 27-31 2011 at NEXT 2011 / Beautiful Mistakes.
* [Doom] Lots of work being done on the new studio project Doom, where a wall
reflects an augmented version of reality where people are evil monsters from
the 1993 videogame "Doom".
* [OutRun on Hack A Day & Engadget] OutRun was featured on Hack A Day on August
2nd and on Engadget on August 3rd 2011 in article titled "OutRun AR project
lets you game and drive at the same time, makes us drool".
* [ACADIA 2011 Keynote] I will be giving a keynote at ACADIA 2011
(Calgary/Banff Canada, 11-16 October 2011). My talk is titled "Arduino
Microcontrollers and The Queen's Hamlet: Utilitarian and Hedonized DIY
Practices in Contemporary Electronic Culture". In this talk, I pull together
concepts of utility-driven do-it-yourself (DIY) culture and pleasure-oriented
DIY practice to investigate a significant trend in contemporary computing
culture, the maker movement, typified by an interest in building personalized
and handmade electronic devices with sensors, motors and lights, usually
controlled by microcontrollers like the Arduino. My argument is that maker
culture has been co-opted by consumer hobby culture, but this is not
necessarily detrimental because it provides an important outlet for personal
exploration, increases an understanding of how electronic media actually
works and assists individuals to be actors in a culture that is increasingly
complex, technological and digitized.
* [Banff R.I.P.] I was at The Banff Centre from July 8, 2011 - July 15, 2011
for R.I.P. - Recycling Pervasive Media, Intervening in Planned Obsolescence
(Blog) / (Official Event Website), an event that will tackle the issues of
recycling, art making, and sustainability practices. Artists, researchers,
practitioners, academics, municipal workers, community leaders, and
professionals were invited to come explore new ways of working with municipal
waste management facilities to reclaim "good garbage". Over the course of
this three-part, seven-day program, we discussed ideas, createed new work,
and presented projects related to sustainable practice. I worked on my Pixel
VGA project.
* [Make Magazine] I wrote an article on OutRun for Make 26 titled "OutRun:
Building the Un-Simulation of a Driving Video Game" that gives an overview of
the development process of the project. Download the article or get the
magazine.
* [Toy Hacking] A lot of circuit bending workshops have been given in Southern
California in March 2011, and our curriculum guide has been completely
redesigned and translated into Simplified Chinese and Spanish. Hackear
Juguetes!
* [New Publications] I have three new papers coming out over the next year:
"Zombie Media" (co-authored with Jussi Parikka) in Leonardo Journal (MIT
Press), "Tactics of Reuse in the Media Arts" in Leonardo Electronic Almanac
(MIT Press), and a re-edited version of my 1995 interview with Billy Klüver
in "Science, She Loves Me" edited by Mary Anne Moser (Banff Centre Press).
* [New OutRun Video] A new video giving an overview of the OutRun project was
released on January 7th 2011. Thanks to Robert Farmer at UCI ICS
Communications.
* [USA Lectures] During January and February 2011 I am booked to give lectures
at the Georgetown Communication, Culture and Technology Graduate Program (Jan
25), the UC San Diego Culture Art & Technology Program (Feb 10), the Ohio
State Art Department Art & Technology Program (Feb 15), the Georgia State
University Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design (Feb 24) and The School of
the Art Institute of Chicago (April 20).
* [OutRun at MADE UP] OutRun was live and at Art Center on Jan 29th 2011 in the
MADE UP: Design's Fictions exhibition. The car made an appearance at the
reception and drove through the gallery - see the video clip. The car and
documentation of the project will stay in the show until March 20th 2011.
MADE UP: Design's Fictions presents the work of major and emerging
international practices that forecast, hypothesize, muse, skylark, role-play,
put-on-airs, freak-out or otherwise fake-it to produce work that is relevant
to our increasingly confusing and accelerated world. FEATURING WORK BY:
Aeolab, Agency, Juan Azulay, Stuart Bailey / Frances Stark, Juliette Bellocq,
Commonwealth, Design I/O, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Andrew Friend, Justin Gier,
Garnet Hertz, Thomas Hillier, Ben Hooker / Shona Kitchen, Ingrid Hora /
Daniel Salomon, Coy Howard, Ed Keller / Yuval Borochov / Lisa Ekle / Danil
Nagy, Perry Kulper, The Planning Center, Keiichi Matsuda, Maywa Denki, Syd
Mead, Metahaven, Microsoft, MOS, Oblong Industries, Sascha Pohflepp, Rojkind
Arquitectos, Eddo Stern, Noam Toran, Julia Tsao, Jackson Wang, Chris Woebkin
/ Natalie Jeremijinko.
* [USC] I gave a guest lecture and ran two workshops at the University of
Southern California in the interdivisional program in Media Arts and Practice
in February and March 2011. One workshop was an introduction to electronics
for artists (via circuit bending), and the other workshop was an introduction
to Processing and Arduino.
* [Flusser 2011 Award Nomination] I was nominated for the Vilém Flusser Theory
Award (VFTA) - for a joint text written with Jussi Parikka: "Zombie Media:
Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method". We presented our paper
at 15:00 Thursday 03 Feb 2011 in "K1" of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt
(House of World Cultures) in Berlin at the Transmediale 2011 festival.
* [Transmediale Circuit Bending Workshop] I taught a circuit bending workshop
titled "Zombie Media Workshop: Circuit Bending as Media Archaeology" at
Transmediale in Berlin on Friday 04 February 2011 from 10:00-14:00 at the
HacKaWay Zone. Abstract: "With their essay Zombie Media, Garnet Hertz and
Jussi Parikka approach media archaeology with the aim of making it into an
art methodology. Following a presentation of their ideas, the Vilém Flusser
Theory Award nominees invite participants to enact the process of circuit
bending: Participants will disassemble battery powered devices such as toys
to subsequently perform with their customised instruments."
* [Transmediale Democratic:Ability] I was on a Conference Focus Panel at
Transmediale titled "Democratic:Ability" with Alison Powell, Nancy
Mauro-Flude, Jürgen Neumann, and Tapio Mäkelä at 15:00 on Friday 04 Feb 2011
in K1.
* [Bending UCI Informatics] I led an electronics workshop in circuit bending at
UC Irvine in the Department of Informatics on Jan 27th 2011 from 9am to 1pm
in Bren 5065. Watch a video clip that documents what we did at the workshop.
2010
* [Artist in Residence, UCI Informatics] As of December 1st 2010, I have a two
year contract as Artist in Residence / Research Scientist at UCI in the
Department of Informatics. I will continue to develop new projects, texts,
and will continue to advise students. I am working with Paul Dourish and
Gillian Hayes. As a part of this appointment, I will be directing a
project-based lab/studio in collaboration with the Laboratory for Ubiquitous
Computing and Interaction and the Social & Technological Action Research
Group.
* [Design Dialogues Fall 2010: Computation After New Media] I curated the
Design Dialogues lecture series at Art Center during Fall 2010 under the
title of "Computation After New Media" - Sharon Daniel, Eddo Stern, Paul
Dourish, George Legrady, Casey Reas, and Celia Pearce are on the agenda. More
details at http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=122113114508652.
* [OutRun, Ben Maltz Gallery] The OutRun project made its Southern California
debut at the Ben Maltz Gallery on October 2nd 2010, and was on exhibition
until December 4th 2010. A live demonstration of OutRun - in other words,
driving through city streets - was given on Saturday November 6th at 11am,
followed by lunch at a local eatery.
* [Dorkbot-SF] I spoke at Dorkbot-SF in San Francisco on Wednesday November
17th 2010 at 7:30pm at Snibbe Interactive, 1073 Howard Street (between 6th &
7th) San Francisco, CA. Event info is available at
http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsf/archive/201011/.
* [Civic Engagement] Gave a guest lecture in Gillian Hayes' UCI Civic
Engagement class on November 16th 2010.
* [UCI Informatics] Presented "The Seamful and Perversive Roles of Artwork in
Interdisciplinary Research" at UC Irvine's Informatics Seminar November 5th
2011. Abstract: "Garnet Hertz launches a discussion into the role of artwork
in interdisciplinary research through the presentation of three of his
projects - a mobile robot controlled by a living insect
(http://conceptlab.com/roachbot/), a videogame arcade cabinet that is
redesigned to actually drive (http://conceptlab.com/outrun/), and a taco
truck that is customized into a lowrider mobile lab to teach children about
electronics (http://conceptlab.com/circuitbending/). Like many contemporary
art projects, these systems are intentionally designed to be poetic or
humorous. This work will be discussed within the framework of
interdisciplinary research in informatics: how novel work in design can
develop more creative and conceptual approaches to innovation and
presentation. Several terms related to design theory will also be introduced,
including wabi-sabi (Koren, 1994), chindogu (Kawakami, 1995), perversiveness
(Lozano-Hemmer, 1996), and seamfulness (Chalmers, 2002)." Lecture slides are
also available.
* [UCSD] Guest lectured in Benjamin Bratton's interdisciplinary computing and
the arts course at UCSD Department of Visual Arts on November 30th 2010.
* [OutRun premiere at 2010 01SJ Biennial] The OutRun project made its debut at
the 2010 01SJ Biennial in San Jose California on September 2010. The project
was in the Out of the Garage and Into the World event from September 4-14th
and the Green Prix on Saturday September 18th. I also gave an artist talk on
Saturday September 11th.
* [OutRun at IndieCade] OutRun was at IndieCade in Los Angeles on October 9th
2010. OutRun will be operating live on Saturday, October 9th from 9:00pm to
Midnight at the IndieCade Village across from Culver City Studios. Video
documentation of OutRun at night is available by Technologizer.
* [OutRun at Beall] OutRun was at the Beall Center in Irvine at the 10.10.10
Experimental Media Art Festival on October 10th 2010 from 1pm to 7pm. See the
video of OutRun at the 10.10.10 Experimental Media Art Festival, Beall Center
for Art & Technology.
* [ISMAR 2010] A paper on OutRun was given at The 9th IEEE International
Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality at the COEX / Art Center Nabi,
Seoul, Korea between October 13th - 16th 2010.
* [Arkeologi Seni Media] The recent article I published in CTheory has been
translated into Indonesian and reprinted in the journal "Footage" as
Arkeologi Seni Media: Percakapan antara Jussi Parikka dan Garnet Hertz on 24
April 2010. This version of the article includes images and video of the
discussed examples.
* [CTheory] New interview out, April 2010: Resetting Theory - Archaeologies of
Media Art - Jussi Parikka in conversation with Garnet Hertz. CTheory is an
electronic academic journal published since 1996. It is an international
peer-reviewed journal focusing on technology and media theory, technology,
and culture, publishing articles, interviews, book reviews and
"event-scenes." It is edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker. The editorial
board includes Paul Virilio, Bruce Sterling, Siegfried Zielinski, Stelarc, DJ
Spooky, Timothy Murray, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Stephen Pfohl, Andrew Ross,
Andrew Wernick, Maurice Charland, Gad Horowitz, Shannon Bell and R.U. Sirius.
Until his recent death, the editorial board also included Jean Baudrillard.
* [OutRun Interview] David Heineman from Bloomsberg University recently
interviewed me in June 2010 about the development of the OutRun project -
listen to the interview at
http://randomracket.com/podcast/racketboy-podcast-0013.mp3
* [Roachbot Aarhus Denmark NEXT Festival] Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot was
shown at NEXT 2010 in Aarhus Denmark in September 2010.
* [FDG2010] I presented a new paper titled "OutRun: Perversive Games and
Designing the De-Simulation of Eight-Bit Driving" at The 5th International
Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games at the Asilomar Conference
Grounds, Monterey, California, USA from June 19-21, 2010 (Conference
Program). The paper provides an overview and context for the development of
the OutRun project to date. Abstract: "This paper outlines the development
process of a mixed reality video game prototype that combines a classic
arcade driving game with a real world vehicle. In this project the user, or
player, maneuvers the car-shaped arcade cabinet through actual physical space
using a screen as a navigational guide which renders the real world in the
style of an 8-bit video game. This case study is presented as a "perversive
game": an attempt to disrupt the everyday by highlighting and inverting
conventional behavior through humor and paradox."
* [Circuit Bending USC] I held a circuit bending workshop at the Institute for
Multimedia Literacy in the School of Cinematic Arts at USC on August 5th
2010. I was commissioned to create a custom instructional zine for this event
(similar to the booklet made for Art Center, pictured below). The workshop is
being held as part of "Broadening the Digital Humanities", which designed to
foster innovative multimedia research. Sponsors include The University of
California's Humanities Research Institute, USC's Institute for Multimedia
Literacy and the electronic journal Vectors.
* [OutRun Press] Recent article covering OutRun project by Orange County Local
News Network: UCI develops rolling video game.
* [Blackflash] I wrote an article titled "Visual Geographies" with Michelle
Teran and Kate Armstrong for an article in BlackFlash that will be in print
in the May 2010 issue. Our online notes for this article can be seen online,
incluing my posts: Un-Simulations, Tricksters and Radical Thought, Reversal
Through Extension, Working Over The Illusion, Utopia & Clemenceau, Creating
Backward Actions, and The Californian Ideology and Geographic Specificity.
* [Design Dialogues] I gave a guest lecture on March 19th 2010 at Art Center in
the Design Dialogues speaker series, which was guest curated by Norm Klein.
Other speakers this term include Stan Douglas (artist), Kari-Rae Seekins
(sound designer and composer), Carole-Ann Klonarides (independent video art
curator, Britt Salvesen (curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Erkki
Huhtamo (media historian and collector).
* [Circuit Bending] I taught a workshop titled "Hardware Basics: A Rough
Introduction to Circuit Bending" at Art Center on January 24th 2010. A sixty
page zine-like booklet was produced for the event. Photo and video
documentation is available at http://conceptlab.com/circuitbending/.
* [Institute for Software Research] As of January 2010, I am a Postdoctoral
Research Fellow at the Institute for Software Research at UC Irvine. I am
affiliated with the Center for Computer Games and Virtual Worlds and am
primarily working on my OutRun project, publishing, and advising students. I
am working with Walt Scacchi, and the position is primarily supported by the
NSF through the Division of Information & Intelligent Systems grant
"Decentralized Virtual Activities and Technologies: A Socio-Technical
Approach".
* [Art + Science Now] My work is featured in Stephen Wilson's book published in
April 2010, "Art + Science Now" by Thames and Hudson, which is available for
purchase through Amazon. I interviewed Stephen Wilson in 2002 about this
topic: Ethology of Art & Science Collaborations: An Interview with Stephen
Wilson [13.6M MP3 Audio File].
* [Doctor Hertz] I completed my Ph.D. in Visual Studies at the University of
California Irvine on November 10th 2009. Thanks to Mark Poster (co-chair),
Peter Krapp (co-chair), Cecile Whiting and Robert Nideffer who served on my
doctoral committee.
* [Faculty, Art Center Media Design Program] I am pleased to announce that I am
now Faculty in the Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design
in Pasadena, California starting October 2009. I am a Thesis Advisor and
currently serving on four Masters Committees.
* [New Book Now Available] A Collection of Many Problems (In Memory of the Dead
Media Handbook) is a new bookwork I designed, and is now available for a
limited time for about $8. It is designed as a visual introduction to media
archaeology in the spirit of Bruce Sterling's Dead Media Manifesto of 1995 -
166 pages, 4.25" x 6.875" perfect binding, Telharmonium Press (Artist's Proof
Edition 1) September 2009.
* [Andrew Pickering] My work will be featured in a forthcoming book by Andrew
Pickering: "Sketches of Another Future: The Cybernetic Brain, 1940-2000" by
the University of Chicago Press in Summer 2009. Andrew is known for his
research in the history of cybernetics, and has published The Mangle of
Practice: Time, Agency & Science, Science as Practice and Culture, and
Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 40] Dorkbot SoCal 40 was on Saturday May 22nd 2010 at 1pm at
Machine Project in Los Angeles. Presenters included: Brett Doar - Brett
discussed the mechanics behind the recent Rube Goldberg machine he built for
the Colbert Report. Brett was also involved with SynnLabs in the Rube
Goldberg machine for OK Go's viral video "This Too Shall Pass". During this
event, local hackerspaces were also showcased, with presentations about their
capabilities, membership, culture, and recent projects, including Crashspace
in Culver City represented by R. Kevin Nelson, and Nullspace in downtown LA
represented by M.
* [Art Center] Four of my grad students graduated from the Media Design Program
at the Art Center College of Art & Design with their outstanding thesis work
at the public event "4 Hours Solid". The event will also include campus-wide
presentations (Art Exhibitions, Broadcast Cinema Screenings, and Industrial
Design Presentations) with a panel discussion on Screen/Culture: panelists
include Kevin Mack, McKenzie Wark, Scott Watson, and Anne Bray. Katherine
Hayles (pictured below, talking to my student Hyun Ju Yang) also game to a
graduation event on Saturday night.
* [Guest Lectures] In March 2010 I've given lectures at University of North
Texas, University of North Texas at Dallas, and Penn State University.
2009
* [DAC09] I gave a plenary lecture at Digital Arts and Culture 2009 (DAC09) on
December 14th 2009 titled "Methodologies of Reuse in the Media Arts:
Exploring Black Boxes, Tactics and Archaeologies." Other presenters at the
plenary included Nick Montfort, Ian Bogost, Conor McGarrigle and Jason
Farman.
* [AFI Mentor] In fall 2009 I served as a mentor at the American Film Institute
Digital Content Lab in Hollywood, California. The project I've advised was
demoed on November 4th 2009 at the Chinese Mann Theater in Hollywood. Here's
a video overview of the AFI Digital Content Lab.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 38] Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 1pm at Machine Project,
featuring Micha Cárdenas / Chris Head / Elle Mehrmand presenting in the
Freephone Project, D.V. Rogers will be presenting documentation of the
Parkfield Interventional EQ Fieldwork, and Owen Gerst will be showing his
work as Stolon Design. More information at Dorkbot SoCal.
* [Milan, Italy] A solo exhibition titled "In Memory of the Dead Media
Handbook" was at Studio D'Ars in Milan, Italy, opening October 20th 2009 at
6:30pm (Via Sant'Agnese 3, 20123 Milano, Italia). Exhibition images can be
seen at the In Memory of the Dead Media Handbook (Flickr set). More
information can be seen at conceptlab.com/problems/milan/.
The press release is as follows:
> “In Memory of the Dead Media Handbook”
>
> Installazione del vincitore del XXV Premio Oscar Signorini - 2008
> Mostra n° 575
> a cura di: Cristina Trivellin e Martina Coletti
>
> inaugurazione martedì 20 ottobre 2009 ore 18:00-23:00
> Studio D’Ars, Via Sant’Agnese 12/8, Milano
>
>
> Presso lo Studio D'Ars di Milano sarà allestita la mostra personale di
> Garnet Hertz, vincitore della XXVa edizione del Premio Oscar Signorini. La
> mostra sarà l’occasione per presentare per la prima volta al pubblico The
> Dead Media Project, il progetto di Hertz nato sulla scia dell’idea di Bruce
> Sterling di catalogare in un unico libro i media obsoleti e gli errori
> commessi in campo tecnologico. L'installazione di Hertz inviterà i
> visitatori della galleria ad esprimere il proprio concetto di Dead Media
> Handbook: come dovrebbe presentarsi un libro sulle tecnologie di
> comunicazione obsolete, a chi potrebbe essere destinato, cosa dovrebbe
> contenere e come potrebbe essere organizzato. Ai primi dieci spettatori che
> collaboreranno al progetto scrivendo le proprie idee, verrà rilasciata una
> copia del libro firmata dall’artista.
>
> Il Premio Oscar Signorini, istituito nel 1984 in memoria del fondatore di
> D'Ars, Oscar Signorini (1910-1980), si rivolge annualmente ai giovani
> artisti under 35. Come ogni anno il Premio propone una sfida volta alla
> comprensione e alla divulgazione di temi strettamente legati alla cultura e
> alla società contemporanee e per questa XXV edizione è stato dedicato
> all’Arte Robotica, ovvero alla tematica della tecnologia robotica impiegata
> in ambito creativo e artistico, chiamando in causa una giuria di rilievo
> internazionale, composta da teorici e artisti affermati presieduta da Pier
> Luigi Capucci.
>
> Il lavoro artistico di Garnet Hertz (www.conceptlab.com) esplora i temi del
> progresso tecnologico, della creatività, dell'innovazione e
> dell'interdisciplinarietà. Ha esposto il proprio lavoro in diverse
> importanti sedi internazionali, tra cui Ars Electronica, DEAF e SIGGRAPH,
> ed è stato insignito del Premio 2008 Oscar Signorini dedicato all’arte
> robotica. Presso l'Università della California Irvine, Hertz è un membro
> del Laboratory for Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction presso il
> Dipartimento di Informatica, ha conseguito un dottorato in Arts Computation
> Engineering e segue il dottorato in Visual Studies (Humanities). E
> fondatore e direttore del Dorkbot SoCal, un mensile di Los Angeles DIY
> sull'arte elettronica e il design. La sua ricerca è ampiamente citati in
> pubblicazioni accademiche e il suo lavoro è stato recensito da importanti
> riviste tra cui The New York Times, Wired, The Washington Post, NPR, USA
> Today, NBC, CBS, TV Tokyo e CNN Headline News.
* [Projects in Ubicomp] In Fall 2009 I advised undergraduate students in the
course "Informatics 148: Projects in Ubiquitous Computing" in the Department
of Informatics at UC Irvine. Students worked on alternative software
approaches to the development of the OutRun project.
* [Philosophy of Technology] I am in the Companion to the Philosophy of
Technology (Blackwell, 2009).
* [OutRun Interns] Over Summer 2009, the OutRun project has had five interns
from the University of California Irvine working on the development of the
system:
* Hardware / Mechanical Engineering: Matt Wong, Erik Olson
* Game/Visualization Software: Chris Guevara
* Media Assets: David Dinh
* Documentation: Richard Vu
* [The Imaginary Twentieth Century] A quick studio sketch of Grand Restaurant
Automatique au XXe Siécle (The Grand Automated Restaurant of the 20th
Century) from Norman Klein's archive of "The Imaginary Twentieth Century"
project. Laser printed on paper, cutout, raised and glued into a
two-and-a-half dimension construction, in the style of vue d'optique /
decoupage / papier tole. August 2009.
* [Beyond design: cybernetics, biological computers and hylozoism] See Andrew
Pickering's "Beyond design: cybernetics, biological computers and hylozoism"
in Synthese (2009) 168:469-491 published by Springer for an interesting
overview of some of my work in relation to the history of cybernetics.
> "Hertz' robots show that there is another and much simpler way to achieve
> comparable ends without the detour. We can see two different stances
> towards matter in play here: the conventional one that involves penetrating
> black boxes through knowledge, and the cybernetic one that seeks to entrain
> boxes that remain black into our world. And we could understand this
> contrast ontologically and epistemologically. Cybernetics centres itself on
> a world of performative black boxes and their interrelations, whereas the
> Modern paradigm emphasises an intrinsically cognitive relation to matter."
* [Art Center College of Design] I was guest critic for final reviews in the
graduate Media Design Program at the Art Center College of Design on Tuesday,
April 14th 2009: "The Media Design Program (MDP) turns ambitious designers
into leading thinkers and makers within emerging communication contexts.
Three concepts help us navigate the flux: hybridity, emergence, and
discovery."
* [Art and Electronic Media] - My work is in the recently published "Art and
Electronic Media (Themes & Movements)" by Edward A. Shanken, published by
Phaidon Press and available through Amazon. Also see Eddie's related video or
information at Phaidon.
* [Los Angeles Art Walk / Ball-Nogues Studio] The Design Algorithms event I
organized in June has been spun off into a new event: TAWFI: There's A Word
For It which will be part of the August 2009 Los Angeles Downtown Art Walk.
Other presenters include Benjamin H Bratton, Anne Burdick, Tim Durfee,
Greenmeme, Miles Kemp, Tod Kurt, Shana Ting Lipton, and Richard Metzger. I
will be presenting on skeuomorphs and the event will be at Ball-Nogues
Studio, 410 S Spring St, Downtown LA, August 13th 2009 at 8pm.
* [Z-Axis: Technique, Collaboration, Innovation] I participated in a panel
discussion titled "Technique, Collaboration, Innovation" in Saskatoon, Canada
on July 25th 2009 at Paved Art & New Media. My Technique, Collaboration,
Innovation slides are online, and focused on Machine Project (Los Angeles)
and my OutRun project.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 37]
***** Saturday, July 11, 2009
***** 1:00pm
***** Machine Project
***** 1200 D North Alvarado Street
***** Los Angeles, CA 90026
* Heather Knight
http://www.marilynmonrobot.com/
A newbie Angelino and recent alumnus from the Personal Robots Group at the
MIT Media Lab, Heather is a Social Roboticist who works at the Jet
Propulsion Lab. She has two degrees from MIT in Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science and a minor in Mechanical Engineering, working in Robotics
since 2002 under Professor Cynthia Breazeal. This dorkbot she will present
her work enabling robots to understand nonverbal human gestures and talk
about the potentials for interactive technology incorporated into everyday
objects, such as clothing.
* Jody Zellen
http://www.jodyzellen.com/
Jody Zellen is an artist living in Los Angeles, California. She works in
many media simultaneously making photographs, installations, net art,
public art, as well as artists' books that explore the subject of the urban
environment. She employs media-generated representations of contemporary
and historic cities as raw material for aesthetic and social
investigations.
* Xuan "Sean" Li
http://www.way2sky.com/portfolio/
Xuan "Sean" Li creates works that merge concepts and ideas from different
disciplines into new digital and electronic expression. He has worked in
the areas of web design, game level design, product design, and 3D
rendering and animation. His most recent work attempts to expand the role
of information visualization as an art form through a novel combination of
physical sensors with generative visuals, exploring new aesthetic
possibilities by expressing the nature of the wireless data flow.
* [Hertz, Durfee, Klein] I organized this event as a follow-up to conversations
with Tim Durfee and Norm Klein at Art Center: Design Algorithms: Skeuomorphs,
Spandrels & Palimpsests (June 20th 2009, Machine Project, Los Angeles, 1pm).
This event will explore how cultural objects shift over time, with each of us
exploring a single term related to patterns of cultural change: I will be
discussing skeuomorphs, Tim will be discussing spandrels, and Norm will be
discussing palimpsests.
* [8-bit Economic Meltdown Game Mod] Play the economic crisis of 2009 in Debt
Hole - a game mod by Garnet Hertz. Move your financial assets through the
colon of debt, avoiding bankruptcy and foreclosure on either side of you.
Hitting the brown-colored wall will result in you losing your house. Game
modification programmed in MOS 6502 8-bit microprocessor assembly code, as
seen on the Apple II, Commodore Vic 20 and the Nintendo Entertainment System.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 34] Dorkbot SoCal 34 was on Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 1pm at
Machine Project at 1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles. Photos of the
event can be seen on Flickr. Speakers included:
* Dan Goods - Dan is the "Visual Strategist" for NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory at CalTech where he develops creative ways of communicating
science. He recently has done artwork with aerogel and on a team to develop
a 108-foot long data driven sculpture at the San Jose airport.
* Brian O'Connor - Arduino + Chumby = Fun! The Chumby is an open-source,
ambient Internet device running Linux while the Arduino is an open-source
prototyping platform. Brian will show how to connect an Arduino to the
Chumby and develop a simple application that monitors the environment.
* Eric Gradman and Brent Bushnell - Eric and Brent will present ArtFall: a
dynamic physical simulation by drawing on a whiteboard.
* [UCSB] I gave a guest lecture titled "Inverting Technological Correctness:
Critical Design and Tactics of Innovation in Media Arts and Technology" in
the Media Art & Technology Graduate Program at the University of California
Santa Barbara on Tuesday, March 3rd 2009.
* [USC] I gave a guest lecture in the Interactive Media Division of the School
of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California on Thursday, March
5th 2009.
* [PBS Vermont - Technology of Social Sciences] My work was featured on
"Emerging Science" (Episode: "Technology of Social Sciences") which is
sponsored by the National Science Foundation (EPSCoR). The episode originally
premiered on February 10th 2009 at 9pm.
* [BIL2009 CSULB] I spoke on a panel on the topic of "Where is my Cyborg Self?"
at California State University Long Beach for the BIL2009 conference on
February 7th/8th 2009. Other panelists included neural computation researcher
/ hacker Virgil Griffith from CalTech (and WikiScanner), Isa Gordon,
bioengineer KV Fitzpatrick from USC, roboticist Eric Gradman from Applied
Minds, and AGI researcher Peter Voss from AdaptiveAI.
* [Sci-Q] My work recently seen (Jan 2009) on Discovery Channel's "Sci-Q" show.
2008
* [Won 25th Oscar Signorini Prize] Notified on December 11th 2008 that I won
the 25th Oscar Signorini Prize (Fondazione D'Ars Oscar Signorini Onlus).
Victoria Vesna won the award in 1998. Documentation of my work was shown at
Studio D'Ars in December 2008, and I will have a solo show in 2009 at Studio
D'Ars Milan. Noema (Tecnologie e Società) has published special information
on the prize at
http://www.noemalab.org/sections/specials/xxv_signorini_prize_robotic_art/main.html.
A summary is as follows:
> This XXV edition of the Prize is focused on robotic art, that is the use of
> robotic technologies in the arts. The Prize yearly proposes a competition
> aimed at understanding and spreading topics which are strictly connected to
> the contemporary culture and society. The Prize aims at raising a
> reflection on contemporary topics through the main viewpoint of
> contemporary arts, in their newest, most emblematic and international
> forms. This is the reason why the Oscar Signorini Prize on robotic art has
> an international jury with renowned theoreticians and artists. The jurors
> are Pier Luigi Capucci (president), Eduardo Kac, Riccardo Notte, Luigi
> Pagliarini, Laura Sansavini, Pavel Smetana and Franco Torriani.
* [Stephen Wilson Interview - Ethology of Art & Science Collaborations] I've
uploaded Garnet Hertz interviews Stephen Wilson (09-30-2002), a 13.6M MP3
file. We discuss a number of issues related to interdisciplinary arts
practice, including art & science collaborations, artists producing
knowledge, and research ethics boards and contemporary art practice.
* [Excerpts & Slides - Ethology of Art & Science Collaborations] As of Nov 25th
2008, I've uploaded lecture notes, interview excerpts, and slides from a
lecture I gave titled "Ethology of Art and Science Collaborations: Research
Ethics Boards in the Context of Contemporary Art Practice." See
http://www.conceptlab.com/ethology/ for details. This documentation includes
interview excerpts from Adam Zaretsky, Eduardo Kac, Stephen Wilson, and
Natlie Jeremijenko on the topic of institutional research ethics boards
within the context of contemporary arts practice.
* [High-Res Updates] As of November 2008, documentation and higher resolution
images have been added to a number of projects, including: TV & Beans (1, 2,
3, 4, 5), Luminous Experiment (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), Emporium (1, 2, 3, 4),
Interface (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), World's Smallest Server, Experiments in Galvanism:
Neutral Ground Webcasts and Doppelgänger: An Exploration of Transcorporal
Representation of Motion Capture Data. Sketches include Font Week, Audio
Laser Experiments, and Crash Buddha. Also, some clips of a demo I did at
Survival Research Labs are now on YouTube.
* [Science Channel] My work was featured in a half hour documentary on the
Science Channel produced by Outline Productions (UK). The episode also
features Kevin Warwick. Part of the documentary footage can be found on
Vimeo:
* [Dorkbot SoCal 32] Dorkbot Socal 32 is on November 1st 2008 at World Power
Systems Headquarters. Tom Jennings is declaring that it's time for a regime
change in his studio, so he's selling mountains of his equipment. This isn't
just ordinary stuff, though. It's a hand-picked selection of some of the
finest and most obscure technologies from the Cold War and the history of
computing: nixie tubes, antique computing, wind-up tape machines, transistors
older than you, gyroscopes, flip-dot displays, nixie assemblies, one-plane
numeric displays, radiation detectors, new (in 1950) aluminum project
cabinets, weird knobs, dials, switches, old (nice!) radios, ancient
(working!) oscilloscopes, bubble [magnetic] memory, tiny cathode ray tubes,
weird instrumentation. Most things will be one dollar. Bring some cash and
come on out.
* [USC Demo] The cockroach controlled mobile robot was demo'd at the University
of Southern California for Steve Anderson's Interactive Media class on
Thursday, October 16th 2008 in the Ron Howard Screening Room of the Robert
Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts. Steve Anderson made a brief blog post about
the demo: "Mechanical Cockroach stalks Zemeckis Center."
* [Dorkbot SoCal 31] Dorkbot Socal 31 is on August 27th 2008 at Machine Project
in Los Angeles "Nerd Droid" (Instrument bending and video glitching VJ duo),
univac (musical gadgets, pictured below), and Kevin Mack (mathematical
abstract 3D art) will be presenting... see you there.
* [Snelgrove - Sept 15th 2008] I will be in Saskatoon, Canada from September
9th through 16th 2008, and will be giving a lecture on Monday, September 15th
2008 from noon until 1pm at the University of Saskatchewan in the Department
of Art & Art History in the Snelgrove Gallery (Room 191, Murray Building).
This is the university I did my undergrad degree at, and the talk will be
"From Farm to DIY Culture: This lecture will provide an overview of Hertz's
work, tracing a line between the farmyard scrap pile of his childhood in
Saskatchewan and his current work and research in art that engages with and
questions technology."
* [Moscow International Film Festival] My work was featured at the Media Forum
program of the 2008 Moscow International Film Festival in Moscow, Russia
(June 25 2008) and at the National Centre For Contemporary Arts in
Kaliningrad, Russia (July 2008). The show was titled "Evolution Haute
Couture: Art and Science in the Post-Biological Age" and was curated by
Dmitry Bulatov.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 30] Dorkbot Socal 30 is on July 26th 2008 at Machine Project.
Steven Gentner, Gil Kuno and Brett Doar will be presenting... see you there.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 29] Dorkbot Socal 29 is on May 29th 2008 at Machine Project.
Hear the gut-wrenching tale of four plucky men and a crappy car who made a
foolish fantasy into a foolish reality! Earlier this year, Make: magazine
agreed to sponsor Jason Torchinsky in fielding an entry into the 2008 24
Hours of Lemons motor race: an endurance race for cars valued at $500 or
less. Jason gathered the best people in the field of enough free time and
some interest in racing a shitbox: Tom Jennings, Brett Doar, and Sloan Fader.
A 1993 Ford Escort LX was purchased for $300, and the work began. In the end,
The Make:Way car came in 33rd out of nearly 90 entries-- a far better result
than ever hoped for. Come see what the team did, how they did it, and see the
33rd-place-winning car itself!
* [HASTAC II] I was at HASTAC II May 22-24 2008 at University of California
Irvine and University of California Los Angeles - the event focused on
exploring the multiple ways in which place, movement, borders, and identities
are being renegotiated and remapped by new locative technologies. HASTAC is
the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory and is
committed to new forms of collaboration across communities and disciplines
fostered by creative uses of technology.
* [2008 GSFIR Forum] I presented at the 4th Annual Graduate Student Forum on
Interdisciplinary Research @ UCI on Friday, May 2, 2008. The event included
Julia Lupton, Mark Poster, Robert Nideffer, Carol Burke, Rajagopalan
Radhakrishnan, Allison Fish, Kim Icreverzi, and Eric Kabisch. The forum had 3
primary goals:
1. To engender discussion among participants from different departments who
might not otherwise interact.
2. To discuss issues involved in pursuing research that crosses disciplinary
boundaries or does not fit exclusively into an established discipline.
3. To explore possibilities for connections or collaborations between
participants from different disciplinary backgrounds.
* [Pedagogical Fellowship @ UCI 2008/09] I've been awarded a Pedagogical
Fellowship through UC Irvine. This will include training incoming teaching
assistants at UCI, and also includes workshops on course design, pedagogy,
mentoring, job talks, tenure, etc. For an overview, see this video by Shaun
Longstreet.
* [Video Games at Art, Culture & Technology] For the second academic year, I am
teaching discussion sections of Video Games at Art, Culture & Technology at
University of California Irvine with Peter Krapp, Bill Tomlinson and Dan
Frost. Students: you can find my 2007-2008 lecture notes at
http://conceptlab.com/uci/us12a/, http://conceptlab.com/uci/us12b/, and
http://conceptlab.com/uci/us12c/
* [Photostereosynthesis: New Project Proposal] I have a freshly minted research
proposal online for a new photography-based imaging/hardware project,
tentatively titled Photostereosynthesis. No robots or animals. It's
whitewall-gallery-ish and displayed without electricity. Here's the one
sentence blurb:
> Research and development of a custom microprocessor-based digital camera
> focus controller in the style of Louis Lumiere's 1920s-era layered
> photographic technology, Photostereosynthesis.
* [McKenzie Wark] As a follow-up to Galloway, McKenzie Wark gave a guest
lecture in US12C on Thursday, April 10, 2008 from 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM. He
discussed GAM3R 7H30RY and 1. can we explore games as allegories for the
world we live in? and 2. can there be a critical theory of games?
* [Alex Galloway] Alex Galloway gave a guest lecture in US12C on Thursday,
April 3, 2008 from 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM. His talk was titled "The Game of
War." RSG is currently working on a new project: a computer-based version of
"The Game of War," a board game designed and fabricated in 1978 by the French
Situationist Guy Debord. During this talk, he discussed details of Guy
Debord's wife, Alice Becker-Ho, legally threatening him.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 28 - 1pm Sat April 5, 2008 @ Machine - Seeley, Lotan & Edwards
+ Make Magazine] Guest hosted by Thomas Edwards, former Dorkbot DC overlord.
Presenters were Damon Seeley, Thomas Edwards and Gilad Lotan. There was also
be a presentation by the Make Magazine race car team to solicit projects for
their car.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 27 - Make:Way Meet-The-Car Event] This event happened on
Saturday, March 29, 2008 from 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM at Tom's place. Make:Way is
Make Magazine's entry into the 2008 24 Hours of LeMons race -- an endurance
race where each car must be $500 or less. The Make:Way team will be
transforming a $300 1993 Ford Escort LX into a screaming brute of a racecar.
* [At the Trailing Edge of New Media] As an offshoot of my paper "At the
Trailing Edge of New Media: Interdisciplinary Arts Practice &
Institutionalization" for CAA2008, I've been starting to interview people in
the media arts community. This is partially in response to Geert Lovink's "In
Search of the Cool Obscure" and Dietz & Cook's "Formerly New Media" (which I
participated in).
* [Book launch - Quebec City Feb 5th, Montréal Feb 13th 2008] Some older work
of mine is included in the book "L'Image ramifiée: Le Photographique du Web"
edited by Élène Tremblay with writings by Thierry Bardini, Vera Frenkel,
Arthur & Marilouise Kroker, Joanne Lalonde and Valerie Lamontagne. "Une
vingtaine d'artistes et six auteurs issus du domaine des arts visuels, des
communications et des sciences humaines proposent une analyse de la place
occupée par la photographie dans l'art Web." The press, Éditions J'ai VU is
holding two book launch parties - and although I won't be there - some other
interesting folks will be. Here are the specs:
> À Québec, le mardi 5 février 2008 á 17h
> au CAFÉ L'ABRAHAM-MARTIN DE MÈDUSE
> 595 Saint-Vallier Est
> À Montréal, le mercredi 13 février 2008 á 18h
> á la LIBRAIRIE OLIVIERI DU MUSÈE D'ART CONTEMPORAIN
> 185 Sainte-Catherine Ouest
* [CAA2008 - Texas] I will be presenting a paper titled "At the Trailing Edge
of New Media: Interdisciplinary Arts Practice & Institutionalization" at
CAA2008, the College Art Association's 96th Annual Conference in Dallas -
Fort Worth Texas in February. The panel is Electronic and Emergent Media Art
and Their Relationship to Culture, Society, Identity, and Politics Wednesday,
February 20, 2:30 PM-5:00 PM, Dallas Ballroom D1, 1st Floor, Adam's Mark
Hotel. This panel will be chaired by Max Kazemzadeh and will include Laura
Richard Janku, David Nunez, and Golan Levin. I will also be participating in
the Leonardo education forum on Thursday, February 21 from 12-2.
2007
* [Dorkbot SoCal 26 - LA Geek Dinner Blind Date] This event was planned with
Heather Vescent and Mark Allen on Tuesday, January 15, 2008 from 8:00 PM -
11:30 PM and at Machine Project. See the invitation here
* [Dorkbot SoCal 25 - Saturday Dec 1st 2007] Dorkbot SoCal 25 - Bullock (HDR
Photography), Hoetzlein (Intelligent Things), Hertz Sr. (Supermileage
Vehicles) - Machine Project, December 1st 2007, 1pm. For more info, see
http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal/
* [Boing Boing TV - November 27th 2007] Boing Boing TV re-edited some footage
of mine and posted it on November 27th 2007: for the clip, see
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/27/bbtv-cockroachcontro.html - the original
clip can be seen at http://www.conceptlab.com/roachbot/
* [Dorkbot SoCal 24 - Mister Jalopy - Oct 13th 2007] After a long summer
slumber, Dorkbot SoCal is back on October 13th 2007 at 5pm with a special
studio visit/event with Mister Jalopy of http://hooptyrides.blogspot.com/ and
Make Magazine. This event took place at Mister Jalopy's secret studio
hideout, and was limited to 30 people. There are several interesting guests
coming out, including Douglas Repetto (founder of Dorkbot), Eliot Phillips
(hackaday.com), Mark Frauenfelder (Boing Boing), and Coop (artist). As it
turns out, the event was also covered by Wired and Boing Boing TV.
* [UCSB Text Encoding Seminar - 19-21 Sept 2007] I was sponsored to attend the
Text Encoding Seminar & Workshop at UC Santa Barbara from September 19-21,
2007. This seminar was led by Julia Flanders and Syd Bauman, and was hosted
by the UC Transliteracies Project and the UCSB Early Modern Center, with
funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Thanks to Alan Liu
for the invite.
* [CBC Interview - 29 Aug 2007] I did an interview with CBC for a new program
on CBC Radio One, titled Search Engine on 29 Aug 2007. This interview aired
nationally in Canada on Thursday September 20th 2007 at 11:30am.
* [PhD Advancement to Candidacy - 13 June 2007] I successfully advanced to
candidacy in the Visual Studies PhD Program at UCI on June 13th 2007.
* [GSFIR Panel 11 May 2007] I presented at the third annual UCI Graduate
Student Forum on Interdisciplinary Research on May 11th 2007: CalIT2 Room
3008 at 1:30 pm. My lecture slides/videos are online: Thoughts on Early
Cinema, Economic Models & the Humiliation of Interdisciplinarity. The talk
starts with "The main point to realise is that all knowledge presents itself
within a conceptual framework adapted to account for previous experience and
that any such frame may prove too narrow to comprehend new experiences."
(Niels Bohr, 1958). The other people on the panel / roundtable included
Samantha Lane, Amanda Williams, and Michelle Cho.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 23 - May 5] Some people that wanted to blow something big up
or launch something into outer space, came out to Dorkbot SoCal 23 for an
excursion to Norton Sales on Saturday May 5th 2007 1pm... for some photos,
see my Dorkbot SoCal 23 Flickr set or the thing that I bought, a 1962 HP 196B
(Polaroid Land back) Oscilloscope Camera.
* [Rotterdam in April] I was in Rotterdam (Netherlands) between April 6th to
11th for The Dutch Electronic Art Festival: DEAF07... It was a good show and
got to meet some old friends and make some new. I also got done the
installation a day ahead of schedule and had the chance to take a quick trip
to Paris.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 22 - March 10] Dorkbot SoCal 22 was at Machine Project on
Saturday March 10th at 1pm, and was on the theme of 3D/stereo imaging. Some
of these devices had been informally demo'd already at previous events: see
the PS2 Stereo Movie Viewer or another view of the "Steampunk viewfinder".
Ray Zone will be presenting - I recently saw a talk he gave at USC, and it
was top-notch. Check the Dorkbot SoCal website for more info...
* ["Jan 2007 Tour" schedule]
* COMPLETE: Dorkbot SoCal 20 - Saturday Jan 6th
* COMPLETE: Installing Experiments in Galvanism in San Luis Obispo
(California) Jan 12-14th. Exhibition titled "Emergent Reaction" w Casey
Reas, S Penny, Peter Cho. Show runs January 19th to February 17th 2007 at
the UAG.
* COMPLETE: Opening in San Luis Obispo Jan 19th, although I won't be there.
The opening can be viewed indirectly through my project, though. Lots of
people (300+) came to the opening.
* COMPLETE: Gave a talk at University of California Digital Arts Research
Network "Epicenter" event on Jan 26-27th at UC Riverside. My lecture is
during the "Social Considerations" panel between 2:30 - 4:30PM on Friday
Jan 26th in Screening Room #335, 3rd floor. My talk was entitled Theories
of Media Change and how this relates to media arts practice. My UCDARnet
slides are available here.
* TORONTO INSTALL: Going to Toronto from Sunday Jan 28th to Monday Jan 29th
to install for a show at InterAccess.
* MONTREAL LECTURE: I am giving a public lecture in Montreal at Concordia
University on Wed Jan 31 at 7pm: 1515 Ste. Catherine, Concordia EV
Building, 5th Floor, Room 615, Visual Arts side. The poster for the lecture
is here. The talk is organized by Concordia's IMCA in conjunction with
Hexagram, CIAM, CDA, and UC Irvine.
* TORONTO OPENING & DEMOS: The InterAccess exhibition (titled "Zoo") w Ingrid
Bachmann & Amy Youngs. A short exhibition essay by Matthew Brower is also
available.
> Please join us for a special opening reception on Friday February 2, 8:00
> pm at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, 9 Ossington Avenue.
> Artist talks will take place prior to the reception at 7:00 pm. Live
> demonstrations of "Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot #3" will take place
> at the opening reception, as well as on Saturday, February 3 from 12:00
> to 5:00 pm.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 21 - Feb 3] Dorkbot SoCal 21 was the much-anticipated
"Dorkbake" event at Machine Project on Saturday Feb 3rd.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 20 - Jan 6] Dorkbot SoCal 20 was at Machine Project on
Saturday Jan 6th at 1pm... and was a triple event: Bob Blackstock from
Laminar Sciences gave a "Streaming birefringence" demo, some Open Hack
socialization happened, and the "Dorkbake" Contest was announced. The
Dorkbake winner of the contest will win a prize and be in Make Magazine.
Check http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal/ for details. Some recent Dorkbot
SoCal pics on Flickr give an idea of what went on.
2006
* [Dorkbot SoCal 19 - Dec 2] Dorkbot SoCal 19 was at Machine Project on
Saturday December 2nd at 5:30pm... it was a packed launch party for the new
issue of MAKE Magazine, with guest presentations by Simon Penny and Mr
Jalopy. Mr Jalopy's talk was especially good.
* ["Theories of Media Change" slides online] I gave a public lecture on Tuesday
November 7th 2006 at Calit2, and uploaded my slides: Theories of Media
Change: Graphing Revolutions in Telecommunications & Information Technology.
This presentation uses a positioning statement of the institute - the
California Institute for Telecommunications & Information Technology - as a
reference point to discuss general theories of media change. Exponential
models of growth, like Moore's Law (1965), are explained and questioned.
Gartner's Hype Cycle Theory (2005) is then proposed as a model for
articulating unrealistic expectations of new media. Paul Duguid's
Futurological Tropes (1996) of transparency and supercession are introduced
within the context of hype, and Hype Cycles are problematized as being
consumer-product-centric. Lastly, McLuhan's Tetrads (1989) are introduced as
a model for the analysis of media research & development.
* [Vida 9.0 Win] I won honorable mention at Vida 9.0. Here's the call for
participation:
> "VIDA 9.0 is the eighth edition of an international competition created to
> reward excellence in artistic creativity in the fields of Artificial Life
> and related disciplines. We are looking for artistic projects that address
> the interaction between "synthetic" and "organic" life, as well as
> innovative projects that further develop the field of Artificial Life. In
> previous years prizes have been awarded to projects that included
> autonomous robots, avatars, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots,
> cellular automata, computer viruses, virtual ecologies that evolve with
> user participation, and works that highlight the social side of Artificial
> Life."
* [Dorkbot SoCal 18 - Nov 4] Dorkbot SoCal 18 went really well: it was a field
trip to Apex Electronics. Some people that were there posted some great
photos of the place on Flickr: take a look at Heather Vescent's Apex set,
Dave Bullock's Apex photos and Zoetica Ebb's Apex set. While we were there,
Tom found something he built a long time ago... but somehow I wasn't too
surprized. After all, he basically invented BBS's...
* [Technological Slowness] In an attempt to be funny in 2000, I had bought a
few domains and posted some content to them: slowsoftware.com and
slowporn.com. I let these domains expire a while ago, but recently put the
work back online. Warning: these are only one-line jokes that were funnier
within the context of Apple's "Think Different" campaign and dialup internet
access.
* [Dorkbot SoCal 17 - Oct 7] Dorkbot SoCal 17 happened on Saturday October 7th
at 4pm at Machine Project. This event featured Suzanne Stefanac, Allison de
Fren, and Greg Elliott, who bounced up and down on his toes.
* [Discovery Channel / Science Channel] I did an extensive video shoot with a
Toronto crew from Discovery Channel on Tuesday Oct 3rd 2006. I've been
through this routine a few times, and Doug Crosbie (producer) and Jay Kemp
(camera) seemed to do a way-above-average job. This will air in Canada on
Discovery Channel and in the US of A on the Science Channel. This video is
viewable on YouTube.
* [YouTube Madness] About half a year ago in April, Jonah did an interview with
me for Gizmodo, and he uploaded a video of the roachbot to YouTube. At the
time I didn't give it a lot of contemplation - I had just sort of thought
that it would be a cheap place to host the clip. For whatever reason, the
video - that was never really intended for a big audience - has sort of gone
viral on YouTube since then.
* [SECT] I participated in Technospheres: Futures of Thinking, the Third Annual
Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory at the University of California
Humanities Research Institute. The event was August 14-25, 2006. A number of
interesting folks were there: Julian Bleecker, John Seely Brown, Craig
Calhoun, Lisa Cartwright, Beatriz da Costa, Cathy N. Davidson, Scott Fisher,
Tracy Fullerton, Dan Greenstein , Katherine Hayles, Lynn Hershman, Perry
Hoberman, Norman Klein, Tim Lenoir, George Lewis, Geert Lovink, Tara
McPherson, Michael Naimark, ONOMY LABS (Design for Culture), Simon Penny,
Saskia Sassen, Larry Smarr, and Floyd Webb. Some photos I've taken of the
event can be seen on Flickr. I also did a short talk and demo on Wednesday
Aug 23rd at 7:45pm at my lab in Calit2.
* [New Video - Japan] Here is a new video of the Cockroach Controlled Mobile
Robot at Ars Electronica 2005 by directions.jp (although it was shot almost a
year ago).
* [Aug 12th Dorkbot SoCal - Make Magazine Issue 7 release party] Dorkbot SoCal
16 is scheduled to happen on Aug 12th 2006 (Saturday) at 8pm at Machine
Project. This was a special event presented by Dorkbot SoCal & Machine
Project: Make Magazine's Issue 7 Release Party. Jed Berk talked about
autonomous flocking behaviour in robotic blimps, Make editor and internet
superstar Mark Frauenfelder introduced the new issue and chatted about
general makery, and Make Issue 7 (Back Yard Biology) was be there for you to
peruse and purchase, which includes an article on making a home mushroom
growing lab by our friend Phil Ross.
* [See you at ISEA] I'll be at ISEA 2006 from the evening of Tues Aug 8th to
the morning of Sat Aug 12th. I will for sure be at the SRL show on August 11.
The ISEA2006 Symposium Schedule is here.
* [Interview on Canadian radio] An interview I did related to a story on
surveillance and artmaking by Angela Antle is being aired on CBC Radio One's
"Socket" Program on Wed July 12th (11:30am) and again on Sat July 15th
(directly after the 4:00 pm news). In the interview, I primarily discuss
Posthuman System #1: Cockroach with Wireless Video. Here is an overview of
Socket Episode #3 - Privacy (it appears to be gone now... oh well).
* Got an 2006-2007 Emulex Fellowship from Calit2 (My studio/lab space is behind
the small square windows of the live Calit2 UCI webcam). Thanks!
* Dorkbot SoCal 15 was on Sunday, July 2nd 2006 at 1pm at Machine Project. This
was another successful and packed "open hack deconstruction" event, with the
entire event consisting of people ripping apart (and indirectly learning
about) discarded technology.
* The roachbot was in the June 2006 issue of Ingenia (Issue 27), the journal of
the Royal Academy of Engineering. The article by Peter Moar is titled
"Biocomponents: Bringing Life to Engineering".
* Dorkbot SoCal 14 was on Saturday, June 3rd 2006 at 1pm at Machine Project
under the theme of "Un-everyday Environments". Samuel Coniglio, Vice
President of the Space Tourism Society showed products he's designed for life
in space: including, of course, a zero-gravity martini glass. Jennifer
Silbert, an L.A.-based architect, brought us into the interesting world of
designing and working with highly original custom architectural materials.
Lastly, Tod E. Kurt showed his entourage of Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners
and explained how to modify them to play music and do other unexpected
things.
* Presented to Paul Dourish's research group at UCI on June 1st 2006 about my
new work related to Dead Media and how this relates to the dynamics of media
change and theory/history of information technology.
* Jonah Brucker-Cohen did a fairly in-depth interview with me for Gizmodo on
Friday 07 April 2006: Gizmodo Gallery: Garnet Hertz.
* Gave a demo to the president and faculty of Orange Coast College on 15 March
2006.
* I gave a lecture at UCSD's Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts 2006
Lecture Series on April 27th 2006 from 6 to 8pm. This lecture series is
organized by Brett Stalbaum of C5. Other speakers in the series include
Sabine Himmelsbach, Anne-Marie Schleiner / Luis Hernandez, Miller Puckette,
Achim Mohnè, Heather Raikes, Steve Durie, Rachel Clarke, and Sheldon Brown.
* Dorkbot SoCal 13 was on Saturday, May 6th 2006 at 1pm at Machine Project.
This event was "Open Hack" format, with people bring something to completely
dissasemble - which was a really successful event. Tom Jennings and others
were there. Bradley Pitts was visiting from the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam,
and gave a talk about several of his projects, including his spacesuit-based
work.
* Dorkbot SoCal 12 was on Saturday, April 1st 2006 at 1pm at Machine Project.
The theme of the event was "Visualizing the Invisible", and featured
presentatations by Mark Daggett, Naomi Spellman / Brandon Stow, and Michael
Lew. Mark Daggett, most well-known (perhaps) as being part of the Radical
Software Group that won a Golden Nica at Ars Electronica 2002, presented
"Balance Bar" - a browser extension programmed to allow any user to
editorialize any web page anywhere on the Internet. Naomi Spellman & Brandon
Stow from 34 North 118 West showed "Interpretive Engine for Various Places on
Earth", a system that uses outdoor wireless network connections to design a
custom-built narrative specific to geographical location, including factors
like weather conditions, the physical environment, nearby locales, and
historic events. Michael Lew presented an April Fool's joke that included
someone collapsing to the ground and flailing around in a siezure: he's a
media artist and research engineer that primarily works on expanding cinema,
and has a background in electrical engineering, artificial intelligence,
performance and filmmaking.
* I exhibited at the STRP Festival in Eindhoven Netherlands from March 23-26
2006. There were a couple of familiar faces there, including Bjoern Schuelke
(from ArtBots 2005), Markus Lerner & Andre Stubbe (from ArtBots 2005), Marnix
de Nijs (from Ars Electronica 2005), Pascal Glissmann & Martina Hofflin (from
Ars Electronica 05), Matthias Gommel / Martina Haitz / Jan Zappe from
Robotlab (from ArtBots 2005). Bill Vorn and Graham Smith were also there. The
theme of the robot-oriented show is "We Are The Robots", with a related
presentation by Karl Bartos of Kraftwerk. An overview of the festival aired
on the Deutsche Wella TV program "Euromaxx" on March 25th 2006: see an
archive of the show at rtsp://a1175.v143424.c14342.g.vr.akamaistream.net/
ondemand/7/1175/14342/v0001/ ondemand.dw-world.de/
dwtv_video/eme/eme20060325.rm (open in Real Player).
* I gave a talk at a special edition of Dorkbot Eindhoven held in conjunction
with STRP Festival on Sunday March 26th 2006 at 8:15pm in Strijp-S Hall 2.
* Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver was installed at
Latitude 53 in Edmonton, Canada from February 17th to March 18th 2006.
* I will be in the 2nd edition of the DVD Art et biotechnologies by Louise
Poissant and Ernestine Daubner (published by UQAM). Submitted documentation
of the roachbot on 01 March 2006, but not sure when the DVD is coming out.
* Dorkbot SoCal 11 happened on Saturday, March 4th 2006 at 1pm. The "Open Hack"
event had several folks bring out an array of interesting projects: it was a
great event. I also gave a "how to solder" workshop, although it was really a
collaborative demo significantly contributed to by Tom Jennings.
* Was at Information Exchange: UC DARNet Annual System-Wide Gathering on Friday
March 3rd.
* Interviewed by Régine Debatty from http://we-make-money-not-art.com on
Wednesday, March 1st 2006. Take a look at the Mini-interview with Garnet
Hertz at we-make-money-not-art.com
* Gave guest lecture/demo in Lisa Naugle's class at UCI on Feb 27 at 1:30pm.
* Was interviewed by Georgina Born from University of Cambridge (UK) on 23
February 2006. She is doing a sociology-based research project on the
intersections of art, science & technology.
* Attended "New Media, Technology and Humanities" at UCI on Feb 17th 2006.
Manovich and Huhtamo gave good talks, with Erkki's "topoi" an interesting
concept worth exploring... (a post-event overview can be seen here)
* Gave a guest lecture/demo in Beatriz da Costa's EECS129 class at UCI on Feb
13th 2006.
* Real-world-simulacra is stranger than fiction: the roachbot was demo'd to an
advisor of Arnold Schwarzenegger's at Calit2 on Feb 9th 2006.
* I have a 3 year contract to have lab/studio space in the freshly-built Calit2
building at UCI starting Feb 2006. The Media Arts lab is a 3000 square foot
facility, and at this point I think I'm the only person occupying the space
on a permanent basis. Thank-you to Lisa Naugle, Albert Yee and the folks at
Calit2 for their positive attitude and support. The building can be seen via
webcam - my studio space has small square bunker-style windows and is on the
2nd floor. (Calit2 UCI Floorplan)
* I did an informal interview with Three D World Magazine (AU) on 06 Feb 2006.
This included some of my thoughts on Ray Kurzweil.
* I have been awarded some funding to work on the Transliteracies Project.
People involved with this project include a bunch of folks: Kevin C.
Almeroth, Bruce Bimber, Sue-Ellen Case, Sharon Daniel, Mark Goble, Judith
Green, N. Katherine Hayles, Tobias Höllerer, Yunte Huang, Peter Krapp, George
Legrady, Alan Liu, Peter Lyman, Mark Meadow, John Mohr, Christopher Newfield,
Robert Nideffer, Lisa Parks, Carol Braun Pasternack, Mark Poster, Rita Raley,
Ronald E. Rice, Mark Rose, Warren Sack, James Tobias, Matthew Turk, Noah
Wardrip-Fruin and William B. Warner.
* I've finally linked up an interview I did at Ars Electronica 2005 with
Gelinda Lang from ORF Radio (2.6M MP3 File). It gives a decent and quick
audio overview of the Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot. Listen carefully to
hear Scott Snibbe's Blow Up whirring in the background.
* I am learning French.
* Dorkbot SoCal 10 happened on Feb 4th 2006 (1pm) in a packed-completely-full
Machine Project. The topic for the event was http://hardware.processing.org,
with an introduction by Casey Reas. Two physical computing initiatives
related to Processing were presented: Osman Khan showed the Arduino project
and Sean Dockray presented the Wiring project. In addition, two recent
Arduino/Wiring projects developed at UCLA were demonstrated. Thanks to the
presenters for a great show and to everyone that came out.
* I was interviewed on 93.9 FM (KZLA) in regards to Dorkbot SoCal on Friday,
February 2nd 2006.
* Dorkbot SoCal 09 happened on Jan 7th 2006, 1pm as an "Open Hack" Event in
where a number of people brought projects to show, demo, and get feedback
on... as well as get tidbits of technical help. Mark Allen, Tom Jennings and
I acted as informal hosts. The meeting concluded with a presentation by Jonah
Brucker-Cohen who was visiting from NYC/Dublin. Press about this event was in
the Thursday February 2nd 2006 issue of the L.A. Times.
2005
* Roachbot #3 appeared in a documentary on TV Tokyo on November 28th 2005. The
crew - including director Ryo Nishida - came from Japan to shoot the robot in
action on October 29th 2006.
* Dorkbot SoCal 08 happened on December 3rd 2005 (Saturday, 1pm) at Machine
Project in LA to a completely packed audience. Julian Bleeker & Peter Brinson
from USC's Interactive Media Division presented "Vis-a-Vis Games", Phil
Stearns demo'd some TI99/4a Circuit Bending, and Jay Mark Johnson showed a
Robotic Spherical Lens 3D Camera. Thank-you to the presenters and everyone
that came out.
* I presented demos of Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot #3 in conjunction with
the IEEE International Conference on Sensors on Tuesday November 1st 2005.
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) conference was
at UCI, with demos occuring at the California Institute for
Telecommunications and Information Technology.
* Jens Hauser wrote a review of my roachbot at Ars Electronica, which can be
seen at http://www.arte-tv.com/fr/kunst-musik/
kultur-digital/noued/973988.html (French) and at
http://www.arte-tv.com/de/kunst-musik/ kultur-digital/noued/973988.html
(German).
* I participated in the BioTech Art Workshop from October 10th to 14th 2005
with Symbiotica at UC Irvine. The description is as follows: "Artistic
Director Oron Catts and key scientific collaborator Gary Cass from the
Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Western
Australia will run a five day intensive workshop where the tools of modern
biology are demonstrated through artistic engagement, which in turn gives
voice to the broader philosophical and ethical exploration into the extent of
human intervention with other living things. The practical components of the
workshop include DNA extraction and fingerprinting, genetic engineering,
selective breeding, plant and animal tissue culture and basic tissue
engineering techniques. " My photos of the Symbiotica BioTech Art Workshop
can now be seen at http://www.conceptlab.com/photos/symbiotica2005/.
* I installed "Experiments in Galvanism: Frog w/ Implanted Webserver" at
Banff's Walter Phillips Gallery. The project is available at
http://conceptlab.com/frog/ until October 23, 2005. The project is part of
"The Art Formerly Known As New Media", curated by Sarah Cook and Steve Dietz,
which opened at the Walter Phillips Gallery (WPG) September 17 (2pm). "The
Art Formerly Known As New Media" is an exhibition on the occasion of the 10th
anniversary of the Banff New Media Institute. The exhibition includes works
by Shu Lea Cheang, Francesca da Rimini, Sara Diamond, Garnet Hertz,
irational.org, Michael Naimark, Greg Niemeyer, radioqualia (Honor Harger /
Adam Hyde), Catherine Richards, Marek Walczak / Martin Wattenberg, and Maciej
Wisniewski. The show will be producing a major catalogue. I also give an
artist talk at 1 p.m on Saturday, September 17th.
* I am doing doctoral research in the Visual Studies program at UCI (starting
Fall 2005). I've been digging through a number of different areas and have
started making notes of this process at http://www.conceptlab.com/uci/phd/ -
although this is likely out of date.
* New Ars Electronica 2005 photos! Roachbot Version 3 - Ars Electronica 2005
photos
* My roachbot was in Ars Electronica 2005 in Linz, Austria. The festival had
33,000 people in attendance - and it felt like I gave a demo to each of them.
Check out the Roachbot Version 3 - Ars Electronica 2005 photos. I got version
number 3 of the machine completed, and was installed in the Brucknerhaus,
which housed the main Ars Electronica conference. The machine was demo'd to
about 10 television and radio crews. I was in the Hybrid show, which was a
good match for the project. I ran into Ollivier Dyens, Steve Heimbecker,
Dominique LaFontaine, Lev Manovich, Steve Dietz, Casey Reas, Sabrina Raaf's
alter-ego Emma, Andres Ramirez, Michelle Kasprzak, Nicholas Stedman, Jens
Hauser, Brody Condon, Paul Demarinis, Michelle Teran, and many other folks.
* Press about the roachbot has spread through the OC Register, OC Weekly,
Associated Press, MSNBC, Make Magazine (twice), Wired, and The New York Times
(with the article reprinted in a dozen other papers).
* I helped out a bit in this year's Siggraph CyberFashion show: I did some
demos in conjunction with the show last year, and got to know (and be friends
with) Janet Hansen and Isa Gordon. At one point, they asked me to model...
but luckily they didn't need me. I also ran into some folks during the
conference: Eddie Shanken, Cheryl L'Hirondelle, Steve Dietz, Jonah
Brucker-Cohen, Katherine Moriwaki and others.
* I have discontinued using my yahoo.com and vividworks.com email addresses: my
new email is my firstnamelastname@gmail.com (actually with my first name -
Garnet - and last name - Hertz - together as one word).
* Cockroach-Controlled Mobile Robot was shown at ArtBots 2005 from July 15-17,
2005 in Dublin, Ireland. The ArtBots curators for 2005 are: Douglas Repetto
(Columbia University Computer Music Center), Michael John Gorman
(Stanford/The Ark), and Marie Redmond (Trinity College Computer Science). The
show was one of the best show-type experiences I've ever had, and my machine
was lucky enough to win a prize as the audience's favorite project.
* New indoor ArtBots 2005 photos! Roachbot Version 2 - Artbots 2005 exhibition
in Dublin, Ireland
* New outdoor ArtBots 2005 photos! Roachbot Version 2 - Artbots 2005 in the
streets of Dublin, Ireland
* I will be completing my MFA degree from the University of California Irvine
in the Arts Computation Engineering Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in
summer 2005. I will also simultaneously be finishing UCI's Critical Theory
Emphasis. Thank-you to the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Canada-US Fulbright
Foundation, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information
Technology and the Arts Computation Engineering Program program and Simon
Penny for helping make this a possibility.
* Went to the SRL Los Angeles 2005 Show on April 2nd 2005.
* I presented a paper titled "The Animal-Machine: Biorobotics, War and
Animalized Technologies" in the conference "Defense: Models, Strategies,
Media" at UCI, sponsored by UCI's Visual Studies, Humanities Center, and
Critical Theory Institute (7-9 March 2005). The talk was essentially a survey
of biomimetic weapons in a critical/cultural context. Speakers at the
conference include Etienne Balibar (UCI), Wendy Hui Kyung Chun (Brown),
Beatriz da Costa (UCI), James Der Derian (Brown), Garnet Hertz (UCI), Eva
Horn (Frankfurt/Oder), Natalie Jeremijenko (Yale/UCSD), Julian Klein
(Berlin), Peter Krapp (UCI), Trevor Paglen (Berkeley), Claus Pias (Essen),
Mark Poster (UCI), Laurence Rickels (UCSB), Philipp Sarasin (Zurich),
Felicity Scott (UCI), Jens Schroeter (Siegen), Jennifer Terry (UCI), Eugene
Thacker (Georgia Tech), and Brigitte Weingart (Cologne).
* Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot showed at the Beall Center for Art &
Technology in March 2005.
2004
* Details of my Masters coursework etc. at UCI can be viewed at
http://www.conceptlab.com/uci/ - watch the slow motion blow-by-blow drama. I
don't think it's a standard MFA program: look at the link and decide. My
thesis-related work can be seen at http://turing.ace.uci.edu/~ghertz/
("Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine")
* I don't quite understand why I'm still getting a lot of traffic. During 2004,
this domain saw 3.72 million page views per month: that's around 120,000/day.
* Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot (AKA "Control and Communication in the
Animal and the Machine") made its premiere at Siggraph 2004. This project
consists of a mobile robot that is literally controlled by a living giant
madagascan cockroach. Special thanks to Isa Gordon for inviting me and to
numerous others for the feedback.
* Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver was live beginning 3
June 2004 (Thursday, 6pm PST) and ran until 19 June 2004 at the Beall Center
for Art & Technology as part of the exhibition Hybrid Vigor.
* Guest artist presentation at UCSD in Ben Benjamin's ICAM101 / VIS140 class on
19 May 2004.
2003
* Living in California pursuing graduate research under the auspices of the
interdisciplinary Arts/Computation/Engineering Graduate Program at the
University of California Irvine, supervised by Simon Penny. Supported by UCI,
the Fulbright Scholar Program, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and a Research
Fellowship at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information
Technology.
* Fly was featured on Slashdot on 04 March 2003, which resulted in a record day
in some respects: 1,773,829 hits - 34,963,157,475 bytes - 78,892 visitors in
24 hours. This didn't break the previous record of 2,203,241 hits and
1,097,900 pageviews the last time my work was featured on Slashdot (15 Mar 15
2002). (View the stats...)
2002
* Participating in ArtSci2002, New York City 06-08 December 2002. Within this
conference, I will be acting as a mentor to consult with other
scientists/artists regarding interdisciplinary collaborations. For more
information about this event, visit http://www.asci.org/artsci2002/ or for
more information about ASCI, visit http://www.asci.org.
* Interview: Steve Dietz - by Garnet Hertz, originally published in BlackFlash
Magazine 19-3 is now avaialble as a 304K PDF.
* Presenting "Ethology of Art and Science Collaborations: Research Ethics
Boards in the Context of Contemporary Art Practice" at Crossing Over:
Negotiating Specialization in an Interdisciplinary Culture. University of
Regina, Canada. October 25 - 27, 2002. For more information about this
conference, visit http://uregina.ca/crossing_over/
* Presented at the Bridges II Consortium, October 4 to 6, 2002. Location:
Banff, Canada. Bridges is an international consortium for the study and
exploration of interdisciplinary collaborative processes in art, culture,
science and technology. (More consortium information: Bridges II Website,
with Chat and Forum.) I co-presented this with T. E. S. Dahms from the
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Regina, Canada.
* Teaching "Introduction to Digital Media", Univeristy of Regina, Department of
Media Studies - Fall 2002. Students: class website is now online at
http://www.conceptlab.com/film208/, and the course syllabus and lecture
schedule is available as a PDF at
http://www.conceptlab.com/film208/film208syllabus.pdf.
* Developing embedded webservers on miniature surface-mount microprocessors,
and am using it as a tool to look the physical nature of digital activity and
interactions. This includes the implanting of these servers into small
physical objects, and configuring the servers to be able to trigger physical
movement/activity in the physical objects. This work is based on code and
schematics from Frederic White's "World's Smallest Webserver" webACE project.
For my video documentation of this process, see World's Smallest Server.
* Artist In Residence at Soil Digital Media Suite (Regina, Canada) for a
sixteen month term until July 1st 2002. During this time, a new project
Experiments in Galvanism: Neutral Ground Webcasts was produced with the
support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board and
Soil Digital Media Suite. This project included live webcasts every week
(Saturdays, 1pm to 3pm CST [GMT-6]).
* Project managing a collaborative 3D realtime environment project for artistic
collaboration, funded by CANARIE (Canada's Advanced Internet Development
Organization), utilizing high speed networking (CA*Net 3).
[top]
----------------------------------------
BIO
----------------------------------------
Garnet Hertz is Canada Research Chair in Design and Media Arts, and is Associate
Professor of Design at Emily Carr University. His art and research investigates
DIY culture, electronic art and critical design practices. He has exhibited in
18 countries in venues including SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, and DEAF and has won
top international awards for his work, including the Oscar Signorini Award in
robotic art, a Fulbright award, and Best Paper Award at the ACM Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). He has worked as Faculty at Art Center
College of Design and as Research Scientist at the University of California
Irvine. His research is widely cited in academic publications, and popular press
on his work has disseminated through 25 countries including in publications like
The New York Times, Wired, The Washington Post, NPR, USA Today, NBC, CBS, TV
Tokyo and CNN Headline News. More info: http://conceptlab.com/
(Updated June 2020)
Portrait: Best print resolution headshot, vertical (2021) (9.8MB JPG, 4000 x
6000 pixels)
Portrait: Print resolution headshot, vertical (2021) (21.4MB JPG, 4000 x 6000
pixels)
Portrait: Print resolution studio shot, horizontal (2021) (23.0MB JPG, 6000 x
4000 pixels)
Portrait: Print resolution studio shot, vertical (2021) (21.4MB JPG, 4000 x 6000
pixels)
Portrait: Print resolution 'library' shot, vertical (2021) (20.2MB JPG, 4000 x
6000 pixels)
Print resolution photo, Hertz lecturing (2014) (3.8MB JPG, 3658 x 3658 pixels)
----------------------------------------
CV
----------------------------------------
http://www.conceptlab.com/garnethertz/
(Updated October 2020)
----------------------------------------
LINKTR.EE
----------------------------------------
https://linktr.ee/garnethertz/
(Updated January 2023)
----------------------------------------
PROJECTS
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Experiments in Surveillance Capitalism [current]
New studio work in development features a large array of Google Home smart
speakers and a custom-built robotic device to speak to them. The system, which
consists of a modified cathode-ray-tube television from the 1990s melded with
custom electronics and robotics, spins around a large circular arrangement of
speakers that resembles a form of technological séance. The system emulates a
person speaking into a smart speaker, but programmatically inputs information as
a tool to reverse engineer how personal data profiles are constructed and shaped
by companies like Google.
Reimagining the Now [current]
A card set designed with Gillian Russell and Craig Badke to highlight how
existing technological infrastructures can be re-imagined and re-designed around
different sets of cultural values. This card set is a continuation of Hertz's
Critical Making Design Process Cards merged with the workshop methods of Russell
and Badke.
Phone Hammer [2019]
A hammer for smashing your mobile phone, with an integrated cable cutter.
Maker Manifesto: The 2018 Maker's Bill of Rights [2018]
This is a sticker that was made to comment on the current state of the maker
movement. This design is based off of The Maker's Bill of Rights, published in
Make Magazine in 2005 (Issue 4). This 2018 update is an argument for
hackerspaces and makerspace initiatives to pay more attention to social issues
and less to technologies. Related to this, "We Need Something Better Than the
Maker Movement" was released as a one-page written document to further
contextualize the sticker and was published by the Italian publication Neural
(Issue 60, Summer 2018) who distributed the physical sticker in the centre of
the essay as a pasted-in insert in the magazine.
Disobedient Electronics: Protest [2017]
Disobedient Electronics: Protest is a limited edition publishing project that
highlights confrontational work from industrial designers, electronic artists,
hackers and makers from 10 countries that disobey conventions. Topics include
the wage gap between women and men, the objectification of women's bodies,
gender stereotypes, wearable electronics as a form of protest, robotic forms of
protest, counter-government-surveillance and privacy tools, and devices designed
to improve an understanding of climate change.
Slow Game [2015-2017]
Slow Game is a physical video game with a very low frequency of interaction: one
move a day. By reducing the feedback loop to a frequency of a day, Slow Game
radically challenges our memory, observation and patience. The project is a
collaboration between Hertz, Odom (SFU), Wakkary (SFU), and Ishac Bertran. The
project is currently in field study deployments during 2017.
People [2016]
"People" examines the contemporary connection between individuals and their
mobile phones. The project consists of a series of low-polygon figures
resembling life-sized white origami humans, with a hand that softly glows red
like a slowly scrolling screen. The project premiered at the XXI Triennale di
Milano in Summer 2016.
Faxbook [2016]
Faxbook is a fax-based social networking platform. Blurb: "Tired of wasting your
entire day on Facebook? Tired of apps and wish you could return to 1986? Faxbook
can help. Delete your Facebook account, dust off that old fax machine, and get
connected to us on Faxbook: a real, working fax-based social network for social
media dropouts. To get started, download the Faxbook profile page, fill it out,
and actually fax it to us at +1-604-630-7427. We look forward to hearing from
you."
The World is Getting Worse [2016]
3D printed porcelain experiments during April 2016 using depressing data about
the world - like increases in income disparity and global temperatures - to
construct bottles for collecting tears.
Conversations in Critical Making [2015]
Against the current of disposable technology and estranged digital devices,
critical making brings together individuals working at the intersection of
critical thinking and hands-on practice. What follows are a series of interviews
with leading theorists and practitioners of critical making. Discussions range
from the political implications of critical making to creative reflections on
the place of technology in culture and society. Published by CTheory.
Critical Making Design Process Cards [2015]
A physical card set built as an aid for technology designers to sketch and
prototype new projects that are culturally relevant, socially engaged and
challenging of current biases in commercial design. They bring together
critically-engaged design methods and concepts like critical making (Ratto),
critical technical practice (Agre), reflective design (Sengers), near futures
(Bleecker), critical design (Dunne & Raby), values in design (Nissenbaum),
tactical media (Lovink) and adversarial design (DiSalvo) into a practical
brainstorming tool suitable for university classroom or commercial studio use.
Phone Safe 2 [2015]
Phone Safe 2 is a locked box with a slot in the top to put your mobile phone.
Pressing a button adds time that your phone will be locked inside, and phones
are not retrievable while in the locked box. Premiered at ISEA2015 in the Museum
of Vancouver in the exhibition "Enchanted Objects".
Phone Safe 1 [2015]
Phone Safe 1 is a locked box with a slot in the top to put your mobile phone.
Pressing a button adds time that your phone will be locked inside. Phone is not
retrievable while in the locked box. This version of the project features a four
digit 7 segment LED timer that counts down seconds, which triggers an electric
solenoid to unlock the door when the time has elapsed.
Videodome [2013]
This project uses a large number of miniature video cameras to create an analog
virtual reality system. Premiering March 5th 2013 at the Natalie and James
Thompson Art Gallery at SJSU's School of Art and Design in the exhibition "See
Yourself Sensing" curated by Madeline Schwartzman.
Toy Hacking: Technology and Community Outreach (T.A.C.O.) [2010-2015]
This project uses the breaking apart and modifying of battery powered toys as a
platform for teaching people about electronics. This curriculum currently exists
as a zine/booklet, and it is proposed that a taco truck be customized and
outfitted as a lowrider mobile electronic lab to help bring this workshop to
diverse communities.
Critical Making [2012]
A handmade book project in the field of critical technical practice and
critically-engaged maker culture. 350+ pages, with 70 contributors including
Altman, Bleecker, Borgman, Burdick, Csikszentmihalyi, DiSalvo, Dougherty,
Durfee, Galloway, Ghazala, Jeremijenko, Levin, Losh, Lovink, Lozano-Hemmer,
Maeda, Malina, Monochrom, Pauline, Powell, Raby, Ratto, Snibbe, and Wark.
Doom [2011]
A wall reflects an augmented version of reality, where people are evil monsters
from the 1993 game "Doom".
Pixel VGA [2011]
This is a group of projects that reuse old computer monitors and transforms them
into a large low resolution video installation. Each VGA monitor displays a
single color at a time; each screen is a single pixel.
OutRun [2010-2011]
This project combines the real world and OutRun, an arcade driving game from
1986. This project features a cabinet/car that actually drives. The screen,
which is in front of the driver, renders the real world as the 8-bit video game.
A Collection of Many Problems (In Memory of the Dead Media Handbook) [2009]
Bookwork: 166 pages, 4.25" x 6.875" perfect binding, Telharmonium Press
(Artist's Proof Edition 1) September 2009.
Debt Hole [2009]
Play the economic crisis of 2009 in Debt Hole, a game mod programmed in MOS 6502
8-bit microprocessor assembly code, as seen on the Apple II, Commodore Vic 20
and the NES. Move your financial assets through the colon of debt, avoiding
bankruptcy and foreclosure on either side of you.
Cockroach-Controlled Mobile Robot (Control and Communication in the Animal and
the Machine) [2004 - 2006]
A mobile robot system literally controlled by the bodily movements and
intelligence of a giant madagascan hissing cockroach. Includes a feedback "VR"
system in which the insect is able to interpret and react to the robot's
surroundings.
Experiments in Galvanism: Frog with Implanted Webserver [2003 - 2004]
A bionic/golemic/galvanic frog with a miniature networked computer node and
custom electronics within its body. Installed as part of "The Uncanny:
Experiments in Cyborg Culture" (Grenville) and at DEAF2007.
Doppelgänger: An Exploration of Transcorporal Representation of Motion Capture
Data [2003]
A project with Adrian Herbez and Pei-Yi Ko to take motion capture data and build
a 3D application and custom file format to remap human movement onto non-human
shapes and skeletons.
Posthuman System #1: Cockroach with Wireless Video [2003]
Rethinking "the posthuman" through a Madagascan hissing cockroach equipped with
a miniature wireless videocamera, microphone and 2.4GHz transmitter.
Experiments in Galvanism: Neutral Ground Webcasts [2002]
A series of ten webcasts consisting of electro/biological experiments in the
spirit of Luigi Galvani's concept of animal electricity, circa 1780. Taking
galvanism as a starting point, web-controllable physical avatars were built
using nitinol, small-scale web servers, custom electronics and preserved
specimens.
World's Smallest Server [2002]
Video documentation of building a webserver about the size of a match head.
Supported by Soil Digital Media Suite and Neutral Ground Gallery & Artist Run
Centre.
Coretext [2001 - 2002]
Editor, online publication with Mark Jones (Cyberstage). Coretext is about the
linkages and tensions between art, electronic culture and the world in which it
exists. In it, we feature artists who use electronic media in their work and the
surrounding discourse of art and technology within its socio-political
environment.
Fly (http://139.142.46.159) [2001]
Fly with implanted webserver, as exhibited at the Mendel Art Gallery (Canada)
from June 1 to September 3rd, 2001.
Coredump [2000]
Telerobotic markmaking machine project, with the primary goal of outputting raw
physical gestures actuated by viewers on the net.
The Simulator [1997]
HTML-based work of a banal 'interactive' day. Featured as an 'Easter Egg' at
ask.com, and seen globally in the press: CNN Headline News, International Design
Magazine, SPIN Magazine, The Washington Post, etc. Desktop [1997]
Desktop user interface as visual object. These images were part of 'DESKTOP.IS'
organized by Alexei Shulgin, a collaborative internet project which has since
been analyzed by writers as a key work in the history of the "net.art movement."
Seen in The New York Times, Artforum and Rachel Greene (2004).
Cathedral [1997]
Documentation of a collaborative CDROM project between Garnet Hertz and Mike
Misanchuk. QuickTime VR-based, interactive video-pieces, and sketches of digital
space. Programmed in mTropolis. Conceptual themes: body / digital /
architecture. Interface [1995 - 1996]
Documentation archive of telerobotic webmachine project. Includes writings on
'Reality Interface', 'Technological Correctness' and telerobotics. Documents
include machine control interface, process information, and images of the
web-controlled robot system.
Big URL [1995]
Documentation of a gallery installation consisting of a 16-foot-wide lightbox,
and a webcam and speaker controlled by custom software. Emporium [1995]
Documentation of a gallery installation consisting of several hundred TV-based
images. Subject : advertisements with 1-800 numbers; Media : xerox.
Luminous Experiment [1995]
Documentation of a site-specific installation: a basement excavation
[jackhammered basement floor], with dirt, ambient groundwater, and powered
television parts.
TV + Beans [1995]
Powered television parts used in conjunction with growing organisms [mung
beans]. Documentation includes photos, video clips of the installation, and
interviews with the experiment's 'Control Group'.
Surrogate [1995]
Influenced by Nam June Paik's "The Moon is the Oldest Television" (1965-67) this
timelapsed VHS video explores the modern attraction to TV as a primal human
hunger for light.
Information Superstation [1994]
Hypertext, initially done as a text/Lynx-based piece, and later adapted with
images to Mosaic and Netscape. Uses a pseudo-classified-ad / personal homepage
format, explores linking and mailto: tags. "The details of my life lay bare to
you at your computer terminal." Speed/Growth [1994]
Fast-paced and highly distorted, this VHS video explores the medium of
television as a communication format that is biased to be a better communicator
of speed than the concept of growth. This video is influenced by McLuhan's
"Understanding Media" (1964) and Jerry Mander's "Four Arguments for the
Elimination of Television" (1977).
E.A.T. Information Booth [1994]
This project was built to provide information on Experiments in Art and
Technology (1967, NY) by building a small booth that was in the style of the
work being produced by members of the group in the 1960s. A
telephone-booth-sized room had one side lined with mirror on wall, ceiling and
floor with small lights positioned to have the appearance of an endless vertical
wall of lights.
Icon [1994]
A 4x8 ft lightbox that was produced from an image taken at a 3-minute b/w photo
booth, with the image enlarged and processed through several generations of
xeroxes.
The Examined Life [1993]
Influenced by Krzysztof Wodiczko's projections. Dual-80-Carousel Syncronized
Slide Projection with cross-dissolve unit with data on cassette tape.
----------------------------------------
CONCEPTS/SKETCHES
----------------------------------------
Unubiquitous [2015]
Unubiquitous is an open source mobile phone platform that, somewhat ironically,
helps people disconnect from technology and reconnect face-to-face.
"What I Really Do" Meme [2012]
I made an image related to the experience of being a contemporary artist in
February 2012 that is attributed as starting the widespread "What I Really Do"
meme, supposedly the most popular meme on the internet during February 2012,
which pervasively spread and adapted through Facebook to tens of millions of
viewers.
The World's Largest Easter Egg (miniaturized) [2011]
Making a traditional easter egg, or pysanka, modelled after the world's largest
easter egg in Vegreville, Alberta, Canada that was built in 1978 for the Queen
and Duke of Edingurgh.
Grand Restaurant Automatique au XXe Siécle [2009]
A series of images from Norman Klein's archive of "The Imaginary Twentieth
Century" laser printed on paper, hand cut, raised and glued into a
two-and-a-half dimension construction, in the style of vue d'optique / decoupage
/ papier tole.
Dead Media Research Lab [2009]
The problem: How to creatively repurpose and reuse electronic waste.
Montréal Photostereosynthesis: L'arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat, [2008]
Production & installation sketch - site specific art production and installation
concept, researching the location of the first film screening in Canada on June
27 1896 in the Palace Theatre on the corner of Boul. Saint Laurent and Viger in
downtown Montréal.
Repositioning of La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (1895) [2008]
Video Sketch - Repositioning of La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (1895). This
is thought of as being similar to ViewFinder (Naimark et al, 2008) but focused
on repositioning historical films.
Extruded still from La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (1895) [2008]
3D Java Applet Sketch - Programmed in Processing. Extruded still from La Sortie
de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (1895). Conversion of a frame from the "first film"
into spatial data points, extruded by levels of brightness.
Four stage wiggle stereoscopy, using Portraits of Auguste Lumière, stages in
'photostéréosynthèse' (c.1920) [2008]
Animation - Four stage wiggle stereoscopy, using Portraits of Auguste Lumière,
stages in 'photostéréosynthèse' (c.1920).
Diagram of orthographic view of Auguste Lumière, stages in 'photostéréosynthèse'
(c.1920) [2008]
Sketch of of orthographic view of photostereosynthesis layers, using Portraits
of Auguste Lumière, stages in 'photostéréosynthèse' (c.1920).
Extruded layer from Portraits of Auguste Lumière, stages in
'photostéréosynthèse' (c.1920). [2008]
3D Java Applet Sketch - Programmed in Processing. Extruded layer from Portraits
of Auguste Lumière, stages in 'photostéréosynthèse' (c.1920). Conversion of a
photostereosynthetic frame into spatial data points, extruded by levels of
brightness.
25 Bipeds [2005]
A short animation test applying motion capture data to 25 bipeds in Autodesk 3D
Studio Max. Symbiotica Workshop [2005]
A five day intensive workshop with Oron Catts and Gary Cass from Symbiotica. The
practical components of the workshop included DNA extraction and fingerprinting,
genetic engineering, selective breeding, plant and animal tissue culture and
basic tissue engineering techniques. Font Week [2002]
Experiment making typefaces as quickly as possible, one font per day over the
course of a week. Total time spent creating the seven typefaces was 222 minutes.
Audio Laser Experiments [2001]
Video of audio-modulated laser experiments, made as prototypes for Andres
Ramirez Gaviria for an installation that measured and visualized sound within a
specific physical environment. The laser image vibrated (changes patterns) in
direct relation to the amount of sound created within the exhibition space.
Crash Buddha [2001]
I owned wangchung.com at one point, and proposed the "Crash Buddha," a hardware
product as a good omen that fends off hangs, crashes, and bugs. If your computer
crashed, however, the device was proposed to laugh at you through an embedded
audio circuit.
64 [2000]
Concept for a net-actuated matrix of 64 lights to make network/tele/activity
visible through the input of up to 64 simultaneous users. These sketches were
done as background to the Coredump project.
Topologies [2000]
Making network topologies and operating system architectures visible. Simple,
hand-sketched diagrams. Conceptual references include I/O/D's Web Stalker.
Slow Porn [1999]
The first proposed product/content line of slowsoftware.com: a website that is
very, very slow. This project makes more sense with a 28.8K dialup internet
connection, circa 1999. Featured on CBC Radio One.
Slow Software [1999]
A dotcom business model in which a company's sole product line consists of
slow-running, inconvenient, sloppy-source, bloated software. This
freestyle-programming project is accepts source code and executable submissions
to be distributed under this brand.
e-Beggar [1999]
An online e-commerce begging system which allows users to donate money to an
e-commerce transaction engine with no content or product.
torture.mov [1995]
This QuickTime clip works with the ability of the viewer to stretch and
manipulate the digital video frame while it is played in a loop: a yelling
individual with outstretched arms and legs.
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TEACHING
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Garnet Hertz - Teaching Documents [2008]
My fields of expertise include network art, digital imaging, computer based
installation, electronics, robotics, visual studies, and the history and theory
of new media. My teaching experience includes studio production courses,
computer programming, digital imaging, 3D environments, writing & English
composition, and history & theory of electronic art. Teaching related materials
are as follows:
* Teaching Statement
* Teaching Experience
* Teaching Focus & Course Outlines
* Computer Games As Art, Culture & Technology
* Machinima Studio
* Mash-Ups And Remixes: An Introduction to Digital Video Editing
* Introduction to Digital Image Manipulation
* D.I.Y. Studio: Introduction to Electronics and Interactivity
* Microcontrollers: Sensing and Interacting with the World
* Dead Media Studio Lab
* Foundations in Media Theory
* History of Twentieth Century Art & Technology
* The Emergence of Cinema
* Critical Studies in New Media
* Artificial Life: The Quest for Living Technologies
* Examples of Student Work
US12C: Computer Games as Art, Culture & Technology [Spring 2007 & Spring 2008]
University of California Irvine
Role: TA (Discussion Sections) with Krapp, Tomlinson & Frost. Overview: First
year interdisciplinary writing and production course investigating computer
games as artistic, cultural, and technological phenomena. Course includes the
development of a team-built game project with an extensive design document.
US12B: Computer Games as Art, Culture & Technology [Winter 2007, Winter 2008 &
Winter 2009]
University of California Irvine
Role: TA (Discussion Sections) with Krapp, Tomlinson & Frost. Overview: First
year interdisciplinary writing and production course with lectures covering art
practice, 3D worlds, software engineering, 3D animation and modeling, HCI, music
& sound, and game politics. Course includes two essay assignments and
development of a team-built game project in Second Life.
US12A: Computer Games as Art, Culture & Technology [Fall 2006 & Fall 2007 &
Fall 2008]
University of California Irvine
Role: TA (Discussion Sections) with Krapp, Tomlinson & Frost. Overview: First
year interdisciplinary writing and production course with lectures covering the
history of computer games, game mods, machinima, interactivity, and character
design. Course includes two essay assignments and a team-built game project
developed in Java.
Dorkbot SoCal 11: How to Solder Workshop [2006]
Machine Project, Los Angeles
Role: Instructor. Overview: In keeping with a Dorkbot/DIY mindset, this informal
workshop taught individuals the basics of soldering electronics. Co-taught with
Tom Jennings.
Film 208: Introduction to Digital Media [Fall 2002]
Department of Media Production & Studies, University of Regina
Role: Adjunct Lecturer. Overview: Production course for senior film and media
studies students, providing instruction in Photoshop, HTML, and digital video.
Used Manovich's "Language of New Media" as a conceptual framework for studio
assignments.
HTML Code: Learn to Build the Web the Old Fashioned Way [2002]
Soil Digital Media Suite, Neutral Ground Gallery, Regina
Role: Instructor. Overview: Two week workshop on the fundamentals of web
development, focusing on HTML code.
Desktop Publishing Using Adobe Photoshop [2000]
Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology, Kelsey Campus
Role: Instructor. Overview: Digital imaging course, focusing on Adobe Photoshop.
Introduction to Adobe Photoshop [1997]
The Photographer's Gallery
Role: Instructor. Overview: Two week digital imaging workshop, focusing on Adobe
Photoshop.
Guest Lectures [2000 - present]
Art Center College of Art and Design, Concordia University, University of
California San Diego, University of California Irvine, California State
University Long Beach, University of Saskatchewan, University of Regina.
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INTERVIEWS
----------------------------------------
The Godfather of Technology and Art: An Interview with Billy Klüver [1995]
Billy Klüver (1927-2004) was an electrical engineer at Bell Telephone
Laboratories who founded Experiments in Art and Technology in 1967 as an
interdisciplinary matchmaking organization between artists, engineers and
scientists to work on collaborative projects. Working in collaboration with
artists Jean Tinguely, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Jasper Johns, and Andy
Warhol, Klüver was at the forefront of the "Art and Technology" movement of the
late 1960's. Still directing Experiments in Art and Technology after thirty
years, Klüver (in 1995) explains the inspiration, formation, and operation of
the group -- and shares some of his views of technology and art.
(Republished in Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds, eds. Explorations in Art and
Technology. London: Springer-Verlag, 2002.)
Beyond the Realm of Humans: A Discussion with Mark Pauline of Survival Research
Laboratories [1995]
Leading the San-Francisco-based Survival Research Laboratories, Mark Pauline has
distinguished himself as one of the pioneers of large-scale machine-based
performance. Since starting S.R.L. in 1978, Pauline has directed nearly fifty
shows (as of 1995) -- scavenging and incorporating technology from the Silicon
Valley into a massive spectacle of steel, hydraulics, flame, power, and fear.
Interview: Steve Dietz [2002, 304K PDF File]
Steve Dietz is the founding Director of New Media Initiatives at the Walker Art
Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As one of the ten most visited art
centres/museums in the US (as of 2002), the Walker boasts a multidisciplinary
approach to its programming, which includes new media, visual arts, film/video,
and the largest museum-based performing arts program in the United States.
(Published in BlackFlash, The Canadian Journal of Photo-based and Electronic Art
Production, Issue 19-3 in 2002.) Ethology of Art & Science Collaborations: An
Interview with Stephen Wilson [2002, 13.6M MP3 Audio File]
Stephen Wilson is author of Information Arts (MIT Press, 2002) and is Professor
of Conceptual Information Arts at San Francisco State University. During this
audio interview, we discuss a number of issues related to interdisciplinary arts
practice, including art & science collaborations, artists producing knowlege,
and research ethics boards and contemporary art practice.
(Excerpts originally presented at the Bridges II Conference, Banff New Media
Institute, in "Ethology of Art and Science Collaborations: Research Ethics
Boards in the Context of Contemporary Art Practice" in 2002.)
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DISSERTATION
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Methodologies of Reuse in the Media Arts: Exploring Black Boxes, Tactics and
Archaeologies
PhD Program in Visual Studies, University of California Irvine.
Abstract: This research investigates what motivating factors drive contemporary
media artists to use obsolete information technology hardware and electronics in
their work, and articulates what they accomplish by reusing and repurposing
outdated communication devices. Three themes of reuse are proposed and explored
through the examination of works by artists Reed Ghazala, Natalie Jeremijenko,
Tom Jennings and Paul DeMarinis and through conversations with theorists Geert
Lovink and Jussi Parikka. Reuse is explored as a method of uncovering the
concealed mechanisms of consumer electronics, tactical reuse is developed as a
tactical method for political change, and archaeological reuse is expatiated as
a historiographical intervention.
Completed: November 2009. Advisors: Mark Poster and Peter Krapp, with committee
members Cecile Whiting and Robert Nideffer.
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TEXTS & LECTURE ABSTRACTS
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Emerging Sites of HCI Innovation: Hackerspaces, Hardware Startups & Incubators
(2014, paper by Silvia Lindtner, Garnet Hertz & Paul Dourish, CHI 2013)
In this paper, we discuss how a flourishing scene of "DIY makers" is turning
visions of tangible, mobile and ubiquitous computing into products. Drawing on
long-term multi-sited ethnographic research and active participation in DIY
maker practice, we will provide insights into the social, material, and economic
processes that undergird this transition from prototypes to products. The
contribution of this paper is three-fold. First, we will show how DIY maker
practice is illustrative of a broader "return to" and interest in physical
materials. This has implications for HCI research that investigates questions of
materiality. Second, we shed light on how hackerspaces and hardware start-ups
are experimenting with new models of manufacturing and entrepreneurship. We
argue that we have to take seriously these maker practices, not just as hobbyist
or leisure practice, but as a professionalizing field functioning in parallel to
research and industry labs. Finally, we end with reflections on the role of HCI
researchers and designers as DIY making emerges as a site of HCI innovation. We
argue that HCI is positioned to provide critical reflection, paired with a
sensibility for materials, tools and design methods.
(Download the paper: Emerging Sites of HCI Innovation: Hackerspaces, Hardware
Startups & Incubators, CHI 2014)
Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method (2012, paper
by Garnet Hertz & Jussi Parikka, Leonardo 45:5, MIT Press)
There is always a better camera, laptop, mobile phone on the horizon: new media
always becomes old. We approach this phenomenon under the umbrella term of media
archaeology and aim to extend the media archaeological interest of knowledge
into an art methodology. Hence, media archaeology becomes not only a method for
excavation of the repressed, the forgotten, the past, but extends itself into an
artistic method close to Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture, circuit bending, hardware
hacking, and other exercises that are closely related to the political economy
of information technology, as well as the environment. Media embodies memory,
but not only human memory; memory of things, of objects, of chemicals, and
circuits that are returned to nature, so to speak, after their cycle. But these
can be resurrected. This embodiment of memory in things is what relates media
archaeology to an ecosophic enterprise as well.
(Download the paper: Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art
Method, Leonardo 45:5, pp. 424-430, 1.5MB PDF, 2012)
Five Principles of Zombie Media (2011, exhibition catalog essay by Garnet Hertz
& Jussi Parikka)
Zombie media addresses the living deads of media culture. As such, it is clearly
related to the earlier calls to investigate "dead media" by Bruce Sterling and
others: to map the forgotten, out-of-use, obsolete and judged dysfunctional
technologies in order to understand better the nature of media cultural
development. And yet, we want to point to a further issue when it comes to
abandoned media: the amount of discarded electronic media is not only the
excavation ground for quirky media archaeological interests, but one of the
biggest threats for ecology in terms of the various toxins they are leaking back
to nature. A discarded piece of media technology is never just discarded but
part of a wider pattern of circulation that ties obsoleteness to recycling
centers, dismantling centres in Asia, markets in Nigeria, and so forth - a whole
global political ecology of different sorts where one of the biggest questions
is the material toxicity of our electronic media. Media kills nature as they
remain as living deads.
(Download the exhibition catalog essay: Five Principles of Zombie Media 349K PDF
- or the entire exhibition catalog: DeFunct/ReFunct Exhibition Catalogue, South
Dublin Arts Centre, RUA RED, 13.3MB PDF, 2011)
Arduino Microcontrollers and The Queen's Hamlet: Utilitarian and Hedonized DIY
Practices in Contemporary Electronic Culture (2011, keynote lecture ACADIA 2011)
In this talk, I pull together concepts of utility-driven do-it-yourself (DIY)
culture and pleasure-oriented DIY practice to investigate a significant trend in
contemporary computing culture, the maker movement, typified by an interest in
building personalized and handmade electronic devices with sensors, motors and
lights, usually controlled by microcontrollers like the Arduino. My argument is
that maker culture has been co-opted by consumer hobby culture, but this is not
necessarily detrimental because it provides an important outlet for personal
exploration, increases an understanding of how electronic media actually works
and assists individuals to be actors in a culture that is increasingly complex,
technological and digitized.
(Download the paper: Arduino Microcontrollers and The Queen's Hamlet:
Utilitarian and Hedonized DIY Practices in Contemporary Electronic Culture,
692KB PDF, 2011)
OutRun: Building the Un-Simulation of a Driving Video Game (2011, article)
A description of building the OutRun project in Make Magazine for the electronic
DIY community.
(Download the article: OutRun: Building the Un-Simulation of a Driving Video
Game, 970KB PDF, 2011)
The Seamful and Perversive Roles of Artwork in Interdisciplinary Research (2010,
lecture)
Garnet Hertz launches a discussion into the role of artwork in interdisciplinary
research through the presentation of three of his projects - a mobile robot
controlled by a living insect (http://conceptlab.com/roachbot/), a videogame
arcade cabinet that is redesigned to actually drive
(http://conceptlab.com/outrun/), and a taco truck that is customized into a
lowrider mobile lab to teach children about electronics
(http://conceptlab.com/circuitbending/). Like many contemporary art projects,
these systems are intentionally designed to be poetic or humorous. This work
will be discussed within the framework of interdisciplinary research in
informatics: how novel work in design can develop more creative and conceptual
approaches to innovation and presentation. Several terms related to design
theory will also be introduced, including wabi-sabi (Koren, 1994), chindogu
(Kawakami, 1995), perversiveness (Lozano-Hemmer, 1996), and seamfulness
(Chalmers, 2002).
(Lecture slides: The Seamful and Perversive Roles of Artwork in
Interdisciplinary Research, 2010)
OutRun: Perversive Games and Designing the De-Simulation of Eight-bit Driving
(FDG '10 Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on the Foundations of
Digital Games)
This paper outlines the development process of a mixed reality video game
prototype that combines a classic arcade driving game with a real world vehicle.
In this project the user, or player, maneuvers the car-shaped arcade cabinet
through actual physical space using a screen as a navigational guide which
renders the real world in the style of an 8-bit video game. This case study is
presented as a "perversive game": an attempt to disrupt the everyday by
highlighting and inverting conventional behavior through humor and paradox.
(Download the paper: OutRun: Perversive Games and Designing the De-Simulation of
Eight-bit Driving (or through ACM Digital Library), 3.1MB PDF, 2010)
Art After New Media: Exploring Black Boxes, Tactics and Archaeologies (In press
with Leonardo Electronic Almanac, MIT Press)
This paper discusses three methodological themes employed by contemporary media
artists who reuse obsolete information technology hardware in their work.
Methodologies include the exploration of the hidden "blackboxed" layer of
technology by circuit bending artists like Reed Ghazala, the tactical use of
technologies to bring social change by artists like Natalie Jeremijenko, and the
archaeological use of outdated technologies to intervene in history by artists
like Tom Jennings. These themes are presented as useful tools to construct a
language of reuse which serves a valuable function in a culture increasingly
confronted by electronic waste and assists in critiquing assumptions of
obsolescence, technological progress and understanding digital culture primarily
within the framework of "new media."
Gramophones, Films, Typewriters & The Dead Media Handbook: Kittler's paradigm of
winners and the secret histories of losers (2006, paper)
The Dead Media Project is a stockpile of fragmented silences in the archive of
media history. This paper begins to tackle this archive, and reveals how The
Dead Media Project, as a conceptual theme and distributed research initiative,
fits alongside and against contemporary work in media theory and history.
Specifically, this paper pushes two works of Friedrich Kittler - Discourse
Networks 1800/1900 and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter - directly into collision
with The Dead Media Project. In the process, the debris reveals potential
weaknesses in Kittler's texts and hints at how The Dead Media Handbook could be
literally constructed.
The Commodore 64: Perspectives from Art History, Cultural Anthropology and Film
& Media Studies (2005, illustrated paper experiment)
Within this document, I try to look at the Commodore 64 from a few different
perspectives - many of which I'm not an expert in. This is partially done to
look at the disciplines of Art History, Cultural Anthropology, and Film & Media
Studies by trying to get inside of the language and methodologies of each.
Hopefully this shows some links to the vintage C64, and also highlights some
disciplinary biases. I conclude the document by trying to figure out what this
all means, launching a short critique toward "visual studies" and finish with a
thought on the concept of "media archaeology".
Remnants of Virtuality: Contemporary Embodiment Beyond Posthumanism
(Encountering the Hybrid: Posthumanism, Embodiment and Frissonic Value, Part 1)
(2005, paper)
Although N. Katherine Hayles re-addresses the topic of embodiment within "How We
Became Posthuman" her embrace of concrete embodiment is distanced by the
influence of virtuality: in particular, a worldview popularized in the 1990s
that envisioned computer-created, simulated, or transferred information as
becoming increasingly real. Although she mounts a formidable attack against the
Moravecian "bodiless exhultation" of human minds being eventually extracted,
transported and saved on computer disc, she falls short of envisioning
embodiment in its simple, concrete state: it is interpreted through the lens of
metaphor. The legacies of virtuality and literature are helpful, of course, to
lay foundations for considering embodied reality within the narrative of
becoming posthuman. However, if embodiment is the core of our being, as Hayles
argues toward, it would be logical to begin from the visceral body; embodied
exegesis as opposed to virtual eisegesis.
(Slides from related lecture: On Embodiment: Posthumanism, Computationalism and
Definitions of Intelligence, 2004)
Beyond Flickering Signifiers: Frissonic Value and Shifting Boundaries in the
Context of Contemporary Hybridity (Encountering the Hybrid: Posthumanism,
Embodiment and Frissonic Value, Part 2) (2005, paper)
In "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers" N. Katherine Hayles proposes the
term flickering signifier to refer to the linguistic and psychodynamic
experience of the human confronting the posthuman; the point at which the
individual confronts the concept that humanity is no longer the most important
figure of the universe - that information, technology and machines are the
reference point to which humanity now views its reflection. Hayles' concepts,
however, do not delve deeply into the psychodynamic mechanics of the moment of
encountering the posthuman, and are significantly influenced by the heritage of
the "virtual". In other words, her explanation of flickering signifiers focuses
on positioning the concept within the frames of communication theory,
literature, informatics and the internet - as opposed to the psychological
experience of the individual, and why the symbolic moment creates unexpected
metamorphoses, attenuations and dispersions. Hayles is on the right path and
lays necessary bridgework for exploring the human/posthuman encounter but does
not give voice to the embodied, personal implications of it. As such, this
paper: 1. Seeks to clarify the dynamics of the exact point of confrontation of
the human with the posthuman 2. Strives to articulate this confrontation beyond
the heritage of virtuality, and 3. Begins to develop a framework in which this
confrontation experience can be viewed within the larger contexts of
consciousness and meaning.
The Animal-Machine: Biorobotics, War and Animalized Technologies (2005, lecture)
MP3 Audio Recording
Animals inspire the development of technological systems by providing clever
solutions to embodied, complex environments. Biomimetic systems - technologies
that mimic biology - are exploited in the context of war because they augment
military force with animal-machine instinct, durability, and controllability
without the risk of losing "life". The 20th Century has embraced the
animal-machine within the context of war, with current American biorobotics
research funded by DARPA continuing and expanding this trend. This presentation
will provide a visual survey of 20th Century animal-machine systems, focusing on
mechanical-computational weapons that have been developed as animal-like
entities. Critical and theoretical questions will be raised toward the basis of
bioinspired technological development within this context: between war and the
media of animal-machine hybrids.
(Slides from related lecture: Animals/Machines: Explorations in Control and
Communication, 2004)
Chess, Violence and Embodiment: Pervasive Computing and DARPA's Dream of the
Cyborg Soldier (2004, paper)
This paper explores a super-human ideal: a fighting machine whose undesired
cognitive and embodied traits have been replaced via technological abstractions
of cognition, embodiment and violence. In particular, contemporary DARPA-funded
work in pervasive computing and biorobotics is explored. This mechanized
cyborgian soldier indicates a larger thread in western society: mind and body
are not only split, but the mind is managed and the body is technologized. In
many ways this concept is a continuation of the ideals of chess: intelligence is
seen as a cerebral strategy, with embodiment pulled into abstraction through
technological obfuscation.
Ethology of Art and Science Collaborations: Research Ethics Boards in the
Context of Contemporary Art Practice (2002, interviews, lecture, website)
Lecture Notes (58K PDF File, 10 pages)
Presentation Slides (25.6M Flash File)
Frameworks for ethical review of scientific research are well established and
documented; however, many interdisciplinary artists and art institutions are
unfamiliar with these policies and procedures, as well as the potential benefits
this process offers within emergent areas of collaborative research. In this
paper, we will examine currently established models for ethical review of
scientific research as they would apply to interdisciplinary fields. Using the
Canadian system as a basis for discussion, a practical overview of its guiding
principles, conducts, application processes, terms of approval and liabilities
will be presented. Issues covered will include tissue culture, animal use,
genetic modification and transgenics. Relevant highlights will be presented from
the Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics (PRE), the Canadian Institutes
of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
of Canada (NSERC), the Canada Council of Animal Care (CCAC) and the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Examples of
contemporary artworks will be explored as specific case studies in relation to
the ethics review process. Proper navigation of these processes may offer
guidance to artists and institutions that engage controversial subjects, use
scientific facilities, or attempt to access funding traditionally oriented to
scientific research.
This project consisted of interviewing Adam Zaretsky, Eduardo Kac, Stephen
Wilson, and Natlie Jeremijenko on the topic of institutional research ethics
boards within the context of contemporary arts practice. Excerpts from their
interviews that were used in the talk are as follows:
* Adam Zaretsky "blastpheming the temple of science"
* Eduardo Kac "yelling fire in a theater"
* Stephen Wilson "art police"
* Natalie Jeremijenko "ethics cleansed"
* Stephen Wilson "art goals aren't worth as much"
* Adam Zaretsky "my art project"
* Eduardo Kac "hypocritical chicken for dinner"
* Natalie Jeremijenko "unconfortable with the word ethics"
* Adam Zarestky "if you shake good art, science comes out of it"
* Eduardo Kac "there is no universal answer"
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EVENT ORGANIZATION
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Dorkbot SoCal
http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotsocal/
Dorkbot SoCal is a monthly meeting of Southern Californian electronic/media
artists, hackers and theorists. Recently, events are being held in Los Angeles.
Presenters have included Tom Jennings (World Power Systems), Mark Allen and Sky
Frostenson (c-level / Waco Ressurrection), Beverly Tang (Rhizome.LA /
Sublimina), Lucas Kuzma (UCLA), Paul Yarin (Blackdust / RealSimSystems), Perry
Hoberman (USC), Dan Novy (Flash Film Works), Spot Draves (Electric Sheep), Doug
Goodwin (Reactive System), Ryan Schoelerman (elint arts lab), Annina Ruest
(t-t-trackers.net), Schoenerwissen/OfCD, Andreas Schlegel, Daniel Sauter, Janet
Hansen (Enlighted Designs), Brett Stalbaum (UCSD), Paula Poole
(paintersflat.com), Neil Kearns, Marcos Novak (UCSB), August Black (UCSB), Dan
Overholt (UCSB), Julian Bleecker (USC), Peter Brinson (USC), Phil Stearns
(CalArts), Jay Mark Johnson ("Hollywood"), Jonah Brucker-Cohen (Trinity College
Dublin / MIT Media Lab Europe), Casey Reas (UCLA / Processing), Osman Khan
(UCLA), Sean Dockray (UCLA), Mark Daggett (Radical Software Group), Naomi
Spellman (34 North 118 West / UCSD), Michael Lew (MIT Media Lab Europe), Samuel
Coniglio (Space Tourism Society), Jennifer Silbert (3form Architectural), Tod E.
Kurt (Hacking Roomba), Mark Frauenfelder (Boing Boing / Make Magazine), Jed
Berk, Phil Ross, Suzanne Stefanac (Digital Content Lab at the American Film
Institute), Allison de Fren (Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology), Greg
Elliott (UCI), Simon Penny (UCI), Mr. Jalopy (Hooptyrides / Make Magazine), Bob
Blackstock (Laminar Sciences), Eric Kurland, Ray Zone (ray3dzone.com), John A.
Rupkalvis (StereoScope International), Dave Bullock (eecue), Rama Hoetzlein
(UCSB), Damon Seeley (Electroland), Thomas Edwards, Gilad Lotan (ITP), Steven
Gentner (RoboRealm), Gil Kuno, (unsound.com), Brett Doar (UCI), Jerrold Ridenour
& Anthony Magnetta (Nerd Droid), Tom Koch (univac), Kevin Mack, Deborah
Aschheim, David Guttman, Brian Evans (Metropolitan State College of Denver),
Brian O'Connor, Eric Gradman / Brent Bushnell (Mindshare Labs), and Dan Goods
(NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Jeremy Douglass (playpower.org), John Arroyo
(remixin.com), Norman Klein (CalArts / Art Center), Tim Durfee (Art Center),
Xuan "Sean" Li (UCSD), Jody Zellen, Heather Knight (Personal Robots Group, MIT
Media Lab), Todd Margolis (UCSD), Joachim Gossmann (UCSD), Dane Picard
(danepicard.com), MluM (Long Beach / Singapore).
Dorkbot SoCal pics at flickr.com
There are also some videos at Dorkbot SoCal TV on YouTube.
Documentation of several of these events is included in the Machine Project
Almanac, a 262 page publication that is a retrospective of all Machine Project
events in Los Angeles from 2003 to today. Version 1.5 of the publication is
available for purchase through Lulu or it is available as a free download as a
204MB Adobe Acrobat File. It is edited by Mark Allen and Jason Brown and
designed by Department of Graphic Sciences, LA.
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OTHER RESEARCH INTERESTS
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* Critical design
* Un-simulating simulations
* Media archaeology
* Technological Subversions: Misuse, Analog / Digital Hacks, DIY,
Inefficiency/Malfunction
* Human-made semi-living / synthetic beings, Animal Electricity, Cybernetics,
Biorobotics
* Telepresence, Telematics
* Cross-disciplinary research
* DIY Culture
* History of Art and Technology
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CONTACT
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Email: (current as of 22 January 2015)
myfirstnameandmylastname@gmail.com (not literally this - substitute in
"garnethertz")
Studio and Mailing Address:
Garnet Hertz
The Studio for Critical Making
Emily Carr University of Art + Design
1399 Johnston Street #190
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H 3R9
(604) 630-7427
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SEMI-SOCIAL NETWORK
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(some close, some distant)
Mark Allen, Julian Bleecker, Oron Catts, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Brody Condon,
Sarah Cook, Beatriz da Costa, Paul DeMarinis, Steve Dietz, Ed Dimendberg, Paul
Dourish, Peter Flemming, Sky Frostenson, Alex Galloway, Isa Gordon, Michael John
Gorman, Janet Hansen, Steve Heimbecker, Adrian Herbez, Cheryl L'Hirondelle,
Perry Hoberman, Risa Horowitz, Tom Jennings, Natalie Jeremijenko, Branden
Joseph, Eric Kabisch, Michelle Kasprzak, Peter Krapp, Catherine Liu, Lev
Manovich, Karen Marcelo, Robert Nideffer, Greg Niemeyer, Marnix de Nijs, Simon
Penny, Mark Poster, Sabrina Raaf, Andres Ramirez, Casey Reas, Douglas Repetto,
David Rokeby, Ryan Schoelerman, Bjoern Schuelke, Felicity Scott, Eddie Shanken,
Scott Snibbe, Brett Stalbaum, Nicholas Stedman, Andre Stubbe, Beverly Tang,
Eugene Thacker, Bill Tomlinson, Bill Vorn, Amanda Williams, my Dad.
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SOME PHOTOS & VIDEOS
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In addition to the work hosted at conceptlab.com, I have photos and videos
scattered around the web. I've recently caved in and started storing sets of
photos at Flickr - all of my photos hosted on Flickr can be found here.
As of late 2008, several higher resolution documentation videos can be found on
Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/garnet/videos/.
There are some assorted videos on YouTube, including all of my videos uploaded
to YouTube and some playlists related to work I've done: Cockroach Controlled
Mobile Robot TV and Dorkbot SoCal TV.
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NET.ART ACTIVITIES
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Mr. Net Art 97/98 [DEC 19 1997]
Jury: Rachel Baker, Natalie Bookchin, Josephine Bosma, Sandra Fauconnier, Rachel
Greene, Olia Lialina, Vesna Manojlovic, Diana Mccarty, Kass Schmitt, Cornelia
Sollfrank, Barbara Strebel, Keiko Suzuki, Carey Young
Jury Proceedings - rhizome.org threaded discussion
Mister Net Art Contest - there are conflicting facts as to whether this was
Mister Net Art '97 or '98. Other participants included Joao Da Silva, etoy
(Nicolas), Alexei Shulgin, Danny Hobart, Pit Schultz, Luka Frelih, Michael
"Zuper" Samyn, Murph The Surf, Valery Grancher, Heath Bunting, Vuk Cosic,
Ricardo Echevarria, Andrej Tisma, and Mr Superbad (Ben Benjamin). I/O/D's Web
Stalker software application won. Some of my notes about this happening can be
found at http://www.conceptlab.com/mr/.
Homework [DEC 03 1997]
Natalie Bookchin
In this project an international group of net artists appropriated a real
homework assignment - a part of the Introduction to Computing in the Arts (VA40)
course at the University of California, San Diego, taught by Natalie Bookchin.
Artists were asked to: build a site which uses outside links as an integral part
of its identity and construction; construct a faux documentary or appropriate an
official interface to convey subjective content (i.e. to use the official
language of an institution to subvert an aspect of dominant culture); and to
build a site which is new-media specific - something that would not work as well
or at all in any other medium. Each project was graded and evaluated along with
the students in the class, A-F (F for Fail) by Prof. Bookchin. The project, says
Bookchin, 'shows how institutional constraints/boundaries as well as identities
are easily blurred and manipulated on the net as well as demonstrating the easy
movement of artists on the net in radically alternative contexts'. Role:
Homework submitter. I don't remember what I submitted exactly.
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MISC
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notes - citation collection [2006]
change - theories of media change [2006]
stats - old stats [2005]
glög - not sure [2004]
Mocap-Max - 7.8M QuickTime video [2003]
tightmachine - Short-lived one-track band project [2000]
beginnings - farm machinery hacking [1970s]