September 22, 2015

In a series of visualization workshops next month, UK-based designer Brendan Dawes will lead participants in creating interactive art that blends technology, design and social media. The resulting introspective selfie projects will provide a platform for students to examine the things that humans find worthy of sharing publicly. Brendan Dawes’ playful, innovative work is internationally recognized and explores the interaction between objects, people, technology and art, using an eclectic mix of digital and analog materials. The workshops, which will take place October 5-9 and will include a public presentation on October 9, are open to any student interested in learning about interactive design and art, arduino, coding, and creative collaboration with a world-class artist and designer. The deadline to register is September 30. To register, please email Professor Mike Glaser at mdg56@drexel.edu.

The five evening workshops are geared toward a multi-disciplinary mix of undergraduate and graduate students, including product designers and students in digital media, graphic design, design & merchandising, entertainment & arts management, interior design, computer science and many others. The workshops will culminate in a public presentation on Friday, October 9 at 6:00pm in the URBN Annex Screening Room, with final projects displayed in the URBN Annex Lobby (3401 Filbert Street).

The goal of the experiment, which remixes the stream of social media data and images into interactive art, is to create discourse and highlight the absurdity of the things we publicly share. Through his websites, notable iPhone apps, software, books, electronic circuits and plastic objects, Dawes seeks to put new objects into the world that disrupt the status quo and ask questions about accepted practices.

Among numerous projects he is the creator of The Accidental News Explorer, an iPhone app listed as “new and notable” in the U.S. app store; The Happiness Machine, a small internet-connected printer that delivers random happy feelings from people across the web and which was featured at the London Design Festival; the Doodlebuzz news interface, a celebration of chance encounters and serendipity featured at MoMA; Psycho Studio, one of the very first Flash video editors; Cinema Redux™, which was acquired by MoMA for its permanent collection, and many others. Brendan Dawes is visiting Westphal as a Rankin Scholar in Residence.