Serendity at its best. I attended PR + MKTG Camp EAST last Thursday. I felt lucky when my dear friend Katherine Pendill showed up. Then I felt super lucky when Katherine introduced me to her friend Isabel Walcott. And, luckier still when Isabel invited us to her husband’s art opening in Chelsea that evening. So I texted Karl and asked him to meet me after the conference — where we were wowed by Scott’s software art.
About Scott Draves:
Scott Draves a.k.a. Spot is a visual and software artist living in New York City. Draves is best known as the creator of the Electric Sheep, a continually evolving abstract animation with over 350,000 participants.
He created the original Flame algorithm in 1991, the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Electric Sheep in 1999. Draves’ software artworks are released as open source and have been used for two decades by many other artists and designers in their own work. Most recently, Draves created Generation 243, a commissioned piece for the Gates Center for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Other works in clude Clade 1, a rare true high-definition video artwork that runs a 26-minute loop. Dreams in High Fidelity, a moving painting that runs infinitely, is installed in the lobby of Google’s headquarters, and has been acquired by corporate and residential collections nationally.
Draves’ award-winning work is permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has appeared in Wired and Discover magazines, as an official skin for Google Chrome, as the graphic identity for Siggraph 2008, the Prix Ars Electronica 1993, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and on the main dance-floor at the Sonar festival in Barcelona.
When not working as a full-time artist, Draves has worked for a series of technology start-ups. First was the fabless microprocessor design company Transmeta, made famous by Linus Torvalds. Later came FastForward Networks, which was acquired by Inktomi, then the PDI/Dreamworks R&D Department, which earned him a feature film credit for Shrek 2. Draves is now an engineer in the mapping division at Google Inc.
Spot started VJing at underground parties in the early 90s and still performs live. In 2004 he published SPOTWORKS a DVD of visual music which has sold more than 4000 copies.
In 1990 he received a BS in Mathematics from Brown University and in 1997 a PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University for a thesis on metaprogramming for media processing.
Check out Scott’s work in Multiplied Within though November 28th at Able Fine Arts, 511 West 25th Street, New York, NY.
Check out even more of Scott’s work on his website.
Images: 1) Karl and Scott ©2010 kHyal; 2–3) ©Scott Draves.
{ 2 trackbacks }