Keynote

Sheldon Brown
 Devising Coherency: Software-Intensive Art as Cultural Research

Sheldon Brown
Director, Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA)
Director, UCSD Experimental Game Lab
Professor of Visual Arts
University of California, San Diego
Abstract:
In the development of his artworks, Sheldon Brown finds himself creating relatively large software projects as his primary artmaking process. This software development occurs at many levels: from extending existing applications, to creating high level authoring environments, to the creation of large frameworks that integrate advanced systems of real time 3D graphics, AI, physics, computer vision, networking and audio. These works manifest in a variety of end forms but common to them all is the process of creating software. This approach is integral to the concerns of the work, which look at how culture is transforming due to the ubiquity of algorithmic mediation.
Biography:
Sheldon Brown is Director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) where he is a Professor of Visual Arts and the founder of the of New Media Arts area for the UC San Diego Division of Calit2. His artwork reconfigures private and public spaces where new forms of mediation proliferate, diversifying geographies and social organizations. This art explores the schismatic junctions of these zones - its edges of coherency - providing glimpses into formative structures, with a view that extends constrained boundaries. Currently, he is developing several interactive environments that cross-fertilize virtual reality and game technologies.