Seminar Description
Exploring Inner Landscapes
Jonathan Harris
October 7, 2010
5:30 pm
Davis Center, Silver Maple Ballroom
Summary
Combining elements of computer science, visual art, anthropology, architecture, and storytelling, Jonathan's projects create large-scale living portraits of the human world — portraits that both simplify and complicate our understanding of it. In this talk, Jonathan will present a broad survey of his work over the past ten years, touching on time capsules, emotional search engines, Eskimo whale hunting, online dating, spirit animals, the soul of the Internet, and metaphysical signs. He will discuss his creative process, and pose some questions about what kind of space the digital world is becoming, and what that world is doing to us as individuals.
Speaker Bio
Jonathan Harris makes projects that reimagine how humans relate to technology and to each other. Combining elements of computer science, anthropology, visual art and storytelling, his projects range from building the world's largest time capsule (with Yahoo!) to documenting an Alaskan Eskimo whale hunt on the Arctic Ocean (with a warm hat). He is the co-creator of We Feel Fine, which continuously measures the emotional temperature of the human world through large-scale blog analysis, and has made other projects about online dating, modern mythology, anonymity, news, and language. After studying computer science at Princeton University, he won a 2005 Fabrica fellowship and three Webby Awards. His work has also been recognized by AIGA, Ars Electronica, the state of Vermont (for which he co-designed the state quarter), Print Magazine (which named him a 2008 New Visual Artist) and The World Economic Forum (which named him a 2009 Young Global Leader). He has given talks at Google, Princeton and Stanford Universities, the TED Conference, and at two hippy forest gatherings. His projects have been shown at The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Le Centre Pompidou (Paris), and have appeared on CNN, NPR, BBC, and Bhutanese television. Born in Vermont, he now floats between Brooklyn, NY, the open road, and cyberspace, documenting his life with one photo a day.
Sponsoring Organizations
This talk is sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Complex Systems Center, the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and the Department of Art & Art History. Additional support provided by Burlington City Arts, Small Dog Electronics, and Champlain College.
