The Electric Sheep is the collective dream of a cyborg mind consisting of 60,000 computers and people every day.  It combines crowd-source, open source, and evolution to create animated abstract art.  Dreams in High Fidelity is a limited edition “painting that evolves”.  It’s made with the Sheep, but at much higher technical and aesthetic quality. Together they form a symbiotic system, addressing the tension between artist and audience, and openness and sustainability.  The talk will include a presentation of the work itself and an explanation of the techniques and concepts behind it.

Bio:

Scott Draves a.k.a. Spot is a visual and software artist living in New York City.  He created the first open source art, the Flame algorithm in 1991, the Bomb interactive visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Electric Sheep in 1999.

Draves’ award-winning work is permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has appeared in Wired and Discover magazines, the Prix Ars Electronica, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and on the main dance-floor at the Sonar festival in Barcelona.

Before becoming a full-time artist Draves worked for a series of technology start-ups, including the Transmeta virtual microprocessor company and FastForward Networks, which was acquired by Inktomi. His last regular job was with PDI/Dreamworks, which earned him a feature film credit for Shrek 2.

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.

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.

Draves’ current project is Dreams in High Fidelity, a painting that evolves. The HiFiDreams is limited edition fine art that is installed in the lobby of Google’s headquarters.