Over the past several years I have become increasingly involved with the Seattle chapter of a group called Dorkbot. (There are over 30 chapters world wide.) It’s a monthly meeting of artists/geeks/scientists who use technology in their art (or…art in their technology). It’s extremely “geeky”, for the most part a crowd of established professionals in the tech industry interested in the creative uses of everything from RFID tags to microcontrollers. There’s also a yearly exhibit of art called “People Doing Strange Things with Electricity”. You can get a good sense of the kind of work presented at these meetings by reviewing bios of past speakers: http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotsea/archive.shtml.
Recently the founder of the Seattle contingent, Kate Seeking, decided to head off to art school so she recruited a few of us to take over running the meetings. We have an organizing committee, for which I have volunteered to be the Dork Overlord for the next several months. (Hee. I volunteered primarily for the privilege of the title, believe me.) I became involved with dorkbot because I have often observed at conferences, with friends, and with colleagues that some of the most innovative new technologies come from people using it for art.
swilson/book/infoartsbook.html”>Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology”, from the abstract: “Who said that scientific research and technological innovations belong to the technicians? Research has become a white hot center of cultural foment. It is affecting everything from the gizmos of everyday life to basic philosophical notions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human. Wilson explores the idea that the arts can assume their historical role at the edge of culture by becoming the independent zone of research, undertaking investigations ignored or discredited by commercial interests and academic science.” Yeah, what he said.
It’s rarely the case that people have the right combination of artistic vision and technological talent to implement their visions, so not only does dorkbot attract a rare breed of individual, it enables people with distinct skill sets to develop an awareness of each other and collaborate. Visual artist, meet microcontroller geek!
Dorkbot has been getting a lot of attention from the media lately. Here’s a video blog from on10 with Laura Joy about last months meeting, in which I make a brief appearance: http://on10.net/TheShow/2203/. The month before, a guy got an RFID chip embedded in his hand live which attracted a bit of press from the Seattle Times. Here’s some AP coverage of the original New York dorkbot: http://www.yahoo.com/s/292019
