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food tech 2018 | Austin Forum
Technology + Art:
Data, Algorithms, and Software Enable New Artistic Creativity
March 5, 2020 | AUSTIN CENTRAL LIBRARY | 6:15pm
REGISTER
ASK THE SPEAKER
with
Julia Morton
Shirley Steele
James Pricer
​Tyler Hobbs


Austin Central Library
710 W. Cesar Chavez
Downtown Austin

5:45pm Doors Open
6:15pm Presentation, Q&A
7:30pm Reception
Austin public library | Austin Forum
Thanks to Austin Public Library for their partnership.
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Technology has always enabled art by providing new tools, materials, and expertise that artist then used to advance their visual innovations. The Renaissance is a good example of what can happen when technologists and creatives collaborate. Today a new 21st Renaissance is underway with tech and art uniting to form a new movement dubbed generative art, with Austin as one of its creative hubs.
 
Generative art uses code, data, AI, AR, VR, music, math, algorithms, hardware, and software to create novel digital media and daring aesthetics that would not otherwise be possible! What’s more these artists are coders, many with backgrounds in technology. Like good design and beautiful code, their evocative images and ideas are judged by their clarity and simplicity, and for their elegant, original solutions to complex concerns. Their relevant visions allow all of us to appreciate our unique place in history and to imagine the future of technology, art, and humanity through fresh eyes.
 
Come experience these mesmerizing tech-driven creations as Julia Morton and her guest artists reveal their code, process, and inspiration in this special Austin Forum event that will also feature a pop-up generative art gallery. 
We welcome your participation! Please email us with your questions, answers and prognostications in advance. 

Admission to the Austin Forum is always free. 
​
The Austin Forum accepts donations of used smart phones and tablets at all our events. All devices will have a factory reset and be set up as new by the team at Austin Pathways’ nationally-recognized “Unlocking the Connection” initiative, which will connect every public housing resident with a digital device, digital literacy, and a free or very low-cost internet connection. Your donated phone can change lives and help close Austin’s digital divide, thanks to Austin Pathways.

speakers

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Julia Morton
Generative Art Project
Julia Morton is a graduate of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY where she studied design. In 1981, she opened her own fashion boutique, Einstein’s, in New York’s East Village. Throughout the 1990s she turned her attention to the mass market designing for retailers, brands, and catalogs. With a career change in 1999, she began writing art columns and book essays. She also produced video reviews and curating exhibitions. Moving to Austin in 2011, she took up gardening and chickens, and completed a memoir. In 2018 she opened Generative Art Project. 
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Shirley Steele
Generative Art Project
My artwork explores new ways to think about human language, the language of
machines, and our dialogue with them. My artistic practice is informed by a career as a research scientist in speech and linguistics. After earning a Ph.D. in Brain and Language (University of Texas, Dallas), I worked as a research scientist in speech acoustics at Texas Instruments, AT&T Bell Laboratories, and Unisys Corporation.
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James Pricer
Generative Art Project
My academic background was in clinical psychology, philosophy, mergers and
acquisitions, and international business. I have worked as a Data Architect, Data Miner, Data Scientist, and Data Artist.  Although steeped in data architectures and algorithms, Data Science requires as much art as science.  As a Data Artist, I use data architectures and algorithms to create abstractions of data that bring them to life.
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Tyler Hobbs
Generative Art Project
My work focuses on the creation of generative processes. For each new work, I design a custom algorithm capable of generating a sequence of unique, but aesthetically related images. The algorithms I craft borrow patterns observed from the natural world, repurposing and remixing them to explore the sensations they evoke. A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, B.S. Computer Science – 2010, I am a native of Austin.

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