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Humor, Failure, and the Art of Subversion with Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Overview
Jonah Brucker-Cohen has
spent over two decades turning familiar systems into subversive art. His
method: take something everyone uses (a mailing list, a crosswalk
button, a login screen) and break it in a way that makes you laugh, then
think.
Jonah walks through several recent projects that use public data to
expose invisible urban realities, such as a crosswalk timer that delays
your crossing based on the street’s accident history, a weather system
that shows how temperature maps to neighborhood wealth, and a GPS app
that routes you through the most dangerous parts of a city. Each one
takes data we already have and reframes it as something you physically
experience.
We discuss the origin story of the Scrapyard Challenge, a
workshop series Jonah co-founded with Katherine Moriwaki in Dublin in 2003.
Jonah and Katherine taught non-engineers how to build sound controllers
and interfaces out of junk. Their key finding: people with zero
electronics experience took the biggest risks and made the most
interesting things.
The conversation closes with Jonah’s philosophy on what makes
interactive art work: it should be immediately understandable, without a
long artist statement required. He points to Blake Fall-Conroy’s Minimum Wage Machine
as a model for that clarity: crank it for an hour and it dispenses
exactly minimum wage in pennies.
Bio
Jonah Brucker-Cohen is an artist, researcher, and Associate Professor
of Digital Media and Networked Culture at Lehman College (CUNY). His
interactive works have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, Ars
Electronica, Tate Modern, MoMA, and Transmediale, among others.
He was recently interviewed about projects that address artificial intelligence
on the AI Futures for Art and Design
podcast.
Chapter Markers
technology and art practice
culture
history
reality
invite to destroy them
waiting times
cybernetics
technology
Resources Discussed
publication
culture
Applications — creative technology projects
Contact
View all episodes
By Mike SubelskyOverview
Jonah Brucker-Cohen has
spent over two decades turning familiar systems into subversive art. His
method: take something everyone uses (a mailing list, a crosswalk
button, a login screen) and break it in a way that makes you laugh, then
think.
Jonah walks through several recent projects that use public data to
expose invisible urban realities, such as a crosswalk timer that delays
your crossing based on the street’s accident history, a weather system
that shows how temperature maps to neighborhood wealth, and a GPS app
that routes you through the most dangerous parts of a city. Each one
takes data we already have and reframes it as something you physically
experience.
We discuss the origin story of the Scrapyard Challenge, a
workshop series Jonah co-founded with Katherine Moriwaki in Dublin in 2003.
Jonah and Katherine taught non-engineers how to build sound controllers
and interfaces out of junk. Their key finding: people with zero
electronics experience took the biggest risks and made the most
interesting things.
The conversation closes with Jonah’s philosophy on what makes
interactive art work: it should be immediately understandable, without a
long artist statement required. He points to Blake Fall-Conroy’s Minimum Wage Machine
as a model for that clarity: crank it for an hour and it dispenses
exactly minimum wage in pennies.
Bio
Jonah Brucker-Cohen is an artist, researcher, and Associate Professor
of Digital Media and Networked Culture at Lehman College (CUNY). His
interactive works have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, Ars
Electronica, Tate Modern, MoMA, and Transmediale, among others.
He was recently interviewed about projects that address artificial intelligence
on the AI Futures for Art and Design
podcast.
Chapter Markers
technology and art practice
culture
history
reality
invite to destroy them
waiting times
cybernetics
technology
Resources Discussed
publication
culture
Applications — creative technology projects
Contact