
Julian Bleecker is an artist and technologist with a history developing innovative
mobile research projects.
Career
Bleecker holds a
Ph.D. from the
History of Consciousness
History of Consciousness is the name of a department in the Humanities Division of the University of California, Santa Cruz with a 50+ year history of interdisciplinary research and student training in "established and emergent disciplines and fi ...
Program at
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...
where he studied with
Donna Haraway
Donna Jeanne Haraway (born September 6, 1944) is an American professor emerita in the history of consciousness and feminist studies departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and te ...
,
Angela Davis
Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of ...
,
Victor Burgin
Victor Burgin (born 1941) is a British artist and writer.
Early life and education
Burgin was born in Sheffield in England. He studied art at the Royal College of Art, in London, from 1962 to 1965 (A.R.C.A., 1st Class, 1965) before going to t ...
, and
James Clifford.
He's been an artist-in-residence at
Eyebeam,
exhibited work at
Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in t ...
, a research fellow at the
Annenberg Center for Communication Annenberg may refer to:
* Annenberg (surname)
* The Annenberg Foundation, formerly Annenberg/CPB, known for funding educational television and the Annenberg Channel
* Annenberg School for Communication (disambiguation)
** The USC Annenberg School f ...
and an assistant professor at the
USC Interactive Media Division
The University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts's Interactive Media & Games Division first accepted M.F.A. students in 2002. The division currently offers both undergraduate (B.F.A.) and graduate (M.F.A. and M.S.) programs in int ...
.
Bleecker has been active as a researcher in the areas of mobile computing, pervasive networks and near-field interaction systems. In 2006, with Nicolas Nova, he organized a workshop entitled "Networked Objects" at
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne held in May 2006, exploring his interest in Near-Field Interaction and the
Internet of Things
Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...
.
This vector of research on mobile computing, pervasive networks and near-field or proximity-based interaction systems has been a theme of Bleecker's research and design projects for a number of years. One of his earlier projects in this area was PDPal (2003–2005), a series of technology project that investigated how mobile devices could be integrated into a system to allow people to annotate the experiences they have, as in a location-specific diary. The PDPal series was commissioned by
Eyebeam in New York City, and the
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...
in Minneapolis to find ways for creating art-technology projects that made use of readily available mobile devices, such as PDAs and mobile phones. PDPal was a collaborative project with designers Marina Zurkow and Scott Patterson.
Other more exploratory projects looked at ways to use common technologies, such as WiFi, in unexpected ways. WiFi.Bedouin and WiFi.ArtCache were two projects that use wireless communications networks to create local networks that make digital content available in very location-specific ways. WiFi.ArtCache was invited for exhibition at ISEA 2006 in San Jose, California, and was the winner of the Audience Choice Award. It was also commissioned for exhibition at the group show "Reclaim the Spectrum" in Seville, Spain (2006).
More playful commissioned art-technology projects include "Pussy Weevil", an animated, sensor-based, screen-based character, which was selected for exhibition at Ars Electronica (2005), the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City (2003–2004), and Art Interactive in Boston (2003).
Bleecker was lead technologist on the Sonic Memorial Project, a Peabody Award-winning website and radio documentary based on audio recollections of the events of September 11.
In 2008 he wrote the essay Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fictio
that lead to the development of the futures design approach
Design Fiction
Design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. It is a way to facilitate and foster debates, as explained by f ...
.
He founded his cycling product company OMAT
in 2014 after working for 7 years at
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...
, and sold it in 2021. He now focuses his time on developing the third evolution of Near Future Laborator
a multidisciplinary consultancy and global community focused on developing more robust futures practices through
Design Fiction
Design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. It is a way to facilitate and foster debates, as explained by f ...
. His podcast The Near Future Laboratory Podcas
features discussions on the relationship between imagination, creativity, and innovation practices.
Bibliography
* The Manual of Design Fiction: A Practical Guide to Exploring The Near Future. http://themanualofdesignfiction.com
* It's Time To Imagine Harder: The Reader's Guide to The Manual of Design Fiction. https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/products/imagine-harder-the-readers-guide-to-the-manual-of-design-fiction
* Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction. http://nearfuturelaboratory.com/2009/03/17/design-fiction-a-short-essay-on-design-science-fact-and-fiction/
* Hello, Skater Girl. August 2012. First comprehensive photo book of women who skate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bQDiuQIP4k&ab_channel=JulianBleecker.
* A Brief Bibliography And Taxonomy Of GPS-Enabled Locative Media. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, v. 14, no. 3. (co-authored with Jeff Knowlton). https://web.archive.org/web/20061014172644/http://leoalmanac.org/journal/Vol_14/lea_v14_n03-04/jbleecker.asp
* A Manifesto for Networked Objects — Cohabitating with Pigeons, Arphids and Aibos In The Internet of Things. February 2006. A point of view essay on design approaches within the idioms of pervasive networks, networked-based sensor platforms and the "Internet of Things." Published on my research blog at https://web.archive.org/web/20060908161927/http://research.techkwondo.com/blog/julian/185
* A Design Approach for the Geospatial Web. June 2005. A point of view article on design for Location Based Services and geo-tagging for the Geospatial Web, published on the O'Reilly Network web site. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/06/07/geospatialweb.html
* WiFi.Bedouin. In
Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, Issue 2, Fall 2005. https://web.archive.org/web/20070928141110/http://vectors.iml.annenberg.edu/index.php?page=8%7C2&projectId=12
* Cybertypes. February 2003. A book review of Lisa Nakamura's book on the politics of identity in the context of the internet. Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies. https://web.archive.org/web/20061006002329/http://www.com.washington.edu/rccs/bookinfo.asp?AuthorID=57&BookID=182
* MobileDNA. November 2002. Paper delivered at the American Anthropology Association annual conference, on the invited panel "Making New Things."
* The Race for Cyberspace: Information Technology in the Black Diaspora. September 2001. With Ron Eglash, Science as Culture, Volume 10, Number 3, September 1, 2001, pp. 353–374.
* Mobile Realities. September 2001. Paper delivered at the 2001 meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science. Presents the technical and social history of mobile technology.
* The Simulation Crisis. April 1996. Presentation at Cornell University Workshop "Simulating Knowledge: Cultural Analysis of Computer Modeling in the Life Sciences.
* Urban Crisis: Past, Present, and Virtual. Winter 1995. An analysis of the computer simulation game, SimCity2000 informed by race theory and cultural studies. Socialist Review, Winter 1994-95, v. 24, no. 1-2.
* Virtual Reality, Vision Culture, Technology: Re-Establishing Cultural Production. February 1993. Paper delivered at the 81st Annual College Art Association conference on the panel "Pictures from the Hyperworld: The Artist in Technoculture."
References
External links
The Near Future Laboratory- Bleecker's research blog
OMATA- Bleecker's company
Julian Bleecker- Bleecker's profile page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bleecker, Julian
University of Southern California faculty
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)