
Julian Bleecker is an artist and technologist with a history developing innovative
mobile
Mobile may refer to:
Places
* Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city
* Mobile County, Alabama
* Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S.
* Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador
Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels
* Mobile ...
research projects.
Career
Bleecker holds a
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...
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 fiel ...
Program at
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge ...
. 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 th ...
, a Research Fellow at the
Annenberg Center for Communication The Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy (CCLP) at the University of Southern California promotes interdisciplinary research in communications between the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Viterbi School of Engineering, and the separate ...
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.A.) and graduate (M.F.A.) programs in interactive med ...
. He now works as an interaction designer at Nokia Design (Los Angeles).
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
The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...
.
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 neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...
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.
Bibliography
* The Manual of Design Fiction: A Practical Guide to Exploring The Near Future. http://themanualofdesignfiction.com
* 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/
* 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
, 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
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bleecker, Julian
University of Southern California faculty
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)