On February 14th I’ll be giving a presentation at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology on my artistic practice and research.  The talk is titled “What Does Software Want? Recent Artistic Projects and Research.”

Speed of Reality (2010)
installation view
Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago, IL (photo by C. Bakker)

The event is free and open to the public.  It will be held on February 14, 2012, from 12-1pm in room 2269 (2nd floor tower room) Beckman Institute.  Beckman is located at 405 N. Mathews Ave. in Urbana, IL.  Free pizza will be served, or you can bring your own lunch if you prefer.

Here’s the abstract and bio I submitted:

What Does Software Want?  Recent Artistic Projects and Research

Ben Grosser
MFA Candidate, School of Art+Design, University of Illinois

Software now facilitates many aspects of daily life, whether it’s your phone, your bank, your car, or your refrigerator.  Though immaterial, software is still a designed object created by humans.  I’m interested in how those designs serve their creators, as well as the systems those creations reside within.  Why do those designs result in certain kinds of human-computer interfaces?  How do those interfaces interact with humans to achieve their goals?  What does software want?   In this talk I will present an overview of my recent research questions around this topic and the resulting artworks I have generated in response.

Ben Grosser is an artist and a composer, and is currently an MFA Candidate in New Media in the School of Art+Design at UIUC.  Previously he was the Director of the Imaging Technology Group at the Beckman Institute.  His artistic work has been covered widely in the online press, including articles on Boing Boing, the Make Blog, Engadget, Fast Company, and Discovery News.  The Huffington Post recently said of his Interactive Robotic Painting Machine that “Grosser may have unknowingly birthed the apocalypse.”  The St. Louis Riverfront Times called his music “very loud and ugly.”

Hope to see you there!