Research Colloquium at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology in Surrey presents

W. Bradford Paley

Wednesday Feb 6th, 2008 at 2:30 - 4.00 pm

SFU Surrey Campus, Room 5380 (5th Floor Galleria)

W. Bradford Paley

Digital Image Design Incorporated / Columbia University - Computer Science

Title: Rigor and Accuracy in Art: Getting Viewers Past Titillation to Meaning

Abstract:

I believe even exploratory fine art can benefit from a certain kind of

focus that ties the presentation of objects into the capabilities and

"expectations" of the human mind. Build imagery to fit what people can

absorb more quickly and you can get past the medium to the subject of

the art. I will share two decades of practice: interaction design,

information visualization, and even the latter accepted as fine art.

I will discuss the techniques that allow the same piece to be seen by

different audiences as art or tool. I will suggest perceptual, cognitive,

and psycholinguistic mechanisms for techniques embodied in my work, with

the hope that sharing this respectful attitude toward how we absorb

information might help make more understandable--and more moving--artifacts.

Bio:

W. Bradford Paley uses computers to create visual displays with the goal of making readable, clear, and engaging expressions of complex data. His visual representations are inspired by the calm, richly layered information in natural scenes. His process applies three perspectives: 1 rendering methods used by fine artists and graphic artists are 2 informed by their possible underpinnings in human perception, then 3 applied to creating narrowly-scoped, almost idiosyncratic representations whose visual semantics are often driven by the real-world metaphors of the experts who know the domains best.

Brad did his first computer graphics in 1973, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley in 1981, founded Digital Image Design Incorporated (didi.com/brad) in 1982, and started doing financial & statistical data visualization in 1986. He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art; he created TextArc.org; he is in the ARTPORT collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art; has received multiple grants and awards for both art and design, and his designs are at work every day in the hands of brokers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University, and is director of Information Esthetics: a fledgling interdisciplinary group exploring the creation and interpretation of data representations that are both readable and esthetically satisfying.

http://wbpaley.com/brad/