Brendan Dawes
Bio
Brendan Dawes is a designer and artist exploring the interaction of objects, people, technology and art using an eclectic mix of digital and analog materials.
Ever since his first experiences with the humble ZX81 back in the early eighties, Brendan has continued to explore the interplay of people, code, design and art through his work on brendandawes.com where he publishes ideas, toys and projects created from an eclectic mix of digital and analog objects.
His work is featured in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and is a Visiting Teaching Fellow at the Manchester School of Art.
'Fillings for rectangles' is how he often describes his work. Over the years those rectangles have come in various shapes and sizes including websites, iPhone apps, posters, books, electronic circuits and pieces of plastic. Whilst his output takes on many forms, running through all his work are consistent themes of playfulness, curiosity and experimentation.
He believes passionately in putting new objects into the world that disrupt the status quo and ask questions about accepted practices; such as his Doodlebuzz news interface - a celebration of chance encounters and serendipity - featured in the Talk to Me exhibition at MoMA in New York and earlier won a D&AD award for interface design.
Session
If it aint broke - break it!
The most dangerous thing Brendan Dawes has ever done is having a bath straight after his tea. That, and going outside with his hair wet is probably as risky as he gets.
But when it comes to playing around with the possibilities of interactive design - pulling things apart and trying to break things is where he gets his more riskier "kicks"!
In this session Bren takes your through some of his ideas and explorations, hopes and fears in all things interactive and digital.
He'll show how he throws code around with little respect for structure, how he openly steals from here and there and hacks stuff together to create playful, interesting and occasionally bemusing output, using everything from Flash to Python, to vinyl records to Wii controllers.
