Amit Pitaru
Bio
Amit Pitaru is designer and coder. His work to date spans across experimental art, research, education, and entrepreneurial projects. A recurring theme in Amit's work is the extreme attention to user-experience, specifically how technology can promote (or destroy) curiosity, literacy, and creativity.
Amit currently works at FiftyThree (maker of the Paper app), were he helps investigate and prototype tools that allow creativity to flow.
As an artist, Amit develops novel instruments and methods for making music, animation, and dance. His work has been exhibited at the London Design Museum, Paris Pompidou Center, Lincoln Center, Israel National Museum, Sundance Film festival, Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art, and ICC Museum in Tokyo.
Amit is a recipient of a MacArthur grant for documenting his work in the field of assistive technology: "Making everyday software and video games more accessible to children with disabilities." His writing on this subject was recently published by MIT Press.
As an educator, Amit develops curricula that focus on the coupling of technology and the creative thought process. He taught at New York University's ITP, co-founded Kitchen Table Coders micro-school, and will soon help launch the School for Poetic Computation in Brooklyn.
Session
Learning Curves
From teaching artists to code in basements of NY museums, to his work on Paper (Apple's App of the year), to tools that protect us from Wall Street, to diaper-wearing robots that can count up to 10 - Amit Pitaru's work draws a line of curvy twists and sharp corners.
On the next Designers+Geeks, Amit talks about the basic design principles that shape his work, his attempts at authoring a kinder ilk of technology, and how he hopes to change the way designers and artists learn to code.