Feb 20 – Steve Boyer

Thursday, February 20th, 7:00 – 9:30pm

Atoms to Bits –
The Disintegration of Everyday Things

In The Duncan Anderson Design Department Gallery at California State University, Long Beach

Over the past decade there has been a seismic shift in the way we experience physical space.

Our smartphones, tablets and notebook computers are no longer tools that we carry – they are prosthetic devices, extensions of our bodies through which our experiences are mediated. The digital worlds they provide access to are gradually becoming the spaces where we spend the majority of our time. Physical objects are being replaced daily with software applications. Architectural spaces are being overrun with video screens. The result is the evolution of a vast BioElectric Network which is rapidly replacing the world of matter as our primary environmental condition.

Resolving the tension between our respective places in both the physical and digital worlds is perhaps the largest cultural challenge we have ever faced. The technologies that form our new environment are advancing more rapidly than we can consciously assimilate. As a result, longstanding cultural values and social norms are being disrupted at speeds that would make even the Italian Futurists call for restraint as they tremble with both fear and delight.

In this presentation creative technologist Steve Boyer will discuss some of the design challenges presented by this evolution offers some solutions to the new problems of bifurcated space and disintegrated social interaction. He will also present some of his own recent work created in response to these challenges including Colorfields, a piece for thousands of coordinated smartphones that was performed on the beach in Santa Monica as part of last summer’s Glow exhibition.

Steve Boyer is an artist, designer, inventor and educator with over 25 years of experience developing technology and producing content for a wide variety of media including video games, electronic toys and architectural installations. Steve has been on the faculty at some of the finest art and design schools in the US including The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of California – San Diego and Otis College of Art and Design and worked for some of the largest digital media companies in the world (Viacom, Vivendi Games) as a designer, producer and researcher. He earned a BA in Music from Northwestern University and a MArch from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).