Tactical Research Associates
Our practice involves working closely with creative, thoughtful experts within various domains of work depending on the needs of any particular project. Our associations with a wide network of well-respected and accomplished practitioners makes it possible to work from concept development to construction of unique digital designs. Besides the principals — Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova, we work closely with these and other fine Tactical Research Associates.
Jed Berk
Jed Berk’s work explores ideas related to the transient point in nature where evolution might occur. "Transitional Species" is a body of networked sculptures that interact with their environment, an audience and each other. In this work he employes the use of emerging technologies to create technological biotopes of semi-domesticated, biologically inspired sculptures that live in network-based ecosystems.
Presently Berk creates installations where an audience can actively engage and cohabit with multiple species thereby effecting their behaviors and the environment. The Use of technology creates a tangible link between the physical and virtual by giving form to invisible and intangible networks. An emotional response to the "species" cultivates new relationships. His over arching interest is in developing large, multiple biotopes placed globally and capable of communicating with each other simultaneously, transcending language and cultural barriers.
Having received much media attention and acclaim from the art, science and technology communities, Berk’s work has been included in media/robotic festivals, exhibitions and technology conferences through out the US, Europe and Asia. Berk presently is teaching workshops related to robotic species.
Born in New York, Berk lives in Los Angeles, CA. He received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Art Center College of Design. He has shown in the US and internationally in institutions such as, Beall Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, CA; Art Center Nabi, Seoul, Korea; Brandts, Odense, Denmark; ACM, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA; and Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA. Berk’s work has also reached a broad audience with the ALAVs international television debut on the Discovery Network.
Aaron Meyers
http://interactive.usc.edu/members/adm/
Will Carter
Will Carter is an interaction designer specializing in mobile media. He is primarily interested in exploring new forms of entertainment and services that utilize emerging technologies to expand how we interact with our communities and our media. He’s co-creator with Aaron Meyers of MobZombies, a unique mobile game where players’ physical movements control their game character. His interest in location-based services inspired his master’s thesis project Location33, a location-aware musical composition played in Culver City California. He also co-created with Julian Bleecker geotagthings.com, a service that allows anything with a URL to be geo-coded. He is a graduate of Brown University and received a master’s degree from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he studied interactive media.
Kyle Ng
Kyle Ng is an artist-designer based in Los Angeles. His work ranges from products to art installations to high concept store installations. Kyle work is largely inspired by the 19th century, particularly the cabinet of curiosities, taxidermy, natural history, medical models and science fiction. His aesthetic has been described as a “Future Naturalist”. His work has been showcased in such magazines as Vogue, MEAN, Flaunt, and Giant Robot magazine. He is presently artist-in-residence at Von Dutch.
Fabien Girardin
Fabien Girardin is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and Digital Communication in the Interactive Technologies Group (Department of Informmation and Communication Technologies) at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. He is also affiliated with the Senseable City Lab (Department of Urban Studies and Planning) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA. His current investigation explores the integration of ubiquitous technologies in the everyday urban environments. More specifically, he studies the design of location-aware applications that take into account the limitations of technologies.
J*B (AKA Jean-Baptiste) has already organized many Arduino and Processing workshops in France and in Italy. He is a computer science PhD student specialized in Creativity and HCI (human computer interaction) and does electronics and interaction design. Among other things, he hacks fabrics, accelerometers or organic items to create new instruments and controllers such as wearable social networking electronic jewelery, tangible cameras or ubiquitous augmented reality videoediting and gaming systems. His blog at http://insitu.lri.fr/~labrune/blog/