Events
Design Tech Fall 2022 Lecture Series | Jonah Brucker-Cohen
Critical Networked Experience
Jonah Brucker-Cohen will discuss his projects in the theme of “Critical Networked Experience,” which includes works that challenge and subvert accepted notions of network interaction and socialization. Projects he will discuss include BumpList, an email community for the determined; Weapon of Protest, a modified game controller that protests gun violence in the U.S.; To Protect and Server, a critical modification of Google’s ReCaptcha software to emphasize police brutality and social justice; Killer Route, a GPS navigation system that integrates live crime data; Human Error, a series of works that emphasize humanity’s inability to understand technical interfaces; ContactRot, an iPhone app that challenges our reliance on the cloud; Alerting Infrastructure!, a website hit counter that destroys a building; WordPlay, a new linguistics-based project installed at the New York Hall of Science; and more. At the end of his talk, he will present a live demo of his commissioned project for Montefiore Hospital called Healing Destinations, an earth simulation that allows the audience to interact using their cell phones.
Speaker Bio
Artist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Lehman College / City University of New York
Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Ph.D., is an artist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Lehman College / City University of New York. He received his Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin. His work focuses on deconstructing networks, with projects that subvert accepted perceptions of network interaction. His artwork has been exhibited at venues such as SFMOMA, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Art, MOMA, ICA London, Whitney Museum of American Art, Palais du Tokyo, Tate Modern, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, and more. His artworks, Bumplist and America’s Got No Talent are in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His writing has appeared in WIRED, Make, Rhizome.org, Gizmodo, Neural, and more. His Scrapyard Challenge workshops have been held in more than 15 countries in Europe, South America, North America, Asia, and Australia since 2003. He is currently a visiting artist at Cornell Tech.