The Luminous Arts Podcast Robb Pope

Hey guys, welcome back to the Luminous Arts!  I spend the next hour and a half talking to a good friend of mine, David Glicksman.  He’s the Director of Creative Technology at Gensler’s DxD department in LA.  They’re doing some really next-level installations in some of the world's most impressive architectural projects.  David’s an incredibly creative guy and he’s been part of the scene from the beginning.  He started with VFX and motion graphics and moved into the digital placemaking industry a few years ago when he took the helm at DxD.  Our conversation is great and we get into the weeds about what it means to be truly creative and an artist in this industry.  I loved this conversation and I bet you will too!

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In this episode, I sit down with my friend Nathan Lachenmyer to talk about his work as a creative technologist.  He started his career at MIT, in my hometown of Boston, which is actually how I met Nathan in the first place.  Nathan is a super talented creator and he’s worked on some iconic installations at the Dana Farber Institute and the Tate Modern.  His work with kinetic sculptures early on informed some of his more recent work incorporating machine learning with robotic free-floating artificial life forms at the Tate.  Pretty wild stuff!
It’s very cool to talk with Nathan about how his career has progressed since finishing school.  Our conversation was so natural and easy, we both know so many of the same people.  It’s an interesting dive into some unique parts of the New Media Arts Scene and I think that you’re going to love listening to us jam!
 
Links & Social Media
Websites: 
https://sitara.systems/
 
Instagram:
@sitara.systems
 
Twitter:
@morphogencc
@SitaraSystems
 
LinkedIn:
LinkedIn Featured Projects

Christopher Bauder, the founder of White Void, was one of the people that I had in mind when I started the Luminous Arts podcast.  I was in Berlin for the Touch Designer Summit when I first saw his work.  It was a performance called Skalar and it was being shown in an old abandoned transit station.  It was just crazy to me that thousands of people would gather to watch a performance centered around lighting and visuals.  The music was just a supporting element, not the focus of the show.  Whitevoid, which is the name of Chris’s design company, creates some of the most amazing lighting performances I’ve ever seen.  They combine kinetic lighting, lasers, and music in a totally unique way.  It’s like he’s using light as a fluid to fill a 3-dimensional space.
Our conversation wanders, like conversations here tend to do.  We start by talking about our youths and how growing up in the techno scene in Berlin shaped his artistic path.  Both of us spent our early years exploring the techno scenes in the places where we grew up, which led us to experimenting with the visual arts.  Even though we grew up at different times and on different continents, there’s a lot of shared experience between us that was really interesting to explore.  I’d been waiting years to have this conversation and I’m excited for the next time Chris and I can meet in person. 
 
Links & Social Media
Websites: 
Kinetic-lights.com
Whitevoid.com
Christopherbauder.com
Instagram
@chritopherbauder
@whitevoid_berlin 
@kinetic_lights
Facebook
@whitevoid.studio
@kineticlights

Bill and I started to circle each other off of the Shiny list about a year and a half ago.  He’s an OG head in the new media arts scene and he’s worked with some of the most iconic groups and projects in our community.  Bot and Dolly, Future Forward, Nonotak, Obscura, GMunk, VT Pro, Leviathan, he’s been around the block and literally knows everyone doing anything cool with tech art.  Just recently we started working together in a professional context and I thought it was about time we did an episode together.  You should check this one out if for no other reason than to listen to us gossip like old grandpas and reminisce stories from the heat of battle.  I consider Bill a good friend at this point, someone who really understands the game and I can talk to about the challenges that I face putting together crews and running my company.  I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did, it’s a good one!
 
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Portfolio Website
Instagram
LinkedIn

Nick is the creative mind behind one of the most impressive works of kinetic new media arts I’ve seen.  The piece is called morph and it’s truly a genius mix of form, motion, light, and sound.  I saw the work come through my social media feeds and immediately wanted to get in touch.  
 
Our conversation was mostly about the creative process, I wanted to understand how Morph went from concept to reality.  Hired by a curator from Austria to produce the piece for a gallery show in a renovated castle, the final setting for this piece could not be a better contrast to their high-tech installation.  
 
His co-creators, MindBuffer, developed the software used to drive the light, motion, and sound and are geniuses in their own right.  I definitely look forward to meeting them as well.  They all came together in Berlin and worked out of a maker space called MotionLab to finish the build.
 
Definitely check out their portfolio page before you listen to this episode so you get a sense of the project we’re talking about.  Hope you enjoy the episode, I know I did!
 
Links & Social Media
Portfolio Website
Instagram
Facebook
 

Tiffany Trenda is a new media fashion artist based out of LA.  We met each other through my friend Anouk, another new media artist active in the fashion-tech scene.  I was curious how the conversation would go.  We spoke on the phone about a week ago and our conversation was really flowing.  That totally continued through this episode.  
 
She’s spent her artistic career creating a physical narrative through performances using handmade costumes and tech-infused clothing.  She never shows her face and encourages the audience to interact with screens that are attached to her body.  
 
Her work is really unique and super compelling.  We talk about performance art in the time of Covid, bridging the uncanny valley, how NFT’s apply to physical new media art, and of course, the singularity.
 
Check it out, I know you’ll love this one!
Links & Social Media
Portfolio Website
Unseen, virtual performance