Prototyping a More Positive Future
Speaker
Sophia Brueckner
Assistant Professor, Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan
When
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Where
Newell-Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium)
Video
Video link
Description
Sophia Brueckner is a futurist artist, designer, and engineer. Inseparable from computers since the age of two, she believes she is a cyborg. At Google, she designed and implemented products used by tens of millions. At RISD and the MIT Media Lab, she combined the understanding that interfaces structure thought processes with ideas from cognitive behavioral therapy and embodied cognition to build sci-fi-inspired devices for mental well-being. She teaches an internationally renowned class on sci-fi prototyping and the ethics of design and invention. Her work has been featured by SIGGRAPH, Wired, NPR, and more. As an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, her ongoing objective is to combine her background in design and engineering with the perspective of an artist to create technologies that inspire a more positive future.
Speaker's Bio
Sophia Brueckner, born in Detroit, MI, is an artist, designer, and engineer. Inseparable from computers since the age of two, she believes she is a cyborg. She received her Sc.B. in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Brown University. As a software engineer at Google, she designed and implemented products used by tens of millions and later on experimental projects within Google Research.
Brueckner earned her MFA in Digital + Media at the Rhode Island School of Design where she explored the simultaneously empowering and controlling aspects of technology (UX design and computer promming in particular) through her artwork. At the MIT Media Lab, she combined the understanding that interfaces structure thought processes with ideas from cognitive behavioral therapy and embodied cognition to design and build haptic devices for mental health.
Brueckner feels an urgency to understand and raise awareness of technology's controlling effects, and to encourage the ethical and thoughtful design of new technologies. To do so, she teaches Sci-Fi Prototyping, a course combining science fiction, building functional prototypes, and the ethics of invention/design. Since 2011, she taught multiple versions of the class to students and researchers at MIT, Harvard, RISD, Brown, and the University of Michigan. Both the class itself as well as the students’ individual projects received international recognition and were featured by The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Wired, NPR, Scientific American, Fast Company, and many others.
Brueckner’s work has been featured internationally including at SIGGRAPH, ISEA, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Leaders in Software and Art Conference in New York. She is especially interested in the application of embodied cognition to interaction design, wearable technology, digital fabrication, generative systems, sound, and, as a technology antidote, painting. She recently joined the University of Michigan's Stamps School of Art and Design as an assistant professor (with a courtesy appointment in the School of Information) where teaches sci-fi prototyping, digital fabrication, design, and creative programming. Her ongoing objective is to meaningfully combine her background in UX design and engineering with the perspective of an artist to create technologies that inspire a more positive future.
Host
Karen Berntsen