Aaron Koblin

Aaron Koblin leads Google's Data Arts Team, nine creative coders committed to what Koblin calls "experimental applications of Google technology," or "showing off what's possible." It might be easier to say that Koblin, who switched his college major from computer science to fine arts after one quarter, is an artist working in the medium of data. 

Koblin's more explicitly informational visualizations include the WebGL Globe (2011), a virtual world map of Google searches by language. Much as the WebGL Globe's open-source code has been adapted to plot recent earthquakes and average incomes, Koblin's art projects have allowed the user to participate in creation, starting with his 2006 MFA thesis, "The Sheep Market," which paid 10,000 unwitting participants two cents each to draw the titular animal -- a subject inspired equally by Le Petit Prince and Dolly the clone. 

With director Chris Milk, Koblin developed interactive websites that "take the music video to the next level." "The Johnny Cash Project" (2010) enhanced his earlier work's collaborative qualities: not only can you contribute rotoscoped drawings of the late Man in Black, but you can also vote on your favorites and create a unique animation from thousands of hand-drawn frames. Their more recent "videos" offer a more intimate experience, using, as Koblin explains, "data specifically tailored to one person as opposed to from many people." "The Wilderness Downtown" (2010), set to Arcade Fire's "We Used to Wait," plays on nostalgia by dynamically generating 3-D animations over Google Street Views of your childhood neighborhood; different "shots" open in different browser windows. "3 Dreams of Black," for the Danger Mouse/Daniele Luppi/Norah Jones/Jack White supergroup Rome, shifts from film footage to 2-D animations to a user-navigated 3-D landscape -- an Xbox-like experience brought to your laptop by advanced Web technology.  

MORE DIGITAL RENEGADES