Jeff Crouse (born September 10, 1980 in

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

) is an American artist and

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

/creative technologist who works with live

data feed Data feed is a mechanism for users to receive updated data from data sources. It is commonly used by real-time applications in point-to-point settings as well as on the World Wide Web. The latter is also called web feed. News feed is a popular for ...

s from the internet to make art works.

Background

Crouse's undergraduate study in Computer Science and Fiction Writing led to creating works that continued the history of

automatic writing Automatic writing, also called psychography, is a claimed psychic ability allowing a person to produce written words without consciously writing. Practitioners engage in automatic writing by holding a writing instrument and allowing alleged spir ...

through using computers, code, and dynamic sources on the internet
Interactive Frank
for example, used sources on the internet to create dynamically generated audio programs reminiscent of public radio pioneer,

Joe Frank Joe Frank (August 19, 1938 – January 15, 2018) was a French-born American writer, teacher, and radio performer best known for his often philosophical, humorous, surrealist, and sometimes absurd monologues and radio dramas he recorded often i ...

. Another example i
ChinASCII
a video game based on the life

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted ...

. In order to facilitate his projects, Jeff Crouse develope
Switchboard
a library for

Processing Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming ...

. Switchboard allows "artists and designers to easily use a variety of live data sources for digital art". After completing a Master of Science degree in Information Design and Technology at

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

in 2006, Crouse began a Production Fellowship at Eyebeam in 2006 and in 2007 he became a Senior Fellow. He is on the Add-Art advisory committee.

Notable works

* Invisible Threads (aka Double Happiness Jeans or Double Happiness Manufacturing) - a collaboration with Stephanie Rothenberg. Double Happiness is a

sweatshop A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, o ...

manufacturing plant in

Second Life ''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...

to build jeans based on orders made in real life. The jeans are designed and assembled in the factory and then delivered back into real life by being printed on fabric via a large format printer. The result is a tangible, wearable (however impractical) pair of pants. The project began in 2007 and was shown at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in the New Frontiers exhibition.

Awards

* 2022 Gerald Loeb Award for Personal Finance and Personal Service

References

External links

Jeff Crouse
Official Website
Art Forum
review of Invisible Threads (requires login) {{DEFAULTSORT:Crouse, Jeff 1980 births Living people American digital artists Artists from New York (state) Georgia Tech alumni Artists from Baltimore Gerald Loeb Award winners for Personal Finance