Theo Watson is a British artist and programmer. His art work includes interactive video, large-scale public projections,

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

projects, and interactive sound recordings which have featured in museums and galleries across the world including

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

New York Hall of Science The New York Hall of Science, also known as NYSCI, is a science museum located in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the New York City borough of Queens, in the section of the park that is in Corona. It occupies one of the few remaining structures fr ...

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is ...

amongst others. Watson is a partner at Design I/O, a Cambridge-based interactive design firm known for cutting edge, immersive installations. He is also co-founder of the programming toolkit

openFrameworks openFrameworks is an open source toolkit designed for creative coding founded by Zachary Lieberman, Theo Watson and Arturo Castro. OpenFrameworks is written in C++ and built on top of OpenGL. It runs on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, ...

, co-creator of the EyeWriter and a virtual fellow at

Free Art and Technology Lab The Free Art and Technology Lab a.k.a. F.A.T. Lab was a collective of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and musicians, dedicated to the merging of popular culture with open source technology. F.A.T. Lab was known for producing artwork cri ...

Biography

Watson has a

Bachelor of Fine Arts A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students for pursuing a professional education in the visual, fine or performing arts. It is also called Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA) in some cases. Background The Bachelor ...

in Design and Technology from

Parsons School of Design Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhatt ...

. As a programmer, Watson has worked with Zach Lieberman in creating

, an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

library for

creative coding Creative coding is a type of computer programming in which the goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional. It is used to create live visuals and for VJing, as well as creating visual art and design, entertainment (e.g. ...

and graphics. He is a member of the

Graffiti Research Lab Graffiti Research Lab is an art project founded by Evan Roth and James Powderly James Powderly (born 1976) is an artist, designer and engineer whose work has focused on creating tools for graffiti artists and political activists, designing ro ...

, and in 2007 wrote the code for their LASER Tag project. In 2006, Watson worked with director

Michel Gondry Michel Gondry (; born 8 May 1963) is a French filmmaker noted for his inventive visual style and distinctive manipulation of mise en scène. Along with Charlie Kaufman, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as one of the writers ...

, writing custom software for physical sensors and cameras in three interactive installations in Gondry's '' Science of Sleep'' exhibition at

Deitch Projects Jeffrey Deitch (pronounced ''DIE-tch'';Mike Boehm (January 12, 2010)L.A.'s MOCA picks art dealer Jeffrey Deitch as director''Los Angeles Times''. born 1952) is an American art dealer and curator. He is best known for his gallery Deitch Projects ...

in New York City. From Spring to Fall 2006, Watson worked as a Production Fellow at Eyebeam. He is currently a Virtual Fellow at

(a.k.a. FAT Lab).

Artworks

Watson makes site-specific installations that look at how humans relate to various situations and spaces. Many of Watson's works use elements of

physical computing Physical computing involves interactive systems that can sense and respond to the world around them. While this definition is broad enough to encompass systems such as smart automotive traffic control systems or factory automation processes, it ...

in interactive installations. In ''Vinyl Workout'' (Rotterdam Electronic Music Festival, 2006), custom software and cameras track user's movements as they walk along a large projection of a record on the floor, manipulating the audio and video playback with the speed and direction of their steps. In ''Audio Space'' (2005), a user wearing a

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

-enabled headset can record messages at any position within a room, and hear all the sounds left by previous visitors as they move about the space. ''Laser Tag'', a 2007 installation by Watson, used a laser projector to enable members of the public to write names and messages in light on the side of a

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...

office building. It was also shown at

MoMA Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; Ang ...

and the

. ''Born out of Necessity'', a collaborative artwork by Watson and other artists, involves the use of eye-tracking technology to allow a

graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

artist afflicted with

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most comm ...

to create virtual tags; it is in the collection of

. The ''Tate Muybridgizer'', commissioned from Watson and Emily Gobeille by the

, is a cellular phone application that allows users to create animations in the style of

Eadweard Muybridge Eadweard Muybridge (; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904, born Edward James Muggeridge) was an English photographer known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. He adopted the first ...

Zoopraxiscope The zoopraxiscope (initially named ''zoographiscope'' and ''zoogyroscope'') is an early device for displaying moving images and is considered an important predecessor of the movie projector. It was conceived by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muy ...

Exhibitions

Watson has shown projects at Eyebeam,

, the DUMBO Video Art Festival,

Resfest RESFEST (1996–2006) is a defunct American film festival. It was by the 2000s the most prominent digital film festival in North America. History RESFest was a leading global showcase of new digital filmmakers alongside England's Onedotzero ...

, the inaugural Rotterdam Electronic Music Festival, and at Montevideo/Time Based Arts in (Amsterdam).

References

External links

Theo Watson

openFrameworks

{{DEFAULTSORT:Watson, Theo British multimedia artists Modern artists British contemporary artists British video artists British digital artists British computer programmers Parsons School of Design alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people)