I first heard of Theodore Watson from Linda Fleming who teaches at CCAC and was one of the founders of Libre artist commune is Southern COlorado, the place where I was born, my middle name and the name of my company. It was the summer the Democratic National Convention was in Denver COlorado and I wanted to go, I had this idea to use projectors and to project highly erotic poetry onto buildings in very sterile places. I told Linda about this and she said oh, Theodore Watson who is Beatie Wolf's brother who was at Libre's 40th birthday party that year has a program that will do that using a green lazer and projectors and it is mobile so you wont get busted. This was highly appealing to me and she showed me Theodore's website and I have been amazed at the work he does. from the Knee deep project that is interactive and allows kids to stomp out a urban story, to the funky forest project that is also interactive, where kids make a shadow on a wall that grows into a tree and continues to grow as long as they water it with the virtual light water on the floor that they can dam and control through moving sandbars. They must pick up the light and throw it on the tree and the second they stop watering the tree the tree begins to wither. I think his work is brilliant and fascinating and wonderful. I am still desperate to get my hands on a green lazer and give it a go. This is all from his website and is pretty amazing.
2009Theodore Watson is an artist, designer and experimenter whose work is born out of the curiosity and excitement of designing experiences that come alive and invite people to play. Theodore’s work ranges from creating new tools for artistic expression, experimental musical systems, to immersive, interactive environments with full-body interaction. His recent work includes the Eyewriter, an eye controlled drawing tool, Graffiti Research Lab's Laser Tag, laser graffiti system and Funky Forest, an immersive interactive ecosystem for young children. Theodore works together with Zachary Lieberman and Arturo Castro on openFrameworks, which is an open source library for writing creative code in C++.
Theodore Watson's work has been shown at MoMA, Tate Modern, Ars Electronica, The Sundance Film Festival, Res Fest, REMF, Cinekid, Montevideo, OFFF, SHIFT, ICHIM, The Creators Series, Deitch Projects, Eyebeam, Pixel Gallery, Museum N8 Amsterdam. In 2010 the Eyewriter project won the Future Everything award and the Design of The Year award for the interactive category.
Contact
Theodore Watson
contact me at: theo@ this website.
US Office: +1 617 959 5111 ( prefer email though )
Cambridge, MA
United States
Amsterdam Office: +31 64 367 3501
Damrak 70,
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Theodore Watson
contact me at: theo@ this website.
US Office: +1 617 959 5111 ( prefer email though )
Cambridge, MA
United States
Amsterdam Office: +31 64 367 3501
Damrak 70,
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Knee Deep 2009
Knee Deep is an interactive installation developed with Emily Gobeille of zanyparade, that invites children to jump in and explore unexpected worlds of different proportions with their feet. Stomping through a loose narrative that plays with ideas of scale, point of view and discovery of cause and effect, children gain a sense of perspective about how their actions relate to the natural systems of our world. Knee Deep allows children to see themselves and the world from seemingly impossible scales and provides a space for exploration and play where children can create their own rules and logic. The installation combines real-time greenscreening, computer vision and stomp detection.
Knee Deep was created for the 2009 Cinekid festival. Production of Knee Deep was made possible by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.
Knee Deep was created for the 2009 Cinekid festival. Production of Knee Deep was made possible by Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst.
Funky Forest 2007
Funky Forest installation at Singapore Art Museum June 02 2010
Emily Gobeille and I just completed a new installation of Funky Forest for the Art Garden exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum. Its running from now until July 18th 2010.
