whatnologist

Technology is the least interesting thing about technology. Technology is a tool, not an end in itself. The most important question is not "What cool technology can we use?" but "What are our needs and our goals?"

My name is Adam Chapman and I am a Creative Technologist, Strategist, Designer, and User Experience guy with extensive experience conceiving, strategizing, managing, producing, and selling projects. I've run a video game company and a department at a large ad agency. I've strategized, overseen, designed, and built everything from social campaigns to robots to interactive computer vision installations to kiosks to websites to print publications. This is a collection of work I've done over the last 15 years. I am the Director of Interactive Technology at MPC. I have a resume. I have some videos of past projects. I also have a blog.

 

 

Multi-user Kinect Interface Every Conversation Weve Ever Had Manguso The Guardians swarm drawings Mercedes sitelet created for Rapp. Prius Projects Signature Series weak forces DoCaWI Mercedes sitelet created for Rapp. I made the video, audio, photo player for TreemoLabs. TreemoLabs is great. I made the video, audio, photo player for TreemoLabs. TreemoLabs is great. new year 09 Mercedes sitelet created for Rapp. DoIMFaM I made the video, audio, photo player for TreemoLabs. TreemoLabs is great. SMS graphitti system. That's right. I worked with Paul Notzold at Txtual Healing on this. Check him out. Interactive Architecture poster. I made a fully editable drawing application in ActionScript. All curves can be spliced or sub-divided, plus there are the standard image editing features. The application generates an XML file for manipulation and saving. I made this sitelet for CitiBank when I was an engineer at Virtual Goodness. I got so tired of using wonky flash video players that I wrote my own. It plays videos, slide shows, and audio files with an intuitive interface, dynamically drawn blurbs, and slide navigation. I created a zylophone-type instrument to go with a glass give-away by McDonald's Montana. You can play, record, and re-play songs.. Through DDB Seattle. legible nature I was the lead engineer on the American Express My Life My Card site while I was a lead engineer in the Emerging Media department at Digitas. Swedish Fish aquarium screen saver - surprisingly complex. Chiclets screen saver Sour Patch Kids screen saver Time Pieces is a series of clock experiments with limited color pallette. I developed a comprehensive, fully dynamic, XML-driven Flash site for ad agency, Buro+Creative. The Buro+Creative site makes extensive use of my own proprietary Flash toolset for windowing, movement, dynamic loading and parsing, and navigation tracking. PDPal is a personal mapping application with annotation and BBS features. This was a project with the uber talented Marina Zurkow, Scott Patterson, and Julian Bleeker. I produced this comprehensive Flash application, developing an extensible mapping system which allows for zooming as well as global and local tagging at any level. In addition the app parses and appends XML documents, utilizes dynamic drawing, and displaying, multiple user management and annotation, toggle ability for maps and annotations, dynamic menu population, and various naming abilities. The user may place locales or draw routes on any given point on the map. The user may also annotate the given locale or route, view other users maps, and comment on their locales and routes. PDPal was co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center and Creative Time and is archived on the Whitney Museum's Artport. Currently, there are PDPal maps for Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN, and Times Square, NY. Site and identity design for the author Sarah Manguso. If you haven't read her, then you might be illeterate. Interactive Holiday Card Johnson and Johnson pitch I designed for RGA. they won the account. I conceived and designed the Verizon Localized campaign while I was an art direct-engineer at RGA. The campaign highlighted local thought and community leaders and how Verizon empowers them in their endeavors. Internet campaign I came up with for Tivo. For FCB Logo for mid-century modern blog run by the scholar-curator-star, Lily Kane. gathering 2004 Holiday Card is a series of algorithmicly generated drawings. I designed the site for NYU's Computer Science department. I handled the art direction and design for this 24-page, full-color brochure for the computer science graduate school at NYU. After researching similar programs, we decided on a unified, photographic design which highlighted the accomplishments of faculty and students as well as played up the culture and setting of New York. cuddle this robot The Girl Scouts contacted me to design their massive extranet site. This site changes the way Girl Scouts headquarters communicates with the numerous regional branches. I designed the site, tools for this and other Girl Scouts sites, redesigned all internal newletters, and handled the promotional print campaign for the site. This project would not have been possible without the unparalleled talents of information architect, Jody Hankinson. cuddle this robot I helped found CROWD magazine. I was their Arts Editor and Art Director. Titles created for the Guggenheim Works and Process series. This session was entitled Brave New Word and gathered the luminaries of electronic writing for presentations and discussion. dance fight I designed and built this site for the fantastically talented Andy Ryan. I created an algorithmically generated layout. I think this won an AltPick award. mixed messages Human Rights Watch poster. The poster lists the names of every politcal prisoner. I designed this outreach campaign for Human Rights Watch. Tashkent, Uzbekistan is the site for the next EBRD meeting. The EBRD has provisions in its charter not to support countries which don't meet certain human rights standards. The map combines actual tourist sites with torture sites from around Tashkent. The map has been given to Senators and dignataries with relations to the EBRD. Human Rights Watch poster An ActionScript experiment with algorithmically generated blobs that you can knock around. Plenty of variables to tweak. Album for Jason Brody using a photograph by Andy Ryan. Concert poster for singer-songwriter Jason Brody. I designed and built the site for the singer-songwriter Jason Brody. I also did a bunch of illustrations and concerpt posters and an album cover or two. mirror Janet Zweig is an amazing artist who gets to do a lot of public art works eg. the Spring Street N station. I was got to design and devlop her site. Experiment where users click to reveal a story. The words are connected via a spring system. Creative Nerve. This site was part of an identity package for the interactive video installation (think Kinnect) company, Creative Nerve, Inc. I was responsible for Creative Nerve's logo, business cards, letterhead, website and promotional DVDs. Site featuring the work of interactive artist Camille Utterback This site was made for the 2002 Techno Poetry Festival, as part of an identity package which included posters, wayfinding, and event program. TechnoPoetry Festival poster This word catching game was created for Project Stretch -- a program run by the Stnaton/Haskell Foundation at the CUNY graduate Center, the goal of which is to increase literacy levels in middle school students through an interest in computer technologies. The game is desigined for multiple, scalable, implementations, reading in a string of variables then parsing the strings into arrays. Project Stretch is a program initiated by CUNY Research Foundation to increase the literacy levels of minority and low income middle school students. I handled the technology planning, information architecture, and design for the site. In addition, I built custom games. Originally, I was asked to develop an on-line 9-11 memorial for HBO Documentaries. The design was later modified for the New York Times. The User encounters a screen full of names arranged in alphabetical order: here, only the first 430 names are used. As the User moves her cursor toward the edges of the screen, the field of names scrolls accordingly, thus giving the names a visual/spatial presence while conveying the enormity of the loss. When the User clicks on one of the names, a window appears atop the field of names. This window contains a picture of the person, and their obituary to the right. In addition to reading the person's obituary, the User ma post her own comments and memories of the person which will subsequently be displayed below the obituary. In this way, the obituaries will grow to be individual, personal memorials for each person lost in the tragedy. Thus, this memorial takes full advantage of what the Web can do better than any other medium: provide a communal space and a rich archive of information. To make this project I read through the obituary of every single 9-11 victim. IBM ad with lots of fun little physics widgets. Made while an engineer at Ogilvy. A story of a conversation between a couple recalling their relationship as told through a Pong game. The Corporate Imagination was a project with the artist Natalie Jerminkenko. The project chronicled all the instances companies depicted the Future and what it looked like to them. Gordon Parks for HBO Documentaries. I got to work with HBO and Gordon Parks to figre out a way to showcase his life and work and stunning photogrpahy and music. The end result was an amazing experience that captures the incredible life of the man who was a photographer for the WPA and made Shaft - amongst 100 other acomplishments. The site won awards from Communication Arts, SXSW, and Macromedia. Cecil B DeMented - I designed this site for the John Waters film. I used a Russian propganda feel which turned out pretty well. King Gimp for HBO Documentaries. King Gimp won an Oscar. I learned javascript for the design-build to create an auto-scrolling gallery. A series of chapbooks I designed for the New School's MFA Writing Program. I went to school there. cuddle this robot Lit Magazine is a perfect-bound fiction, poetry and art publication published by the New School. I was their Art Director and their Arts Editor. This was an early ActionScript experiment with algorithmacly generated drawing. Knit Classics Records Knit Active was a combined spe ial preformance place in the club and live stream e-commerce idea. It was way ahead of its time. We would have people come in and play special sessions, stream them, do a little documentary, and share it with the world along with an easily integrated way for people to buy the musicians albums and merch. I'm still not sure why LiveNation doesn't do something like this. My proudest moment was talking to the then director of interactive at Spin Magazine at the first NY Shins show and having him tell me they were trying to rip off our idea. The Sound of Film film festival Knitting Factory Records. Did you know the Knitting Factory had 5 record labels? I designed all their sites. The Knitting Factory - I used to be there interactive art director. What better introduction to New York City than having open access to one of the hottest venues in the city. My most memorable shows were the Magentic Fields 69 Love Songs in its entirity over 2 nights, the numerous jam sessions, and the unbelievable surprise Sonic Youth show - their first show after their van with all their customized instruments in it had been stolen. Jazz-E Wikipedia of Jazz Jazz-E Wikipedia of Jazz Generative Song and Video Private Vault Online Secure Storage - like the cloud only in 1998 This project, originally made for the online gallery Plexus.org,was also short listed for the Electronic Book Awards and has been featured at The Guggeneheim, The New Museum, SIGGRAPH 2000, SIGGRAPH 99, Digital Arts and Culture, and Digital Salon 99. It has been written about in MIT's New Technology Review, Leonardo, The New York Times and many other journals and papers. This "agent" communicates with your browser, reacting to and appopriating whatever you encounter. It appropriates text and images you've browsed into its own story of loss, until the Agent's story is supplanted by the tale of your history. This was an early ActionScript experiment with algorithmacly generated drawing. In the age before Skype, I produced the Flash Demo used by Panasonic to pitch their new video ICQ application. Winston Salem Science and Technology Roundtable. I lived in North Carolina for a while, where I learned to love hush puppies and Waffle House and the Outer Banks and I got to witness my first magical ice storm. I can't believe I din't eat BBQ at the time. che santaI made a sing-a-long for the PBS Kids show, Noddy's Playhouse. So, sing along with the wacky characters of the children's show, Noddy's Playhouse. This was while I was at Pop! Multimedia. I made a bunch of cartoons that tell the story of a chubby little kid with a head of fire named Jimmy Hothead. I got to work with Jim Woodring to make this animated tin toy. I love Jim Woodring. Working Stiff Web Documentary Journalism project that focused on the working lives and journals of individuals across class, culture, and geography. It was an amazing project of ridiculously high quality for the time. The content still stands up. SMIL presentations for the Discovery Channel and Comedy Central - see the Comedy Central imagefor more info. This is when I was creative director at Pop! Multimedia. Comedy Central for Real Networks SMiL site. There was almost no documentation for SMiL so I would frequently just type functions that I thought should exist as I thought they'd be phrased and see if they worked. I was about 60-40, which is not bad for calling blindly. Then I'd call Real and let them know I'd found an undocumented feature and they should document it. Howard rheingold Bite Back Productions Documentary Journalism company. Robin Marks is awesome. She works at the Exploratorium now and is still amazing. TRP magazine. I used to be their Art Director. Omnitron Enterprises Alvy Ray Smith event poster. Shout - a search engine for kids Mud Sweat and Gears site for MSN - MSN used to be a BBC style collection of chanels of content. our site made heavy use of the new web technology, Flash. This was a mammoth project we cranked out in a month. Poster for John Perry Barlow event. g gibson gallery Board Wild on Fox Sports K2 Snowboards this and the skate site were such an awesome project to work on K2 Skate - I designed and built - as was often the case - the first sites for K2 Board Wild on Fox Sports Another MountainZone print ad. Mountain Zone print ad designed to stand out amongst endless powder shots. MountainZone.com a mountain sports publication. I started my career as an art director here. I still think of these guys.