James George was the first Artist-in-Residence at Microsoft Research in Seattle. Working with the researchers and product teams, he created three new projects culminating in an exhibition in the Microsoft Research gallery space.
Since his pilot residency in 2013, the Microsoft Research Artist-in-Residence program has thrived. MSR has hosted more than one artist per year, including world-renowned artists such as Jenny Sabin and Jason Salavon.
A tumblr of technology oriented tattoos from the internet. A Memento Mori for Silicon Valley follows how tech subculture's create tribe-like relationships. Participants tattoo their bodies with the symbolism of technology logos and iconography. Many of the icons are obsolete and the companies no longer around.
James wrote an article about this for The Guardian.
The installation for Memento Mori was revealed at the Microsoft Research show Studio 99 as a 16 foot canvas spread onto a table.
GRIP is a site-specific video installation designed for the two video column displays in Microsoft Research's Studio 99’s gallery. Each column face acts as a window into an abstract 3-D scene occupied by two figures balanced in a mutually sustaining grip. When a viewer approaches the column, the couple responds by breaking their grip and quickly falling out of view, only to be replaced by a different pose continuing the cycle.
GRIP was created in collaboration with Charles Loop, Qin Cai, and Cha Zhang- researchers in the Multimedia, Interaction and Communication group at Microsoft Research. Each figure was captured from eight angles in a circular ring. The 3D form was then extracted as point clouds and normal fields approximating the surface of the body. The short clips were then interactively sequenced based on viewer's presence near the column.
Wall Queries is the first in a series of murals exploring the use of image search as a way to create large scale drawings. The results for the search for the word squares returning over 10,000 images are arranged by color into a 30' x 9' vinyl print covering the span of a wall in Microsoft's Studio 99 gallery.
The collage makes visible the scale of readily available images and draws into focus specific objects and symbols culturally associated with each color and geometry combination. Wall Queries was produced with the help of Andrew Shuman and Malik Pradhan at Bing image search, who helped to access deeper queries than publicly available interfaces allow.
Thanks to Andy Wilson, Asta Roseway, Charles Loop and Neil Joshi, and the rest of the MSR team for supporting the residency program.