Oliver Hess

Activist, Architect, Artist, Brainstormer, Educator/Teacher, Engineer, Environmentalist, Idea generator, Inventor, Technologist

Conceptual investigator, Research and Development strategist, Cultural instigator. Hess has spent dozens of years developing specialized technologies for the front line of the culture wars, robots, lasers, puppets, toys, video games, web sites, and lots of public art. The thrust of his work is directed at the future where children have to decide how hard to work to reinforce the institutions crumbling around us and where machines will fight us for access to the resources we scarcely recognize the existence of. Hess devotes his time to analyzing and developing technologies that realize these situations and maximize the potential of our existing infrastructures and thoughtfully create what is necessary to ensure the best outcome forever. He spent 8 years as co-director of Materials & Applications, focusing primarily on developing new and novel fabrication processes and on creating social networks around the key steps of creating urban scale art projects. He has taught numerous subjects including Mediatecture at Art Center College in Pasadena. He is currently runs a workshop for developing new projects in a cultural infrastructure he calls Aperiodic Industries, a mix of research and development laboratory and conceptual incubator. He is also designing and fabricating two public artworks that act as seismic observatories suspended over a freeway in downtown los angeles as well as numerous other projects.

Repurposing public space, to create communities and to link them to a shared and appreciated cultural infrastructure. Using art, engineering and design to create a great future.

The current system of invention in our culture is in desperate need of rethinking. Between the economic collapse and the environmental collapse, we have a bleak outlook on the future we created. The message to the current generation seems to be one of do-it-yourself. Create a future which does not rely on being provided for, and take responsibility for yourself, and where possible share your successes instead of competing. To wiki-pedia-fy the world. We have not completely depleted our resources we just realize that if we don't change course we will. So in the interim it's possible to seek solutions and share those failures and successes to accelerate the pace of problem solving. Like in nature, a million failed solutions are shed every generation and the survivors multiplied. By abandoning the competition and industrial manipulation that hampered innovation in the past and embracing a shared achievement we can as a society move far beyond today's world.

Architectural Design, Collaborative Models, cultural infrastructure, Design Thinking, Environmental design, Machine Vision, Materials characterization, Public Art, Public Space Design, Spatial Analysis & Data research

I was suspicious of the fervor that TED visitors and fans adopt, but after having tried to first go at the age of 16 I maintained a close eye on its development and when they started a fellowship program I leapt at the opportunity to interface with the TED culture in that way. I think TED is an inspiring look at how to create a cultural infrastructure around the exciting and oblique world of intense technical presentations. Participation in TED opened my eyes to three important things: 1. the TED community needs to induct new members and create a greater intergenerational connection, the original set are all celebrities and they create the inertia and the mass that is TED. 2. TED is a production platform, more then anything else TED makes culture and is staged to maximize the appeal and virtue of that work. 3. Cultural tourism within TED is rife, and meaningful, there should be a more codified sense of the meaning and organization of this culture for everyone's benefit.

I heard last night I'm a good whistler, I've never thought about it one way or the other. I play no instrument, but perhaps because I have too many other hobbies. maybe I'm a natural?