Appropriate Architecture, with Jeff Burke

Contrasting architectures with the systems built on them, this talk will discuss opportunities and barriers for the arts to drive innovation at the level of technological infrastructure. It will revisit the appropriate technology movement as it relates to the increasingly calcified digital architectures impacting human communication and creative expression. As examples, we will cover a few specific projects in experimental digital media production and research by UCLA REMAP, including work on the Named Data Networking (NDN) internet architecture and the OpenPTrack real-time sensing platform.

Jeff Burke is Professor In-Residence at the UCLA Department of Theater. He co-directs REMAP, the Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance, a joint center of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and Samueli School of Engineering. His research explores how technological architectures shape our approaches to contemporary creativity, and how to reverse the flow of influence between the two. From 2006-2012, he was area lead for participatory and urban sensing at the NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). From 2010-present has been a lead PI for major research projects on the NDN future internet architecture. At REMAP, he is currently working on an augmented reality immersive theater project with support from Epic Games and Intel Studios.