Benjamin H. Bratton, Director
Benjamin H. Bratton is a sociological, media, and design theorist. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, and Director of the Center for Design & Geopolitics at the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology, one of the premier applied research institutes in the application of supercomputing and very-large scale data visualization across the sciences, humanities and social sciences.
His work sits at the intersections of contemporary social and political theory, computational media & infrastructure, and architectural & urban design problems and methodologies. Current research interests include: the philosophical problematics of the interfaciality, digital urbanism & media architecture, contemporary continental philosophy & aesthetic theory, institutional technology transfer protocols and platforms, design research management & methodologies, classical and contemporary sociological theory, history of the social sciences, organizational theory, and interaction and interface design.
Bratton has lectured widely, and is the author of many articles, book chapters, in both academic and popular publications. Bratton has published widely, from AD:Architectural Design and Volume to BlackBook and Theory, Culture & Society, and has been an visiting lecturer and critic at Columbia, Pratt, Yale, Architectural Association of London, Penn, USC, UCLA, Art Center College of Design, Michigan, Brown, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, among others. He was also co-chair of ambient:interface, the 54th (and final) International Aspen Design Conference.
He is a frequent advisor and consultant to public and private organizations. He is the former Director of the Advanced Strategies Group at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale and Burbank, CA, and former Director of Information Architecture at Razorfish in Los Angeles and New York. As principal of The Culture Industry, a strategic research and planning consultancy he has developed projects with Motorola, Microsoft, Imaginary Forces, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, among others.
He splits time between Los Angeles and La Jolla with his partner, Bruna Mori and their son, Lucien.
D:GP Graduate Fellows
Sam Kronick is an artist, technologist, and researcher with a focus on computational infrastructure and urban design. His work draws equally upon historical notions of utopia, open source/free software culture, and fieldwork in sites on the fringe that serve as microcosms to understand the larger issues of geopolitics in a world changing with technology.
D.K. Rehn is an artist-researcher whose interest extends across both historical aspects and visions of the future for interactive art and networked culture.
At the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, they and colleagues are pioneers of the analysis and visualization of cultural data. Rehn frequently advises private organizations on design, ideation, and concept development.
Tara Zepel is a researcher, theorist and intermittent artist at the intersection(s) between aesthetics, community and technology. She is currently pursuing a PhD in the Art History, Theory & Criticism at UCSD where her work explores the use of augmented reality and other collaborative process-based representations as the tools and the traces of collective aesthetic experience.
Prior to UCSD, Tara received a bachelor's degree in Literature from Duke University (2002). She has also acted as a project manager in the art world and doing production and post-production work for independent films but has always retained close ties to her passion for learning and sharing knowledge.
Advisory Board
D:GP's Advisory Board is a select group of academics, professionals, designers and policymakers. They work closely with us to define and communicate the DPP vision to ensure that it is able to have the most effective and resourceful impact. A complete roster of Board members will be finalized and posted in this cell in the coming weeks. D:GP would like thank our Board members for the very generous support and important council they have provided.