Aaron Koblin is an American digital media artist best known for his innovative uses of data visualization and crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....

. He is currently Creative Director of the Data Arts Team at Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 Creative Lab in San Francisco, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

.

Koblin's projects have been shown at international festivals including Ars Electronica

Ars Electronica

Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...

, OFFF, GAFFTA (San Francisco), the Japan Media Arts Festival

Japan Media Arts Festival

The Japan Media Arts Festival is an annual festival held by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs since 1997. The festival for a nominal year was usually held during February or March next year, rather than at the end of the nominal year. For instance, the 2010 Japan Media Arts Festival, where...

, TED

TED (conference)

TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....

, and are part of the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 (MoMA) in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou

Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...

 in Paris. In 2006, he received the National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

's first place award for science visualization. In 2009, he was named to Creativity Magazine

Creativity (magazine)

Creativity is a website, formerly a monthly magazine, covering all things creative in advertising and design. The magazine, launched in 1986, provides a showcase of the best ideas across all areas of consumer culture, an exploration of the talent and techniques behind the work and insight on the...

's Creativity 50, and in 2010 he was one of Esquire Magazine's Best and Brightest. Koblin is a graduate of UCLA's Design | Media Arts MFA program.

Work

• Flight Patterns http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work/flightpatterns/
• The Sheep Market http://www.thesheepmarket.com/
• Ten Thousand Cents http://www.tenthousandcents.com/
• New York Talk Exchange http://senseable.mit.edu/nyte/
• Radiohead
  Radiohead
  Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
  
  's House of Cards music video http://code.google.com/radiohead
• Bicycle Built for Two Thousand http://www.bicyclebuiltfortwothousand.com/
• The Wilderness Downtown, music video for Arcade Fire's We Used to Wait http://www.chromeexperiments.com/arcadefire/
• The Johnny Cash Project, a collaborative music video for Johnny Cash with Chris Milk http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/

External links

• TED Talks video - an overview of Koblin's work and philosophy; recorded March 2011.
• Work of Aaron Koblin