Krystelle Denis is a designer and technologist specializing in visual frameworks and data-driven narratives. Her functional and aesthetic design approach has led her to projects at metaLAB at Harvard, Paris Sorbonne, the Fogg Museum, MIT, and Piaggio Fast Forward, among other institutions. While working with Ateliers Jean Nouvel, she collaborated with acoustics engineers to design the ceiling of the Philharmonie de Paris concert hall. She studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Alex Horak is a software engineer and social theorist with a background in human-computer interaction. His technical grounding has taken him across disciplines, from brain-computer interface research to chief technology officer at productivity software company Fetchnotes. He has also worked with the Japan Disasters Archive to map resources and victim stories following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, as well as on experimental museum curation while working for metaLAB at Harvard.
It has become our shared circumstance to frequent flat, glowing screens. As their content grows more insistent for our time and manipulative of our behavior, we begin to resemble actors directed this way and that. The film director David Fincher has been credited as saying that, “Every scene you direct … it’s the same thing: behavior over time.” Fincher’s pithy clause is as relevant for film makers as it is for digital creators — it compels us to respect the influence we have over the time and behavior of those who use our tools. It implores us to work critically and humanely. – B/t