Weidi Zhang is an LA-based new media artist/researcher/designer. Her current research and media art practices investigate the image data-based multimedia assemblage in the context of experimental data visualization, Interactive Intelligence system design, and immersive media. Her works are featured at different international venues, such as the SIGGRAPH, ISEA, Times Art Museum, IEEE VIS Art Program, SIGGRAPH ASIA, SwissNex Gallery, and others. Her artwork wins the 'Best in Show' Award in SIGGRAPH Art Gallery 2021, Juried Selected in Japan Media Art Festival 2020, and honorable mentioned and shortlisted in Lumen Prize (2020, 2021). Her immersive audiovisual is selected and screened in the international Fulldome Festivals including METAXIS – Planetarium 1 (Saint Petersburg / Russia), Fulldome-Festival Jena – Zeiss-Planetarium (Jena/Germany), the Melbourne Planetarium – Victoria Museum (Melbourne/Australia), and others. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media Arts and Technology Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a lecturer at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) in The Ohio State University, and a graduate researcher in Experimental Visualization Lab. She holds her MFA degree in Art + Technology at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and BFA degree in Photo/Media at the University of Washington, Seattle. As a visual designer and concept artist, she worked as a visual designer in the award-winning design studios in LA for key art and package design and she was selected for WDI (Walt Disney Imagineering) blue sky project in 2015.
Weidi Zhang
Ph.D. Candidate (UC Santa Barbara) and Lecturer (Ohio State University)
Weidi Zhang
Ph.D. Candidate (UC Santa Barbara) and Lecturer (Ohio State University)
Weidi Zhang is an LA-based new media artist/researcher/designer. Her current research and media art practices investigate the image data-based multimedia assemblage in the context of experimental data visualization, Interactive Intelligence system design, and immersive media. Her works are featured at different international venues, such as the SIGGRAPH, ISEA, Times Art Museum, IEEE VIS Art Program, SIGGRAPH ASIA, SwissNex Gallery, and others. Her artwork wins the 'Best in Show' Award in SIGGRAPH Art Gallery 2021, Juried Selected in Japan Media Art Festival 2020, and honorable mentioned and shortlisted in Lumen Prize (2020, 2021). Her immersive audiovisual is selected and screened in the international Fulldome Festivals including METAXIS – Planetarium 1 (Saint Petersburg / Russia), Fulldome-Festival Jena – Zeiss-Planetarium (Jena/Germany), the Melbourne Planetarium – Victoria Museum (Melbourne/Australia), and others. Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media Arts and Technology Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a lecturer at the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) in The Ohio State University, and a graduate researcher in Experimental Visualization Lab. She holds her MFA degree in Art + Technology at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and BFA degree in Photo/Media at the University of Washington, Seattle. As a visual designer and concept artist, she worked as a visual designer in the award-winning design studios in LA for key art and package design and she was selected for WDI (Walt Disney Imagineering) blue sky project in 2015.
Lecture
Technologies of Seeing: Visualization as Textural Practice
Professor Braun’s lecture emphasizes the “technology of seeing,” or the power to render something visible, and the process of rendering requires design decisions. He displayed examples of his projects where he has taken different types of texts and created visual mediums of representing those texts. These projects can include literal works of texts (books, articles) or more abstract forms of text such as movies. Texts are broken down into pieces of information through exploration, questions, and analysis so that they can be reorganized and/or reinterpreted through the design process and visualization that allow better accessibility to the audience.
Workshop
Storytelling with Environmental Data through Informational Design
This workshop allowed students to take multiple data sets of pollutants in different cities and create meaning with them through their own ways of visualization. Through a step by step process, Professor Braun instructed students to first answer questions on the data to help interpret and understand the data. Afterwards, students took the data of two cities and put them through a graph visualizer to view differences in levels and distributions. This allowed students to ask their own questions about why these data sets were shaped the way they are and why they were different between different states, inducing the need to research to solve these questions and create further visualizations to create a storytelling medium.
Upcoming Event
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