Oliver Hess

Conceptual investigator, Research and Development strategist, Cultural instigator. Hess has spent dozens of years developing specialized technologies for the front line of the culture wars, robots, lasers, puppets, toys, video games, web sites, and lots of public art. The thrust of his work is directed at the future where children have to decide how hard to work to reinforce the institutions crumbling around us and where machines will fight us for access to the resources we scarcely recognize the existence of. Hess devotes his time to analyzing and developing technologies that realize these situations and maximize the potential of our existing infrastructures and thoughtfully create what is necessary to ensure the best outcome forever. He spent 8 years as co-director of Materials & Applications, focusing primarily on developing new and novel fabrication processes and on creating social networks around the key steps of creating urban scale art projects. He has taught numerous subjects including Mediatecture at Art Center College in Pasadena. He is currently runs a workshop for developing new projects in a cultural infrastructure he calls Aperiodic Industries, a mix of research and development laboratory and conceptual incubator. He is also designing and fabricating two public artworks that act as seismic observatories suspended over a freeway in downtown los angeles as well as numerous other projects.