Dr. Scott Draves

Scott Draves, Ph.D. a.k.a. Spot is a visual and software artist living in New York City. He is best known as the creator of the Electric Sheep, a continually evolving abstract animation with over 450,000 participants. Stephen Hawking’s 2010 book The Grand Design used an image generated by Spot’s “flame” algorithm on its cover.
 
Spot created the original Flame algorithm in 1991, the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Electric Sheep in 1999. His software artworks are released as open source and have been used for two decades by many other artists and designers in their own work. Most recently, he created Generation 243, a commissioned piece for the Gates Center for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Other works include Clade 1, a rare true high-definition video artwork that runs a 26-minute loop. Dreams in High Fidelity, a moving painting that runs infinitely, is installed in the lobby of Google’s headquarters, and has been acquired by corporate and residential collections nationally.
 
His award-winning work is permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has appeared in Wired and Discover magazines, as an official skin for Google Chrome, as the graphic identity for Siggraph 2008, the Prix Ars Electronica 1993, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and on the main dance-floor at the Sonar festival in Barcelona.
 
When not working as a full-time artist, Spot has worked for a series of technology start-ups. First was the fabless microprocessor design company Transmeta, made famous by Linus Torvalds. Later came FastForward Networks, which was acquired by Inktomi, then the PDI/Dreamworks R&D Department, which earned him a feature film credit for Shrek 2. He is now an engineer in the mapping division at Google.
 
Spot started VJing at underground parties in the early 90s and still performs live. In 2004 he published Spotworks, a DVD of visual music which has sold more than 4,000 copies.
 
In 1990 he earned his BS in Mathematics from Brown University and in 1997 he earned his Ph.D. from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University for a thesis on metaprogramming for media processing.
 
Watch Scott Draves Software Artworks 1992–2008, Conversations with Harold Hudson Channer: Scott Draves — 07–06-10, Tubular TV Show 9: Sheepumentary w/ Scott Draves, and Scott Draves — 165 Star Oasis (2005). Read his blog. View his Facebook page. Read his his LinkedIn profile, and his Wikipedia profile. Follow his Twitter feed.