00:22:13 · Ruby Justice Thelot
Similarly, right, there's also Xerox PARC. Right? Xerox PARC was another one of these hubs, skunk works, there's lot of collaboration between artists and engineers. These would be in the sixties and seventies, of course. Another group that I would be remiss not to mention is EAT, Experiments in Art and Technology, started in part by Robert Rauschenberg. There were... Once again, this idea is spent in... At the time in New York on how do you facilitate collaboration between engineers and artists. And so to me, the field of creative technology is a... You know, it has inherited the philosophy of a lot of these collaboration spaces, of Xerox PARC, of EAT, of Bell Labs. And so when Google, you know, starts its creative lab, to me, it is continuing the age old tradition of seeing what artists can do with front... Frontier tech. Because, you know, quite frankly, a lot of these users are transgressive. A lot of them break the the tools. Right? And the artist expands the possibility of what can be made with the device, with the technology, with the tool. I think a lot about the Xerox machine in my own research on the work of, say, a Norman Shapiro or even how Sol LeWitt used the Xerox machine. A photocopier seems like a very banal instrument, but in the in the hands of Norman Shapiro, in the hands of Sol LeWitt, right, who are these two amazing artists, they become just like fountains of of of possibility, of potential. Sol LeWitt actually makes a book with the Xerox machine. He invites a bunch of his friends. They all use a photocopier, and they make this amazing zine that you can actually probably still find online as a PDF. Norman Shapiro is a book artist, and so he's making all these zines in these books. He's a gay man, and so he uses it to tell his own unique stories that potentially would not be published elsewhere. And so the Center for Book Arts in New York has a great collection of Shapiro's work, and I'm currently doing a fellowship there, researching his work. So that's why this interest in technology and art is very, interesting to me. And so I wanted to see how hot is the term to creative technologists? How popular is it really? One of the sort of big mentions, of course, was the the start of the role of creative technologists at Google in 2014.
00:24:55 · Ruby Justice Thelot
The first uses, I think, date technically from the mid-1900s, but the actual job title, prop 2005, in the mid aughts. Google makes it more popular, of course, with its own title in 2014. And then one thing we'll post for sure is the graph of the Google Trends. So you can see that there was a steady sort of interest in the field, but it really jumped in 2025. And I think in part this is due to the unlock of creativity led by artificial intelligence. If people had ideas for, like, novel interfaces, novel things to do with the computer, their limitation was in part due to their technical ability. I was recently talking to Robert Gallardo, who perhaps you'll hear about very, very soon. And it is truly a large unlock for a creative to be able to do their own work, specifically on the computer, and not have to deal with an agency or a third party that actually makes the code. And so I think the big jump we are seeing here in creative technology is because it is easier to code now. And so creatives, artists, people who are just tinkering, I think are at a point in time where they are having these ideas that were previously very hard to bring to fruition. And now armed with the latest large language models, armed with the latest coding implements, they find themselves in Bell Labs, in Xerox PARC, working with EAT, but in the comfort of their own bedrooms. And so what once required the buy in from a large corporation to give you access to compute, to give you access to tools and devices, I think now is made much easier by the broadening of possibility, by the broadening of accessibility that is led by AI, specifically in the field of creative technology. In parts because AI is just very good at coding, so we have an idea of that sort. It becomes much easier to bring it to fruition, to bring it to life. Now, one thing that's interesting is that there's a newer term also that's often used in the tech industry, design engineer. That term is actually much more popular than creative technologists. So creative technologists still remains a little bit marginal. And though there are some labs across different companies, big tech companies, design engineer has really jumped up in popularity over and above creative technologists. So, one of the things me and Sofia want to talk about is what actually is the role of the creative technologist in the tech industry? Right?
00:27:44 · Ruby Justice Thelot
Many labs, many companies have artists in residence programs. We've already seen the presence of a lot of digital art make it into its way into institutions. But what does it mean to have now a brand new crop of people working with these tools and making things, post them online? And I think that in and of itself is a great question. Right? In part because having the ability to make anything is just one thing, but making the right thing, I think, is the important thing. So when people are making all sorts of different software, all sorts of different applications, tools, and websites, I think it's probably worth it to ask, what is it made for? Are people going to use it, or is it mere just like... Maybe just be like a... It's just it's just a craft. It might just be a craft. It just be a thing that you're making in your bedroom, which is for fun, and it's not meant to be seen. It's not meant to be watched. But I think it's important to have these discussions because they're becoming, I think, an important part of how regular people interact with technology. There's a lot of tools I'm thinking about like, know, Max, MSP, or different sort of creative software that were very, very hard to use now that have been sort of unlocked by by AI. And I think a lot of people are encountering them for the first time through these videos, through these reels, through these creators. And I think it's showing people a lot of the possibilities in tech. And I think it'd be foolish not to talk about the impact that that's gonna have on the relationship of the average person with technology. And so in the following moments, we should see our dear guest Sofia Puccini walk in in a little bit. I wonder if she's behind the door or if she is waiting for the exact thirty minute mark to walk in. Yeah.
00:29:53 · Sofia Puccini, Ruby Justice Thelot
[00:29:53] S1: Oh, do I just, like, walk in? [00:29:54] S0: Yeah. Yeah. Please walk in. Sit on the chair. [00:29:56] S1: Well, hello. [00:29:57] S0: Yeah. This is real life. This is this is live. Yeah. The mic is on. [00:30:03] S1: Hello, MTS. [00:30:05] S0: Hello, MTS. [00:30:06] S1: I am... Yeah. I'm joined with Ruby for the first time. [00:30:10] S0: It's very exciting to be here with you. [00:30:12] S1: I know. It's it's such a switch up of the usual dynamic. [00:30:16] S0: The last time I was here. I mean, I feel like we didn't get a chance to talk this... That much, but I'm here and we're live, and we were just trying to figure out, like, what exactly we're gonna talk about. Yeah. And so I kinda set the stage by speaking about the rise of creative technologists. Mhmm. I talked a little bit about... Okay. Well, the... In the engrams, when you take a look at all the mentions in in in terminology, it shows up in the books in the mid fifties. Specifically, Disney has a role for [00:30:45] S1: Oh, interesting. [00:30:46] S0: For a creative technologist in 1993. But really, I feel like it really gains popularity when Google launches its own creative technologist role in 2014. [00:30:54] S1: Interesting. Okay. So what, like, what what was the job description for, like, the Disney role versus the Google role?
00:30:54 · Sofia Puccini, Ruby Justice Thelot
[00:30:54] S1: Interesting. Okay. So what, like, what what was the job description for, like, the Disney role versus the Google role? [00:31:02] S0: Well, famously, of course, like, Disney was literally in the base of creative technology. Like, they had to come up with novel ways of animating. So it was really like a a technical role at the intersection of how do you help the animators, illustrators bring their things into the digital realm, specifically as they were transitioning from hand drawn to more digital animation? And so that was really the term creative technology. And Bran Ferren, right, he was an Imagineer. That's what the people who come up [00:31:32] S1: with it. Imagineers. Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:34] S0: Yeah. Which is one of the coolest titles I've [00:31:36] S1: ever heard. [00:31:36] S0: I know. Yeah. And so he became the president of creative technology in 1998, which is very interesting. And another thing I talked about is how, well, people like to... You know, they see the people do a lot of reels on... About cryptology or a lot of different sort of hacks or projects, but the history of the collaboration between engineers and artists is well trodden. It's been there for a long time. Yeah. Specifically the sixties. Right? Bell Labs, Xerox PARC [00:32:04] S1: Yes. The
00:32:04 · Sofia Puccini, Ruby Justice Thelot
[00:32:04] S1: Yes. The [00:32:04] S0: EAT, were all examples of times where companies oftentimes were like, hey. We got a couple of extra computers, couple of extra printers, couple of extra this and that. Plotters come and work in our office. Mhmm. We'll pay you or you'll get a grant or whatever. Yeah. You can come in every day. And so whether it's like, you know, Franker,, a lot of these artists worked at telecom companies, at Xerox, at Bell Labs. Another... An artist that I really like called Tom Lloyd, he worked with an engineer from RCA, right, like the tape company to make his light sculptures. So... And that was in the sixties as well. And so there's a lot of... There's a big history of that collaboration. So I think we're... We... We'd be remiss if we didn't mention this just because people are doing cool visualizations, whatever things on on TikTok and videos.