Who is
this diva?
Fernanda Viégas is a 21st century artist. Instead of painting with oils or drawing with charcoal pencils, she creates computer images she calls "visualizations". A native of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, her work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Designing Interactive Systems gallery in London, the Artists Space in New York City and Emerging Technologies in Los Angeles. Her latest work can be seen at the Whitney Independent Studies Gallery in New York City.
Because Fernanda's work uses computers and technology, people who view her art can often interact with the designs in a way that isn't possible with paintings, drawings or sculptures created in the last century.
What
do you do at work?
Every day is different for me,
and this is one of the things I really like about being
a graduate student. I make my own schedule. I work according
to my rhythm and to the deadlines in my projects which
means that sometimes I have to work non-stop until I get
the project up and running. Mainly, a typical day for
me includes reading, writing, coding and a lot of emailing.
It also includes hanging out with my fellow lab mates
and talking about all sorts of things such as what's happening
in the world, in our lives, in our research, etc.
How does your job help other people?
I create visualizations of people's activities online.
In a sense, these visualizations are like beautiful "photographs"
of what we do online.
I hope that the visualizations I build will help people
become more aware of the online portion of their lives.
The more we use the Internet to keep in touch with loved
ones, to give and receive emotional support, to conduct
business and to make new friends, the more important it
becomes that we have a better understanding of this new
universe we are inhabiting.
I hope that my visualizations will contribute to people's
understanding of their interactions online.
Do you work alone or with
a team?
I work with other people all the
time. There have been projects where I had to work with
a couple of programmers and a couple of artists at the
same time.
The nice thing about what I do is that I have the freedom
to collaborate with whomever is interested in the idea
of creating beautiful visualizations: programmers, artists,
mathematicians, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists,
etc.
Because I work with such a varied range of people, I get
to learn their different perspectives on what it means
to inhabit the digital world, and this is invaluable learning
for me.
What's
the best part of your job?
The best part is to see people's
reaction when they learn something they didn't know before
because of the visualizations they are looking at.
What's
the worst part of your job?
The worst part is having to pull all-nighters to finish
up projects.
Where
do you see yourself in 10 years?
I would like to continue to do
research in this area of information visualization; it
might be fun to teach and have students who are as excited
as I am about the possibilities in this field.
What
do you do when you're not at work?
I love to dance, to scuba dive
and to eat chocolate. I don't have a family yet, but I
hope to have one in the near future.
What advice would you give
a girl about the I.T. field?
Think about I.T. as a tool because that's all it is.
Learning to program, for instance, is like learning to
write. After you learn how to write, a whole new world
opens up for you, and you can write just about anything--novels,
plays, text books, news, diaries, etc. It is the same
way with programming; it gives you an additional way to
express yourself.
What
were your hobbies when you were 11-14?
For the longest time I thought I wanted to be an astronomer
because I loved to look at the stars so much. But, when
I found out that astronomers never really look at the
stars, they only study them via mathematical equations,
I realized I could never be one. I wanted to work with
things I could see.
As far as interests go, since an early age, I have always
been interested in the issue of women in society, and
why girls are treated differently from boys.
Describe technology you
wish was available now.
I would love to have the ability
to be tele-transported to faraway places. I would tele-transport
myself to Brazil all the time to visit my family.
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