New media artist wants people to answer questions with photos

Raghava KK is part of the tectonic shifts that have lead to the overlapping between technology and art. His latest app Flipsicle where people reply to public questions with photographic answers has managed to gain $ 2 million in funding without ever making a business plan. In an exclusive interview with Krishna Bahirwani, Raghava KK shares his thoughts on his role in the shifts that combine art and technology.

What do you consider your role to be in the combination of art and technology?
I've always thought of technology as an exciting medium that I could incorporate into my art. I feel like the same story told through a new medium brings out a new experience and I keep trying to add a new complexity to my work.

When the iPad first came out, I was gifted one after speaking with Bill Gates at Vinod Khosla's conference. I didn't know what to do with it, so I gifted it to my son, who was a year old at the time. I was amazed by how intuitively he was able to use it! So my wife Netra and I created an iPad art book for him called 'Pop-it'. Pop-it is a book about the things children do with their parents. It starts out with a gay couple raising a child, but when you shake it, you get a lesbian couple. Shake it again, and you get a heterosexual couple. I wanted to teach my children that there is no ideal family, but that there are many kinds of families that exist.

That was the first time I brought technology into my artwork. After that, I have had the opportunity to work with technologists and scientists to create other kinds of tech-science-art projects. For example, I did a brainwave art piece using an EEG headset and I did a series of interactive work using the Kinect.

I wanted to use technology as a way to rethink knowledge systems. Both Netra and I believe that we are moving into a visual world where knowledge is being consumed visually more and more. Especially on the internet. We wanted to invent a new medium to open this visual communication and help people to think in pictures.

What is your definition of success? Would you consider yourself successful according to your own standards?

Success for me is dynamic, it is the ability to wake up inspired and to remain inspired. We keep evolving and changing all the time. The only thing that's constant in the real world is change. This is reflected in my life and in the changing style and direction of my artwork.

I have always believed that in order to have a real impact, I need to reach out of the silos of the art world to different fields such as science, technology, dance, and performance. The ability to do this is success.

I think success is relative, but I've been very lucky to have opportunities to work with some of the greatest artists, explore and research with scientists and technologists, create work that is challenging and have millions of people follow me. I will consider my new venture Flipsicle successful if we can inspire people to think in pictures and talk with photos.

What is your opinion of the state of education in today's world?

I think that education, like parenting, is very difficult in today's changing world. How can we prepare children for a future that we know nothing about? I think that education should prepare students with the ability to solve problems creatively, think out of the box, and to apply their skills to create. I don't believe that traditional book-learning will be able to prepare our children to make a life for themselves in the future.

I have been working with my children to teach them programming and electronics, even though they are very young (6, 4, and 1). We have been using Little Bits, Electro Bricks, Capsela, and Lego Mindstorm. I think that schools should start to use these materials in the classroom.

I think that we need to also be educated in visual literacy. Now that information is easily available- its application becomes more relevant and that requires creativity.

Tell me about your involvement in NuVu Studios?

I am an advisor to NuVu Studios and I have taught several studio courses there. I think it's one of the most amazing educational initiatives I've come across. It's based around the studio model of education, where students work collaboratively with others and with coaches to create projects. In the process, they learn science, technology, math, writing, creative problem-solving, etc.

I prototyped my brainwave art pieces there along with a fellow coach, Sean Stevens, who is a brilliant technologist. The initial idea of Flipsicle also came out of a course I taught at NuVu on Shaken Storytelling (shaking up any story by telling it from many different points of view).

I really love the NuVu model of education and I keep threatening them that I'm going to send my kids to them as soon as they are old enough! After all, this is where our idea for Flipsicle was born.

Tell me about brainwave art?

My brainwave art pieces use the viewers' thoughts and mental state (read by an EEG headset) to dynamically bias and change the artwork. One of my brainwave pieces is called "Mona Lisa 2.0." It is the face of an old woman in a black background. The viewer wears an EEG headset, which reads the brainwaves and gauges your mental state. The brainwave data directly affects the emotion of the old woman and projects the mental state of the viewer onto her. When I'm happy she's happy, when I'm sad she's sad. The woman's facial expression and emotion constantly changes along with the mental state of the viewer.

I believe that the future of art lies in the changing role of the viewer. My new interactive works take the viewer from being a mere spectator to being an active, biasing, participant. The final artwork is being co-created by the viewers, affecting the experience in a way that could never happen with a static piece of artwork.

How important would you say the role of the storyteller is in today's society?

It's the most important as the world we live in is fragmenting. Linear dominant narratives are breaking into smaller worlds and to make sense of yourself and to contextualize yourself in this changing fragmenting world, one should be capable of stitching together narratives and telling your own story.

If you had to leave the readers with one thing to think about, what would it be?

We need to understand the world of knowledge in perspectives and not as facts. Our education teaches us who we are but it's our creativity that teaches us we can be much more than what our education told us we are.