Scott Draves

Last Name: 
Draves
First Name: 
Scott

Scott Draves a.k.a. Spot is a visual and software artist living in New York City and San Francisco. Draves is best known as the creator of the Electric Sheep, a continually evolving abstract animation with over 60,000 daily participants. He created the original Flame algorithm in 1991, the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995, and the Electric Sheep in 1999. Draves' software artworks are released as open source and distributed via the internet. Draves' award-winning work is permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has appeared in Wired and Discover magazines, the Prix Ars Electronica, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and on the main dance-floor at the Sonar festival in Barcelona. Before becoming a full-time artist Draves 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. His last regular job was with PDI/Dreamworks R&D Department, which earned him a feature film credit for Shrek 2. In 1990 he received a BS in Mathematics from Brown University and in 1997 a PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University for a thesis on metaprogramming for media processing. 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 4000 copies. Besides teaching at Parsons School of Design, his current project is Dreams in High Fidelity, a painting that evolves. The HiFiDreams is limited edition fine art that is installed in the lobby of Google's headquarters, and has been acquired by corporate and residential collections nationally. Scott Draves received a Finishing Funds 2008 award from the Experimental Television Center. http://www.scottdraves.com/