Aaron Siegel is a media artist, designer, and technologist with a concentration in computational information design. His creative endeavors are inspired by interesting data sets, interfaces, and urban environments. He utilizes data visualization as a medium to explore complex systems, aiming to create aesthetically pleasing representations of data while fostering scientific empiricism. His work strives to display relationships and correlations within information systems that would remain unseen from any other perspective.

He has created work for various institutions including the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Electroland, Directed Play, the MIT SENSEable City Laboratory, Facebook and Fabrica. He has exhibited work in Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Reno, Memphis, Indianapolis, Seattle, New York, Guadalajara, Madrid, Trieste, Heidelberg, Singapore, Rome, and Dubai. Siegel is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California Iovine and Young Academy for Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation.

Designing Networked Objects: From IoT to Smart Spaces

Processing Community Catalog. Processing Foundation. (Project: Square Spiral #2) (2023)

Siegel, A. Dreaming of Data. Nightingale. 9/21/2022.

Decoding the City: How Big Data Can Change Urbanism. Offenhuber and Ratti. (Project: Live Singapore!) (2014)

MoMa Talk to Me Exhibition Catalog. New York. (Project: BackTalk) (2011)

Visual Complexity; Mapping Patterns of Information. Lima. (Project: Research Chronology Revisited) (2011)

Left, Right, Up, Down; New Directions in Signage and Wayfinding. Fuguro. (Projects: Connection, Pulse, Los Angeles Author Wall) (2010)

Form + Code in Design, Art, and Architecture. Reas, McWilliams, and Barendse. (Project: Power Structures) (2010)

Feedback Exhibition Catalog. Laboral Centre de Arte. (Project: On Translation: Social Networks) (2007)

2014    Museum of Future Government Services, Government Summit, Dubai, United Arab Emirates 

2013.   Pendulums and Shiver in "Playful Inter-Action," MAXXI, Museum of 21st Century Art, Rome, Italy 

2013	Colors News Machine in "Festival of Dangerous Ideas”, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia 

2011	Research Chronology Revisited in "CADRE Show", Lake Tahoe Community College, Lake Tahoe, California

2011	BackTalk in "Talk to Me", Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York. 

2011	LIVE Singapore!, The Singapore Art Museum, Singapore

2009	Author Wall, Guadalajara International Literary Festival, Guadalajara, Mexico

2008 	Power Structures in "Exit Strategies", The New Wight Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles, California. 

2008	IPIcons, RE/ACT Festival, Heidelberg, Germany

2008	IPIcons, Festival404, Trieste, Italy

2007	IPIcons in "Prints from our Process", The Bermont Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles, California

2007	IPIcons, The Bermont Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles, California. (2007)

2007	Wikipedia by the Minute, First Year MFA Exhibition, The EDA, UCLA, Los Angeles, California

2006	On Translation: Social Networks in "Feedback Exhibition", Laboral Centre de Arte, Gijon, Spain

2006	Irradiated in "Palm", The New Wight Gallery, UCLA, Los Angeles, California

2006	On Translation: Social Networks, ISEA 2006/Zero One Festival, McCenry Convention Center, San Jose, California

2006	Body Daemon, The White Gallery, SJSU, San Jose, California

2005	Visual Rhizome, The Black Gallery, SJSU, San Jose, California

2005	Synaesthesia, The Black Gallery, SJSU, San Jose, California

(Exhibit: Playful Inter-Actions). November 18, 2013. 

Visniic, Filip. Sadly by your side - A music album and a processing/remixing tool by Angelo Semeraro. October 14, 2013. 

Caula, Rodrigo. Fabrica: The News Machine for COLORS Magazine. April 24, 2013

Etherington, Rose. Colors News Machine by Fabrica. April 2, 2013

Four4Tech. IBM's Watson supercomputer for president? February 10, 2016

This Musical iPhone App uses Your Phone's Camera to Remix Tunes. October 14, 2013

Helmore, Edward. Artificial intelligence - coming to a government near you soon? April, 22, 2023.

Russon, Mary-Ann. Step aside Trump - Should IBM's artificially intelligent supercomputer Watson be US president? February 8, 2016

Toobin, Adam. IBM's Watson Supercomputer Will Not be Running for President in 2016. February 16, 2016

Tual, Morgane. Une intelligence artificielle peut-elle devenir présidente des Etats-Unis? February 16, 2016

Cuthbertson, Anthony. Could a Robot Run for President in 2020? February 16, 2016

del Castillo, Michael. Watson for President campaign seeks a leader without vested interests. February 16, 2016

Noves, Katherine. Forget Trump and Clinton: IBM's Watson is running for president.  February 8,, 2016.

Oberhaus, Daniel. Hail to the Computer. May 17, 2016

Gershgorn, Dave. Would you Vote for a Supercomputer as President? February 8, 2016.

Khanna, Parag. Watson should have run for US president: How smart algorithms are better than dumb politicians. January 23, 2017.

Murphy, Mike. IBM's Watson should run for president February 8, 2016.

Project: On Translation: Social Networks. 2006.

Murphy, B.J. Watson for President 2016 (Interview with Campaign Director Aaron Siegel). February 12, 2016 

Chua, Grace. Turning live public data into local apps. (Project: Live Singapore!) 2011.

An Album You Can Remix With Your Smartphone's Camera. October 21, 2013

Playful Inter-Actions. November 18, 2013.

“Design Decoded 2023,” UCLA, Los Angeles, California, 2023

“Capslock 2022 Design Jam,” UCLA, Los Angeles, California, 2022

“Microseminar: Making Visible The Invisible: Effective Graphic Communication of Information,” (second year), USC, Los Angeles, California, 2022

“Admitted Students Day Faculty Session: Algorithmic Visual Design,” USC, Los Angeles, California, 2022

“Riptide 2021,” USC, Los Angeles, California, 2021

“Microseminar: Making Visible The Invisible: Effective Graphic Communication of Information,” USC, Los Angeles, California, 2021

“Interplanetary Information Exploration,” Designskolen Kolding, Kolding, Denmark, 2015

“Interacting with Data: Visualization for Exploration,” World Bank Group, Washington DC., 2014

“Public Interface: Reimagining Urban Experience,” ZKM AppArtAwards, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2014

“datadreamer,” Università Iuav di Venezia, Venice, Italy, 2014

“Making Visible the Invisible: Data in Art and Design,” Fabrica, Treviso, Italy, 2012

Core77 2015 Design Awards: Speculative Category for Museum of Future Government Services 2014.

Core77 2014 Design Awards: Interaction Category for Sadly by your Side.

Magnum Quai Award from Cadre Laboratory for New Media. (2006)

Fang Quai Award from Cadre Laboratory for New Media. (2006)

Fang Quai Award from Cadre Laboratory for New Media. (2005)

Fang Quai Award from Cadre Laboratory for New Media. (2004)

Watson 2016 is a satirical political advocacy group promoting the election of the IBM Watson supercomputer to be president of the United States. The objective was to present the role of president as "the decider", collecting information and making the most informed high level decision possible. This role seems best suited for a machine that is capable of handling massive amounts of data from a variety of sources and gauging the results of analyzing that data on a myriad of metrics to weigh the impact of different decisions on the population as a whole. This is exactly the type of work that Watson was developed to do.

The site uses the iconography and navigational structure of previous presidential election websites from the 2012 campaign season to convey the image of a legitimate political web site. The intention is to blur the perception of the viewer towards uncertainty of the reality of the site or not, allowing them to momentarily suspend disbelief in order to seriously consider the possibility of a computer president. Their temporary contemplation of this scenario and the ensuing conversations that resulted through social media and blogging services allowed the concept to expand from propaganda to cultural discussion.

Petition Planet (2014) is a visualization of signature activity on the White House petition website. The interface affords the user the ability to select a specific petition from the website and watch the playback of signatures added over time, seeing the cities where signatures were coming from, an estimated gender break down of who was signing the petition, as well as a distribution of republican to democrat lean based on the 2012 presidential election results.

LIVE Singapore! (2011) provides people with access to a range of useful real-time information about their city by developing an open platform for the collection, elaboration and distribution of real-time data that reflect urban activity. Giving people visual and tangible access to real-time information about their city enables them to make their decisions more in sync with their environment, with what is actually happening around them.

After an initial process of data analysis from several data streams, six visualizations have been delineated that investigate different areas of interest and of relevance to the city of Singapore. The visualizations aim to provide greater understanding of some of the city's dynamics. This includes the real-time movement of up to 16,000 taxis moving around the country, thousands of airplanes traveling through Changi airport, thousands of container ships going through the second busiest shipping port in the world, as well as SMS messaging activity during special events.

Faculty

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