Howdy class,

My name is Dan Wilcox and I’m a 3rd year Master of Fine Arts graduate student in the School of Art. I’m Golan’s TA for IACD this spring.

My background is in Computer Engineering but I was always into music so I went to Europe to learn New Media. I worked for 2 years at the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria on interactive installations and played music festivals with my robotcowboy project before coming to CMU.

robotcowboy

I’m an artist, engineer, performer, and musician who combines live musical performance techniques with experimental electronics and software for exploration into themes of science fiction, space travel, cyborgification, and far futurism. I prefer to use open source tools and software including Pure Data, OpenFrameworks, and Processing and maintain a Github page for public projects.

MDRS

Back in December, I spent 2 weeks at the Mars Desert Research Station run by the Mars Society in Utah as research for my thesis project:

In this Martian analog on Earth, the crew will spend 2 weeks living and working in a remote, simulated habitat: planning Extra Vehicular Activities, wearing space suits, exploring the terrain on foot or via rovers, maintain/upgrading systems, and experiencing a tin-can existence. Through this research, they’ll be able to better understand how people will live and work effectively on the Red Planet.

Dan’s mission is to document what life will be like for the first humans on Mars from “a feet on the ground” perspective. This work will then form the basis of his MFA Thesis project: a live musical performance and concept album around the theme of humanity crossing the sea of space and touching down on a familiar new world.