Aaron has been working since 2012 to realize the potential of virtual reality to transform the way designers communicate their ideas. His work with the Virtual Reality Design Lab has spawned a new venture – R5VR – where he is working to incorporate VR into the daily work of architects, engineers, contractors and designers of all types. [Video]

Interactive, participatory art...

People Pixels

by Aaron Westre and J Wynia
Northern Spark 2015

People Pixels is an interactive, participatory art event created for Northern Spark, an all night art festival which takes place each summer. It's part game, part collaborative drawing tool. Portraits are taken of each participant, processed to increase contrast and then fed into a custom software application. The software stipples the portrait and sorts the stipples into a sequence. When the participants are ready the app displays each stipple in order, challenging the participants to keep up as they race to complete the portrait before time is up.

Building creative tools...

Design Games is a book, a course and an ongoing effort to teach designers and artists how to build creative applications inspired by video games. The course was first taught in the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota in 2009. Since then, it has evolved through several modes of instruction and creative coding tools. A variation was taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. It spawned a book published by Routledge in 2014. A new, open curriculum based on Design Games is currently in development.