Sure, you love using BitTorrent (or the tiny-yet-mighty client, µTorrent) but how much do you know about the people behind the product? If you’ve ever downloaded BitTorrent Featured Content well, Yuri’s the person who makes it happen.
Yuri does more than help us build sites and amazing artist programs. She also builds installations. If you’re in San Francisco this weekend, check out her work at Yerba Buena Gardens.
What’s your current role at BitTorrent?
I’m the Senior Producer for Interactive Media.
And what does that involve?
It’s different at every company I work with. Here at BitTorrent, I make it happen! (That’s for all the Producers out there). I have an eye and voice for the needs of the UX, Product, and Marketing teams. I work on a slew of projects including our BitTorrent Bundles featuring new artists like Willis Earl Beal and indie movies like Kumaré and Stacy Peralta’s autobiographical doc about the Bones Brigade.
How did you end up here?
I was freelancing and when I heard BitTorrent needed a Producer, I was intrigued. As soon as I walked through the door and heard about the new initiatives they’re working on, I was hooked – even with my bent for installation-based work.
Speaking of installations, you have an art exhibition coming up this weekend at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. Can you tell us more about that?
It’s an interactive installation with two-channel video projections called ‘Beauty in the Bubble’ and it’s all about the beauty of where we live, reflections of San Francisco. It’s partly my response to the ever-shifting wave of people here, with the current tech-boom induced rent hikes and all. I wanted to focus on the beautiful qualities that persevere. And bring people into a beautiful experience.
Visitors can play with a topographical sculpture of San Francisco and trigger different visions of the city. I can’t wait for the bubble to pop tomorrow!
It’s just one part of an evening event in Yerba Buena Gardens and across the street in Jessie Square. It’s free, open to the public, with live dance, music, video and installation art!
Still from “The Beauty in the Bubble”
When did you become an artist? What inspired you?
I think of my work as ‘experiments’ and experiences. I’ve always been intrigued with human experience and perception.
In college I got turned on to the idea of embedding technology into our surroundings in new ways when I took classes from Gail Wight, one on the “technological other” that was about the cross between media and technology, and another where I got to use sensors and soldering irons. That was my first exposure to (technology based) interactive art.
It’s taken me a long time to get back to that love. After designing interactive children’s toys for years, I left the States and rekindled my passion for interactive art and video art, working in Berlin and Melbourne. Now I’m back in SF experimenting with all of it. And hopefully bringing people a little wonder.
And what do you think about kale?
I love living in Kale-i-fornia.
Make sure you check out the ‘Beauty in the Bubble.’ It happens this Saturday at Yerba Buena Night 2012 at the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco from 7:00 – 10:00 pm.
