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Nikolai Cornell


Designing Interactive Installations

Course Description
Interactivity is rapidly moving into the world of architecture and exhibit design, creating immersive experiences that engage users through all their senses by communicating with sight, sound, and touch. Through this workshop participants will gain the skills they need to create their own interactive installations while learning about experience design, interaction design, & information design. The focus of the workshop will be on developing installations and alternative interfaces that take a shift away from the small screen to touch people on a more direct and immersive level. Participants will also learn how to transform and enhance environments through the use of a variety of different sensors and projections. Participants will build several simple projects during the course of the workshop and will form teams to design and make a more ambitious final project. Participants will leave the workshop with:

  • A better understanding of the design process involved in creating large scale interactive installations and environments
  • A better understanding of the technologies that are used to develop and build these experiences
  • A better understanding of where this emerging field of design is headed in the future, and how it will transform the way we interact with the world around us.

Artist's Biography
Nikolai Cornell is an award-winning media designer and technologist whose work focuses on the intersection of architecture and immersive interactive content. With experience in exhibit design, interface development, web, print, branding, and photography he is well positioned to utilize his broad range of talents to create truly unique interactive experiences.

Nikolai received his bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Virginia Tech in 1997 and spent two years working for FACE Architecture in San Francisco, designing interior commercial and residential projects, before turning his attention to the field of web design in 1999. He worked for several years as a web designer at Razorfish, helping to design and implement highly innovative websites in both HTML and Flash for a large variety of clients, before leaving at the end of 2001 to pursue his own projects and later attend graduate school at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.

In 2004 Nikolai completed his MFA in Media Design with a thesis entitled: “Life-Size - A series of interactive installations that explore human-scale interaction, environmental interface, and display systems.” His MFA thesis has won several awards, including a gold at the Art Directors Club (ADC) 84th Awards and a silver IDEA award from the IDSA. It was also featured in the Communication Arts Interactive Design Annual 11.

Earlier this year Nikolai completed several interactive installations for The George P. Johnson Company, all of which debuted at the 2006 Detroit Auto Show.