Mehmet Akten
(1975) is a visual artist, musician and engineer working at the intersection of art and technology.
Driven by the urge to make the seemingly impossible, possible; and awaken our childlike instincts to explore and discover new forms of interaction and expression; he invents new ways of creating and performing images and sound. With a focus on creating emotional and memorable experiences, his work ranges from live music/dance/theatre performances, large-scale immersive interactive installations, music videos; to online works and mobile applications. He has given talks and workshops around the world and is currently on the selection committee of Siggraph. Also an open-source advocate, his experiments and source-code are documented on his blog. In 2007 he founded The Mega Super Awesome Visuals Company - a network of artists, designers, musicians, engineers, hackers and tinkerers.
Recently his Body Paint installation has been shown at exhibitions around the world including the Victoria & Albert Museum as part of the Decode exhibition. His collaboration with Mira Calix and Flat-e My Secret Heart - a sound and film installation - has toured countless locations including the Royal Festival Hall in London, Edinburgh Film Festival, the Sydney Biennale, the Creators Project in New York, Sao Paulo and Beijing. He has collaborated on a music video for Depeche Mode; accompanied the BBC Philharmonic with a visual performance; programmed a twitter dress for Imogen Heap; collaborated with CERN Physics Professors to visualize cosmic rays in a giant projection dome; created 40ft long interactive digital artworks for the lobby of Deutsche Bank flagship HQ in hong kong; directed and produced projection mapped visuals for Blaze - the west end dance show; worked with dancers ranging from ballet, contemporary, hip hop, street and breakdance and worked with brands such as Apple, Google, Rolls-Royce, Samsung, Vodafone, Toyota.
Selected exhibitions and performances include Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Royal Festival Hall (London), Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), Creators Project (New York, Sao Paulo, Beijing), Sydney Biennale, Science Museum (London), Design Miami, Ars Electronica (Linz), onedotzero, Aldeburgh Music Festival, Cannes Lions Festival, Manchester Bridgewater Hall, Edinburgh Film Festival, Mapping Festival (Geneva), Yota Space Festival (St. Petersburg), Glastonbury Festival, as well as exhibitions in Paris, Tokyo, Cape Town, Venice, Hong Kong, Pittsburgh, Madrid and more.
Memo was born and grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. Fascinated by the hacker demo-scene of the 1980s, he started programming music & graphics demos at an early age on the 8-bit computers of the era. In 1997, after completing a BSc in Civil Engineering, he moved to London where he worked in the video games industry as an artist, designer and programmer. Leaving the industry in 2003 to pursue more immersive experiences, he now balances his time between personal work, collaborations, research and commissioned projects.
Source: The Mega Super Awesome Visuals Company