Auriea Harvey (UCLA Game Lab Lecture)

Auriea Harvey is a digital media designer based at Entropy8. Entropy8 was founded by Harvey in 1995 as an experiment with image and interactivity. Since then, it has grown into an award-winning Web development collective. Harvey’s personal work deals with issues of humanity in machine-driven spaces. She works to dispel the popular notion that the Internet is an impersonal, “machine-like” medium by creating environments that evoke a tangible quality as well as stressing the communicative aspect of online culture. The New York Foundation for the Arts recognized Harvey’s work with one of its first computer arts fellowships. In 1997 and 1998 she received Webby awards in the Art/Design and Arts categories. Her work was included in the 1997 and 1998 editions of Communications Arts’ Interactive Design Annual, and has also been feature in I.D. magazine’s I.D. Interactive Media Design Review. In 1999, she was nominated for a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship.

SPONSORED BY UCLA GAME LAB

With her partner Michaël Samyn they were trained as artists. Auriea studied sculpture at Parson’s in New York and Michaël graphic design at Sint Lucas in Ghent, Belgium. They’ve been using computers since Windows 3.1 and Mac System 7. They met online in 1999 as members of an online artist collective around the hell.com domain. They have been collaborating form the very day we met. At first, as Entropy8Zuper!, on website designs for clients and on internet artworks. Then expanding to other types of interactive projects. Since 2002 they’ve focused on videogames. In 2015 they abandoned commercial production in favor of dedicating their lives to the muses. Auriea studies traditional figure drawing. And Michaël classical guitar. They live in the beautiful medieval city of Ghent, Belgium.