Let’s meet at the intersection of design, technology and art

Technology should bring us closer. To each other, to the world, to ourselves. I am a humane technologist and product lead in Amsterdam. I build with AI for culture and the public good, and I teach creatives to do the same.

About

For twenty years I have worked on the intersection of design, technology and art. I was trained as a graphic designer at the Royal Academy of Arts (KABK) in The Hague, studied Media Technology (MSc) at Leiden University, and spent an exchange at UCLA’s Design Media Arts. Since then I have been a founder, a designer, a product lead and a teacher. I keep coming back to the same questions: What can technology do? And how does it affect us?

Today those questions mostly concern AI. I use it to build products, immersive experiences and experimental storytelling, for museums, cultural institutions and human-rights organisations such as Amnesty International. I also teach ‘Design with Machines’ at ArtEZ University of the Arts, where I work with students on using AI creatively and with a critical eye.

The work I am proudest of made people feel something, understand something, or meet each other. And I care as much about how something is made as about what it does.

What I do

Product leadership. I run design sprints, shape roadmaps, and keep teams of strong-willed makers pointed the same way. I lead from care rather than authority: clear direction, and room for people to do their best work.

Making with AI. I understand AI on several layers at once; technical, cultural, ethical. My work is to translate that into concrete choices and concrete things: products, interactive installations, data experiences. I stay close to the material without losing my skepticism.

Teaching. Since 2017 I teach ‘Design with Machines’ at the ArtEZ Design Art Technology department. Students learn to use AI creatively and with a critical eye; the thinking stays their own. I give workshops on the same theme.

What I have done

ongoing

Thunderboom

Design and development, with Superposition

With Thunderboom we created WAIVE and ARSynth: free, open-source tools that put creative technology in more hands. WAIVE, made with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, is an AI plugin that turns public-domain archives, old broadcasts and field recordings into visuals that move with the music. ARSynth lets anyone build and share augmented-reality work straight from the browser. Both collect no personal data and were built on public values.

Thunderboom tools

ongoing

Media Majlis Museum

Digital content, with Superposition

From concept to implementation: developing immersive, experimental storytelling and interactive digital content for the Media Majlis Museum at Northwestern University Qatar, a museum dedicated to media, journalism and communication.

The Media Majlis website

since 2021

Superposition

Partner and head of product

A creative studio that makes complex systems, data and invisible forces tangible and human. As partner I led products and projects with experimental storytelling at their core, for clients including Amnesty International, Slot Loevestein and the Media Majlis Museum.

superposition.cc

since 2017

Design with Machines

Course at ArtEZ, Design Art Technology

A course on creative collaboration with machines. Students explore how and to what extent artists and designers can work with machine learning in their practice. AI as material, technical assistant or even as a creative collaborator, but never as a shortcut.

Design Art Technology at ArtEZ

2023 to 2024

TUMO Yerevan

Workshop leader, volunteer

Generative 3D design workshops for high-school students at the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan, Armenia.

tumo.org

2018 to 2020

Business Art Service

Online product manager, freelance

Product lead for Business Art Service / Kunst.nl, the largest art lending service in the Netherlands. I led the development of two new platforms, B2B and B2C, from specification to launch.

businessartservice.nl

2014 to 2021

Patty Morgan

Founder, head of product

Patty Morgan started from a simple, stubborn idea: let’s build an ‘Instagram for art with a buy button’. With Matthijs Booij and Hubertine Bergsma I founded a home for young, promising artists, and a way for anyone to live with their work. It started as an online platform, but we were never only a website: we put on shows, ran ‘art meetings’, let people try a work at home before they bought it, and brought artists into companies and organisations.

Patty Morgan on Instagram

2008 to 2015

Perceptor

Founding partner, designer

An interactive web and app design agency in The Hague, founded with Bastiaan Terhorst after working at the studio of Petr van Blokland and Claudia Mens. Work for autonomous interactive systems and installations, embracing unstable media and tinkering. Twice a finalist for the Dutch Design Awards: the MENDO website in 2012, the iPhone game Perloo in 2014.

perceptor.nl