this is Derek Lomas

I am a Graduate Researcher in the Department of Visual Arts at UC San Diego.  Previously, I studied Cognitive Science at Yale University, focusing on music cognition, skill learning, and HCI.  I am fascinated by the relationship between Cognition, Social Practices, and Artifacts/Architectures.  I  love the aesthetic that emerges from collective human movement.

Currently, I am co-director of the Social Movement Laboratory at Calit2 along with Natalie Jeremijenko (who is currently teaching at NYU).  The Social Movement Laboratory is a hybrid arts laboratory researching the dynamics of social activity online and offline. Recently, we've been conducting a large-scale ethnographic study of common social behaviors within Myspace.com, the largest online social network.  Using a 60-panel display, we've created detailed visual representations of the spread of viral media and the structure of popularity within this highly influential online network.

In teaching this course, I hope to put my theories into practice and generate a community of discourse around the relationship between architecture and sociality.  It is also my hope that our actions will have a larger effect upon the intensity of student culture of UC San Diego, which I personally think needs a kick in the pants.