Алекс Драгулеску
亚历克斯德勒古列斯库
أليكس دراغوليسكو

Ekisto

source: sqro

Ekisto is an interactive visualization of online communities. Ekisto tries to imagine and map our online habitats using similarity algorithms and the city as a metaphor.

While participating in social media, we are aware of the closest or loudest users, and are tuned to the ebb and flow of information trends but don’t quite have a visual understanding of the global network or local clusters around us. Ekisto is meant as a discovery and exploration tool.

Unlike real life human settlements where the layout is rigid and governed by geography and urbanistics, the layout logic of the online habitat is algorithmic and thus infinitely mutable.

One such instantiation is generated by a graph layout algorithm which arranges users in 2D space based on their similarity. Similarity is computed based on the users’ network (FriendFeed), collaborate, watch, fork and follow relationships (Github), or based on the tags of posts contributed by users (StackOverflow). The height of each user represents the normalized value of the user’s Pagerank (GitHub, FriendFeed) or their reputation points (StackOverflow), a measure of their importance in the community. The gravitational pull of hubs, those well-connected influential users, delineates the neighborhoods of the online habitat.

Alex Dragulescu is a visual artist working at the intersection of art and technology. His projects are experiments and explorations of algorithms, computational models, simulations and information visualizations that involve data derived from social feeds, public databases, unwanted emails and video games.

His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions worldwide in San Diego, Boston, Madrid, Venice, Florence, Rome, Seoul, Sao Paolo, St Petersburg, Havana, Helsinki and Bucharest. He has a BS in Cinema and Photography from Ithaca College, a Masters of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from University of California, San Diego and a Masters of Science from MIT. He has been a researcher with the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab, the Experimental Game Lab and the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts at University of California, San Diego.

Currently, he works out of his studio in San Jose, California.
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source: encyclocouk

Alex Dragulescu is a Romanian-born visual artist who lives in the United States. His art deals with Internet-related themes, making visualisations of negative things on the Internet such as spam, phishing and computer viruses. His work was the subject of news stories in 2006 and again in 2008.
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source: levfestival

Alex Dragulescu es un artista visual que trabaja en la intersección del arte y la tecnología. Sus proyectos son experimentos y exploraciones de algoritmos, modelos computacionales, simulaciones y visualizaciones de información que implican los datos derivados de los piensos sociales, bases de datos públicas, correos electrónicos no deseados y videojuegos.

Su trabajo ha sido expuesto en muestras individuales y colectivas en todo el mundo en San Diego, Boston, Madrid, Venecia, Florencia, Roma, Seúl, San Pablo, San Petersburgo, La Habana, Helsinki y Bucarest. Él tiene una licenciatura en Cine y fotografía de Ithaca College, una Maestría en Bellas Artes en Artes Visuales de la Universidad de California en San Diego y una Maestría en Ciencias en el MIT. Ha sido investigador del Grupo Sociable Medios en el Media Lab del MIT, el Experimental Game Lab y el Centro para la Investigación en Informática y de las Artes en la Universidad de California en San Diego.

Actualmente, trabaja en su estudio en San Jose, California.