Memo Akten

"I like to touch people, in their most private places, and make them giggle or cry." At the intersection of technology, art and design, Mehmet (aka Memo) Akten’s work focuses on designing, developing and hijacking technology to create emotional and memorable experiences. A visual artist, musician and engineer, he is 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. Also applying similar techniques to traditionally non-interactive media he explores new ways of creating and performing moving images and sound. Founder of The Mega Super Awesome Visuals Company, his work ranges from large-scale immersive interactive installations; music/dance/theatre performances, music videos; to online works and mobile applications. Recently his “Body Paint” installation has been shown at exhibitions across the world including the Victoria & Albert Museum as part of the “Decode” exhibition. The generative visuals he designed and developed for “My Secret Heart”, a collaboration with Flat-e and Mira Calix, has toured countless locations including the Royal Festival Hall in London, Edinburgh Film Festival, The Sydney Biennale, Paris, Tokyo and is now touring as part of The Creators Project in New York, Sao Paulo and Beijing. Various other works, performances and collaborations include the Science Museum, Ars Electronica, Mapping festival, Glastonbury festival, Aldeburgh Music, BBC Philharmonic, Depeche Mode and brands such as Apple, Adidas, Rolls-Royce and Toyota. Also an open-source advocate, a lot of his source-code and experiments are documented on his blog www.memo.tv. 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 commercial projects with international brands.