Tabitha Swanson
Taking innovation to the next level, Tabitha Swanson is a multi-disciplined artist within creative technology. From AR to XR and everything in between, Tabitha works in order to learn and create entirely new outcomes each time. Recently she worked alongside Dead Hype Radio and Adidas Originals to produce an animation that was displayed on the big screen during their Berlin pre release event. The event that was entirely an audience of people in their cars, enabled them to enjoy music and art during the pandemic. Tabitha also teaches animation and AR at the Design Akademie Berlin, creates face filters for Instagram and much more. Read on to hear more from Tabitha about her technical process and what she has planned for the future.
Can you tell us about how you got to where you are today working within creative technology and AR?
I have a pretty varied background and definitely had a long, roundabout pathway to working with creative tech and AR. I went to school for design, then fashion and then marketing. I worked in these industries and co-owned a creative strategy agency back in Canada before coming back to design, where I went from graphic design and art direction, to UX/UI, and then more creative technology and XR (extended reality). I think overall as a society, we’re realising it’s never too late to learn new skills and that continuing to learn has become easier and more accessible than ever before, which I think is beautiful. Anyone could wake up tomorrow and decide they want to learn something new!
One of your recent projects created for Dead Hype Radio and Adidas Originals was shown on the big screen at their Berlin pre release event - how did you enjoy collaborating on this large scale project?
I loved working on this project, which I called Hearken. I am so grateful to Dead Hype Radio (@deadhyperadio) and Bernard Koomson specifically for bringing me onto this project. He gave me a lot of trust and creative freedom to essentially create a storyboard I was passionate about and just slipped in a few key elements that had to be there. I think this kind of approach can be really empowering to an artist/creative and often allows the best work to come out because they can really just let the creative energy flow in the truest sense. At about 3.5 minutes, this was definitely the longest and most complicated full animation I’d made and there was a lot of prep that went in before starting to render. We accompanied the piece with a track by Lava Dome (@lava_dome) that I fit some of the cuts in the video to. The piece was shown at a drive-in theatre alongside some excellent music and visual performances and a documentary about Dead Hype and in my opinion was an innovative way to gather community during corona times.
What was your workflow for this project?
Some intense planning definitely came first and understanding stuff like what elements I’d need, what characters I had to make, what the different scenes were, etc. I made a number of the characters custom for this project in Daz3D, then exported them and added animations through Mixamo, then stuck them into Blender where I created the scenes and rendered them out. After that, I cut and edited the video in After Effects and Premier Pro.
You have recently started teaching animation and some AR at the Design Akademie Berlin - can you tell us a bit more about this?
I’m really thankful for this experience. For years, I’ve been giving workshops and presentations on UX/UI and design in general (and prior to that a lot of marketing presentations), and it was a nice experience to be challenged to bring that into a longer-term and more formalised, structured setting with some clear goals. It’s really important to me to listen to the students I’m teaching and try to understand their perspectives and what they need. It’s a humbling experience to be a teacher, I think. You have to really practice empathy and patience and also learn how to shut up and listen in a different way lol. I’m so proud of all the students I’ve had so far and honestly so inspired at the work that they created – some of them had never animated before and it was beautiful to see that growth throughout the semester. I think I learn as much from them as they learn from me.
What softwares and techniques do you use to create work?
I use quite a variety of softwares in my regular workflow. For design and video work, I use the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite and for 3D work, I use Blender, C4D, and have been learning some Unreal Engine; I use SparkAR for filters. For UX and UI, I’ve used other programs in the past, but I mostly use Figma and Sketch now.
I’ve recently started using Clo3D to create digital fashion garments, but still have a ton to learn. Sometimes I play around with RunwayML if I want an easy way to use machine learning to spice things up (everyone should try this out, it’s so accessible to use) – I like the unpredictability of these outcomes. Technique-wise, I think I’m often trying new things out. I’m a big advocate for multidisciplinarianism – I think that approaching different problems forces you to think in different ways which can often help you solve other seemingly unrelated challenges in a roundabout way.
What influenced you to start making face filters for IG?
Prior to working with 3D and XR, I was working in UX/UI and had a lot of contact with experiential marketing – I think that allowing users to experience a piece in a more visceral and tangible way where they could interact with was extremely appealing. Before I had ever worked with XR, I read an article that described it as the ultimate empathy machine and I peg that as the defining moment where I decided I wanted to work in this field. World building is extremely important to me. I write everyday and growing up, all my homework was covered in drawings. I would very often create fantasy worlds in my head that I would visit whenever I felt that need or desire to and often wished I could share them in a way that people could better experience. I also grew up reading a lot and have thought for a long time that reading a piece of fiction is the closest someone can get to reading another person’s mind as that world is completely created by them – I think experiencing a 3D animation or an XR world created by one person is a different way of peering through that doorway.
I’ve been really thankful and lucky to have been able to not only make filters for enjoyment, but to be able to support myself doing it for clients like Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Origins, and Vans. I recently gave a filter workshop with Nike alongside Ines Alpha (@ines.alpha) and Dani Coyle (@inter_sexy) and have given a number of workshops to classes and agencies. There are so many great resources online and people who give fantastic tutorials such as Noland Chaliha (@alwayscodingsomething), Luke Hurd (@lukehurd), and Josh Becwith (positlabs), just to name a few.
Your work merges the lines between real life and technology through the means of the internet - how do you see the future unfolding in terms of progression within technological knowledge?
This is a complicated one. To touch first on technical knowledge, I think we’ve access to learn whatever we want to at this point as individuals and we’re realising that more. I think educational institutions are being called into question, and those queries have been exacerbated with corona and quarantine/having to learn online anyhow. I think we’re still only at the starting point of a huge disruption in the field of formalised education. In regards to the threshold between real life and technology, it’s something I’ve thought a lot about, especially as I’m so online. I made a small piece called IRL*URL that speaks to some of these blurred lines. I think it can be an incredible tool to allow people to experiment, learn about new aspects of themselves be it anonymously or not, and perhaps LARP a little bit, but something I’ve really been chewing on is that in order to make real change, all of this has to be taken offline as well and made into formalised policy. It’s also prudent to keep in mind that while we get a ton of beautiful benefits from platforms like Instagram, they are still (at the end of the day) large tech corporations and their bottom line will always be capital gain.
You recently worked with the medical research facility Charité in Berlin doing UX/UI for their VR therapy project neomento – can you tell us a bit more about this project?
Charité is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe that runs a ton of research, testing, and other projects – I was honoured to be asked to work on this project. The product is called neomento and it’s a VR therapy experience designed to allow therapists to guide patients through exposure therapy simulations. In order to properly work on this, I had to learn a lot about biometrics, psychology, therapy and the way therapists structure their workflows, and the medical industry within Germany. The team was sincerely incredible, every person was so smart and a complete expert at what they did and it was inspiring to see such a passionate team. I was brought on as a contractor just this year to sort out the user experience, though they’ve been working on the project for years. My role was to design the interface and logic for the therapist and allow them to access and understand the different customisable features to really tailor the experience for each patient. This was challenging in a different way because while it had to look nice, looking cool or eye-catching was not the point of it at all, it was more about functionality and ease of usability.
Where do you see your work progressing into in the near future?
I would like to work more in fashion as a 3D fashion designer. As a kid, being a fashion designer was my dream, but I soon realised I hated sewing and went to school for fashion marketing instead. It’d be nice to be able to bring that passion back to the forefront of what I do and approach it from a different angle.
I showed a piece at Paris Fashion Week last year FW2019 and I think for FW2021, I’d like to release my own digital fashion line. We’ll see how it works out lol. I recently collaborated with Scotoma Lab (@scotomalab) through the agency Mutantboard (@mutantboard), rendering out some digital fashion pieces they made for Sevdaliza and that was such a fun project with a lot of learning on workflow and how to move items between different programs. I also had fun making a little elf render of a shirt I designed for NTS Radio. I also appreciate the sustainability aspects of digital fashion. When I was at Zalando, I had brief encounters assisting the research team for digital fashion and sizing. I think there is great potential for the future with e-commerce as sizing is one of the main reasons users send back online fashion purchases add to waste and increased postage. I think I’d also like to work on more audiovisual projects and more long-winded AR and VR experiences. Maybe I’ll make a music track? I’ve always loved teaching and mentoring and I think I’ll continue doing that for the rest of my life. I’m currently am part of an exhibition at The Reed (@thereed_) as part of Berlin Art Week alongside four other amazing artists until September 23rd. We’re showing work on over ten different screens, including one of the largest LED screen in Germany. I’m so grateful to them and Jo Dreier for bringing us on to that project. I’d love to do more net art exhibitions like this in the future. Overall, I’m fairly open-minded. I’m really passionate about creating things and exploration in general and while I set a lot of goals for myself, I’m also fairly flexible about these goals and open to adapting them as I learn more and encounter new variables. I’m generally happy to be challenged and surprised and often find myself most comfortable in a state of change.
interview GABY MAWSON
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