This is a transcript of the Spur of the Moment episode “Bridging art, architecture, and technology with Jason Bruges.” It is provided as a courtesy and may contain errors.

Jason Bruges: I don’t mind, actually, the conversations lead and the kind of ideas, these urban myths about, “What is this doing?” That’s the kind of thing that could be really fascinating.

Jocelyn Hittle: Welcome to “Spur of the Moment”, the podcast of Colorado State University’s Spur campus in Denver, Colorado.

Jason Bruges: Up close you’ll better see these beautiful printed circuit boards and the components, like pieces of jewelry, but then they’ll come to life, they’ll breathe. I think creating work that can be experienced in many different forms, I think is really useful.

Jocelyn Hittle: On this podcast we talk with experts in food, water, health, the environment, and in this case the arts, about how they are tackling big challenges in these areas. I’m Jocelyn Hittle and I am joined today by Jason Bruges, an artist, designer and head of Jason Bruges studio. Jason’s studio does public art installations that incorporate technology, lighting, robotics, and various media, and that respond to their audience and environment. The Jason Bruges studio will also have an installation at CSU Spur campus. Jason is joining me virtually from London today, welcome Jason.

Jason Bruges: Ah, thank you very much. I’m very glad to be here.

Jocelyn Hittle: I hesitated a bit to simply refer to you as an artist in that intro, the work you do really sits at the intersection of a number of different disciplines. How do you describe your work?

Jason Bruges: Well, that’s right, I trained as an artist but then my primary training was as an architect. So, it crosses over between arts, architecture and technology. So, if you draw a, I suppose, classic Venn diagram I’m in that little intersection in the middle, which just doesn’t really fit easily into one word. But, yes, I’m an artist working with technology at an architectural scale.

Jocelyn Hittle: Interesting that you have this varied background and that your work is really interdisciplinary as a result. Your team does, I believe, primarily public art installations and I think when many people think of public art, what comes to mind is maybe a mural or a large sculpture in a park, but what you just described of sitting at the center of that Venn diagram of art, technology and architecture, leads to very different types of public art that use different media and use a lot of technology. My understanding is it’s also frequently interactive with its audience or responsive to the environment around it. Can you talk a bit more about both that interactivity and the interdisciplinary nature of what you do?

Jason Bruges: So, yeah, interactivity is a key thing, a key thing we’re looking at in the work and quite often we’re using the movement of people through space, and interacting with that and using that as a kind of instruction or a cue for the work to come to life, for how it kind of performs. It’s almost like a sort of notation. And I’ve got a piece of work, which you’ll have to sort of imagine this, it’s a grid of fiberglass pandas, like the giant pandas, and they actually rotate to track you and they all look like they’re kind of staring at you. And it was a commission for the World Wildlife Fund, and it was all about obviously bringing people to think about what Wildlife Fund stands for, but interestingly the piece is very compelling because you’re being stared at by 100 pandas. So, if you can imagine that, walking around this grid, there’s a little army of pandas looking at you and they basically track. And they won’t stop tracking you until you stop moving, and we’re using, in that instance, thermal cameras to map the movement of people and it plays back into the choreography of the artwork. And that happens sort of again and again, we’re looking at environments or aspects of environments that are interesting and feeding that directly into the work.

Jocelyn Hittle: So, can you help us understand a little bit more, as a public artist, what is that process like for you to be brought into a project? What types of places do you work? How do you and your team become a part of a project?

Jason Bruges: So, my commissioners, or clients, are very often making new spaces. So, whether that is for higher education for universities, colleges, or whether it’s for infrastructure. So, not too long ago, we finished a piece of work that’s at Dallas Love Field Airport, and we’re mapping the movement of people on walkways through there and that was an open competition, as was the commission here. We’re currently working in the Harvard Medical campus for the new children’s hospital there, and we’re creating a piece for the lobby. Whilst that was an invited competition, they had seen a piece of work we’d created in the children’s hospital in London and the pieces of work there are very much about sort of distracting the children on their way to surgery, or for treatment. So, they’re quite often competitions but sometimes it’s also the designers of the spaces that come to us, because they can see how our work will weave into those environments and they might have an idea for a space, or a setting, where our work might help bring the environment to life and add another layer to it.

Jocelyn Hittle: As we’ve mentioned, you and your studio have a piece that will be installed at the CSU Spur campus, that piece, like many of yours, includes technology. It’s got lighting and integration of data that’s being collected in the building. Can you talk a little bit more about how technology is used across your various pieces?

Jason Bruges: So, the sort of mixed media component to the work is quite often using technology in different ways, so we’re using light or display technology to sort of animate spaces and bring them to life, but there are other sort of technical components we’re working with. Currently working with a series of robotic arms, the type of arms you might see in an automotive factory. We’re animating and choreographing a landscape in downtown Tokyo using four of these robot arms and, yeah, so we’re using sort of technology, it’s applied use of technology to different sorts of environments, to create these performances, these artful performances, that animate and bring spaces to life. And this technology is really part of the story, really, the important bit is telling the story and what the work is about. So, it’s not technology for technology’s sake, it’s not a case of this is the answer but what was the question? There’s a narrative that’s being told.

Jocelyn Hittle: So, can you maybe describe a couple of your installations and what it was like to see people experience them for the first time?

Jason Bruges: So, I’m going to talk about two here. So, we’ve recently created a project that you’ll be able to understand is that a kind of to the project that I’ll bring to Denver when it’s finished. And it was a commission for a building in central London where the client, the commissioner was looking to change how their buildings worked, and therefore we’re bringing in a team to look at greening the inside of the building, So bringing in planting and bringing in some sort of an internal garden, which was actually going to be tended for and looked after by local community. And we were fascinated with the process of trying to find out about how the plants would respond to the environment around them, so we started doing research into the NVDI technology, which a lot of your students will be very familiar with looking at reflected and absorbed infrared. We were growing these tea plants in the studio and it’s the last thing you’d expect to see in a sort of digital artist studio, is a little row of tea plants. But we’re in a big early 20th century building here in East London and we’ve got a railway running on, brick railway is running past, and the trains block the light coming into our studio. And the plants were actually changing their level of photosynthesis and the efficiency thereof in real time, and I didn’t know that. And that was fascinating, but things like those sorts of experiments and those real-type tests that we’re doing leads to where the work ends up. So, the piece that we ended up creating is sort of related to the makeup of plant cells and how it cascades across the surface of this lobby that it’s in, in Central London, relates to the microscopic makeup of plant cells. And we have two sort of, as a jewel aspect, from one side you can see modulating, animated light and from the other way you actually see data within the artwork itself, which is responding to real time plant feedback. I’ll go back to another environment, so in a children’s hospital in Central London we’d created this journey from wards to theater, and the audience for this work are between one-year-olds and 16-year-olds, so quite a wide range in terms of this pediatric visitors to the environment. And we’d create this wallpaper that walled the journey from ward to theater, and we had this half-toned, so by half-tone I mean dots that create this pattern that represent this north European birch forest, so these trees, but bursting out these trees, these animals appear as you’re being wheeled to the theater. And the whole point of it is to just completely distract the children on that journey, and it was just magical, A, the first time we managed to make this work, because we’re embedding our digital technology inside the wall so that this would come to life and it’s just magical for me, just seeing the effect that your work can have on people for the first time seeing it, and understanding it and that cognition of, “Where’s that coming from, is it projected over my shoulder?” But in that instance it’s coming from within the buildup of the actual wall itself and there’s a layer of… I’m trying to think what the right terminology would be, but it’s like plaster board, it’s dry lined wall. And the light’s coming through it and it’s very, very magical, and seeing that sort of effect and seeing the effect that has on people for the first time when they see the work, that’s the thing, it’s that sort of magic. And bringing, either, if the work can create a catalyst for discussion about something, like it might be the future of biotechnology or agri technology, or is it bringing joy? I mean, there’s sort of two, for me, kind of criteria for judging success, is that a kind of catalyst or a sense of joy.

Jocelyn Hittle: I can imagine that there are a couple of different reactions that people have. One might be the, “How does this work?” reaction where they’re maybe understanding for the first time that in some cases your pieces are responding to what they are doing. So, there’s a moment there that must be really fun to watch when people really understand that they can interact with this piece, which might not be that typical with a piece of public art.

Jason Bruges: Yeah, it works on many, many different layers, so there is that immediate feedback that when people realize that cognition that you’ve created, or essentially a mirror, or something that’s creating something they can have an effect over. But, obviously, quite often you’re working in the context of an environment where someone’s gonna see something day in day out, and either they’re traveling past a piece of work or they work in a building where you’ve created a piece of work, or it’s in some kind of transport infrastructure. If it’s an airport you might see it once a month or once a week, if you’re a familiar frequent traveler. So, then it’s about building layers of understanding of things that might happen that are different. So, if I walk over there versus walk over here, is there a different story? Or quite often we’ll use data that’s changing over the year, so you’ll have a texture that animates a piece. So, we just finished a piece in Seoul, in South Korea, which is a metaphor for a tree canopy and you go up through it on a big escalator through the… It’s a 45 foot diameter oculus, and there’s a suspended canopy of these digital components which are creating the effect of being in a tree. And we’re using real-time weather data all the time to change what that feels like. So, if there’s a gust of wind outside, this artwork will animate and change inside at the real-time, so you’re this link to the outside and there we slowly change the effect of the seasons on the artwork, so it’s not any dramatic changes. And it may reverse and go back again, like the weather does. There’s things that will always be different, and so therefore we can quite often say that the pieces of work that I’m creating in the studio working with me, that they’ll always be different. And no frame or key frame, or moment in time will be copied, so it’s always gonna be different.

Jocelyn Hittle: I love that there is that dual nature, that there’s the first experience and then the repeat experience. Maybe we could talk a little bit about the piece that you all will be installing at the CSU Spur campus, because it also will have that first experience that people have, it is installed on a glass pedestrian bridge that goes between two of our buildings. So, that’ll be the first experience that people have both from the outside of the building and walking through that bridge. And then a repeat experience for people like me, who will be living in that building, my office will be there, I’ll be there every day, so maybe you can describe that piece and hit on both of those two experiences.

Jason Bruges: So, the piece which without ever visiting the site and having a initial idea, I called rotation index, and indexing and sorting through data is obviously a lot what the work does. And rotation came from an idea which very simply, and this was kind of, imagine a common theme was looking at the landscape and the pivot irrigation systems, the historical ones, and looking at the effect that that has on our environment, but actually being fascinated by that movement and that direct impact of a mechanical movement on our environment. But then actually thinking of about circles and the circle of life, and data visualization system using circles, systems of measuring, looking at sectors on a kind of… Even looking right down at the electronics in front of me, there are circles in the hard drive or in solid state parts of equipment, where things are being plotted and measured all the time. So, it was an element of measuring and representation that came from the idea of circles. So, when you look at the bridge you’ll see this matrix, this grid of little circles. They are… They have holes in them so they are this various geometric terms for that flat tourist or that donut, but the idea being that it’s something that doesn’t cover or block the architectural elevation, it allows you to look through this bridge. The bridge is habitable, I believe there’ll be events on the bridge itself, it’s a circulation space. So, interestingly, it’s something that you can see from a far from the junction at the end of the street, you’ll be able to see the artwork but also from within the bridge you’ll be able to look out through the artwork. So, it’s something that’s actually gonna to work at different scales, I’m gonna get up really close and I can kind of look at the materials and up close you’ll better see these beautiful printed circuit boards within the components, like pieces of jewelry. And there’ll be craft within those, and a kind of technology but a beauty up close, but then they’ll come to life, they’ll breathe. Each one of these circles has a series of concentric circles which will aluminate. And at first glance this will be this kind of living animated pattern that will bring to life that elevation, but what we’re hoping that this piece becomes a portal into specific things that are happening. So, if there is an experiment happening in one of the growth chambers or the greenhouse, and there are parameters or things changing, we can use those same parameters to drive the artwork. So, in the same ways I might change from the conditions in the greenhouse to see what happens with an experiment that might be taking place, that equally will change the output from the artwork. So, if you imagine that the artwork is almost like one of those digital pets you used to have as a kid, called… It’s sort of like Tamagotchi. The artwork is like one of those, if we feed it and water it in certain ways it will grow and transform and it’ll have different outputs that we won’t know until we’ve given it those parameters. So, it will be needed to be fed and looked after, or watered by that data, so that data will be its lifeline and will bring it to life. And a lot of that detail, it’s not a graph on the wall. I mean, it could be but it’s a catalyst for conversation, we just want people to talk about it and go, “I kind of wonder what’s happening in those buildings? I can’t see in their black boxes,” for lots of good reasons. And apart from where you’ve got lovely architectural fenestration where I can see in, but a lot of the things will be hidden. So, it’s very much about starting a discussion and making people curious. And if people become curious and have conversations, and quite often, I don’t mind actually if the conversations lead and the kind of ideas, these urban myths about, “What is this doing?” That’s the kind of thing that could be really fascinating.

Jocelyn Hittle: Yes, I would love it if this piece of art started urban myths around how the lights move around these rings that you’ve described and why. I would call that a success. One of the things that CSU Spur campus is focused on is inspiring particularly young people, but everyone really, who comes through our doors, to think about how they can have an impact on these big global challenges we’re talking about, food, water, health, the environment. And to help them understand that there are ways that they can engage in these topics regardless of background, regardless of discipline. And I think you just did a wonderful job of describing how art can connect with these topics and how artists can contribute, so thank you. I may need to come back and listen to this again before we start giving tours of the site, so that I can describe it, as poetically as you just did, what is happening with this wonderful piece of art that we’re so excited to see.

Jason Bruges: No, likewise, sometimes it’s quite good to come back to what you’ve discussed, to think about how best to interpret the work as well. Do you create a digital twin for this piece, can it also live online as well? And by that I mean it’s a sort of representation of this piece. When you’re talking about inspiring a wide range of different types of people from different backgrounds, I think creating work that can be experienced, downloaded, thought about, discussed, in many different forms I think is really useful. And something that one of the bits of silver lining, I think, from this year is actually contemplating that and thinking about how work is disseminated above and beyond the physical environment, but of course that becomes, and still is, a massively important part of it.

Jocelyn Hittle: Yeah, I think what you’re describing with the digital twin idea is something we think about with the Spur campus as well, “How can it not just be a location in Denver but also serve the entire state of Colorado, at the very least, and maybe nationally, internationally offer content in food, water, health, and the arts, and all of those topics we’ve been touching on?” The past year for us has really intensified and accelerated our thinking around that virtual space, because there was such need for good educational content for everyone whose kids were at home and for everyone who might wanna experience something from afar, that they had planned on visiting in person, and we’re looking for ways to still have some semblance of normalcy this year. So, maybe we can talk a little bit about the past year, what has the COVID-19 pandemic meant in terms of your work? How has it changed what you’re doing and… You mentioned a few silver linings, but are there ways that it has changed your work that you think will continue?

Jason Bruges: So, yeah, the COVID-19 pandemic has… I mean, interestingly, I’ve traveled now twice in the year so that’s something incredibly unusual, and I think for me I’ve reflected upon the fact that I’ve been actually able to do a lot of work without leaving, actually, Central London in the UK. And that’s quite an interesting thing really and it makes me think about, well, working for me is really important to see sites, see places, meet the people you’re gonna be collaborating and working with, and for, and not doing that has been interesting. And obviously this work is very site specific. Sites and spaces are incredibly subtle and there’s very subtle nuances about spaces and places, and there are certain things you just have to see and experience it firsthand. So, to look at a site only on Google Earth and from architectural visualizations, and ask questions through, obviously, very wonderful meetings online via video conference. It’s interesting to sort of think about, “Well, how are my responses to places changing based on fact being slightly…” I mean a kind of digital photograph or video, or Google Earth is a slightly blunt instrument by which to understand the world in terms of something that is multi-sensorial. But it has brought an idea that we can work flexibly, I mean, out of all the specialists in my team, both in this creative and the technological side, usually there’s nearly 30 people in the studio And today, actually, there’s quite a few there’s about five or six people testing things, we’re allowed to come into a place of work if you can’t do it reasonably from home. So, that’s pretty much been like that for the last 12 months, so I’m coming in ’cause I’m looking at things and looking at what they physically look like rather than via a camera. So, this ability to work flexibly has been interesting and it means that I think practice and how I work will be much more fluid moving forward. We won’t be waiting to have physical meetings, which is good. And hopefully commissioners will be more trusting, not, trusting is the wrong word but more… We won’t be wedded to a process that it means we have to travel, and I think it will be like important occasions, probably at the start of project still, but hopefully the gateways within the project will be less of them where we have the kind of requirement to be somewhere physically. And I think obviously that’s gonna be great for all sorts of things, environmentally and spend, resource and budget on the bits of the project that will be manifested and remembered.

Jocelyn Hittle: Absolutely. So, you mentioned your team. Can we talk a little bit more about your team, because your work really sits at such an intersection of different disciplines, you must have quite a wide variety of skill sets that you need and that you have on your team?

Jason Bruges: We’ve got a fabulous team that ranges from photographers, physicists… Um, I’m trying to find a clever way of– We’ve got performers. but, yeah, 3D design, 2D design, time-based, performance, coders, engineers of different types, electronic engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, design engineers, architects, artists. So, quite a wide range of people inputting into projects. I’d say people quite often with dual skills, so I’m always fascinated by the fact that people could have two different skills that might be not evident, and they will kind of be . But everyone in the team is incredibly important at different points in the process of bringing work, making work happen. And you never know when a good idea is going to come from.

Jocelyn Hittle: So, Jason, I’d like to shift gears a little bit and talk about diversity and equity as it relates to your work. Can you speak to how that has impacted, how you and your team think about incorporating diversity and equity?

Jason Bruges: So, I mean, there’s many answers there. I mean, it’s been something that I think our work has always embraced cultural diversity and I’d say, yeah, the Black Lives Matter movement has definitely brought all of that thinking to the forefront of our minds, definitely, but the thing that’s always been important in terms of creating public work is very much how it is accessed, how it’s understood and how it’s perceived. So, that’s something that’s really important, and the process we go through we’re re-evaluating how that’s disseminated, how we give opportunities to people to understand it. So, quite a large number of my team are either involved in research or teaching, both engineering, coding, architecture, arts. So, we are thinking about how is our work understood and how does that benefit the research we’re doing in the studio? How are we sharing that and how are we creating knowledge transfer and how is that an accessible? So, on a whole series of levels, so on some projects we’re working with primary school children, secondary school children, so from age five to 16, 18. And then obviously as our collaborations and our teaching with different university courses as well, so… And the other thing, I suppose we’re working across nearly 25 different countries where our work’s been commissioned, so having to develop work that responds to different conditions and tries to explore localization, I mean, it’s very interesting looking at a site in Chengdu, or in Seaham, or in Shanghai, versus Tokyo, versus Seoul, and just seeing differences there in a certain part of the world. But we have commissions currently running in Ottawa, Boston, obviously Denver, Tampa, and I love the richness of the world, I love how places is different. And it’s something we embrace and very careful to look at, I mean, I talked about the genius or the atmosphere of a place, but sort of take that on board but not appropriate anything. The work is original and it is from my philosophy of thinking, it’s from the studios thinking, and I think we’re always considering this matrix of inputs and we realize that how something looks and operates will differ in different parts of the world. And one thing I suppose this has made me reflect upon a little bit is, ’cause we’re very keen to develop work that is sustainable and will last, essentially, is how will future generations look at what we’re doing now? And we touch on quite a few subjects within the work I’m interested in, so we’re looking at obviously data, we’re looking at resources, we are looking at the sustainability of the projects as well, and I’d love to fast forward 40 years and look back and have that hindsight but we’re not going to have the luxury of that. But it’s fascinating to how we’re looking back on what once were cultural artifacts which was biased and skewed, and therefore, yeah, it’s gonna be interesting to see how things progress and how much we can… Hopefully we have the benefit of foresight rather than hindsight.

Jocelyn Hittle: Mm-hmm . Yeah, you touched on a lot of different aspects of diversity there, right? Geographic and cultural and age, there are a lot of different ways that your audiences vary that you all have to take into account. So, I want to shift gears again, we have a few minutes left and I want to be sure we have a little bit of a chance to talk about your journey. So, as you know, one of the things that the Spur campus is hoping to do is to inspire young people to consider careers they might not thought about. And to connect to those careers to these big challenges where it’s appropriate, but really we are interested in telling the story of people who have all kinds of different careers so that students can see themselves and see their path, and see that they have the opportunity to emulate someone who is potentially a role model for them. So, I think about your path maybe not being such a straight line, given your various different backgrounds that have led you here. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got where you are?

Jason Bruges: Absolutely. So, slightly planned slightly not planned journey. My family, you realize your DNA and your programming, to a degree, my mother was a trained artist and my father a computer scientists and software engineer. So, there’s quite a bit of both parts of the way I’m practicing now that really do utilize that part of my upbringing. I mean, being surrounded by paintings, photography, the arts, and not just with my mother but other artists in the family. But at the same time we would have very early PCs dotted around the house, which I was using from quite an early age to code or create my homework, or do various things, and I certainly was really interested in this intersection between engineering and the sciences, and arts, and wondering how I could find something fulfilling that would… I didn’t really have a plan I enjoyed lots of different things, and certainly was really interested in the sciences. We do our A levels in the UK at sort of 17, 18, and I studied design and technology, pure mass, applied mass, physics, and . So, that isn’t really… There was no arts, I mean, the schooling system here will quite often split, will not allow for the arts and the sciences to happen at the same time, which would be one thing I’d go back and change, if I could, for lots of people. And I figured that something like architecture would be interesting, it kind of uses both of those core areas. So, I trained as an architect at Oxford Brookes, in Oxford, and very much I was learning about architecture the first time, but it’s very varied. You learn about history of art, you learn about buildings, you learn about construction, you learn about engineering, we even did environmental psychology, so how buildings make people feel. We had some wonderful professor that was interested in extreme environments, so we learned how spaceships were built, we had some really… And we had people that were building performance installations, so we had wide range of inputs. And, certainly, I was moving at that point, even early on, towards the idea of performance and the idea of a building being a moving, living thing. I worked for Norman Foster, an architect in Hong Kong, worked on the airport there as a trainee architect, learning how to create production information for buildings. Came back and did my postgraduate at University College London, at the Bartlett School of Architecture. But I landed in this unit and it was under the guide of this gentleman called Peter Cook, who was part of Archigram. A group of architects was quite radical, they thought buildings should walk, perform, change, inflate, all sorts of things. And we were taught, really, about ways of thinking and we weren’t taught about designing buildings, it was like people became interested in film or robots, or different sort of things, and they’ve got a really big unit now which looks at bio-architecture, architects that really links with plants and buildings together. And I advise and teach them various things now, but that set me on a journey and I did not know where that was going because I was building things that look like they could be in Hollywood, in terms of special effects, but I was building dynamic, robotic art installations within my postgraduate architectural training. And it was like, “Where does this fit in to the built environment?” And I essentially was prototyping ideas and experiments of what I’m doing now, but it was all under the guide of Peter Cook who was the professor looking after the thinking in the school. And it was very much turning things on their head, and he was very much interested in the idea of disruption. And that was key thinking. ’cause I came out of architecture school thinking, “What does this lead to?” I worked a little bit more as an architect but I also worked for a company called Imagination, which designed experiences. And they were this amazing company that develops expos and trade shows, and world cup launches, and all sorts of things. And they had a group of people in a room that was, the name on the door was R&D, research and development. And you’d go in there and they’d have lamps and projectors, and they had a multimedia room with new computer systems, and very much they were designing theater so my eyes were opened to this new time-based way of creating architecture. So, my idea of this architectural installations meeting this theater was, I suppose, the influences that then sent me on my way. And I started to exhibit my own work before I had any commissions, which set me on a journey. And my first commission that I won whilst finishing my work there was a series of devices on roundabouts, the junctions we have on our big roads, and this was a elevated roadway running east out of London. And I won a competition to create these public artworks that would measure the environment and create these, what I was calling these Litmus devices for testing the environment. And these were giant alphanumeric displays coming up 30, 40 feet out of these roundabouts, that were measuring the environment. And I won this competition and suddenly I had to build, so that’s what sent me on my way, I had to set my studio up and think about “How am I going to… Yeah, how is this going to progress?” So I had to hire, I had an assistant part-time, I had a couple of students helping me, I had a colleague from my last job came and helped me do production, design and drawings. And at the same time we won a project for an artwork in a hotel in Spain, where these digital walls would film people walking through the spaces and change color like a chameleon. So, that was another, an early commission nearly 15 years ago, 16 years ago. So, it’s projects like that that brought the studio into being sort of big environment or barometers on roundabouts, and digital wallpapers which were like a chameleon skin responding to the fashion and the colors being worn by people.

Jocelyn Hittle: So, you said it’s been about 15, 16 years, roughly how many installations have you done in that time?

Jason Bruges: Well, they were built so I started… I mean, I left my last job, actually it’ll be 20 years this summer. The studio was officially incorporated 19 years ago and I think we’ve built permanent and temporary pieces, probably around 300.

Jocelyn Hittle: Wow, amazing. Amazing.

Jason Bruges: Of all different scales, so probably the larger projects about 150. And by large projects, either building facades or things in lobbies, or parts of airports, or things, and probably a good proportion of those still exist today. Some have been decommissioned, some were temporary. So, it’s been a fun journey so far and I’ve no plans to stop, so yeah.

Jocelyn Hittle: Great. Well, I’m thrilled to hear that. And I think from the CSU Spur perspective, I keep circling back to this, that the multidisciplinary approach that we are taking with Spur, I think you’re such a good example of what happens when you have multiple influences come together, and certain kind of educational background that intersects with a different kind of passion or an inspiration from an individual who sort of can maybe push you along a certain path. So, we just have a few minutes left so I wanna be sure, you’ve done a great job over the course of this conversation describing these installations that are fundamentally something that needs to be seen and experienced. So, thank you for that, but where can we point people so that they can see some more of your work, so we can point people in the right direction?

Jason Bruges: I’m blessed with a fairly unique name, so pretty much under any of the social media channels if you look up Jason Bruges you’ll find some representation, our website is jasonbruges.com where we have a portfolio of work. It’s fairly simple, it’s representation of a selection of some of the work. And, interestingly, actually it bifurcates into a art portfolio, but there are some projects which have been commissioned as design projects, so we’ve got a brief essentially where there’re criteria they’re judged against, so they’re slightly more leaning towards design commissions. The work is highly visual, so doing a podcast is wonderful but I do a lot of talking about what things look like. So, yes, Instagram is a great place, @jasonbruges for the, again, an ongoing cataloging and description of this year’s work. We’re doing quite a lot of work looking at our archives, we’re doing work where we look at the prototyping we do within the studio, occasionally we’ll mention what we’re up to on Twitter. We have Facebook, and actually because a lot of the work is moving and animated, the Jason Bruges Vimeo channel is actually quite a good place to look at longer versions. What people love seeing is the making of, the documenting of, and obviously we will have that for this piece, a rotation index. There’s something for everyone, and which I think is nice and means that it will inspire many different types of people, hopefully.

Jocelyn Hittle: Wonderful, thank you. We will link to all of your various social media channels, and particularly that Vimeo channel, it is a great recommendation. I highly encourage all of our listeners to go and take a look, because you really don’t… It’s hard for us to describe how impactful and just fun so many of these installations are, and watching people in their day-to-day life have that discovery moment or interact with it, maybe as they do every day, is really an important component of what makes your work so special and impactful. So, we are going to wrap up. So, I have a spur of the moment question for you which you have not heard before. But because we focus a little on food at the Spur campus I’ll just ask you, if you had one food that you had to eat every day for the rest of your life, what would that food be?

Jason Bruges: Well, I have to say, I do this based on experience. I traveled to Mumbai an India a few years ago with a group of students, and also had a commissioner there as well. And we were there to see the city, see the culture, we were to look at how things were recycled, we went to the slum areas, we went to the adjacent rural areas. Absolutely fascinating. And I do really love Indian curries, I love all the different varieties of them, southern Indian in north Indian. Anyway, I was kind of wondering, “Am I going to get bored of Indian Curry?” And I had them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two weeks, and I have to say I didn’t. So, that’s probably a safe option is to go down that route.

Jocelyn Hittle: Well, Jason, thank you so much for your time. It’s been lovely talking with you and we are so thrilled that you and your team are working on an installation at the Spur campus, we can’t wait for the day that that is installed and we are able to experience it in person. Wish you all the best in the meantime, and thank you so much for joining us today.

Jason Bruges: All right. Thanks, Jocelyn, that’s wonderful. And thank you for your time and the invite to talk.

Jocelyn Hittle: One last thank you to Jason for joining us on the “Spur of the Moment” podcast today. You can visit his website and see images and video of the amazing installations that he and his team have installed around the world, at jasonbruge.com. His last name is spelled B-R-U-G-E-S. And do also look for him on various social media channels and on Vimeo to see video of how these installations, which many of which are fundamentally interactive and move with the people and the environment around them, really worth checking them out on Vimeo. Thanks again to Jason, and we’ll see you next time on “Spur of the Moment.” The “Spur of the Moment” podcast is produced by Peach Islander Productions and our theme music is by Ketsa. Please visit the show notes for links mentioned during today’s episode. We hope you’ll join us in two weeks for the next “Spur of the Moment” episode. Until then, be well.