The Design and Technology programs at Parsons are excited to announce Cloud Salon, a new online webinar that invites artists, designers, technologists, and industry professionals to present projects and engage in direct conversations with participants. These talks will be hosted over Zoom every Friday from April 3 through May 8. Every event is moderated by a faculty member at Parsons Design + Technology.

Fan and Shunshan will present and discuss their current and recent work, followed by a conversation with attendees moderated by Aaron Hill, Assistant Professor of Data Visualization at Parsons.

Fan Xiang is an artist, graphic designer, and educator whose activities vary from graphic design, signage design to digital arts.

Fan is known for her visualization-based artworks. A key project is AwardPuzzle, an online interactive visualization platform that encourages people to explore “winning tips” through data from national art competition, and it triggers public attention to ideology management in visual arts. She is fascinated with synthesizing graphic design and technology as a telescope into unseen reality. Fan has researched signage and pictogram design in Japan and China and has written a book, Wayfinding Signage System Design, and a series of research papers. She is currently an Associate Professor at Academy of Art and Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing.

Shunshan (Sam) Zhu is a software architect whose expertise includes neural network, data collection, database, WAN optimization, cloud computing, and data visualization.

Before he found his interests in data visualization and new media, Shunshan worked in the enterprise software industry for more than 15 years, with GTE Labs (Telecommunication, now Verizon), BMC Software (System Data Collection on Unix/Windows/Linux), Gotuit (Video on Demand) and Certeon (WAN Acceleration). He worked for several years on his own startup software companies focusing on WAN optimization, internet security, cloud computing products, and recently has been working on a revolutionary English education product powered by AI.

Z Lab is a research lab founded by Fan Xiang and Shunshan (Sam) Zhu in 2015. Z Lab focuses on data visualization of complicated social behaviors and collective activities, dynamic media design, and digital arts. The goal of their research is to exploit the potentials of data visualization and information design and provide innovative and engaging visual artifacts to enable researchers, scholars and commercial companies to build solid arguments.

For more information and registration click here