Meet Helin Ulas

Still image from live visual performance by Helin Ulas during Automation Lab performance in Berlin.

Helin Ulas, is a lovely human and long-time friend of School of Machines. An artist, designer, and educator, originally from Turkey, she is also the upcoming instructor for Algorithmic Bodies, a class which uses TouchDesigner as a tool for empowerment, creating collective space for participants to look more deeply at their bodies and themselves.

How did you get your started in creative technology? Has the path always been straight-forward?

I started using creative technology almost 8 years ago now. The path for me has not been so straightforward. I first started with Computer Engineering, then went into communication. A few years into this, I decided to change career paths, started doing design and found myself using creative technologies with a need to visualise information/data. At the time, I was interested in political movements and how to tell stories of change in socio/political environments.

Creative technology was a point where I could experiment with participatory ways of interacting with information. Through back and forth with visual storytelling and using different types of technologies to understand their impact on society, I now stand at a  point where I like to create media environments using technological tools to display stories that I get pulled into artistically.

What have been some highlights of working in the field thus far?

It’s been an exciting journey so far. It took me a while to find my voice using technological tools and how I wanted to deploy them in my work. Eventually, in the end, the biggest highlight for me is feeling content with the choice of using tech creatively. This has brought with it the chance to collaborate with very interesting people, meet many friends whom I find so inspiring, experiment with performance art, learn how to build immersive spaces for participatory experiences and keep calm when I read an unpleasant error message from the computer.

Pivoting a little, what is your interest in bodies and feminism? How do these topics tie into your work?

I come from a place in the world in which I found often times the feminine voice in me was somehow lowered. As I go through experiences and face new challenges, I have found more and more need to reach out to this voice. 

I was recently reading a book by Roxanne Gay,” Bad Feminist”. In it, she explained all the reasons why she could be considered a bad feminist, but she still liked to talk about it from a personal perspective. 

I think this was one of these texts that echoed my own approach to the topic. I might not be a ‘good feminist’ but I still like to talk about these topics because I think they are linked to my life. 

I like to explore this, especially experimenting with using our bodies as the primary input source; how can we use our bodies to tell stories while using technology creatively? I like to view this from a critical-thinking framework, in which feminist ideas and studies are applied to our creative practice. 

What are challenges for beginners to learn tools such as TouchDesigner? What turned you on to that particular software in the first place?

Learning to use tools like TouchDesigner can definitely be a bit of a challenge at first. There's a steep learning curve and it can take some time to get the hang of the interface and how system building works. But I've found that using a visual programming environment has really helped me get my ideas across to the machine faster and more intuitively. It's a way of interacting with the computer using charts and visual feedback, which I find really helpful. 

The environment itself allows for quick prototypes and testing ideas. This makes it also a nice tool to prototype technical requirements that might be needed in a project or to prototype visual storytelling environments with lots of modularity and options for fast iterations.

What is your teaching style? What ideas do you find most important to get across?

I am not so big on traditional lecturing. I prefer a more participatory teaching style, where everyone is encouraged to contribute and learn from one another. I believe in open knowledge culture in learning environments. I think that we all have valuable experiences and perspectives to share, so having an environment where we can all learn from our experiences creates a place for collective learning. 

I think a practice-based approach, where we make mistakes and learn from them, and experiment with different ideas and tools, is essential when we acquire new technical knowledge.

I think it is always surprising and amazing to see how much inspiration can come out of bouncing ideas and experimenting with them with a hand on approach. Really looking forward to the class. :)

For more information and to sign-up for Algorithmic Bodies, a five-week online program which runs Thursdays from 16. March - 13. April, click here.