blackrimglasses

Pre-BRG’s. Mills inspired me.

I am Ethan Kaplan, 27 years old. I am the Senior Director of Technology for Warner Bros Records, where I find cool things and help a big record company act on them. It is a fun job with loud music. I also own and operate Murmurs.com in a sort of collaboration with the band R.E.M. I have done this since I was 16. I like R.E.M. quite a bit, as people and as musicians. Above is myself with R.E.M. in 2001 at a radio performance. Notice how I bring the cool quotient of the room down by about four notches?

In 2005 I got an MFA and a MA from UC Santa Barbara in Digital and Conceptual Art. My thesis was about rock concerts, complexity theory and space. My other thesis was about a mega-huge multiagent system architecture I developed in Java (38000 lines!) for competative organization of agnostic data. It rocks and I’m still thinking of making a product out of it at some point. At UCSB I taught conceptual and performance art, as well as introductory digital art. My approach was less focused on art as visual media, and more on art expressed through computers, film, photography and social interaction. I wrote a lot of papers. At some point I’ll put them up here.

I have spoken at various conferences on technology and art, lectured to classes of a few hundred, been an associate professor, been on TV, on the radio, in magazines and books. More than anything, I owe everything my life to the following things, in order of importance: my wife Amy, my family, my dog Natasha and cat Snooper, computers, the band R.E.M. and Apple Computer (my first ones).

Reach me at ethankap AT (@) murmurs.com or ethan a@t warnerbrosrecords.com and IM me at EthanKap (if you dare)

My Listening Habits Explained

Amy and I in NYC