Kenan Aktulun, VP/creative director at Digitas has been working in interactive for thirteen years. His current work is driven by an interest in storytelling, as a manifestation of the creative process, and the way that technology is used to tell them.

03.07.07

An Artwork Authored by Everyone

What's currently your favorite site/project? We Feel Fine.

What's it about? It's an exploration of human emotion on a global scale. The site collects human feelings from a large number of blogs and displays them in a simple and beautiful way. It searches newly posted blog entries for the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling," identifies the "feeling" expressed in the sentence, and makes them searchable and sortable in a playful, meaningful interface.

What's so great about it? Despite the enormity of the database (several million and growing by 15,000 to 20,000 new feelings every day), its simplicity.

What's your job? I'm a creative director at Digitas New York.

If you have a degree in what field is it? An undergraduate degree in graphic design and photography and graduate studies in film and history.

How did you get involved in this industry? I started as a designer and when I got my first computer (Apple II) I started exploring new tools. In 1994 I helped form the interactive department of an ad agency in Austin, Texas which had high-tech clients such as Dell and Motorola.

What's your biggest Web (design) turn-off? Flash intros and any technology that has no real purpose.     

From what, or who, does your inspiration come? Late Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto; their visionary approaches to time and space inspire me everyday. And W.B. Yeats's and Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi's poetry push imagination and storytelling with words that are constructed in very simple yet powerful ways.

What's the weirdest thing you've bought online? A photo exhibit catalog from Japan.
    
What do you do in your spare time? Read and photograph.

What music are you listening to right now? Jordi Savall's "Tous les Matin du Monde."

What product can you not live without? My espresso maker.