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I was chasing perfection.

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Welcome to portraits of an artist, the podcast where I get the honor of connecting with creative minds to explore their journeys and uncover the stories behind their work. I'm your host, Ryan Burgess. Today I have the pleasure talking with my good friend Shirley Wu. Shirley and I have known each other for years, and we've spent plenty of time together on a tech podcast.

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Front end happy hour. Cheers. Cheers to that. But today, I'm excited to have a completely different conversation with her, one that goes beyond tech and dives into Shirley's incredible journey as an artist. For those of you who don't know, Shirley is an exceptionally talented data visualization artist. Her work blends art and code in a way that transforms raw data into stunning, interactive experiences.

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What I love about Shirley is approach is how deeply personal and human her work feels. It's not just numbers and charts. It's storytelling. In this episode, we talk about Shirley's transition from engineering to creative work, and what it was like taking a leap of faith and going out and doing her own thing. And of course, we couldn't end the conversation without not discussing AI and how it's impacting on artists.

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We talk about AI and how it's changing the creative landscape, and possibly even some of the opportunities it may present. I'm excited to share the conversation with you. So let's get into it. What's been inspiring you lately? What's something that just kind of you find inspires you for your work? This is a little bit hard for me right now because I'm in like the depths of logistics.

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So last year I decided that I wanted to live half the year in Tokyo, half the year in San Francisco. And the crux of it was after I finished my grad programing, New York, and it was an art program and I was trying to figure out where to do art. I realized I was the most inspired in Tokyo.

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So for the last half year, I've been like figuring out the logistics of like, how to because I don't like I grew up in Japan. Yeah, I grew up. I speak the language, but I'm not a citizen and I'm not a permanent resident. I am, I'm an American citizen. So how does someone, as an American citizen that refuses to work at a Japanese company still live and work in Japan?

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I figured out a way that works for me. It's a little bit painful. I would not recommend it for anyone or. Sorry, I would not recommend it for most people. But the tldr of it is like I started my own company and I employ myself through that company. And then for the last half year, what I've been doing is figuring out all of the logistics of living in a brand new country.

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So as you ask me right now, like what is inspiring me? As of this moment, I don't think I have a like things that inspire me in the broad definition of the word inspire. Does that make sense? Like and meet with your head right now is literally like, I want to live and work in Tokyo and I gotta I'm kind of in that world right now, which, I mean, I know what you mean.

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In the art scene of it's like, not it's not your inspiration. Exactly. It's like it's a different thing that you're having to deal with. But I am very because then the logistics becomes like, well, then, you know, I'm now running two companies. How do I make sure that I can know for this lifestyle? So then it becomes about like the logistics of how do I keep bringing in clients that are really good clients are really aligned.

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And that is like enjoyable work. And how do I how do I make that sustainable? And so actually recently the inspiration is less artistic and more like, it's so funny because YouTube at the beginning in, during the new year is like, hey, new year, new you, you want to and, it's been like giving me so many of these videos about, like, how to expand your team, how to pitch better.

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So those have been really fun. Like, my headspace has been like, how do I operate a company that is at a scale beyond just one person, which is a whole nother game to like? So I can understand that. That's where your head's up. Yeah, but I do have, if I like, kind of like remove myself from my current like, you know, all I'm thinking about is business.

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If I remove myself from that and think back like three months ago when I was in Tokyo, because I've chosen Tokyo as a place where I work on art, and San Francisco as a place where I work on my business, and we're currently in San Francisco. Like that cool separation, though. Yeah. And that's why you're getting the business side and less the art side.

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But if I remove myself from San Francisco, me and put the Tokyo me back in, one of the things that I've been thinking a lot in the last few weeks is like, I did a lot of really big things last year, you know, international moves and all. And I started to realize that, like, I was getting so addicted to the excitement of, like, those big moves that I was forgetting all of the little moments in between.

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But if I really think about like, like the big moments are exciting. But if I really think about, like the moments when I felt the most content, the most at peace, it's like in little moments, like there was a moment in August when I was just sitting outside of, like a cafe in Tokyo, and there was just like the leaves rustling.

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And then we were talking about this, Japanese word commodity, which means, like the light that filters through the leaves and the shadow that it casts. I'm most artistically inspired by light and water and wind, and I love the interplay between the light and water. There's like, artists that call themselves like light artists like they like they paint a light.

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I came across in one on Instagram who's like their bio was like, I paint light and it was like beautiful. It was like those kind of like dappled leaves. I also have recently come across, artists that call themselves water artists, but I, I've been thinking about, like, what it is about water and light and wind, and I think it's because I grew up in four different countries.

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I speak three different languages. I've had to navigate three very different cultures and all of this before I was ten and so there's a lot in my upbringing where those differences have both been really beneficial in the long run, but was very difficult in my childhood. But the things that remained were like things like water will always look the same, like rivers and oceans and the way that light filters through them, the way that light filters through trees, the way that the wind blows, all of those are the same across.

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And you place. There you go. That's probably also why I love numbers when working with numbers, because those transcend language. That was a very long answer to why no, I love it, but I think that that it's such a great question too, because I think there are so many things that can, you know, inspire you. And I love that you chose like a lot of these nature things and like how light works.

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And those things can be very interesting in the sense you're like, oh, it's there. And but if you don't put much thought into it, that's all it is, is light. But I think, like the way you're looking at it is so much differently. And I love that. I am curious what inspired you with Tokyo? Oh, yeah. So, quite a few things.

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Probably one of the biggest realizations I had, in my last semester of grad school is I actually took, a writing class, and it was like a writing class geared towards writing for artists opportunities like artist residencies and, and then one of the things that, we were tasked to figure out is like, who are our artistic influences?

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And when I had to write that, I realized, like, I drew a blank, I couldn't figure out any names to write down. And in that moment, what I realized was that I had sat in on art history classes in high school. And what I did not realize at the time was, they were only teaching Western art history.

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I have so many names of like, Renaissance painters and like Rococo and, you know, like, I love I love impressionist paintings, but those are not the kind of paintings that inspire my work. And when I really thought about what are my actual artistic influences in my own art, it's always been East Asian art. It's always been like the Chinese ink paintings that my mom had, like the scrolls on, you know, the walls, painters whose names I don't know.

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But it's what I grew up with. You know, I'm deeply inspired by, like, Japanese animation, like jewelry films and the way that, like, there's such a contrast between a lot of the way that Western art has developed and eastern North has developed. And I realized that almost all of my artistic influences come from Japan or China, and it's from the childhood that I grew up in, and that's the first, reason.

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And when I realized that I started paying a lot more attention when I went to, like, art museums in Japan, and I think there's like, I don't know if it's because they really, like, celebrate nature. They I think a lot of like in Japan, a lot of, you know, a lot of thought and attention is paid to nature and their works really, like, are really influenced by.

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Absolutely. And I'm also really influenced by nature. Like it's probably like, that's probably the second reason is like the art I find there. I resonate with so much. I've also always really enjoyed their media arts the way that they've and like included that the way that they folded take into art all of those different reasons. But also, in the last few years, I've, when I was in grad school, I realized that, that there is also, generational trauma that I'm working through.

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And I think part of that, I realized that probably part of working through that was going back to Asia and, considering the current geopolitical tensions with China.

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Japan was, as in the Me as a Chinese American, but an American citizen. Japan was the safer place to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the that's the reasons for Tokyo. No, that makes a lot of sense. I love that. I mean, Tokyo is I can just see how it would be inspiring in so many ways. But I love where your direction and kind of background of growing up.

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And that kind of ties back to that. You mentioned tech, which I thought makes a lot of sense, too, that there's some tie to that. You do a lot of work online, like your data visualization work. You've also started doing a lot more physical in person type work. Tell me about like what inspired you to do data visualization?

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Oh, do you mean like the the work I do for my clients or the kind of work I, maybe both. Like, I would love to hear both in the sense like, okay, so I would think of even your work, probably one of the first things I did I just fell in love with right away was the Hamilton one.

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Like, it was so popular and so well done, but it was so unique in the sense that you're like, here, you've taken this Hamilton musical and then you, you created data around it, which, I mean, there's a ton of data, but it's like, I wouldn't have thought of that. And I when I saw it happen, I was like, wow, this is so cool.

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So maybe even just that, like, what makes you think of, like, wanting to take something like that and visualize the data piece of it? Oh yeah. I think that I think the data part, I kind of just fell into it was my first job out of college, was at a big data company. And I just so happened to be at a, in a frontend team.

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And so I kind of just fell into, trying to think about, like, how do I, how do I visualize data in a way that makes sense for the, for the person consuming this data? That's where I got my start. And and then by the time that I was making the Hamilton piece, I think because I had worked with data for years at that point, thinking about data and thinking about like, what kind of stories can data tell?

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That it kind of clicked very naturally for me about, looking at Hamilton as a qualitative data set. And I think it's a really interesting and really good point that you brought up that Hamilton by itself. The lyrics don't at first look like a data set because there's no numbers in it. I think a lot of times we think of data sets of numbers.

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And oftentimes when in in our field of visualizing data, we we do tend to gravitate towards the numbers. And we do see that it's much harder to visualize types and qualitative data. But there was something there in those Hamilton lyrics. And I think that something was the repetition and the themes. It was so beautifully crafted that that repetition became that repetition of themes, the way that the lyrics subtly changed in each repetition and the way that that tied back to the story.

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And by that point, it became obvious to me that it was a data set. There is something that I think even within my first year of working with data that I realized, which is that for me, data in numbers is the way to cut through the noise of words. And what I mean by that is like, I think especially with topics that are a little bit more politically tense, I think there's a lot of news articles that are written, and there's a lot of news articles that are written even with the most, like neutral, there's some sort of an agenda behind them that are trying to sway the reader.

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And then I realized that data was the way that I could understand the world without quite, you know, getting into without quite. Because I think words to me is like the English language is something I learned when I was ten. It's it's something I've become familiar with, but it's still sometimes very foreign and sometimes I struggle with the nuance.

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I where struggle with what the writer is trying to tell me. But with numbers, the very first time this occurred to me was, the Bart strike of 2013. And, there was all of these different articles written about, like how the union workers are so selfish, they want to have the same amount of you know, they want 7%, raises or and it wasn't until I dug into the actual data that I realized, like, oh, they're asking for.

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First of all, they're asking for some percent over the course of four years. And second of all, it's because they hadn't had a raise in five years, during the 2008, like since the 2008, recession. And that was the first moment in which I realized, oh, data is my way to understand the world. And so when it became Hamilton, it was data was a way for me to like turning it into data was a way for me to understand the usable.

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And then later on during the pandemic, I made a series of, visualizations, around my photos, the photos I had taken and those visualizations came from a place where and I think this was like a turning point in my work also, whereas before I used it to, I used data to understand the world. That was a moment in which I used data to understand me internally, because what had happened was I had realized that the pandemic had made me become afraid of going outside.

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And then, I realized when I realized that I thought maybe I could use my photos as a way to figure out if this is, like, actually what's happening. And when I found out in the visualizations I made is that pre-pandemic, I used to take so many photos outside and then represented the photos as dots. And the further away from the center that these dots were meant, the further away from home.

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And I think pre-pandemic, all of my dots were like far from the center. And there's a moment in which, like an 20th March 2021, all the dots shrink into the center, and then it stays that way for the two years after. That was a moment when I realized, oh, this is a way to cut through my own words and my own thoughts and kind of use and and data is a way for me to understand myself and love that.

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Like, you know, is I love it so much too, in just the way, like you said, even like a news article about, you know, a strike happening for transportation like Bart, that you know, this is what's happening. There's always ways to spin the like clickbaity way of writing it. You can weaponize data, but actually, if you look at the data and really pull at it, it's you can't really it can't lie, right?

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If the data is there, it's it's hard to I mean, I say that with a smile because I'm like, you can manipulate the data, but you can read into the data and it shows you something like exactly what you were saying with your being inside or being outside. It's like, here's day. Like, I can see this right here at the Numbers Don't lie.

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I'm not taking photos outside anymore. I am inside too much. I think it's like, you can't argue with that data. I think it's more what I'm getting at. Yeah, but I'm curious. You're kind of giving me that look of, like, when I say you. I feel like I actually set you up for that because I think in the last few years, I've also been thinking a lot about how even data can be biased.

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And I think, yeah, this is we we've talked about this about how like in the way that data is collected, that is how, how bias can manifest. I think the most classic example I've heard is like back when data was manually collected for, let's say, the census, like, you know, where people chose to knock on doors or not knock on doors if anyone's interested.

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There's an amazing, Mimi on Ruha, I think is, oh, and you owe a hey, I think is she's an artist. And, her whole exploration is around missing data sets. Data sets that should exist but doesn't because of human bias. And she has, the amazing set of talks around it. And that, I think to me is I've been thinking about it a lot because I think missing data sets is very much tied, correlated with underrepresentation.

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Well, sorry, I just said something really obvious. I mean, I think it's no, it's it's not necessarily obvious. I think it's good calling it out. Two is that it's even when I said it's like, well, data doesn't lie. It's like, well, true. But if you don't gather the right data and there is biases in there, it's not as true as you think.

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And so you need to be thinking about those biases ahead of time while you're collecting the data. It totally makes sense. But when you have the numbers, it's like it's a little more true than the clickbaity title. Yeah, I think it's more of the it's like instead of if we think of it instead of like truth as an absolute like 0 or 1, but instead of truth, as in like a, like a spectrum.

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Yeah, I do find it to be I do find what I can get from data to be closer to the truth. Certainly like my own photos. That's a very controlled and right environment. I can believe that that is truth because there's like, you know, you were feeling that you're kind of like, well, I'm in the pandemic. We're all kind of stuck in our houses like it's obvious, but it's it's such a cool way to visualize, too.

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Thank you so much. I remember you showing me that one. That's why I was like, oh yes, I know exactly. You did a good job of explaining it to you. You've been doing digital work and obviously more for clients, but yeah, you've been doing a lot of really cool work. That's more now in a physical environment. And I would love to hear like what?

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What was the switch for you there that was like, I need to do more physical versus digital. Yeah. I think, there was a few moments in which it clicked for me throughout my career. We can say as we met, because we were software engineers for most of my career, I've worked on a laptop and and there was a movement.

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There was, I think back in like 2015 or something. Someone had come as a guest speaker, the, meetup that I used to frequent, the it was like the Bay area D3 meetup data visualization group. Yeah, yeah, I love that. And someone had come and shown, we call them data physical locations. I don't I don't remember if we've heard of this before.

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Okay. Right. Data, physical ization. Sometimes I call them data installations. Data sculptures. But this person came and showed, I'll call it a data sculpture. It was a, 3D map, printed physically, like 3D printed map of Manhattan. And the high correlated with, I think, how much income you would need to be able to afford the rent in that part of Manhattan.

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And this, 3D map was, submerged in, like this black liquid. And, the interaction was that the person physically steps up to this sculpture and inputs their months and monthly income and based on their income, the, the black water, rises or lowers to reveal which part of Manhattan you can afford. So, you know, if your income is lower than the black water is higher.

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And there's only tiny little parts of Manhattan that are, that are revealed to you. The piece was called Wage Islands, I think, and that was a for something like blew my mind it because there's so much like metaphor like even like the all of the mediums and there's so much metaphor in there of, like, not only what you can see, but like just the fact that if you have less income, there is more volume of black water, like there's some there's a lot.

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After that, I started thinking more about physical. And in a lot of ways I've actually found working in physical to be, in contrast, personally very freeing because I cannot control everything because there are those happy accidents that turn into a learning opportunity that turned into exactly what I needed. Yeah. And I think there is something that when you're in the physical space, like there's just so many things that you just can't account for.

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And I think that that is really powerful. I love that when we talk about art and creativity, especially around software, but even, you know, real physical world, how do you see AI playing into this good or bad? I'm I'm curious. I love this question. Oh, I'm very I'm also very curious what you think. Is it okay if I turn it around on you first?

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Yeah. I have, like, mixed feelings about it, but I think that I don't really like or care necessarily about the art that's just generated by AI. I've seen some pretty cool things where I'm like, okay, I can see where there's the quick one that someone does that they're like, oh yeah, cool. I'm an artist. I just created something.

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There is a level of depth that some people are putting into it to, to really make it amazing. And so I'm like, okay, I can kind of appreciate that, but I don't really care that much. I don't think AI is a bad thing. I also look at it more as a tool. I absolutely a tool that people should look at how they can leverage it.

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And I think what it does to is it levels the playing field a little bit better. It opens it up that it's easier to, you know, create a podcast or create a video and like, oh, this sounds really bad. Can I, like maybe adjust the sound a little better and I can do that really nicely, or I have this idea, what would that even look like?

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And you can have AI produce that really fast. So I think that you can get ideas out there faster and leverages it as a tool. And I think it's amazing for that. I see a lot of concerns of artists where they're like, oh, it's like, you know, just not great. Like in in so many ways or like, you know, as a photographer, like I'm like, yeah, people can go just create whatever image and whatever, but I don't think it's that great.

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I still even if it becomes that great, there's still going to be this missing piece to it. Like those real world in physical space mistakes or a weird shadow that's there or whatever it is. It's like you kind of missed some of those, like real authentic pieces. So I have mixed feelings on it, but I think ultimately I'm pretty positive on it.

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I think that I look at it as more of a tool that doesn't necessarily create the end result perfectly, but it can help you get to the end result and can just make things faster. You know, just take something off your plate to, to be able to create more. So I think we talked about this. Yeah, two years ago.

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And I feel like my opinion about the general, the art side, like the actual like digital painting or digital like photography, aside of gen AI, has not changed all that much. I think that, from an ethical standpoint, because I have so many friends that are digital illustrators, I'm still not a fan of that part. I do remember us discussing how the gen AI for images is very interesting, for prototyping, or for getting ideas out, or for mood boarding since that last time we talked.

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I am, like you, very interested in the parts where speeds up process or the part for me that has become very like integral to my work process is, in the coding side of like, there are so many things that I only do. I've realized two years, like authentication, I I'm really doing it a few times. Early in my career, I was like, oh, I don't remember, like authenticating, especially when it was like, authenticating to an API so that I could like, scrape data.

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I don't remember how to write that. No. And it's such a drag to like, you know, go through documentation and figure out how to do it exactly the way that it ChatGPT amazing. Yeah, I think like a year ago, I asked ChatGPT for help, like writing bash scripts to automatically like, process and upload images onto Google Cloud.

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For my blog. And that I did in like an hour that I would not have ever been able to like the I'd never did it before because it would take days of like days to do that. And you're like, it's not worth the payoff. I'm 100% with you on that. I've built so many tools that like really fast.

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I would sometimes I would do those things just anyways, like just coding by hand. Yeah. But now it's like, oh, this could just be optimized that a little bit more and it's like worth the squeeze because it's not taking that much time to do it. I'm 100% with you there and something like authentication. You're right. You don't remember it.

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Yeah. That's not part of your project. It's not the core part, but it's not. Every service has a different oh, every service has a different thing. And you're like yeah. And then they change them. You know, it's like this was the last version and you're like, oh, well, I got to figure this out. And so yeah, those things, it's like I personally don't want to do that.

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And that's where I'm like, yeah, if I can leverage something like AI to do that, and I can still have the finished product that I want, great. Yeah. Like that. That to me is where I'm like, cool, take away the things I don't want to do so that I can focus on creating like and creating something that I want to do, like that.

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Maybe that's where I have the problem with the, AI creating, generating like an illustration or something like that. I don't enjoy that for, for, coming up with some quick concepts to get an idea. That's one thing. But like my final product, I want to create that. Like, I don't want AI to take that away from me, that that's what I like doing.

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We as creatives, I think that's for us. Where exactly the fun is. It's like free us from the drudge and the work that we find, not fun so that we can spend more time doing the fun things I like. I loved your examples about like the barrier to entry has also lowered to making more creative things like I would have never thought to do podcasts because I'm like, oh, audio editing is another thing that I that's a skill that I will have to learn.

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But with like all the tools are now AI enabled. There was like a little bit of time when I did do the podcasts. Yeah, with Alice. So I think I'm fully in agreement with you. That is another tool that is, speeding up how we speeding process up for us. And then for me, I think the negatives are, aside from all that we've discussed, I do think that it is in some ways making me lazier.

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Like like I don't want to read documentation anymore, but is it so like, because I don't I get your point, but are you just freeing yourself up to, like, you're doing something else instead? Yes. No. Like, I think it's, I think we were in conversation when, there was example of how a lot of new grads don't quite know how to code without ChatGPT or, like, don't quite know how to problems like, I think some of the things I enjoy the most about coding is the problem solving aspect of like trying to figure out how to like a bug has arisen and like trying to debug it.

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And that debugging process is a problem solving process, trying to figure out how to like code. A certain thing that you can't find in tutorial anywhere. Like I think a lot of the visualization work I used to do is like I couldn't find example code anywhere. How do you draw flowers like on the screen? How do you draw like interesting curves on the screen?

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Like there wasn't any tutorials I will like generate me a pretty flower or anything. And I think but the fun part of that, the part where it makes the end result worth it, was all of the like, struggle. Maybe I'm masochistic, but the struggle that I went through to get there, the problem solving, I went through it to get there.

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And I think that with the gen, I think part of that I do miss a little bit of and, and I'm, I am scared of becoming so reliant on it that I don't want to think I myself anymore. That's that's fair, because I think there are times to when I'll even have an error or something like that. I don't even read it.

00;32;00;13 - 00;32;19;14

Sometimes I'll be like, throw this in. What's happening here? Yeah. And, you know, have it describe it to me. And I look at as more of a partner, doing that. And it's like as you're working so I can I can see your point there. It's like, well, there is also some fun and annoying parts trying to fix something like that, but you learn so much going through that.

00;32;19;16 - 00;32;50;19

Continue yourself. And that's all. I think that's a fair point. Yeah. Okay. That's you've caught me on that where I'm going. Yeah. I could see us getting too lazy and, you know, putting off too much of our US creative problem solving. Having said that, I do find it largely irrelevant to the physical work I do. And I love, I love, how after Jenny, I like, came out and there was like, all the, you know, outrage from, like digital artists and all the physical artists are like, well, a job security for us.

00;32;50;19 - 00;33;08;03

That's that's true because it's like it's I mean, eventually you could create some robots that are doing doing an artist's work and stuff like that too, but it's like, yeah, you're right. It's like it's different. Right? And I think so it's even for the digital artists, it's like, how do you set yourself apart? How do you do these things a little bit differently?

00;33;08;08 - 00;33;28;22

And I also think that no matter what, even the model's been trained on unfortunate. That was another bad thing, is models being trained on other people's artwork. Yeah, that was bad. But like I still think that it it still doesn't hit the essence that it should be. Right. Like I still think it's missing something. It's just that extra depth and vulnerability that an artist puts into it.

00;33;28;22 - 00;33;59;09

Yeah, that I think that it's going to just not be as good. Do you think that it will eventually get that part to ever maybe. I, I don't know, I feel like there's just things in humans that you can't recreate. I think, you know what, maybe this is very related to something else I think about a lot now is like how, you know, at the end of the day, data, code, even these AI models are just bits, right?

00;33;59;09 - 00;34;21;02

They're just zeros and ones and zeros and ones can't capture the complex human emotion. And this I've been thinking a lot about, because another reason why I enjoy working in the physical so much is that messiness and that rawness and that, like, emotional like, I mean, there's just like, physical mediums are just so messy or has the potential to be so messy and so variable.

00;34;21;04 - 00;34;39;10

And I think even that messiness is something that, like, none of these models can capture, because at the end of the day, they're zeros and ones. They're trying to get perfection. They are trying to get affection. I mean, there's hallucinations happening and everything like that. But you know, eventually that like, that's actually they're trying to work that out, right.

00;34;39;10 - 00;34;58;21

Like get rid of that. I actually thought that that was the most interesting part of Jenny I yeah, in some of the hallucinations. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's a great point. It's like shows their flaws. It shows that it's not perfect. And I think that the thing that I actually think that a lot of times the things that we appreciate in an artwork is the flaws.

00;34;58;21 - 00;35;19;27

Like, like I remember, sometimes when I visit in, like, art museum and I look at the paintings and the part that I love is seeing the paint strokes, like the physical layers and layers of, like, oil paint stacked on top of each other. And you can really feel that a human hand, like, went and went and like, did that or that, like that.

00;35;19;27 - 00;35;46;06

Because it's a human hand, no matter how perfectly straight of a line they were trying to get, there's always going to be a little bit of that shakiness. And that it's funny to me that they try that we as humans try to program that like quote unquote failures or errors out, that we don't want the hallucinations. But I think that is exactly what makes something so human.

00;35;46;09 - 00;36;02;07

And it's so funny to me. Maybe, maybe we'll still have job security. I mean, I think we always will. I think that there's always you just kind of evolve with it. There will be jobs that don't exist. Like for a human to be doing that, they will be taken over and that you're kind of you have to adapt and things like that.

00;36;02;07 - 00;36;20;15

I do believe that there's always something that, like you will be doing there, you know, that took that heavy load so that you can go do something else. But I, I think it's funny too, is I think even as an artist, you're always trying to like I think about photography. I'm always like wanting to like perfect pixel. There's times when I've had to like up the ISO.

00;36;20;15 - 00;36;38;12

If anyone's familiar with, photography and it's like in it gets a little of that grainy look which sometimes adds so much like character to to it. But I try not to do that. Or I used to do a ton of graffiti and I remember that like paint drip and you would try and fight those things, or at least personally, I did that all the time.

00;36;38;12 - 00;36;57;03

I was like, no, no, no, like I don't want that. Yeah. And it would be upset about those things. But it's like, no, that actually just adds like a human being had did that. Yeah. Where do you think that comes from? I don't know, like I really I don't know because that was something that I think I've only really thought about more now that I'm like, why is that?

00;36;57;04 - 00;37;14;10

Like, why do we have to have perfection? Yeah. And yeah, you go to an art gallery and you see those like the brushstrokes or the like, maybe a little imperfection in that wasn't done perfect. It's still amazing piece of art. Yeah. And like no but you're not questioning that. So I don't know where that comes from. That's super weird.

00;37;14;11 - 00;37;38;17

And actually the the thing that you mentioned about like how it was something that you were more when you were younger and now now you are questioning why that used to be something that you were chasing down minds. Me same when I was, when I was in school, when I was in like high school and I was taking art classes, I was chasing perfection.

00;37;38;19 - 00;38;15;22

This is completely unverified. But I do remember, you know, a lot of Western art history, like in the Renaissance and were like trying to get the perfect, like, representation of a human body or like, what was that movement that was like the Dutch and the light and, and then they're trying to paint, like, exactly as they should be represented, that it should be photorealistic and even like Rembrandt, like they like that still comes out as that little triangle on the other side of the, like the shadow side of the light popping through like that.

00;38;15;24 - 00;38;50;21

Photographers do that in portraits today. Like those types of things. You're like, yes. They were trying so hard to get those things so perfect. Yeah. And then I, I actually there's two places I want to go with this observation. The first is like I actually don't know if I observed that in Chinese and Japanese art, as much is like I think they are, like it's, the Japanese, the Chinese art is like, I don't know that they care about the perfect brushstroke or like, they care about quick brushstrokes that capture the essence of something, but they don't.

00;38;50;28 - 00;39;19;29

And I'm completely I have not studied Chinese or Japanese art, so this is completely just my own observation. And so I wonder if it is something that comes from our Western art history and heritage. That's the first thought I have, and the second thought I have is like, you know, this obsession with perfection in painting when the photograph came out and like, it could capture the the world exactly as it is more perfectly.

00;39;20;01 - 00;39;51;06

And then when like Photoshop came out and like, I feel like I wonder if I every one of these technological advents is actually allowed for more human experimentation into the weird or into the non perfect or like I wonder if with what we have with AI and AI itself, chasing perfection is then as a reaction to it. The place that we go to is like embracing what really, really makes us human, and that is the failures or the imperfections.

00;39;51;06 - 00;40;24;29

And I wonder if that's actually a good thing of like, I remember how weird some of the Photoshop experiments came out or like, like people like I think, okay, so this is again non perfect memory of art history. But like because of the photographs we started having like weird it like we started having cubism where like just like different ways to express reality or like we had surrealism and I wonder if we'll get that again with AI, it's like it's such a pivotal, like change in the way that we do art.

00;40;25;01 - 00;40;56;07

Like, I wonder what kind of new weird things create something completely new that like, and it might not even be created from AI. It might be like artists revolting, revealing something as a different shape, just like how there's a whole art movement. So I reacted to the photograph. I wonder, like what kind of movements will react to not and, and certainly I think there will be art movements created with gen AI, but what I'm really fascinated by the potential of is art movements that are created in revolt.

00;40;56;07 - 00;41;18;28

And reaction to Gen I, I yeah, I love that. And now I'm like, okay, I really want to witness and see this. And even going back to the Eastern Asian art, you said, like, you're not sure if that's a thing. But I do think about there's been like Japanese artists doing like like ceramics, like pottery, things like that, where they will have had, like, a crack in it.

00;41;19;01 - 00;41;37;06

Yeah. And then they put like the gold, they celebrate, they sell it. Yes. And it's, it's more meaningful. And that to me always, you know, it's like. No, like I would have thrown that away. I would be upset I broke it. It's it's no good anymore versus like they're like, no, let's draw attention to that crack, that imperfection.

00;41;37;11 - 00;41;55;19

So I, I don't know, it's kind of cool to think down that way. I was like, yeah, maybe it is just where we've grown up. And like that's kind of just it's perfection is like what we're ingrained in us I don't know. Yeah. And and I think that maybe because in my childhood I chased perfection so much and it's, what's, what's the expression?

00;41;55;19 - 00;42;16;23

It's like it's a fool's errand. It's at the end of the day, so exhausting. And I keep going back to this. But working in the physical for me has been very much about freedom of like, giving myself permission to break away from that perfection and break away from chasing that perfection and really embracing how, and I keep saying the word noisy.

00;42;16;23 - 00;42;41;27

And this is because I had such an interesting realization my first semester in grad school where I was learning Arduino and how to control, an Arduino, the microcontroller and the sensor readings and the and it was so interesting because sensor readings are all noisy. Like, it doesn't it doesn't even if the temperature is, you know, you want the temperature to say 40, 46 degrees or something, but it will fluctuate.

00;42;42;13 - 00;43;08;01

And you have to decide as you're programing that, like, do you do anything or you just drop that data. Yeah. And that was a moment where I was like, oh, the world is inherently noisy. And it is our egos that make us want to control it. And so if I throw away that my own ego trying to control everything, then how much more the only free beer relax or content can I feel?

00;43;08;08 - 00;43;26;19

And I feel this also, you asked at the very beginning why Tokyo? It was actually more a question of why not San Francisco? That's actually, I should have worded that too, because I actually find San Francisco very inspiring. So that is a good, wait, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. And for me, San Francisco.

00;43;26;19 - 00;43;48;19

So oppression is a really heavy and big word. I don't I don't mean to say that San Francisco is a pressing for me, but I think with big Tech and I think with big tech and the egos that come with it and the obsession with like, you know, pixels, imperfection and and also the big egos are like, disrupt, let's disrupt and make these big changes in the world or something.

00;43;48;25 - 00;44;16;18

That to me has always felt very constricting. And so to me, digital and San Francisco are very tied together and physical and not San Francisco is very tied together. But no, I, I'm with you on that. Like, that's a good way to say it because I'm like, that is sometimes working in tech. And when I was doing that, it's like there was a lot of good about it where you're like, oh, cool.

00;44;16;18 - 00;44;35;03

I'm like surrounded by that energy. And then there's points where you're like, I'm too much surrounded by that energy. You know? It's like, that is too much. And so I totally get that of like all a well to in order for me to do that physical stuff, it's like I'm actually just going to move away from like the digital world.

00;44;35;06 - 00;44;53;05

Yeah. And I would love to hear, like what you were inspired to do in San Francisco. Yeah. For me, like, I think it's more for when I think of my photography and things like that. It's like San Francisco has so much to offer. And just like, actually even just the free spirit of San Francisco tech is a little weird.

00;44;53;05 - 00;45;20;15

But when you get past that, there's like a lot of like history of artists and things. And there there is an amazing energy in San Francisco. But what I also really like about it is just there's so much like nature and city and colors and just like there's a lot of really cool aspects. And for me, San Francisco, I think it's a lot of the it offers so many things, whether it's like nature, like the ocean, there's a lot of really cool things to see and do.

00;45;21;05 - 00;45;47;23

It's just that to me, has been always kind of inspiring. Yeah, that's a really great point. And actually, I really especially appreciate what you said about the history of art here and all of the like, just the free spirited nature of it. And that's such a great reminder because I so heavily associate San Francisco with tech. But that's only because of the parts of San Francisco that I visited the most often, which is Soma and Financial District.

00;45;47;23 - 00;46;07;08

But if we get out to like I was while coming over to your place and driving, I was like, oh, I forget how absolutely beautiful San Francisco can be if we just get away from getting away from the tech. And it is unfortunate to I talk about this history. There's still some amazing artists here, but so many of them have left.

00;46;07;08 - 00;46;26;07

I'm sad about that, that there's a lot of amazing artists that I like that grew up just like loving their work and just like they were all in San Francisco. And it's like I moved here and then slowly, like people are moving away. So that's a little sad too. But there's still so much beauty and history that's still there, which I think is really cool.

00;46;26;09 - 00;46;48;16

Yeah, that is really cool. Truly. One thing I wanted to ask you before, you know, we end is where do you want people to take away from your work? Ooh, that's a big one. Yeah. It's not a little question. Yeah, I know there's a big question to end on. Why I'm going to answer this for the work that is personal.

00;46;48;16 - 00;47;25;29

I'm very, very proud of the work I do for my clients. I think of those as really fun collaborations. But at the end of the day, they're it's I'm helping them tell their stories. And so I'll answer it from the perspective of the stories that I'm trying to tell. And I think that there's something that I discovered about art while I was in grad school that I really, really loved, which is, coming from data viz and data visualization being more of a design practice.

00;47;26;01 - 00;47;55;09

This is going to be a long, roundabout answer to your question of what do I want people to take away as most of my answers are long and round about? No. But I think a lot about how, you know, when we design, something there's like something that very specific we're trying to communicate. And whether we succeed or not is like, dependent on do we successfully, you know, sway someone to do what we wanted them to do.

00;47;55;12 - 00;48;41;07

Something beautiful I found about art is we're not trying to persuade. We're not trying to. We're just trying to put I'm just trying to put something of my own out there, my own opinion or my own view of the world. And I'm not trying to persuade or convince you of anything. And what I've especially enjoyed is whereas in my data visualization work for clients, I'm trying to tell you absolutely everything and spell out absolutely everything and explain every single one of like, you know, the data points I decided to show thing about art has been I, I don't I showed just a little like show a part of it, but I don't show all

00;48;41;07 - 00;49;12;21

of it. And what I've found to be really incredible about that is I tell just the amount of my story that I want to tell. But then in the kind of the space in between the viewer gets to fill it with their own story and make it their own. So this is a very long, roundabout answer to say with my work, you can take away whatever you want, whatever that resonates with you.

00;49;12;25 - 00;49;36;03

And maybe that's nothing and that's great. Or maybe it's that it reminds you of your own story, or it reminded you of something, or it taught you something new about yourself. I think that the thing that I've been really enjoying about the art I want that I have been creating and want to create is it's about me. But it's not about me.

00;49;36;08 - 00;49;58;28

It's about me, but it's also about you and it's about it's about the other person and it's about it is about connection. Because when you as a viewer, take something from the art and make it your own, we've just formed a connection and we've just formed a bond. So yeah, that's my non-answer of that. No, no, I think that was a really great answer, I love that.

00;49;59;01 - 00;50;23;18

Well, Shirley, thank you so much for joining me. Me being my first guest, I love it. Letting me be your first guest, I love it, it's great. Where can people find your work if they're interested in seeing more? So I'm a little bit shy about my art right now because it's deeply personal. So it's not really online in many places, but I will hopefully eventually, someday have them up.

00;50;24;02 - 00;50;53;15

On my website, Shirley looks studio. Currently, it's a lot more of my digital client work. I, have replaced Twitter with blue Sky. That is where I, now post my, work in progress and take thoughts that nobody asked for. And, I'm also on Instagram posting random life things and occasionally, things that nobody asked for.

00;50;53;17 - 00;51;20;07

So thank you. So thank you. That was an amazing conversation with Shirley. One area that really stood out to me is how Shirley talks about creating her own data sets. With a project like visualizing where she took her photos and how that had changed through the pandemic. I think that's so powerful to leverage your own data to better understand yourself and possibly even help yourself grow.

00;51;20;09 - 00;51;48;08

One of the most interesting parts of our conversation was around AI and its impact to art. I really loved how Shirley thought that maybe I will give the rise to an entirely new art form, one that we fully don't even understand yet. If this conversation resonated with you, I'd love you to continue following along. One of the things I'm most excited about in this series is that I don't just get to talk to these artists, I also get to photograph them.

00;51;48;10 - 00;52;08;29

I'm sitting down with each guest and taking portrait shots of them, which then can be found on our Instagram at portraits of an artist or on our website at portraits of an artist.com. If you're enjoying these conversations, the best way to support the podcast is subscribe on your favorite platform, whether it's Spotify or Apple Podcasts, whatever you like to listen to.

00;52;09;02 - 00;52;30;08

And while you're at it, leave a quick rating and review to let me know what you think of the podcast. I'm going to be leveraging that feedback to continue to improve it, even since the first episode, I've already upgraded my recording equipment, so look forward to some improvements in the audio quality in the next episode, and make sure to subscribe to the series and stay up to date with the next episodes.

00;52;30;08 - 00;52;55;24

In my next conversation, I get the chance to sit down with someone who I have already probably spent nearly 200 hours sitting with San Francisco based tattoo artist Kevin Marjorie Kemah. Kevin specializes in large scale Japanese tattoos, and he's one of the best at what he does. Over the years, I've had the privilege of not just talking with Kevin about his craft, but also becoming a canvas of his work.

00;52;55;26 - 00;53;33;07

In this episode, we talk about what it means to refine a skill to the highest level, the discipline behind tattooing, and how finding your niche as an artist can be the key to long term success. You won't want to miss it, so make sure to subscribe! Follow along on Instagram and I'll see you on the next episode.