Since February of 2014, we’ve been working with Google on Project Ara. Ara is a modular phone platform created by Google’s Advanced Technologies and Projects group (ATAP). Their goal is to give consumers the power to build their own devices, to determine what they do, and how they look. They want to supply the next 5 billion people with smartphones.

We found Sam at a UCLA art show last winter, where he had wired a dancer up with motion sensors and a wireless transmitter. As the dancer gesticulated and strode around the gallery space, his individual motions created a soundscape out of audio samples that changed their character throughout the piece. What drew us to Sam was his multidisciplinary approach. He's a musician, tinkerer, coder, builder, and thinker. 

These days, designers are increasingly expected to know how to code. At Soso, we think it is just as important for coders to understand design. There is a special type of creative magic that happens when we combine forces: we come up with ideas we'd never think of solo, we avoid hiccups in implementation, and we just plain appreciate each other more. A shared basic knowledge of each other's specialties helps us collaborate more effectively throughout the entire process of developing a digital work.

It's not a well kept secret, but before we were an art and design studio, we were an international audiovisual boyband. For almost two years, we had a monthly residency at the Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Each month we curated movies and music around a theme, and mashed them all up live, through our custom audio visual software.

Check out our screenshot article for Grafik magazine, waxing on CNN's unusual data visualizations during the 2008 US Presidential Debates. We're long time fans of the magazine at Soso and happy to have a chance to contribute.

Want to get familiar with modern C++ concepts but don't know where to start? Take a Soso tour of modern C++.