Out of Office is a new GeekWire series spotlighting the passions and hobbies that members of the Seattle-area tech community pursue outside of work.
- Name: Maksim Surguy.
- Day job: Senior design technologist for Amazon Devices, working on concepts for new devices or new features on existing devices, such as Fire TV, Alexa, and Echo smart speakers.
- Out-of-office passion: Using machines to create art.
Before he pursued a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Maksim Surguy made an initial — and brief — run at a bachelor’s in art.
“Two weeks later, I realized that I suck at art and I switched to computer science,” he laughed.
Fourteen years after completing his education at California State University, Fullerton, Surguy has found happiness and success in marrying the two disciplines, as a technologist and an artist in Seattle.
“My sketching is not to the level that I want, so instead I use code to create artwork,” he said in describing the “robot art” that occupies his free time.
Surguy not only relies on machines to generate his artwork, he creates and sells the software tools that facilitate such art, whether the finished pieces exist as digital NFTs or as physical works such as pen plotter drawings made via scalable vector graphics.
“I spend a lot more time making the tools than actually using them,” Surguy said. “But other people use them to actually make something. So I enjoy both sides of this.”
Surguy is a 2018 graduate of the University of Washington’s Master of Science in Technology Innovation (MSTI), a program at the UW’s Global Innovation Exchange (GIX) — a joint initiative of the College of Engineering and Foster School of Business.
For a hardware/software project, he created a 3D-printed drawing machine with his own electronics program. During the process, he couldn’t find a community for like-minded people who make such things. So he started DrawingBots, a website/Discord that’s attracted thousands of artists and engineers.
Surguy was born and raised in Ukraine and was an accomplished breakdancer who competed as a professional in Eastern Europe when he was younger. He moved to the U.S. in 2004.
He’s been at Amazon for six years and his artwork has been displayed in the company’s headquarters buildings, in public exhibitions — including at Seattle’s NFT Museum, and on his website and social media channels. He’s also written extensively about technology.
And in the blurring space between human and AI-created artwork, he’s leaning further into technology.
“I use AI for a lot of things, and especially now with code, it makes it easier to create tools that are custom and specific for whatever use case,” Surguy said. “I just open-sourced one last weekend. It’s a tool that allows artists to preview their artwork, how it’s going to look before they make it on paper. So it saves them time and money and art supplies.”
Most rewarding aspect of this pursuit: Surguy most enjoys the growing community he helped foster around the tools and art he makes.
“I got to know thousands of people that do this kind of stuff and are very interesting people,” he said. “Some of them were TED speakers. Some of them are PhDs, very well known researchers, scientists, artists. I had conversations with all of these people and consider some of them my friends. So that’s the most rewarding part.”
The lessons he brings back to work: “This kind of procedural and algorithmic art definitely has a place in making products that are digital experiences,” Surguy said of the connection between his hobby and his work at Amazon.
For example, his Devices team launched a dynamic art feature for Fire TV: a screen saver that created artwork on the fly based on data such as weather, time of day, and other inputs.
Surguy said the ideas he generates outside of work serve as inspiration for what he creates at work, whether it’s creative coding or simply expanding the boundaries of what he makes and how he makes it.
Read more Out of Office profiles.
Do you have an out-of-office hobby or interesting side hustle that you’re passionate about that would make for a fun profile on GeekWire? Drop us a line: [email protected].
