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Erik Conrad

Erik Conrad has a M.S. in Information Design and Technology from Georgia Tech where he was a member of the Topological Media Lab. His work is an experiment in embodied thought through interaction and is manifested through studies in phenomenology. He attempts to engage proprioception - the ability to sense the position, location, orientation and movement of the body and its parts - and acknowledges its importance to human thought/experience. This overarching theme runs through the two main branches of his research: 1.) experiments in the phenomenology of reading that explore form/content relationships and 2.) the design and anaylsis of dynamic media spaces exploring how people perceive, understand and navigate space.

 

Gopi Meenakshisundaram

Gopi Meenakshisundaram’s research work focuses mainly on topics related to Computer Graphics, including Geometry and Topology for Computer Graphics, Image-Based Rendering, Object Representation, Surface Reconstruction, Collision Detection, Virtual Reality, and Telepresence. Recent projects include “Parametrizable Object Representations across Geometry and Images,” and “Surface Reconstruction Algorithms for Surfaces with Boundaries from Noisy Point Data”. He is also working with ICS facultry member Renato Pajarola on “Quality Control of Image Based Rendering Systems.” He received his MS from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India and his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His papers have been published in Computational Geometry, Theory and Applications,
International Journal of Computational Geometry and Applications and the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, among others.

 

Gloria Mark

Gloria Mark’s primary research interest is in technologies that support distributed work. She studies technology use in real organizations, and also in the Groupware Lab that she set up at UC Irvine. Her work also includes groupware technology adoption, group-to-group collaboration across distance, requirements analysis, and attention management and collaboration. Organizations she has studied collaboration in are aerospace, microprocessor design, and government. She has authored papers for Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing, Communications of the ACM and others. She has contributed to a number of academic conferences on group wear and collaborative technologies, including CSCW, and GROUP.

 

Lisa Naugle

Lisa Naugle holds a Ph.D. and MFA in dance from New York University. Lisa was a member of the Nancy Hauser Dance Company and has performed and choreographed in the United States, Canada, London, Amsterdam, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Hungary. She has worked with Hanya Holm, Alwin Nikolais, Merce Cunningham, and Eric Hawkins. Her current research and creative activity centers on computer-based applications for dance including motion capture, interactive and real-time video processing, and telematic performance (including two Internet 2 grants.) Her telematic performance works include Voyage of Aeneas:FIXED/NOT, Reverse Patterns, Songs of Sorrow, Songs of Hope, The Cassandra Project, and Janus/Ghost Stories. Her papers have been published in Dance Research Journal, Performance Art Journal, Journal for Distance Education and in numerous conference proceedings. She is active member of Congress on Research in Dance and serves on the Board of Directors for the International Dance and Technology organization. She is the recipient of the Cecil and Ida Green Honors Professor’s Award, 2000.

 

Antoinette LaFarge

LaFarge is an artist and writer with a particular interest in fictive realities and role-playing games. She is the founder and artistic director of the Plaintext Players, a pioneering group of artists, writers, and performers engaged in creating a unique form of live, online theater since 1994. She is also founder and director of the Museum of Forgery, a virtual institute dedicated to exploring the aesthetics of forgery. In recent works such as Virtual Live (2002), The Roman Forum (2000), and The Roman Forum Project (in preparation for March 2003), Antoinette has been working with the intersection between net-based improvisation in multi-user worlds and realspace performance. She has also collaborated with Annie Loui and James Fallon to create “Reading Frankenstein,” an experimental performance that explores themes of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” reframed as a contemporary myth of artificial intelligence, and integrating historical and contermpoary scientific images of the brain.

 

Falko Kuester

Dr. Kuester is the co-founder of the Visualization and Interactive Systems Group. His research interests include virtual reality, large-scale data visualization, computer graphics, simulation based design and geometric modeling. His research efforts are aimed at creating intuitive, high-resolution virtual environments, providing engineers and scientists with a means to explore and analyze massive and complex three-dimensional data. He is currently developing a virtual wind tunnel to test the efficiency of new real-time out-of-core visualization strategies that render massive data sets directly from computer hard disks while requiring only small amounts of computer memory. In a past project, he created a virtual automobile prototype for human factors, ergonomic studies and design verification, which replaced the physical automobile prototype during the early development stages. The potential applications for Dr. Kuester’s work include design, manufacturing and testing, medicine and bio-informatics, among others.

 

Christopher Dobrian

Christopher Dobrian is Associate Professor in the Music Department of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine. He is a composer of instrumental and electronic music, teaches courses in -composition, theory, and computer music, and directs the Realtime Experimental Audio Laboratory (REALab), the Gassmann Electronic Music Studio and the Gassmann Electronic Music Series.

 

John Crawford

John Crawford is a digital media artist, interactive performance director, software developer and user interface designer. He is a leader in the emerging field of digital videodance, exploring techniques for combining digital video and computer-generated animation with motion sensing to produce projected imagery that reflects and responds to movement. He originated the Active Space concept in 1993 to describe his interactive theatrical performance systems that combine motion capture technology, real-time video and audio sensing equipment with custom software to generate visuals and sound. His digital media work has been performed and exhibited throughout North America and in Europe, and he has taught performance and technology in California, New York and in the Pacific Northwest. He founded the digital media software company electricFX, and currently teaches motion capture animation, videodance, web/media design and digital arts history and practice at University of California, Irvine. He also teaches and consults on user experience and interface design, and his software credits include projects for Microsoft, Adobe and many other companies. 

 

Beatriz da Costa

Beatriz da Costa is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who works at the intersection of contemporary art, science, engineering and politics. Her work takes the form of public participatory interventions, locative media, conceptual tool building and critical writing. da Costa has also made frequent use of wetware in her projects and has recently become interested in the potential of interspecies co-production in promoting the responsible use of natural resources and environmental sustainability. Other issues addressed in her work include the use of emergent technologies to investigate context specific configurations of social injustice, the politics of transgenic organisms, and the social… more...

 

Delvin Charles Hanson

Prior to his return to academia, Del was the former chief executive of a California based consulting company specializing in enterprise systems installations at fortune 500 company's including Hewlett-Packard, Sempra Energy and Tyson Foods. Del integrates technology into his art to sculpt in complex behavior and imagery. His art has been seen at the FILE Electronic Language Festival, Sao Paulo, Brazil; California State University, Fullerton; Arkansas Art Center; and the University of Southern Oregon, among others.

 

Jennifer Terry

Jennifer Terry is an associate professor of Women’s Studies at the University of California at Irvine. Her focus is on gender and sexuality studies, the cultural dynamics of science, medicine, and technology, and American Studies. She is the author of An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (University of Chicago Press, 1999) and co-editor of Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture (Indiana University Press, 1995) and Processed Lives: Gender and Technology in Everyday Life (Routledge, 1997). She has also written articles on reproductive politics, the history of sexual science in the United States, and contemporary scientific approaches to the sex lives of animals. In addition she has worked as an associate producer on several documentary films, including The Cucumber Incident (screened on the Sundance Channel in 2003).  Prof. Terry’s previous affiliations were as assistant and associate professor of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University and visiting associate professor of Women’s Studies at Berkeley.  She held post-doctoral positions at the Center for the Study of Women (UCLA, 1999-2000); the Humanities Institute (SUNY Stony Brook, 1992); and the Pembroke Center for Research on Women (Brown University, 1991-1992).  She holds a Ph.D.in the History of Consciousness from UC Santa Cruz (1992), an MLIS in Archival and Information Studies from UC Berkeley (1984), and a BA in Politics from UC Santa Cruz (1980). Professor Terry is now working on a project titled Sentiments in Transit: Conditions and Consequences of Remote Intimacies.  The book explores changing modalities and qualities of sentiment in light of emerging technologies that mediate the expression of love, hate, rage, fear, indifference, commitment, desire, and repulsion.

 

Kavita Philip

Kavita Philip is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at U C Irvine. She received her M.S. in Physics from the University of Iowa in 1989, and her Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Cornell University in 1996, Her recent writings have been in the fields of colonial environmental history, human rights and globalization, feminist science studies, and critical technology studies. Her monograph, Civilizing Natures, appeared in two editions in 2003 and 2004 (Orient Longman-Asia and Europe edition; Rutgers University Press- U.S. edition). She is currently co-authoring a book with Terry Harpold: Going Native: Cyberculture and Postcolonialism. Her other collaborative editorial work includes Constructing Human Rights in the Age of Globalization, co-edited with political scientists Andrew Nathan, Mahmood Monshipouri, and Neil Englehart; and Multiple Contentions, (Radical History Review Issue 89), co-edited with historian Andor Skotnes.

 

Bonnie Nardi

I recently joined the faculty of the School of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. I am an anthropologist specializing in the study of technology.  My theoretical orientation is activity theory, a philosophical framework developed by the Russian psychologists Vygotsky, Luria, Leontiev, and their students. My interests are user interface design, collaborative work, computer-mediated communication, e-democracy, and theoretical approaches to technology design and evaluation.

 

Faith Dang

After surviving the woes and pains of an undergraduate engineering school, Faith wandered into ACE with hopes of taking her work to a more artistic level.  By day she is a starving student with a desire to do art and design. By night she’s a code monkey/ninja with some experience in graphics, image processing, game design, and robotics.  She is a lover of art history and anything related to watercoloring. Faith is currently working on a comic titled “Those Dang Adventures” a self biographical, and extremely exaggerated story of her experiences in school.

 

Six Silberman

six silberman has at one point or another attempted to learn about and/or practice, with varied success, applied mathematics, atmospheric and climate science, natural resource economics, organizational structure, information architecture, intellectual property law, social entrepreneurship, political economy, anarchist political economy, ubiquitous computing, Freenet, what economists can learn from video games, how to design sex magazines, and how to build web database applications, with the resulting discovery that he loves kittens despite a violent allergy. He is currently making small robots out of toothbrushes.

 

Brett Doar

Brett Doar has worked as a commercial fisherman, bus driver, film and video editor, and special education teacher (not all at once).  He also once worked for Greenpeace, who fired him.  He has been making idiosyncratic electro-mechanical creatures out of inappropriate materials for well over a decade, and has exhibited his work in a number of galleries in New York City, and internationally.  He humbly hopes that his work may in some small way contribute to a global robot uprising.

 

Josef Nguyen

Josef Nguyen is a theory-junky. His main research interests include interactivity, performativity, textile-based input devices, video games, ecological criticism, visual culture, and contemporary American literature. In his free time, Josef enjoys working out, cucumber sandwiches, haute couture, croquet, steamed Chilean sea bass, dancing, and uncharacteristically, camping. He hopes to one day become a university professor.

 

Norman White

In the late 60's, Norman White taught himself electronics and began to create electrical machines in order to better model behavior, particularly that of living organisms. White's early electronic art consisted mostly of gridded installations of lightbulbs controlled by contemporary-vintage digital logic circuits. Like most of his art, these displays were concerned more with communicating internal rules and behaviours than straight visual appeal. For example, White's first major electronic work, First Tighten Up on the Drums (1969) (Exhibited at trhe groundbreaking EAT 'Some More Beginnings' exhibition), generated shimmering light patterns through the unpredictable interaction of many interconnected circuits computing simple logical questions independently. Complex behaviours - for example, patterns akin to swirling clouds or rain on a window pane - emerged from simple principles. In retrospect, White recognizes this first project as an early cellular automata experiment. The Helpless Robot (1987-96) is a motor-less kinetic sculpture designed to be a sort of electronic hustler that enlists, then exploits, the physical assistance of passers-by via its persuasive, electronically synthesized voice. In 1978, he helped to initiate, at the Ontario College of Art and Design a programme dedicated to teaching electronics, mechanics, and computer programming to artists.

 

Edward Ihnatowicz

Edward Ihnatowicz was a Cybernetic Sculptor active in the late 1960's and early 1970's. His ground-breaking sculptures explored the interaction between his robotic works and the audience, and reached their height with The Senster, a large (15 feet long), hydraulic robot commissioned by the electronics giant, Philips, for their permanent showplace, the Evoluon, in Eindhoven in 1970. The sculpture used sound and movement sensors to react to the behaviour of the visitors. It was one of the first computer controlled interactive robotic works of art.

 

Stelarc

Stelarc is an Australian artist who has performed extensively in Japan, Europe and the USA- including new music, dance festivals and experimental theatre. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems and the Internet to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He has performed with a THIRD HAND, a VIRTUAL ARM, a VIRTUAL BODY and a STOMACH SCULPTURE. He has acoustically and visually probed the body- having amplified brainwaves, blood-flow and muscle signals and filmed the inside of his lungs, stomach and colon, approximately two metres of internal space. He has done twenty-five body SUSPENSIONS with insertions into the skin, in different positions and varying situations in remote locations.

For FRACTAL FLESH, as part of Telepolis, he developed a touch-screen interfaced Muscle Stimulation System, enabling remote access, actuation and choreography of the body. Performances such as PING BODY and PARASITE probe notions of telematic scaling and the engineering of external, extended and virtual nervous systems for the body using the Internet. In 1998 for Kampnagel, he completed EXOSKELETON- a pneumatically powered 6-legged walking machine actuated by arm gestures.

 

George Lewis

George Lewis (born Chicago, Illinois, 1952) is active as a composer, performer, and computer/installation artist. A 20-year member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, he studied composition with Muhal Richard Abrams at the AACM School of Music and trombone with Dean Hey. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from Yale College. He wrote the groundbreaking music improv software Voyager between 1985 and 1987. In performance, the software, running on a portable computer, 'listened' via a microphone to Lewis' trombone improvisation, came to quick conclusions about what Lewis had played, then generated a response that seemed to make appropriate decisions about melody, harmony, orchestration, ornamentation, rhythm, and silence. In Lewis' words, "The idea is to get the machine to pay attention to the performer as it composes."

A recipient of several awards from the National Endowment for the Arts in both music and inter-arts categories, George Lewis has presented his interdisciplinary compositions across Eastern and Western Europe, North America, and Japan. His computer compositions have been premiered at the Banff Centre (Canada), IRCAM (Paris), and the Studio voor Elektro-Instrumentale Muziek (Amsterdam). His intermedia installations have been shown at the Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago, and the Musee de la Villette in Paris, and his "interactive music videos," combining the mediums of voice, video, and computer music, have been presented at the Arte Elettronica Festival in Camerina (Italy) and the Kitchen (New York).

George Lewis' work as a trombonist is documented on over eighty record albums on which he is featured as composer, improviser, or interpreter. He has taught at Simon Fraser University and the Art Institute of Chicago, and was for two years curator of the Music program at the Kitchen Center in New York City. Formerly a Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego, he was recipient of a Macarthur award in 2002 and is now Edwin H. Case Professor of Music at Columbia University NY.

 

Gordon Pask

Born 1928 in Derby (GB)-died 1996 in London. Pask, who was named Mister Cybernetics, the Cybernetician's Cybernetician by Heinz von Foerster, studied Chemistry, Sciences and Psychology at Liverpool Technical College and the University of London. In the 1950s he and Robin McKinnon-Wood began to construct Musicolour (1953), an adaptive machine, which transformed music live into projected light and changed its behaviour when the music was too monotonous. With Stafford Beer he did electrochemical experiments to develop artificial neurons. Pask's many research projects explored a. o. self-organizing systems, group behavior and issues of learning and teaching. His Conversation Theory developed a comprehensive epistemological model. He constructed adaptive teaching and learning machines like SAKI (1956), CASTE (1972), Thoughtsticker (1974) and published various articles and books, e.g. An Approach to Cybernetics (1961), Conversation, Cognition and Learning (1975) and Conversation Theory (1976). 1953 he founded with Robin McKinnon-Wood the research company System Research Limited. 1969 he was appointed Professor at the Department of Cybernetics, Brunel University. 1974-1979 he was visiting professor at the Institute of Educational Technology of the Open University. Other teaching positions included the universities of Illinois, Mexico and Amsterdam, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, the Concordia University, Montral and the Architectural Association (UK), and worked with Nicholas Negroponte at the Architecture machine (precursor of the MIT Media Lab).

 

Jim Bobrow

James E. Bobrow is a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and is currently a Visiting Professor at the Field and Space Robotics laboratory at MIT. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, Mechanics and Structures Department in 1983. His Ph.D. Thesis was on the optimal control of robotic manipulators. After graduate school, Prof. Bobrow was a senior programmer analyst at McDonnell Douglas Automation Company, where he developed CAM software for the Unigraphics system. In 1984, Dr. Bobrow joined the University of California, Irvine as an assistant professor. While at UCI, his research areas have progressed from the design of pneumatic actuators for robotic systems, to robotics for rehabilitation, to machine learning systems. Dr. Bobrow has also been a Visiting Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, and he has created robots and automation devices for several start-up companies, including Robomedica, Inc. and Cobra Technologies. He serves on the Board of Directors of Robomedica, Inc., and he has served on the program committees or organizing committees of the leading conferences in control systems and robotics.

 

Peter Krapp

Professor Krapp’s current research in the “digital humanities” continues his work on media theory and cultural memory. He is completing a manuscript on what he calls the distraction economy: tracing attention and its deficits in discussing digital culture. In addition, he is co-editing two other volumes - one on film title sequences (the first book-length academic study of this important form between cinema, motion graphics, and digital art), and one on critical media studies and the concept of “defense” (an international conference at UC Irvine).

 

Joerg Meyer

Center of GRAVITY (Graphics, Visualization and Interactive Technology), Calit2

Dr. Meyer holds a Ph.D. and M.S. degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. He joined UC Irvine in 2002. His research interests include large-scale scientific visualization, biomedical imaging, digital image processing, interactive rendering and virtual reality. He developed hierarchical space subdivision techniques for multi-resolution rendering, and wavelet-based compression schemes for interactive data storage, transmission and rendering of large volumetric data sets. His expertise in developing interactive rendering algorithms reaches into several application domains, ranging from medical visualization to earthquake simulations and educational games. He has published his work in over 112 public venues, conferences and journals, including IEEE, ACM and IASTED. His interactive video installation “Fantastic Voyage” (in collaboration with Dr. T. Wischgoll, Wright State University) was displayed at the Discovery Science Center, Santa Ana, CA.

 

Tau-Mu Yi

Tau-Mu Yi is a systems biologist interested in the quantitative description of G-protein signaling, and the analysis of the robustness of biological networks.

 

Crista Lopes

The research I do is always related, one way or another, to languages and communication systems. The ultimate goal of my research is to deepen the knowledge about communication, in particular in systems that involve humans and machines. With this goal in mind, I work in software design, programming languages, device-to-device communications and application-specific networking. I have also done some work in security and applications of audio signal processing. I am most interested in computing systems that are still to come, such as those envisioned as Ubiquitous Computing. To find out about my current projects and students, follow the links on the left or visit the mondego pages.

 

Mark Poster

Mark Poster is a member of the History Department at UCI, the Department of Film and Media Studies, and the Critical Theory Emphasis. He also has courtesy appointments in the Department of Information and Computer Science and the Department of Comparative Literature.
Some of his recent publications are: What’s the Matter with the Internet? (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), The Second Media Age (Blackwell, 1995), The Mode of Information (Chicago Press, 1990) and Cultural History and Postmodernity (Columbia University Press, 1997). A collection of pieces old and new with a critical introduction by Stanley Aronowitz is published as The Information Subject (G & B Arts International, 2001). He is continuing his study of the social and cultural theory of electronically mediated information with a forthcoming work entitled Information Please: Culture and Politics in a Digital Age (Duke University Press, 2006).

 

David Reinkensmeyer

Prof. Reinkensmeyer’s research interests are in neuromuscular control, motor learning, robotics, and rehabilitation. A major goal is to develop physically interacting, mechatronic devices ("rehabilitators") to help the nervous system recover arm and leg movement ability after neurologic injuries such as stroke and spinal cord injury.  Another goal is to understand the adaptive control processes that enable motor learning, in order to provide a rational basis for designing rehabilitators.  Prof. Reinkensmeyer’s laboratory has developed a variety of robotic devices for manipulating and measuring movement in humans and rodents.  These devices are being used to investigate the role of mechanical assistance in retraining arm movement following stroke, the feasibility of providing movement training remotely using the Internet, and the role of sensory information in locomotor plasticity after spinal cord injury.  Prof. Reinkensmeyer’s laboratory also uses computational models to better understand neural control principles.

 

Tom Boellstorff

Dr. Boellstorff is currently engaged in two research projects. The first focuses on male transvestites (waria), HIV/AIDS, regional autonomy, and national society in Indonesia. Despite knowledge of prevention and new antiretroviral therapies, the global caseload skyrockets and access to treatment remains segregated by wealth. It is clear that the greatest enemy in combating HIV/AIDS is not knowledge or resources in the abstract, but the conceptual frameworks with which we understand risk, health, and human being.

His second current research project concerns cybersociality in virtual worlds, mainly the construction of subjectivities and social relationalities in cyberspace. How does the category of the material become transformed in virtual worlds? How do domains like “economic” and “domestic” become reworked in virtual worlds? What are the implications of forms of embodiment where an individual can change genders, ethnicities, or even species at will? What does it mean when a “person” can point to another “person” and say “that woman is also me?”

 

Byeong Sam Jeon

Byeong Sam Jeon is an electronic artist whose interests include Telematic Culture, Robotics, Data Visualization, Interactive Systems, Post Human Theories and Human Networks & Global Communications.  His work is driven by his belief that technology enables all sorts of people to deepen and enhance interpersonal communication.  His research addresses the theme of social interaction between groups of people from different backgrounds. As an artist, he creates bridges to build healthy relationships among people and encourages them to consider the importance of communication.

For a decade, Byeong Sam has exhibited and performed in several international and national venues, including… more...

 

Marvin Park

Marvin Park entered ACE from the ICS department, after taking a B.S degree in Computer Science from KAIST. He co-founded NeoWiz Corp., an online entertainment company in Korea. He has worked as a project manager and chief creative director for nine years in his company, being in charged with service strategy and user interface/interaction design of massive online communities and entertainment services. His current interests include HCI, autonomous agent, natural language processing, neural network and psychological studies about human nature, all of which are required for completing his ‘Virtual World’ project, an alternative social entertainment platform.
… more...

 

Bruno Nadeau

Bruno Nadeau is a computation artist who flirts with neonomadism, a freelance programmer-travaller while in search of inspiration. He received a bachelor degree in computer science with a major in computation arts from concordia university in montreal. During his studies he joined the obx labs, to research, experiment and push digital and dynamic typography. His current work explores alternative displays, tactile interfaces, wireless networks and distributed cognition while pursuing a master degree (m.s.arts computation and engineering) at uci in the informatics & computer science department. Information about his work is available at http://www.keenk.com.… more...

 

Karan Kamdar

Kamdar’s research interests include Software Agents, Artificial Neural Networks, Applied Cancer Research, Robotics and Wearable Computing. He has a background in Information Technology Engineering but with an openness to emerging technologies such as interactive environments, broadband interaction, animation, sound synthesis, digital multimedia entertainment, 3D vision, and heterogeneous multiplayer gaming.

 

Mark Roland

Mark Roland came to ACE straight after earning a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Kansas.  Mark is currently working to integrate his background in web development, engineering, industrial design, and fabrication into the creation of networked artifacts that serve as informational, personal, lasting artifacts in the owner’s life.

more...

 

Addiel de Alba Solis

Addiel de Alba Solis is an international artist and scientist. Currently he is focusing on the exploration of sound, visual art, and complex systems in biology, exploring new methods for the generation of embodied experiences and sensations. His practice is particularly concerned with revolutionizing audiovisual composition by using pure mathematical methods within the discipline of chaos and complex systems.

His main research and artistic work utilizes biological systems and artificial life representations to explore interactions among different functional physical entities. He has been a sound designer for the past ten years, and holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering… more...

 

Chung Nan Yen

Chung is a computing artist with interests in the field of gaming. He received his bachelors degree in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts from the University of California, San Diego along with a minor in computer science. His past projects have dealt with the various social implications and questions brought on by the direction of the current gaming culture. Chung has entered the ACE program in hopes of continuing his interests and further developing his work and skills. He is currently still developing his next project.

 

Sean Voisen

Sean Voisen is a former media arts teacher, entrepreneur, and computer programmer who joined ACE to develop a tangible art practice and explore what it means to be a human in a technoculture. His primary research interests center on cultural-critical and technology studies; everything from technocultural criticism to biocybernetics to human-machine interfaces to explorations of new technologies for creative self-expression and embodied experience. A humanist first and technologist second, Sean has a B.S. in computer science from UCLA.

 

Miya Sylvester

Miya’s middle name is Miya and her first name is Nicole. She loves the visual fusion of art and math, and self-designed her undergraduate BA in Artistic and Mathematical Space from the University of Rochester. Previously, she has researched fold-able designs through algorithmic methods to connect the realm between two and three dimensions via Origami art. For a short time, Miyas work squiggled away from the visual domain into fractal, post-tonal and serial composition with the Eastman School of Music. While she is with the ACE Program, her work will likely do a little dance between kinesiology and the digital geometry of negative space.
She has love for the hapas. 

 

Sunetra Majumdar

Sunetra received her Bachelors' degree in Architecture from Birla Institute of Technology, India and then a Masters degree in Industrial Design from Indian Institute of Technology, India. as a professional, she worked for a water filtration company designing products like Pitcher Filter, Faucet Mount filters, shower filters, pool filtration units, and her work shows a great concern for Universal Design - design for all, irrespective of age, culture, or physical disabilities. Sunetra has designed kitchen cutting implements for the visually impaired, a convertible perambulator which can be biked and taken around and also used as a shopping cart. Another project of hers was Trinity, which combined a hair dryer, hand blender and hand drill in a single product. She is now working towards a MS degree from ACE. While at ACE, she would like to blend in Human computer interaction, Interface design and Universal Design in her work.

 

Sky Frostenson

Sky Frostenson is an artist / designer / aesthetic programmer, originally from Los Alamos, New Mexico. His main project development focus includes (but is certainly not limited to) iconoclastic iconographies, floating signifiers, and their tactical implementation in a wide variety of cultural software and new media agitprop endeavors, with a special emphasis on gaming and interactive design. He holds a B.S. in Psychology and a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts, both from the University of California, San Diego. He periodically posts projects, links, and other digital detritus at http://illinest.net.

 

Tom Jennings

Tom Jennings is an artist with a background in technology whose main strength is synthesis -- problem-solving across multiple discipline boundaries. Computers, software, and electronics since 1977; computer networking since 1984, internet since 1992, basic machine-shop skills, all applied to his artwork, documented at http://wps.com.

 

Paul Dourish

Paul Dourish is a Professor of Informatics with courtesy appointments in Computer Science and Anthropology. His research lies at the intersection of computer science and social science, with a particular emphasis on the social and cultural foundations of contemporary computational practice. His work currently centers around topics of embodied cultural practice in ubiquitous computing. He is a member of the Center for Ethnography, the Institute for Software Research, and the Game Culture and Technology Lab, amongst other UCI affiliations. Before coming to UCI, he was a Senior Member of the Research Staff at Xerox PARC, and has also held research positions at Apple Computer and at Rank Xerox EuroPARC. His book, “Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction,” was published by MIT Press in 2001.

 

Cina Hazegh

Cina Hazegh is a graduate of the ACE program, affiliated with the department of engineering. His current interests include social networks, self-organizing systems, ubiquitous/pervasive computing, and the study of human computer interaction. His engineering objectives include the study of low cost wireless information devices with an additional focus on industrial design. Cina is responsible for flashmob.com and is a collaborator in the xflashmobs.com project. His website is considered a primary source of information on the flash mob phenomenon and has been cited by international media organizations including the BBC and PC Magazine.

 

Robert Nideffer

Robert Nideffer researches, teaches, and publishes in the areas of virtual environments and behavior, interface theory and design, technology and culture, and contemporary social theory. He holds an MFA in Computer Arts, and a Ph.D. in Sociology, and is an Associate Professor in Studio Art and Informatics at UC Irvine, where he serves as an Affiliated Faculty in the Visual Studies Program, and as Director for the Arts Computation and Engineering (ACE) Program. He is also Founding Director of the UC Irvine Game Culture & Technology Lab, and a related academic “Specialization in Game Culture and Technology.” Robert has participated in a number of national and international online and offline exhibitions, speaking engagements and panels for a variety of professional conferences.

 

Bill Tomlinson

Bill Tomlinson is a researcher and animator of autonomous computational characters. His current work explores the connections between social relationships, emotion, and human ethical systems. Previous interactive projects have been shown at SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, the ZKM Future Cinema exhibition and other venues, and have been reviewed by CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Sculpture Magazine, Scientific American Frontiers, the LA Times, Wired.com and the BBC. In addition his animated film, Shaft of Light, screened at the Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by the Anti-Defamation League in its Anti-Bias/Diversity Catalog. He holds an A.B. in Biology from Harvard College, an M.F.A. in Experimental Animation from CalArts, and S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from the Synthetic Characters Group at the MIT Media Lab. Bill is ACE’s Associate Director of External Relations.

 

Adrian Herbez

Adrian Herbez is an aesthetic programmer concerned primarily with the creation and evolution of real-time interactive spaces and generative systems. He studied digital and electronic media at Carnegie Mellon University, graduating in 2001. Since then he has worked professionally producing both real-time and pre-rendederd content and teaching 3d animation. He has been part of the OmniCircus theater since 2000, where he builds and operates Virtual Puppets (VRpits) that integrate with live performance. His work can be viewed at http://www.purplestatic.com.

 

Eric Kabisch

Eric's research interests include network and social visualization, dynamic music generation for interactivity, spatial perception and embodiment, game space vs. real space, and sustainable living. Past work experience includes art direction, music performance and production, application/game development, and motion design/animation. He holds a B.A. in Telecommunications and Music from Indiana University (1996), along with an A.S. in Audio Technology (1993).

 

Garnet Hertz

Garnet Hertz is a Fulbright Scholar, Research Fellow at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and is also completing the Critical Theory Emphasis at UCI. Hertz's current thesis work consists of developing hybrid insect/machine systems, taking cybernetic-inspired forms as an origin to analyze contemporary developments in "cyborg" existence: artificial life, body modification, biorobotics, genetic engineering and posthuman theory. He has shown this work at SIGGRAPH, and also is founder of Dorkbot-Socal, a monthly lecture series. Popular press about his work is widespread, disseminating through 25 countries including The New York Times, I.D. Magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, NBC, CBS, ZDTV and CNN Headline News.

 

Simon Penny

Simon Penny is Professor of Arts and Engineering, a joint appointment of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and The Henry Samueli School of Engineering. He is Founding Director of the Arts Computation and Engineering graduate program. Until 2005 he served as layer leader for the arts component of the UC Irvine division of Cal-(IT)2. Currently he is heading up a research lab focusing on embodiment, performance and telematics. Penny is an Australian artist, theorist and teacher in the field of interactive media art. His art practice consists of interactive and robotic installations, which have been exhibited in the… more...

 

Kevin Ponto

Kevin Ponto is a graduate of the ACE program. A 2004 graduate of the University of Wisconsin Madison, in Computer Engineering, his background is strongly technical. Seeking to expand his knowledge to combine fine arts and computers, the ACE program was a seemingly perfect fit. Kevin has worked professionally designing and programming various websites for several different educational institutions. In the future, Kevin would like to pursue his interests in digital video and special effects, computer simulations, and artificial intelligence.

 

Ryan Schoelerman

Ryan has completed and shown work in various analog/digital medias to include electronic music, video, robotics, interactive installation and public performance via tactical media practices. Ryan has a BA in Media Study from the MediaRobotics Lab, State University of New York at Buffalo.

 

Greg Elliott

Elliot has a B.S. in Cognitive Science & Computation from UCSD. Interested in shaping the way design both dictates and allows for more effective interaction, his current focus is on creating systems that are both functional and emotionally fulfilling.  Lately, he has branched into the design of ubiquitous devices.  A musician and philosopher at heart, he enjoys returning to his roots by framing and exploring them in a software/hardware medium. 

His past work includes:

• E-Learning System - in collaboration with David Kirsh, this “from scratch” system has replaced WebCT/Blackboard for many courses taught at UCSD


• MediaReviewer - a tool for the ethnographic study of multiple videos/subjects sponsored by CalIT2, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and funded by the NSF and the ONR


• Synchronization - thesis project to support & improve how people ‘get on the same page’

Greg is still employed by and closely tied with the Interactive Cognition Lab @ UCSD.

 

Margaret Watson

Watson focusses on the exploration of sensor and computer vision systems, spatial sound and human-centered interaction as components in creating interactive art installations. Related areas of study include Image Processing, Ubiquitous Computing, Interactive Sound and Human Perception. Prior to ACE, Margaret has received a MFA in Electronic Visualization from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BSGS in Art with minors in German and Computer Information Systems from Delta State University in Mississippi. Since moving to Southern California, she is also an avid sailor.

 

Pearl Ho

Ho graduated from the University of Texas at Austin achieving a BS in electrical engineering.  Her interests are in biomedical devices, MEMS, wireless devices, women’s studies, and science studies. Her artworks will challenge the engineering industry to expand research and development to uncultivated utilities. Pearl’s past research has been in biomedical instrumentation. She is always in search of new transdisciplinary collaborations.

 

So Yamaoka

'So's research interests are the unity of interactive computer graphics and audio signal processing (i.e., Visual Music), human-computer interaction, affective computing, ubiquitous computing, brain science, fancy electronic music devices. So Yamaoka has received B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Aizu, Japan.

 

Angela Willcocks

Metal Hearts, Botox. numbering. Eternal youth, skin, mines, Prozac, mapping. Biological manipulation, sociology, antibiotics, media. Sequencing, manipulation and the beautification of disease.

Mapping those pregnant moments essential to contemporary human life, my luscious segments of synthetic biomorphic imagery document the untenable, yet emotive experiences evident in science, society, art and the self today is Willcocks’ major concern. Her multimedia installations have been exhibited in major museums, and she has been an artist in residence at The Contemporary Arts Center in Atlanta and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos.

 

Jeff Ridenour

Jeff completed his undergraduate studies at U.C. Berkeley studying Music and Physics, and also has completed masters degrees in Contrabass performance, Computer Science, and Computer Music.  Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science at UC Irvine. He has worked as a consultant for mobile game companies, and has assisted and taught for several courses in Game Development & Computer Graphics & Sound. Jeff is conducting research on Embodied Interaction, Game Culture & Design, Improvisational & Algorithmic Composition in Computer Music, and Expressive AI with Synthetic Characters.