Students

Mark Roland

Mark Roland is a first year student coming 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.

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.

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.

Marvin Park

Marvin Park is a 1st year ACE student in 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.

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.

Karan Kamdar

A first year ACE student from UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering. My research interests include Software Agents, Artificial Neural Networks, Applied Cancer Research, Robotics and Wearable Computing. I come to the ACE program with a background in Information Technology Engineering but with an openness to exciting emerging technologies such as interactive environments, broadband interaction, animation, sound synthesis, digital multimedia entertainment, 3D vision, heterogeneous multiplayer gaming etc. I wish to blend my engineering skills with an artist’s imagination and critique. I also truly believe in the spirit of entrepreneurship and have worked on a few real world implementable business models such as Stople.com (https://webfiles.uci.edu/kamdark/www/stople.html). My other creative works include self made music compositions and futuristic novels such as “2120 and a Human Re-Engineered”. As I can see it, in today’s competitive world its not tough to find ideas, there are lots of them if you can see with your eyes wide open, the problem is to find the right ones. Through the ACE program I hope to improve the process and product of my wierdest dreams and imagination.

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 from the ITESM Campus Guadalajara, Mexico. He is a second year student of the ACE program at UCI.

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.

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.

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 the ISIMD ‘05 (International Symposium of Interactive Media Design) in Istanbul, Turkey, Uijeongbu International Digital Art Festival in Uijeongbu Art Center, Korea, SIGGRAPH 2004 in LA, USA, Salon 04 International Digital Art Exhibit in Havana, Cuba, and Jooksan International Arts Festival ‘01 in Ansung, Korea.