Presenters

Sean Montgomery

Sean Montgomery is the founder of Connected Future Labs, a New York City-based R&D engineering company that specializes in bringing technology out of the lab and into the real world. From machine learning to computer vision and circuits that sense the body, the work aims to deliver real-world impact from cutting edge research. Since finishing his Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Sean has lead teams developing numerous products in wearable technology, brain-computer interfaces and affective computing and is currently launching EmotiBit, a truly wearable open-source sensor module for capturing high-quality emotional, physiological, and movement data from the body. Sean periodically teaches courses and workshops at MIT, NYU, and Hunter College and regularly shows interactive installation artwork around the world that interrogates the human condition and our changing relationship to the physical and metaphysical world.

Heidi Boisvert

Heidi Boisvert is an artist, scientist and creative technologist. She designs expanded reality and transmedia storytelling experiences, and also devises networked dance and theatre using biocreative technology. She co-founded XTH, an open-source biowearable startup, and after creating "ICED: I Can End Deportation," the first 3D social change game, and "America 2049," an alternate reality game about pluralism, Heidi founded futurePerfect lab to develop imaginative, playful emerging media projects with social justice organizations. A boutique creative agency and think-tank, the lab harnesses the power of pop culture, emerging technology, and neuroscience to ignite culture change by working in creative partnership with non-profits to engineer their messages for mass appeal.Heidi is currently Director of Emerging Media Technology at CUNY and an MIT research affiliate. She has previously been a TED Resident, a Harvestworks "Creativity + Technology = Enterprise" Fellow, a cultural ambassador in Turkey, and new media mentor for NALIP and BAVC Producer's Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Electronic Arts from RPI, where her research interrogated the socio-cultural and neurobiological impacts of intelligent technology. At present, she is developing the first media genome: an open-source biometric lab and AI system to isolate the narrative ingredients that move us to act.

Conor Russomanno

OpenBCI Co-founder & CEO, Conor Russomanno, comes from a mixed background of art, engineering, and design. As an undergrad engineering student at Columbia he focused on computer graphics and virtual environments. He currently serves as a Research Affiliate under Pattie Maes of the Fluid Interfaces group at the MIT Media Lab. While pursuing an MFA in Design and Technology at Parsons, Conor discovered creative coding and brain-computer interfacing (BCI). Since then, Conor has been building OpenBCI, a company dedicated to open source innovation of human-computer interface technologies. His current interests lie at the intersection of BCI, artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented reality (AR). He spent one years as the Director of Advanced Interfaces at Meta, and Augmented Reality (AR) startup based in San Mateo. Conor was recently selected to the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Science list. He has also taught graduate level courses in Design, Physical Computing, and Creative Coding at Parsons and NYU Tisch.

Guillermo Bernal

Formally trained (Pratt, MIT) in computational design and architecture and switched paths to becoming a human-computer interaction and machine learning expert. His research is focused on novel experiences and tools for augmenting human creativity. Guillermo is accustomed to working in the creative field and is comfortable bridging the gap between artistic and technical disciplines. Guillermo’s work focuses on the back-and-forth between the physical and the virtual. He explores embodiment and experiences that address the augmentation of ourselves as technology integrated into our lives. This is done by assessing the emotional response from the body while interacting with future technologies as they become a reality. His current research explorations use real body characteristics, including electroencephalogram, electrodermal activity, electromyography, and electrocardiography, as low-fidelity indicators of our current state. Guillermo's work has been published in academic conferences like NeurIPS, CHI, PETRA, ISWC, design workshops SmartGeometry, and distinguish websites like evolo, design-milk, and detail-online.

Meghna Dholakia

Meghna Dholakia is an artist, designer, and writer. She explores the patterns we continue as individuals and as a species, on a small scale and a large one, through our actions, and our failure to act. She has studied these ideas most recently at the School for Poetic Computation and the Recurse Center in NYC.

Ari Melenciano

Ari "Ariciano" Melenciano is an electromedia artist, designer and researcher passionate about exploring how various forms of design impact the human experience. Much of her work and research surrounds topics including speculative design, experimental pedagogy, audio-visual human-computer interactive technologies, and counterculture. She teaches design and technology at ITP NYU and the Pratt Institute and is the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution for interdisciplinary innovation and racial justice.

Philipp Schmitt

Philipp Schmitt (b. 1993, Germany) is an artist, designer, and researcher based in Brooklyn, NY. His practice engages with the philosophical, poetic, and political dimensions of computation by examining the ever-shifting discrepancy between what is computable in theory and in reality. His current work addresses the automation of perception and notions of opacity in artificial intelligence research. Philipp's work has been exhibited at the MAK Vienna, the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), Science Gallery Dublin, Festival Images de Vevey, and the Vitra Museum, among others, and is in the collections of the PMA, Ars Electronica Center, and the MoMA Art Library. His artist book, Computed Curation, was published by Bromide Books in 2018.

Vanessa Rosa

Vanessa Rosa is a Brazilian visual artist and art historian. She creates projects that mixtures public art, community activities, technological experiments and historical research, usually having painting as her main medium. Currently she has been developing a research about algorithmic images and traditional patterns. Vanessa has worked as project coordinator for different organisations and is an illustrator and art director for Viajante do Tempo publishing company, being one of the company's owners. She has done mural paintings, exhibitions and other projects in South and North America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Winnie Yoe

Winnie Yoe is a Hong Kong-born artist/designer working at the intersection of art, design, and technology. She is interested in exploring the social and emotional implications of technology and draws from a background in graphic design, sculpture-performances, and curatorial work to create interactive experiences about boundaries and discomfort. She graduated from Dartmouth College and is currently working towards a master’s degree at NYU’s ITP program. Her work has been showcased at the ISEA 2019, IMPAKT Festival 2019, Governors Island, Tai Kwun Contemporary and others.

Francisco Rojo

I recently moved to Brooklyn from Pittsburgh, PA. I am an artist that makes interactive experiences, environments, and narratives that are grounded in my lived experience. My work celebrates the detail and aesthetics of everyday existence by creating spaces to explore and play that enkindle an appreciation for our shared reality. I create spaces within virtual and physical contexts. I've made a few small videogames (https://frojo.itch.io) inspired by personal experiences. Among the tools I used to make these games are Unity, Godot, and PICO-8. I was part of the School for Poetic Computation's Fall 2019 cohort, and for the final showcase I created an interactive piece that was an experiment in vulnerability: a closet in the exhibition space was turned into a cozy, alternate space. Participants were let in one a time and were invited to write down a secret on a piece of paper before leaving, leaving a room full of secrets. After graduating in 2016 with a degree in computer engineering and operating systems, I worked at Google as a Software Engineer until 2019. I worked on Chrome OS, improving frame-rate for a tablet device, and on Google Shopping, where I optimized software infrastructure that processed petabytes of data daily.

Yeohyun Ahn

Yeohyun Ahn is an award-winning typographer, interactive visual designer, and educator. Her works have been featured through Washington Post, PRINT, New York Times Magazine, Letter Arts Review, Creator’s Project, Designboom.com, and so on. She was chosen as Design Incubation Fellow in 2017, the Juror's Choice Award at IDEAS in 2015, and Graduate Fellowship from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2009. Her works have been published in the books, Graphic Design: the Basics, Type on Screen, and Data-Driven Graphic Design. She worked as a freelance graphic artist in the New York Times Magazine. She taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago State University, and Valparaiso University. Now she is an assistant professor in the Art department at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Having immigrated last two decades as a designer in America brings her to be aware of social inequity, discrimination, and marginality. Currently, she explores computational graphic art for social homelessness being isolated and marginal in professional areas of American society.

Alexander Miller

I’m an artist, educator and programmer from Seattle, WA. As part of the artist group SPACEFILLER, I create interactive algorithmic playgrounds through computation, light, sound and sculpture. Our work has been featured by the Seattle Times, The Stranger magazine, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the Seattle Symphony, and the Seattle Art Museum. I’m also currently involved with teaching and organization at the School for Poetic Computation. I’m interested in systems that exhibit spontaneous emergence of order and structure (for example: crystal growth, bird flocking, human consciousness). These are local pockets of structure that resist the global tide of entropy, and they inspire my creation of algorithmically simulated models of natural systems.

Yuguang (YG) Zhang and Nuntinee Tansrisakul

Yuguang (YG) Zhang is a New York-based creative technologist, new media artist and a current MPS candidate of the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. An ex-software product manager and artistic director, he took a leap of faith from his mid-career, in pursuit of a vision that embraces the co-existence of humans and intelligent machines. His current practice, which incorporates interactive media, installation, and live performance, focuses on the reciprocal relationship between human and technology, the potential of AI in future storytelling, and the biases & ethical issues that come along.

Nuntinee Tansrisakul is a New York-based new media artist. Her work experiments with the way the human minds construct our physical realities; exploring the thin line where the minds are able to form patterns yet are ready to let go of them and perceive what is truly in front of us. Her work has been exhibited at NYC Media Lab, New York, Processing Community Day 2019, New York, Cycling ‘74 Expo, Massachusetts, TEDGlobal, Kyoto and TEDxBangkok, Bangkok.

Greg Benedis-Grab

Greg is the director of academic technology and computing at The Packer Collegiate Institute. He received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching in 2011. He has presented on science, technology, computing, and innovation at national conferences and led workshops globally. He also teaches at the Hunter College Graduate School of Education. His computational work can be seen on Medium

Elena Lee Gold

Elena Lee Gold is an MFA candidate in the Design and Technology program at Parsons, and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Having previously worked in games professionally for 5+ years, they now make digital interactive work that explores ritual, queerness, and human/computer relationships within the context of our interfaces. In their free time, they like to hunt for the freshest patch of AstroTurf® in NYC.

Will Hallett

Will Hallett is a certificate student in the Transdisciplinary Research and Practice program at the New Centre for Research and Practice. He holds an MPS from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (’19) and a BA in English from Bates College (’16). Will’s work coheres in black radical, feminist, and continental interpretations of time, currency, labor, and computational media with research emphases in queer games, psychoanalysis, ecology and ethnicity, and the political economy of the image. Will has performed, showed work, and shared research at Baby Castles, Space Gallery, Tisch School of the Arts, The Shed, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, LiJiang Studios in Yunnan, the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn, and the Movement and Computing (MOCO) and Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) conferences. Will's research and writing can be found in the ACM Digital Library, Strelka Magazine, and in the &&& Journal. Will is also an independent affiliate of the Post Human Network (PHuN) and the Gulf of Maine ECOARTS Initiative and an office assistant at the New Reality Company, LLC.

Leticia Cartier Oxley

Leticia Cartier Oxley is the Program Associate and Project Leader for the Expressive Matter: Biomaterials Research Group based out of Genspace in New York City. Her work is situated at the intersection of culture, science, and design where she is on a mission to expand collaborative practices between designers and scientists. Leticia also leads strategy and biodesign workshops for universities, conferences, and corporations.

Jasmine Soltani

Jasmine Soltani is an artist, researcher, and programmer who uses code, electronic devices, up-cycled and living materials to explore the embedded human, material, and ecological aspects of digital media. She is a graduate and 2018-2019 resident researcher of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). She has several years of experience collecting, normalizing, and linking data sources for research and program evaluation. She is currently an analyst at the NYC Parks Department and teaches Creative Computing at City College.

Daniel Fenjves

Danny has spent almost 10 years living and teaching code. Danny is an alumnus of Teach for America, worked at Google, and is currently the founder of Upperline Code, whose mission is to train the next generation of computer science leaders. In his career, he's trained over 100 teachers to lead immersive coding courses in schools across the country, built extensive coding curriculum, and taught software development to hundreds of high school students. As a former middle school science teacher, he's deeply committed to the art of instruction and discovering the best methods to recruit, train, and retain top teaching talent in the field of K-12 computer science education.

Michelle Velho

I am the STEAM coordinator for Hudson Montessori School in Jersey City and currently work with students K-6. I recently became a National STEM Certified Educator and National Geographic Certified Educator. I am also a Primary Montessori Certified teacher. My goal as an educator is to create integrated learning experiences. Prior to becoming a teacher I worked in the STEM cell research and in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Louise Lessél and Casey Conchinha

Louise Lessél is a new media artist & creative technologist from Denmark, working with interactive expressions of light and sound, often generating works that respond to movements of the audience through tracking technologies. Previously exhibited works include the internationally renowned installation ‘The Wave’ and ‘Restart:Refrain’, made during her time at the artist collective Vertigo (vertigo.dk), in Denmark. She is currently a student at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.

Casey Conchinha is an artist/coder/designer who lives in Brooklyn. While studying graphic design, he began to feel limited by the existing software for creating graphics, and began learning how to code his own tools using Processing. He is currently interested in pixel-by-pixel manipulations and generative computer graphics. He enjoys VJing and creating interactive installations. He is currently a student at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.

neta bomani

Neta Bomani is a worker who engages in visual storytelling, direct action and anti art practices through organizing and making archives, writings, prints, zines, circuits and workshops. Neta's work has materialized as an educator of the Pioneer Works collaboration with Good Shepherds after school programs, a steward of the School for Poetic Computation, a member of Stephanie Dinkins Studio and a participator in grassroots organizing against prisons and borders in New York City and beyond in solidarity with No New Jails, Take Back the Bronx, Survived & Punished and more.

Luca Damasco

Luca Damasco makes things that help people make things. He develops accessible creative tools for artists, students, and educators while working as an educator and creative technologist. In his creative technology roles, Luca has worked for Riot Games as a Technical Artist, contributed to The Processing Foundation’s Python mode project, and co-created WickEditor.com. As an educator, Luca has taught creative coding at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art, and currently teaches at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.

Jazsalyn McNeil

Jazsalyn McNeil aka NAAMLES identifies as Anti-Disciplinary. Ambiguous in identity, creating the undefined, confronting existential crises such as the byproducts of colonialism, technology and its disconnect with nature, the indigenous. Jazsalyn’s work has been featured in publications such as Vogue, Vogue Italia, The Hollywood Reporter and Huffington Post. Exhibitions and panels such as TEDx Durham and Textiles as a Second Skin at MoogFest.

Henry Haoyu Wang

Henry Haoyu Wang is an artist and a designer based in Brooklyn, New York. He holds his BA in art and technology at Allegheny College, PA, and now as a first year master student at NYU’s ITP (Interactive Telecommunications Program). His work involves an interdisciplinary approach to the medium of new media art. The disciplinary perspectives consist of fine art, digital media, psychology, biology, and computer science. His work exhibited in Austria, Portugal, China, Germany, and United State. His current focus are data and bio ethics, critical and speculative design. Henry leaded various creative coding workshops in Chengdu, China with Processing, and he always interested in both creative coding and education.

Daniel Lichtman with Kaitlyn Chiu, Jose Benitez, Yingna Lu and Khaliya McCall

Daniel Lichtman is an artist, educator and programmer who lives in New York. His work in performance, video and installation explore how media platforms (e.g. YouTube or Public Access Television) shape relationships of trust and power between performer and viewer--he has presented work at BRIC, The Bronx Museum, The Queens Museum and other venues. He currently teaches creative coding in the New Media Art program at Baruch College, CUNY. Lichtman worked for many years as computer programmer in a lab studying human vision at the University of Pennsylvania and in a physics lab at the CERN particle accelerator. Kaitlyn Chiu, Jose Benitez and Yingna Lu, who are collaborating on this project and will help run the workshop, are current students in the New Media Art program at Baruch College, CUNY.

Leandra Tejedor

Leandra is a programmer, designer and educator in NYC. She works as the co-founder and product lead at Vidcode, creating software and curriculum that teaches students to code through creativity. She also runs Arcade Jams, weekend long hardware game jams, around the world.

Layla Quinones

Hello processing community! I am a Middle School Science/Computer Science teacher at The Roosevelt Island School. After receiving my BS and MA from New York University in Physics Education, and have since focused on teaching CS and spreading CS Education to both teachers and students all over NYC. Last year I was a Processing Foundation/CS4ALL Teaching Fellow where I wrote curriculum using p5.js for Middle School students. This year I am a Teacher Trainer with CS4ALL where I help Middle School teachers prepare to teach the Creative Web course:a course that uses p5.js to teach HTML, CSS and JS. I am particularly passionate about integrating CS across the curriculum, identifying entry points for CS in other subjects, and providing tools for teachers that help them reach a variety of learners.

Meredith Morran

Meredith Morran is a writer and filmmaker based in Queens, NY. Her writing and new media work examine interactions between humans and technology as sites for both humor and for questioning our existing forms of meaning making. Her documentary work strives to highlight socially relevant issues, such as aging in rural America, the opioid epidemic, and generational poverty. Her work has been performed and screened internationally at festivals including SXSW, Electronic Literature Organization Conference + Media Arts Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, Utopia Film Festival, Fastnet Film Festival, Lady Filmmakers Film Festival and the Pitch Her Productions’ Riveter Series. She is a graduate of Brown University, where she received degrees in Modern Culture and Media & Literary Arts and took courses in photography at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Yuzhu Chai

Yuzhu is a creative coder, writer, and artist. She graduated from the School of the Art Insititute of Chicago where she explored the versatility of language and text via painting, book-making, and programming. She is interested in the materiality of text and the exploration of (virtual) spaces that her medium creates for interactivity in storytelling. She was also a Software Engineer Fellow at General Assembly, where she used her skills in full-stack development to question and subvert the rapidly expanding role of technology in our global society. She spent this Fall in residence at the School For The Poetic Computation where she hosted workshops, collaborated with other artists and continued working with language, software, and hardware.

Xin Xin

Xin Xin is an interdisciplinary artist and community organizer working at the intersection of technology, labor, and identity. Xin co-founded voidLab, a LA-based intersectional feminist collective dedicated to women, trans, and queer folks and they were the Director and Lead Organizer for Processing Community Day 2019, a worldwide initiative celebrating art, code, and diversity. Their work has been exhibited and screened at Ars Electronica, DIS, Dodd Galleries, Gene Siskel Film Center and Machine Project. Xin received their M.F.A from UCLA Design Media Arts and teaches at Parsons School of Art, Media, and Technology at the New School as an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design.

Organizers

Bomani McClendon

Bomani McClendon is a software engineer and interactive media artist based in New York City. He is interested in using technology to create beautiful, memorable experiences that prompt self-reflection or social inquiry. Bomani works as a member of Foldhaus Collective on Shrumen Lumen, a large interactive art installation that is currently on display at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery. During the day, he builds News products and cross-platform UI infrastructure at Facebook.

Lee Tusman

Lee Tusman is an artist, programmer, educator and curator interested in the application of the radical ethos of collectives and DIY culture to the creation of, aesthetics, and open-source distribution methods of digital culture. He creates interactive media, artwork, software, bots, websites, virtual assistants, games, sound and radio stations alone and in collaboration. Areas of research and work include: decentralized networks, generative processes, sonification of data, alternative interface and performance tools, Linux and open source software, bots and digital assistants. He is Assistant Professor of New Media and Computer Science at Purchase College.

Matilda Wysocki

Matilda is a trans disabled artist, community organizer, and programmer studying, imagining, and leveraging mathematical, ecological, and social systems for a more just, equitable, and inclusive world. They have organized around racial, disability, climate, and housing justice and are currently a fellow at The Knowledge House, a Bronx based pipeline for tech talent from low income communities.

Oriana Medlicott

Oriana Medlicott is a freelance AI Ethics Strategist based in NYC & London - passionate about the future of technology, philosophy, history and art. She writes and produces workshops surrounding tech's latest trends and ethical impacts. Oriana graduated from Nottingham Trent University in the UK with a Masters in Philosophy researching the effects of AI and Biotech on human nature.

rebecca (marks) leopold

rebecca (marks) leopold is an artist, writer, programmer and educator living in New York City. She makes photographs, videos and software that explore the relationship between personal expression and technological and historical authorship. Her work has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, SITE Santa Fe, Knockdown Center, NurtureArt and the Philly Fringe Festival. A double graduate of Bard College, she holds an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP and earned a Master’s of Emerging Media from ITP @ NYU.

Todd Anderson

Todd Anderson is a digital poet and web artist focused on building websites and Chrome extensions for use in live performance as both a solo performer and member of the digital performance group H0t Club. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Code + Liberal Arts at Eugene Lang College of the New School. He also helps run Babycastles, an indie-game gallery and event space, the Illuminator, a guerrilla projection collective and School for Poetic Computation, an artist-run creative tech school. He is perhaps best known as the host and curator of WordHack, the five-years-running language + technology talk series every third Thursday at Babycastles.