About the Talk
You gaze into the Cloud Mirror, and it gazes deep into you. It will violate your privacy, especially if you carelessly litter the Internet with sensitive personal details.

The Cloud Mirror is an art piece which temporarily merges visitors’ online identities with their physical selves. It uses augmented reality, computer vision, and Internet web services to identify visitors by name; mine the Internet for photographs and facts (dirt) about them; and superimpose that data in an on-screen comic book thought bubble that follows the visitor’s motion.

About the Speaker
Eric Gradman is an interactive artist in Los Angeles, CA. His work often features computer vision, large-scale projections, unusual sensors, and custom electronics to produce fun environments that compel people to interact.

Past Talks
BIL 2009 – The Perils of Robotics
BIL 2009 – Demo: Brainwave Controlled iPhone App

About the Talk
This talk will focus on a project in Wellington New Zealand entitled Sentimental Plastics. As part of the IntensCity Urban Design Week artist residency in 2007, Morgan Barnard and Robert Appierdo used a shipping container in the busy Courtenay Place entertainment district in Wellington as studio space and live urban screen. During the month-long residency, Barnard and Appierdo conducted workshops where they interviewed Wellington residents and gathered plastic bags to serve as raw material for the culminating Live Cinema performance and installation. These workshops focused on looking at ways to creatively reuse and up-cycle plastic bags. Bags were transformed into reusable material using a widely known heating method. The material was then used to create practical items and projection screens for the installation. The shipping container was transformed at night into an urban screen, evolving from and responding to the surrounding urban and data environment. The project culminated in a Live Cinema performance, projecting interviews and data-mined content onto screens made from up-cycled plastic bags. This talk will review Sentimental Plastics and look at Live Cinema and Urban Screens as a space for community entertainment and engagement.

About the Speaker
Morgan Barnard is a new media designer, filmmaker, and lecturer living in Los Angeles, California. For the past 12 years digital media and new technologies have been a core element that has informed his practice as an innovative artist and designer. From the early days of interactive digital media production at the California College of the Arts to film & video industry experience in Los Angeles and New York, he has worked with media through digital technologies to tell stories, create experiences, and engage audiences. In 2005 he received a master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program in New York University creating a thesis that explored interactive storytelling and immersive narrative experiences. After graduating from NYU ITP, Morgan stayed on as an adjunct faculty member teaching courses in new media production video and interactive media. In 2006 he was awarded a Production fellowship at Eyebeam Atelier where he worked with artists creating documentaries and designed interfaces for live video performance. His background in documentary, music video, motion graphics, and post-production informs his academic practice. He is currently working on interactive installations, locative narrative, live video mixing and the creation of custom hardware and software for live visual performance.

About the Talk
I will discuss the yin/yang of Artificial Reality. Can we create virtual worlds as rich and interesting — or even more so — as the one we find ourselves in? Are the rules of reality themselves digital, discrete, and computable?

About the Speaker
Daniel B. Miller has led a varied career as a musician, computer guy, and serial entrepreneur. As a co-founder of On2 Technologies (now in the process of being acquired by Google), he championed the release of Theora, the open-source video codec. Recent ventures include Singular Robotics and Katalabs, Inc.

About the Talk
Please join us for a presentation explaining how we developed a full service international booking and promotions organization representing speakers, films, and performers based on lessons learned in the Do-it-Yourself punk scene of the 1990’s.

Evil Twin Booking Agency does booking and outreach for people like The Yes Men, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Dr. Mitchell Joachim, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Dead Prez, Alex Grey, Daniel Pinchbeck, and many more. www.eviltwinbooking.com

About the Speakers
Scott Beibin is the host of Scientists Are The New Rockstars and Lost Film Fest stage shows.

Liz Cole is a writer who has published articles in diverse publications from Wired to Filmmaker Magazine.

The are both the co-founders of the Evil Twin Booking Agency.

About the Talk
Light field cameras instantaneously capture a volume by recording both the location and the angle of photons arriving at a camera sensor. This means that each camera exposure results in a 3D structure, visualized through panning sequences, focal stacks, or volume renderings. Recently, my colleagues and I have applied this technique to microscopic objects. In this talk, I will describe our microscope and present examples from marine biology, particularly 3D neural activation patterns in the zebrafish brain (for instance: http://www.stanford.edu/~tanders/lightfield/mcknight/vis-stim/vis-stim.html). In addition, I will describe a concept for a classroom version which would allow interactive 3D exploration of microscopic specimens from anywhere with an internet connection.

About the Speaker
Image making is my main unifying interest. In graduate school I helped apply a new microscopic imaging technique (light field microscopy) to a model system for neuroscience (larval zebrafish), and am now working on version 2.0 of this tool. This summer I made a lot images photographing the road from Scotland to Mongolia. I love bicycling, which leads to additional imaging. I am also interested in sensory substitution (vibrating hats), science on the cheap (specifically in building a science-themed hostel in Baja), biologically-inspired design, and of course cephalopods.

About the Talk
The North Paw is a compass anklet: it vibrates on your ankle to tell you which way is north. Because the stimulus is persistent, your brain adapts to the device, and you acquire an intuitive sense of north.

Sensebridge is a company I have started (with some friends) that aims to explore the space of wearable electronic senses. We bridge the world you can’t feel into the senses you already have: sensebridge. The North Paw bridges a magnetic sense, we also have projects to bridge ultrasonic sound (and thereby echolocation), heart beat, and “eyes in the back of your back”: feeling when things are coming up behind you.

Our approach is not visual: although vision is the most powerful of our senses, it’s also the most over-burdened already, and is actively used. We feel that the sense of touch offers the most possibilities for augmentation of new sensory stimulus.

If you’re interested in wearable electronics or sensory augmentation (aka augmented reality), come to my talk. I’ll give a short talk on wearable electronic senses, and then I’ll moderate a group discussion / Q & A session. I’ll also have a variety of devices on hand that you can try on! Check out our website

About the Speaker
Eric is an engineer and hacker, transhumanist and environmentalist. Lately he’s been building wearable electronic devices which augment his senses. Please join the noisebridge cyborg group: 1pm Sundays at Noisebridge (a San Francisco hackerspace), till the hacking stops.

About the Talk
Scott Beibin (Lost Film Fest) presents a preview from his newest project, the multimedia narrative SCIENTISTS ARE THE NEW ROCKSTARS — a spoken word, video curation, and gadget show-and-tell that spans generations of scientific tinkerers, with an emphasis on sustainable technologies. Says Beibin, “A rockstar scientist is a person who researches and creates with regards to where things come from and go to with consideration for their environmental and social impact.”

www.scientistsarethenewrockstars.com

About the Speaker
Scott Beibin is the director of the Lost Film Fest and co-founder of the Evil Twin Booking Agency.