MNL - Finding the Heart in Technology

Victoria Vesna, Ph.D., is an Artist and Professor at the UCLA Department  of Design Media Arts and Director of the Art|Sci Center at the School  of the Arts (North campus) and California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)  (South campus). Although she was trained early on as a painter (Faculty  of Fine arts, University of Belgrade, 1984), her curious mind took her  on an exploratory path that resulted in work can be defined as  experimental creative research residing between disciplines and  technologies. With her installations she investigates how communication  technologies affect collective behavior and perceptions of identity  shift in relation to scientific innovation (PhD, CAiiA_STAR, University  of Wales, 2000). Her work involves long-term collaborations with  composers, nano-scientists, neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and  she brings this experience to students. Victoria has exhibited her work  in 20+ solo exhibitions, 70+ group shows, has been published in 20+  papers and gave 100+ invited talks in the last decade. She is the North  American editor of AI & Society journal (Springer Verlag, UK) and in  2007 published an edited volume - Database Aesthetics: Art in the Age  of Information Overflow (Minnesota Press) and another in 2011 -- Context  Providers: Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts. (co-edited with  Christiane Paul and Margot Lovejoy) Intellect Ltd, 2011. Currently she  is working on a series Art Science & Technology based on her online  lecture class.

Will Cady has made a career of looking for unexpected brilliance in overlooked subcultures.  A path from zen monasteries through touring rock bands into digital media brought him to his current role as Head Of Brand Strategy at Reddit, overseeing a team built to find homes for brands amidst Reddit’s vast ecosystem of every online community imaginable. Prior to taking on the Head Of Brand Strategy role, Will launched, hired, and managed Reddit’s Los Angeles brand partnerships office; tapping his years of experience architecting revenue-driving programs that connect brands with fast-growing pockets of music, art, and experience just as they reach their tipping points.   Will is a graduate of Berklee College of Music and recipient of an Emmy Award (Local NATAS) for Best Musical Composition/Arrangement.

Clarissa Ribeiro, Ph.D. in Arts (ECA USP/CAiiA node Planetary  Collegium), Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship awardee (UCLA, Art|Sci  Center/James Gimzewski Lab), M.Arch. (IA USP ), B.Arch, member of the  UCLA Art|Sci Collective, chair of the first Leonardo/ISAST LASER talks  to be hosted in Brazil/Latin America, directs the CrossLab research  group and art collective and the LIP –  Lab for Innovation and  Prototyping at the University of Fortaleza. As an independent artist,  working in collaboration with artists, scientists, research groups and  art collectives in her home country and abroad, she has been producing  and exhibiting internationally experimental interactive installations  exploring cross-scale informational and communication dynamics.