Saturday, June 25th, 2011: Speaker Series
11:00 AM – Alex Beim
Talk Synopsis
Beim’s talk will be talking about Zygote and how the project went from a ziplock bag prototype to a real product. Zygote is a lightweight, helium filled, inflatable ball that responds to human touch by changing colour as it floats through the air. Conceived and produced by Tangible, the 2m diameter balls transform any space into an interactive playground and create a shared experience. Typically, Zygotes unite the audience at music concerts and promotional events but they’ve also been seen at major international festivities including the closing ceremony of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games.
Speaker’s Bio
Alex Beim has a design career that includes heading up his own successful graphic design firm in Montevideo, Uruguay to an award-winning role as Associate Creative Director at Tribal DDB Canada. Brands known around the world have benefited from his strategic and artistic talents, including Pepsi, IKEA, Yellow Pages, Esso, KIA, Clorox and Unilever. His work has been recognized with awards from Applied Arts Magazine, Cannes Lions, Digital Marketing, Graphex, and others. Talk Synopsis Beim’s talk will be talking about Zygote and how the project went from a ziplock bag prototype to a real product. Zygote is a lightweight, helium filled, inflatable ball that responds to human touch by changing colour as it floats through the air. Conceived and produced by Tangible, the 2m diameter balls transform any space into an interactive playground and create a shared experience. Typically, Zygotes unite the audience at music concerts and promotional events but they’ve also been seen at major international festivities including the closing ceremony of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games.
12:00 PM – Leanne Prain
Talk Synopsis
Yarn Bombing has been used by artists to discuss issues as broad as politics, feminism, mental health, urban planning, sexual identity, personal territory, the environment, and community-building. Renegade knitters and crocheters have connected used the forces of the internet to document their projects and share techniques with one another. From political messages embroidered into chain-link fences to helping high school kids understand the politics of altering public property for a form of self-expression, knit graffiti has proved a valuable tool to bring people together and use a traditionally devalued handicraft as a potent method of communication.
Speaker’s Bio
As a crafter, designer, and writer, she is fascinated with how handmade skills can flourish and be used as art form and a communication method in the internet age. In 2008, Leanne co-authored the subversive knitting book Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti with knitting editrix Mandy Moore (published by Arsenal Pulp Press) in 2009 and she recently authored Hoopla: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery, which will be released this September.
1:00 PM – Vincent Van Haaff
Talk Synopsis
Vincent will be discussing what music, video/installation art, hackspaces, and the maker movement all have in common. He will explore the parallels between connecting ‘software libraries & hardware’ and connecting ‘people and communities’ and how these points can benefit and accelerate every piece involved. He will also offer examples of how tribes can help you progress your field of multi-media work in both utilizing other fields and by offering to help for others that want to grow as well.
Speaker’s Bio
Vincent van Haaff (flyingoctopus.net) is a multi-disciplinary multi-media artist working with computer code to explore virtual spaces defined by rule-based systems. Originally from Southern California, he went from a record label co-founder and audio hacker in Los Angeles to a rock climbing/chard-growing hippie in Santa Barbara before moving to Vancouver to become a video game software developer and media artist. His expertise spans from data and music visualization to computer vision and user centred design.
2:00 PM – Leigh Christie
Talk Synopsis
Christie will be discussing the future of new art movements that derive their strength from DIY and maker culture. At the heart of these movements is the fundamental need for the human race to progress and push boundaries. While acutely aware of our current energy and resource limits, Christie looks to offer alternatives to traditional forms of growth. These new art forms can be used as a focused lens when shining a light on the redefinition of progress.
Speaker’s Bio
As an artist and inventor, Leigh Christie continually aims to make the world a more beautiful and sustainable place. He is an accomplished Vancouver based engineer, sculptor, and event producer. Christie first gained a passion for energy while earning his degree in Engineering Physics at UBC; in 1999 Leigh led a team of students to build and race Western Canada’s first solar powered vehicle. Since that time, Leigh has specialized in energy storage systems for use in the clean-tech industry.
3:00 PM – Joe Bowser
Talk Synopsis
This talk will go through the history of the Global Hackerspaces.
Bowser will discuss movement, and about the various functions that Hackerspaces serve in their communities. It will quickly cover what a Hackerspace is, and why you should join your local hackerspace if you haven’t done so already, and if you’re not in an area with a Hackerspace, why you should start one.
Speaker’s Bio
Joe Bowser is a co-founder of the Vancouver Hack Space, and has been directly involved in its development since its inception in 2008. He also has experience working with Open Source projects, most notably with his work in the PhoneGap project as the creator of the Android implementation of PhoneGap, which has been featured in various publications such as Popular Science, and Communications of the ACM. He is also known for his activist work, and is currently involved inexposing the surveillance, both online and offline.
4:00 PM – Dan Royer
Talk Synopsis
Dan Royer will be speaking about the construction of robots, how challenging they are to make, and why it’s important that we make them.
Speaker’s Bio
Royer has developed software for everything from video games to medical simulators, websites to keno machines. Royer is very interested in robotic motion control and embedded programming. Recently Royer broke his leg skydiving, his brain reading “Godel, Echer, Bach”, and his heart in the Middle East. Royer loves working with his hands, jazz, improv, and dark humor. His goal is to do for robots what Bre Petis has done for 3D printers.
Sunday June 26, 2011
11:00 AM – Indi Go
Talk Synopsis
Re-visioning public visual space as a collaborative, community-based process.
We are living in a society in which public visual space has been increasingly regulated and commercialized, with advertising media demanding consumerism at every turn. I would like to discuss the ways in which individuals and communities can work together as makers to re-appropriate our shared environment to manifest a city filled with color, artwork, and collaborative creativity. This talk will be supported by visuals from my travels, working as a street artist/muralist in urban communities around the world.
Speaker’s Bio
Indigo is an artist, writer and dancer based in Vancouver, BC. She currently works in many mediums including stencils, posters, acrylics, oils, photography, printmaking and more. Her artwork is an exploration of human emotion, personal story and the weight of memory. Influenced by her own history, that of the people around her and the imagined histories of strangers, her work often carries a poetic sense of melancholy, the kind of thoughtful sadness that persists long after the tears are gone. From her lifetime of dance training comes a deep-rooted knowledge and understanding of the human figure, of movement and stillness and the brief eternity that lies between.
12:00 PM – Paul Lock
Talk Synopsis
Lock will cover the Maker Movement and its beginnings. He will be speaking on how it is essentially the resurrection of an old philosophy of making and craftsmanship; and how it ties in with events like Burning Man, and the role of the internet in bringing makers together.
Speaker’s Bio
We enjoy design and fabrication projects that have an artistic flair. We also like to mix materials and technologies in interesting ways to provide a unique take on monumental art for architectural and landscape decoration.
1:00 PM – Jonathan Tippett
Talk Synopsis
Jonathan Tippett discusses Doing It Yourself from the perspective of a trained mechanical engineer, a professional maker. Despite years of schooling and over a decade working as an engineer, he was still a maker first. Come see what happens when DIY goes to school and gets a job.
Speaker’s bio
Jonathan Tippett is an artist and a Mechanical Engineer with a bachelor’s degree in Applied Science from UBC. His engineering work began in the fields of marine hydraulics, and fuel cell systems but his focus has been on advanced neurovascular implant research since 2005. The intersection of his art and engineering interests can be seen in his kinetic sculptures, which aim explore the relationship between humans, machines, energy, power and physical skill. His most notable piece to date is The Mondo Spider. His next piece, currently underway, is Prosthesis: The Anti-Robot, is a five-meter tall, 2500kg, four-legged wearable walking machine, which a pilot must control from within using his entire body.
2:00 PM – Karl Brown
Talk Synopsis
Karl will be speaking on the Maker lifestyle. What it is, how it enhances the quality of your entire life as well as how such a lifestyle affects your personal outlook, financial life, relationships with friends & family.
Through anecdotes, examples, and demonstrations, Karl will tell stories of how the Maker lifestyle can help you to overcome financial difficulty, help relationships grow, and provide a meditative outlook for your life.
Speaker’s Bio
Karl Brown is a 56-year-old maker, father, teacher, musician, electronics specialist, baker, programmer, sculptor, roboticist, massage therapist, storyteller, who has a lot of hobbies. His past achievements include an award-winning robot, and the world’s best rubber-powered ornithopter kit.
3:00 PM – David Tracey
Talk Synopsis
A look into how people are challenging the corporate domination of the global food system by growing their own food in cities.
Speaker’s Bio
David Tracey is a writer and environmental designer who is active in the movement towards food democracy. He is the author of “Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto” and the comedy novel “The Miracle Tree.” His latest book is “Urban Agriculture: Ideas and Designs for the New Food Revolution.”
4:00 PM – Kim Werker
Talk Synopsis
This talk explores the fears and inspirations that can surface when we flip our focus on perfection and success upside down, and about how doing something as simple – and threatening – as creating an ugly creature can open up a world of possibilities for creativity.
Speaker’s Bio
Kim Werker is a writer, editor, crafter, blogger, and author of crochet books. She started the Mighty Ugly project in the spring of 2010, which takes scrap supplies to make a creature as hideous as possible. Leading workshops in Vancouver and beyond through the Mighty Ugly project, Kim challenge the pressures we feel to be perfect when we make stuff. She also writes the weekly DiYVR column at VancouverIsAwesome.com and blogs about her work and adventures in creativity at KimWerker.com.
4:30 – Alex Mossman
Speaker’s Bio
Alex came to Vancouver in 1994 to study engineering physics at UBC, and decided to stay. After graduating in 2000, he embarked on a career in fuel cells, followed by a brief foray into solar power. Along the way he co-founded the Vancouver Junkyard War with Brian Wells. For something completely different, he has recently started as a plasma engineer at General Fusion. He is also an occasional stage actor specializing in bad guys. He lives in East Vancouver with his wife Selena (also a Junkyard warrior), and their two sons Barrett and TBD, ages 3.3 and 0.02.
Talk Synopsis
The Vancouver Junkyard War is an invitation only, underground event that has been held annually for the past 10 years. In a format taking its inspiration from the British TV show, Teams compete in a tight timeline to make machines out of junk. The VJYW has its own take on a scrapheap challenge, and has produced some amazing junk creations, such as treeclimbing machines, frisbee cannons, and fully-automatic pancake making machines, not to mention the precursor of the Mondospider. One of the two founders, Alex Mossman will tell the story of how it all started in an icy river in northern BC.
5:00 PM – Joseph Cassidy
Talk Synopsis
This talk will explore what “steampunk” is all about.
Speaker’s Bio
Joseph Cassidy or “professor whovianart” creates fictional alterworld/science fiction props and creations for everyday use and enjoyment, exhibits and trade shows. He specializes in alter-world and steampunk imagery in paintings/drawings, return tops and 3-d items such as jewelry and cosplay toys.
Speaker Series Brought to you by the Gen Why Media Project:
