Chris Csikszentmihályi directs the Media Lab's Computing Culture group, which works to create unique media technologies for cultural applications.
Emily Albinski is an industrial designer interested in how context influences the perception of technical objects. She received her bachelor of fine arts and bachelor of industrial design degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. Currently works designing furniture and graphics. She is based out of Brooklyn and makes and sells tech-oriented jewelry.
Teresa Almeida is a Portuguese artist currently living and working in New York City. She is a graduate from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU.
Ayah Bdeir is a masters student in the MIT Media Lab and a member of the Computing Culture Group. She recently graduated from the American University of Beirut with a BEng in Computer and Communications Engineering and a minor in sociology. Her research looks at the role technology plays in cross cultural communication; being both a vehicle for the representation of identities and a tool to create engaging dialogue amongst cultures.
leonardo bonanni is a phd student at the mit medialab where he develops interactive objects and environments that enhance our
everyday sensory experience. he designs electronics, furniture, exhibits, interiors and buildings. you can read about his recent work online on wired and discovery news or at hyperexperience.com
Diana Eng hopes to make the fashion-minded more interested in the research process and the scientific-minded more interested in fashion as a form of self-expression. Diana received a BFA in apparel design from Rhode Island School of Design. She is a contestant on this season's Project Runway, Bravo's reality TV show for fashion designers. In her spare time she sleeps, blogs, and goes rock climbing in attempts to achieve that "fashionable" thinness.
Flâneuse—a collective started by Francesca Granata—attempts to bring together theory and practice in its exploration and subversion of art and fashion tropes. Francesca studied performance art and critical theory at Tufts University and the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston. She is currently completing her doctoral studies in experimental fashion at Central Saint Martins and edits Fashion Projects. She lives in New York City.
Marisa Jahn and Steve Shada are an art and curatorial collaborative who have presented their work internationally, most recently exhibiting artwork in Bay Area Now, a San Francisco triennial. In 2000, Jahn and Shada co-founded Pond, a non-profit organization dedicated to showcasing experimental art through exhibitions, events, and public art.
Kate James is a Masters of Architecture student at MIT, where her work is framed by an interest in normative spatial perceptions developed within consumer and pop culture phenomena. With a background in dance, ideas of movement also influence Kate’s work in architecture as well as clothing design. Her fashion projects seek a new definition of clothing as an interactive surface between body and environment.
Vincent Leclerc mixes inductors with bread dough and hopes one day he'll create the tastiest 802.11 baguette. Recipies at uttermatter.com.
Things jeff will say to you if you say hi: "what's shakin, m' bacon", "if you need a break, bake a cake", and "what's a word that rhymes with 'sundry'?" if jeff were ever in a bind, rest assured that he would eat his own leg before trying yours. for more info, see http://bea.st
Christine Liu is a second-year master's student at the MIT Media Lab in the Sociable Media group. After dabbling in design at Harvard, she currently pairs fashion theory with electricity. On off-hours, Christine produces sans serif (electronica radio on WBMR 88.1FM), slurps spicy noodles, TIVOs project runway, and knits to keep warm.
Marta Lwin is an artist, designer, researcher, and Masters candidate at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. Her work focuses on the intersection of art, technology and nature. Marta Lwin is known for projects that attempt to critically challenge and subvert accepted perceptions of the relationship between nature and technology. Her work has appeared in international publications including Engadget, Core77, Treehugger, Cool Hunting, MocoLoco, WorldChanging, Rhizome, and We Make Money Not Art. Marta Lwin is a recent recipient of the Turbulence Art Commission 2006. Her work has been shown at galleries in Prague, London, and New York.
Shannon Okey writes knitting books, organizes Bazaar Bizarre Cleveland, curates fiber art exhibitions, teaches workshops, and runs both an online shop called anezka handmade and a publishing company called anezka media. She has appeared on Knitty Gritty, Uncommon Threads and Crafters Coast to Coast, and doesn’t get to sleep much.
Dan Paluska works to be master of everything at the expense of everything else. He is active in technology based art and part of the Boston based Collision Collective. He can been heard around town with The Product and Unlockedgroove. His work as a graduate student applies robotics technology to human augmentation and rehabilitation. Say no to pleats: plainfront.com.
Ariana Paoletti is an undergraduate student at the Massachusetts College of Art. Her work explores physical and emotional relationships between humans and their tech-oriented world. She lives and loves LEDs, electronics, plastics, and retro-modern furniture. She is part of the Boston-based electro-arts collective [:angeldustrial:]
Jen Paulousky is Blue Alvarez Designs, an independent website for knitwear and clothing design. She toils by day for a mild-mannered sewing machine company, and by night uses those same machines to bring her twisted visions to life. See her work at bluealvarez.com.
Amanda Parkes is a designer interested in the relationship of gesture, form, materiality and computation in the context of hybrid physical-digital objects. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab. She holds a B.S. in Product Design Engineering and a B.A. in Art History from Stanford University,and an M.S. in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. Her work has been featured in various internationally recognized design and art awards including the ID Magazine Annual Design Review and the Prix Ars Electronica.
An expert at making work to avoid work, Rehmi earned an M.Sc. from the MIT Media Lab and two patents for the 1997 development of e-broidery, both a method of fabricating electronic circuitry on wash-and-wear textile substrates and a means of avoiding his dissertation topic. He went on to obtain his Ph.D. in 2003 for developing a novel inertial sensor based on the physics of particle traps, while simultaneously co-founding ThingMagic, LLC in his garage along with four of his colleagues. In January 2005 he left ThingMagic and founded Asteism, Inc. to develop electronic textile systems, embedded active RFID and low-cost radiolocation technology.
John Rothenberg is a designer and programmer living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For the past three years he has been working at Small Design Firm, building electronics and programming graphics for interactive installations. He is a co-founder of sosolimited, an audiovisual performance collective, and is currently a Masters student of the MIT School of Architecture and a research affiliate of the Computing Culture Group of the Media Lab.
Alyce Santoro is a Brooklyn-based visual and sound artist with a background in marine biology and scientific illustration. Her sound collages, found-object sculptures, installations, and actions are influenced by rituals and techniques used by scientists, shamans, and philosophers to access that which cannot be examined by “conventional” means.
Gemma is chasing the elusive dream of being a circus performer. Until the time that her dream can be realized, she is pursuing a MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the Media Lab at MIT and works with the Computing Culture Group. She has lived in San Francisco and New York, worked as a floral designer, actor, dancer, software engineer, dishwasher, acupressure technician, PBX technician, cocktail waitress, pilates and Gyrotonic® instructor, dance teacher, choreographer, baker's assistant and freelance designer. She holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Art from Mills College in Oakland, California and is really serious about the circus thing.
Alexandra Underhill, a fiber graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, designed costumes for performers such as Cirque du Soleil, among many others. She has been the Visual Art Director of performance ensemble SAFMOD since 1994, and has taught art in many venues, from an urban production of The Nutcracker to Micronesia.
Cati Vaucelle's challenge is to explore, design and implement transformable interfaces to uncover coexistence of the virtual with the physical. This work differs from current considerations of physical and tangible representation by allowing the virtual and the physical to exist independently from each other, or, to co-exist in a way that informs one another. Specifically, the challenge is to augment the physical using the digital by maintaining a reason d'etre of the physical with the digital. Cati Vaucelle graduated from the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Lab in 2002 and is now a student in product design and architecture at the Harvard Design School.
A lifelong researcher in toys and outfits, Kit loves making everyday objects more fun. Her love of shiny things drew her to wearable computing, giving her carte blanche at the fabric store to bring home the shiniest things she can find.
Boring Incorporated is the love-child of design duo Anya Sapozhnikova and Kae Burke. From Moscow, Russia and Rochester, New York these innovative 19-year-old creators are not only the ultimate collaborators, but also best friends and classmates at FIT. Together, they have experimented with wearable trash, candy, stuffed animals and now, sound. Full time performers and producers in every respect, they are constantly sculpting their environment and teaching humans to reject boredom and celebrate fun.
Lars is a second-year PhD student in aeronautics and astronautics, having graduated from Cambridge University in the UK. Lars has been DJing and running events for 6 years, and is currently president of the MIT DJ collective, MITDMC. Lars spins hip-hop, drum and bass, techno, eighties electronica, and indie rock, and previous DJ credits involve supporting drum and bass acts such as Grooverider, Nicky Blackmarket, and London Elektricity.