Wednesday, May 15, the Pittsburgh Technology Council will present the 2013 DATA Awards Gala & Interactive Exhibition Party. This event, which takes place from 5 to 9pm at the Grand Hall at the Priory, celebrates innovation and creativity in technology.

The 2013 Design, Art and Technology (DATA) Awards feature over of 40 of this year’s most innovative art and technology projects, door prizes and surprises, food, fun and the music of sound architect, Bill Stankay.

Pricing:
Awards Ceremony with Special Exhibition Preview: (includes DATA Interactive Exhibition Party)
$99 Member/Non-Member | $45 Student 



Or, Register for DATA Interactive Exhibition Party Only: $25

Presented by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Gallery Crawl is a free quarterly showcase of art and entertainment in the heart of the Cultural District. All events take place at a variety of galleries and spaces and are FREE and open to the public. The event is ongoing between 5:30 and 9:00 pm, and patrons may start at any location.

On Monday, April 22, Peter Busby of Perkins + Will will present a lecture entitled “Toward Regenerative Design.” This lecture, cosponsored by the Consulate General of Canada and the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service, begins at 6pm in the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater.

Peter Busby is Principal Managing Director of Perkins+Will in San Francisco. Since merging his Vancouver-based firm with Perkins+Will in 2004, Peter has been a driving force across the organization, directing over 100 employees working on projects across Canada, the United States, Europe and the Middle East. Peter created the firm’s Sustainable Design Initiative, providing a framework for the firm’s work in sustainable design. Peter’s globally recognized design work, which focuses on sustainable communities and regenerative design, spans market sectors and has been instrumental in the success of our West Coast offices. As founder and recent Chair of the Canada Green Building Council, Peter initiated the development of LEED in Canada. An outspoken advocate, he has devoted much of his time to his profession, to the community, the development of public policy and the advancement of sustainable education and practices. In recognition of his professional and community contributions, Peter became a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada in 1997 and in 2005 Peter was invested as a member of the Governor General’s Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian award that recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation.

Aaron Koblin, Director of the Data Arts Team at Google Creative Lab, will present a lecture entitled “Data+Art” at CMU’s College of Fine Arts. The lecture begins at 4:30pm on April 10 in the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, CFA-111.

Speaker Bio
Aaron Koblin is an artist and designer specializing in data and digital technologies. Aaron’s work takes real-world and community generated data and uses it to reflect on cultural trends and the changing relationship between humans and the systems they create. His work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His projects have been shown at international festivals including TED, Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH, OFFF, and the Japan Media Arts Festival. He received the National Science Foundation’s first place award for science visualization and two of his music video collaborations have been Grammy nominated. He received his MFA in Design|Media Arts from UCLA. In 2010 Aaron was the Abramowitz Artist in Residence at MIT and he leads the Data Arts Team in Google’s Creative Lab.

Miguel Chevalier’s Power Pixels 2013 runs through April 7 at Wood Street Galleries. The exhibition features two new self generative video installations including the world premiere of his latest work “Digital-Archi” (Meta Cities).

Since 1982, Miguel Chevalier’s art has been dedicated to the exploration of technology. Taking references from the history of art and reformulating them using computer tools, his works investigate the flux and networks that underlie contemporary society. He is known internationally as one of the pioneers of virtual and digital art. His images are a rich source of insights into ourselves and our relationship to the world.

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust operates Wood Street Galleries, which features multi-disciplinary artists from all over the world. Located above the T-Station at Wood Street and Sixth Avenue, Wood Street Galleries also houses the Trust’s shared office space program which provides a home and tools for small arts organizations.

The Warhol Museum and the Film Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh welcome filmmaker Phil Solomon for a special evening of his lyrical film and digital work. The event begins at 8pm on Friday, April 5.

The program will feature four of his unique, optically manipulated 16mm films along with two Pittsburgh premieres of his recent digital pieces inspired by his appreciation for the peripheral splendor of the artificial worlds created for video games. The anchor of the program is Solomon’s “Empire”, which the filmmaker describes as “a re-make of Andy Warhol’s Empire from high atop the Manhattan Island of Grand Theft Auto IV (“Liberty City”), far from the madding crowd of thieves, cops, prostitutes and murderers down below.” Solomon has been making films since 1975 and is currently Professor of Film Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Friday, April 5 and Saturday, April 6 is Pittsburgh’s 4th Geek Art/Green Innovators (GA/GI) Festival. Part of “Unblurred” First Fridays on Penn, the festival features dozens of music, art and tech exhibitions and displays throughout the Penn Avenue Arts District.

GA/GI was created to give artists, eco buffs and technology innovators from Allegheny County and beyond a platform to exhibit and demo while educating the general public within an urban arts venue. The Festival includes a variety of organizations, artists, corporations, inventors and designers invited to showcase “the best they have to offer” along the Penn Avenue Arts Corridor. This colorful event is punctuated with music performances, displays, children’s activities, and more.

Noise, the 2013 wats:ON Festival, returns to Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Fine Arts, and runs April 4-6.

wats:ON? 2013 explores the realm of noise through a variety of analog, digital, and apparatus enhanced sound-music performances. This year’s festival features performances and lectures by:

• Geeta Dayal
• Lesley Flanigan
• Eric Singer
• Jeremy Boyle
• Michael Johnsen
• Jeff Hinkelman

Allan Chochinov, Editor in chief of Core77 and Chair of SVA’s MFA Products of Design department, discusses ways in which design can simultaneously serve as both the creative engine of new goods and services, and the custodian of our built environment. This lecture, part of the CMU School of Design Lecture Series, takes place on Tuesday April 2, 2013 at 5:00pm in Margaret Morrison building (MMCH), room A-14.

Allan Chochinov is the Chair and co-founder of the SVA MFA in Products of Design Program. He writes widely on design education and the impact of design on contemporary culture. Allan lectures around the world and at professional conferences including IDSA, AIGA, and IxDA. He is also a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts, where he serves as the editor-in-chief. Prior to Core77, Allan’s work in product design focused on the medical and diagnostic fields as well as on consumer products and workplace systems. Allan is associate professor at New York’s Pratt Institute, where he teaches two courses in the graduate I.D. department. He has been named on numerous design and utility patents and has received awards from I.D. Magazine, Communication Arts, The Art Directors Club, and The One Club. He also serves on the boards of The Designers Accord, Design Ignites Change, and DesigNYC.

On Tuesday, March 26, artist Carrie Mae Weems will speak at Carnegie Mellon’s Kresge Theater as part of the School of Art Lecture Series. This lecture begins at 5pm.

During the past twenty-five years, Carrie Mae Weems has worked toward developing a complex body of art that has employed photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation and video. Her work has led her to investigate family relationships, gender roles, the histories of racism, sexism, class and various political systems. Currently, her work is the focus of a major retrospective, Carrie Mae Weems: 3 Decades of Photography and Video on view now at The Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville. It will travel to the Portland Art Museum in Oregon; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. A new video, Lincoln, Lonnie and Me-a Story in 5 Parts, is on view at the Mattress Factory. She is represented in collections around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA and The Williams College Museum of Art.

Emily Pilloton presents her work as the founding director of Project H Design, which develops initiatives for humanity, habitats, health, and happiness. This lecture, part of the CMU School of Design Lecture Series, takes place on Thursday March 21, 2013 at 5:00pm in Margaret Morrison building (MMCH), room A-14.

Emily Pilloton is the founder and director of Project H Design, which designs initiatives for Humanity, Habitats, Health, and Happiness. Project H is a nonprofit design and architecture agency that uses the power of design and hands-on building to catalyze communities and public education from within. Project H has a core focus on using design and full-scale building projects to activate public education systems in the US and to provide a more engaged learning framework for K-12 students, particularly in rural communities.

Emily is an industrial designer, architect, writer, teacher, and builder. In the past she has contributed to magazines such as GOOD, FastCompany, ReadyMade, Interior Design, ID Magazine and Innovative Home. Her work has been reported and showcased on The Colbert Report, and in The New York Times, Metropolis Magazine, Dwell Magazine, and GOOD Magazine. She is the author of “Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People.”

At 6pm on Monday, March 18, architect Liss C. Werner will present a lecture at the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater. Werner is a George N Pauly Jr. Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University.

Liss C Werner is a registered Architect in Berlin and visiting professor at CMU School of Architecture. She runs the upper level design by research studio ‘Codes in the Clouds’, developed at Bauhaus, Dessau Institute of Architecture in 2010. The studio defines architecture through code, data, and behavior to engage with the emergence of sublime, tectonically challenging form generation as dynamic system. Her research focuses on architecture as science of cybernetics and culture through the evolution of technology in order to develop computational design thinking for the paradigm shift of architecture in C21. Her exploration of rule-based architectural systems informed by cybernetics, self-organization, and a critical reflection offers one possibility to depart from a purely aesthetic understanding of a priori form towards a vocabulary and theory for an architecture of architecture. ‘FORM is a VERB and not a noun’.

Liss C Werner studied at the Bartlett, RMIT, and Humboldt University. She worked on projects in the UK, Germany, and Russia. She teaches and lectures internationally since 2002 and contributed to a variety of conferences and exhibitions in the UK, Ukraine, Germany, China, Australia, and the US. Her work was exhibited at the 13th Venice Biennale 2012. 

Otto Piene will speak at 5pm on March 5 in Kresge Theater, as part of the CMU School of Art Lecture Series.

Otto Piene was born in Germany in 1928. His father was founding principal of a progressive Gymnasium/academic high school. At the age of 15, Piene was drafted in the heat of the intensifying air war. Discharged from British POW camps in 1946, he returned home to finish school and attend the art academies in Munich and Düsseldorf while also studying philosophy at the University of Cologne. In 1957, out of a ruinous studio in Düsseldorf, he founded the Night Exhibitions with friend Heinz Mack. The resulting international Group Zero spread throughout the world, including New York City, and advanced light art, kinetic art and notably “SKY ART.” He became a professor at MIT and Director of the MIT CAVS, where he co-founded the MSVisS graduate program and directed five International Sky Art Conferences. Piene continues painting with fire, as in the early Zero days.

Michel Rojkind of rojkind arquitectos will present a lecture at the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater. The lecture begins at 6pm on Monday, February 25.

rojkind arquitectos is a Mexico City based innovative firm whose work spans across a diverse and global platform, providing solutions to contemporary architectural and urban strategies. We are nurtured by a multinational team, gathering experts from all fields that are involved in a highly collaborative research and experimental based design process. We are committed to achieving design excellence; but above all, we pursue a fascination for thorough investigation and exploration of contemporary programs, the latest technologies, and the translation of complex digital design into simple solutions for local fabrication. The result: a wide spectrum of design initiatives, from the intimacies of small objects to the complexities of large buildings and master plans. By understanding that our profession is at constant flux (economical, political, social) we are willing to take risks and pursue uncommon paths by providing urban strategies that are able to go beyond what is expected or what is normally a given.

rojkind arquitectos has won several Honors and Awards, including Interior Design’s Best of the Year 2011 Award, as well as Arch Daily’s Building of the Year 2011 Award. The firm was recognized by Architectural Record in 2005 as one of the ten best ‘Design Vanguard’ firms. In 2010, Michel invited Gerardo Salinas AIA to become the firm’s first partner.

Join the Pittsburgh Technology Council at Assemble for an interactive night of making, breaking, and reinterpreting art and technology. Themed stations include electronics, soldering, programming, soft circuits and more – you can make while you mix – and get connected in the Art + Tech community. This event begins at 5pm on February 20 at Assemble (5125 Penn Ave, 15224).

Don’t miss this chance to show your skills, and discover the fun of DIY!

Time:
5:00 – 5:30 pm: Registration & Reception
5:30 — Welcome from ASSEMBLE and PTC
5:30 – 7:00 pm – Making and Breaking / Mixing and Mingling over light food and drinks.

You must pre-register. Space is limited!

Cost:
$25 Member
$40 Non-Member

PLAY Parlour is hosting a FREE tournament of arcade games. Now is your chance to prove once and for all that you are the king or queen of dueling darts, skeeball, mini-golf and wackamole.

This event takes place on Saturday, February 16, 2013, at 5258 Butler Street, Pittsburgh (Lawrenceville) from from 3 to 10 pm. Doors open at 2 pm. Anyone 18+ is welcome to enter. DJ Zombo of WRCT fame will be the emcee and DJ, and refreshments will be provided.

PLAY offers a classy option for enjoying the company of friends with a new twist on traditional arcade games. The space currently houses machines hand-built by sculptor Adam Shreckhise in his Lawrenceville
studio.

Not the advancing-bracket type? Join us as a spectator, or try your hand at any of the games not being used for the tournament. All of the games are as much fun to watch as they are to play.

For more details and to register, visit the Tournament page on our website at http://www.PLAYparlour.com/tournament/. Early registration gives you extra advantages in the tournament; just be sure to respond to our confirmation email one week before the event to hold onto them.

The Carnegie Mellon School of Art will present a lecture by filmmaker and video artist Charles Atlas on February 12, 2013. The lecture will begin at 5pm in Kresge Theater.

Charles Atlas has been active as a filmmaker and video artist since the 1970s. He has made pioneering media/dance works, multi-channel video installations, feature-length documentaries, video art works for television and live electronic performances. His recent projects include the solo shows: The Illusion of Democracy at Luhring Augustine Bushwick and Discount Body Parts at De Hallen Museum in Holland; live performance/installations: In Residence at the 2012 WhitneyBiennial and The Pedestrians, in collaboration with Mika Tajima/New Humans at The South London Gallery; and Ocean, a film of Merce Cunningham’s epic dance at the Walker Art Center. Atlas has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, three “Bessie” (New York Dance and Performance) Awards and was the 2006 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Art’s biennial John Cage Award.

On Saturday, February 9, the CMU School of Architecture will present a lecture by Sanford Kwinter. This lecture, part of the [En]Coding Architecture Conference, begins at 2pm in CMU’s Kresge Theater.

Sanford Kwinter is Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies Program and Professor of Architectural Theory and Criticism at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is a writer and editor who holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Columbia University. He has taught at MIT, Columbia, and Rice Universities as well as at the Staedelschule in Frankfurt, the Architectural Association in London, and the Universitat fur Angewandte Kunst in Vienna. He was cofounder and editor of the journal ZONE and Zone Books for 20 years. He has written widely on philosophical issues of design, architecture and urbanism, science and technology, and was an editorial member of the ANY conferences and publications in the 1990s as well as of the journal Assemblage. He is the author of over a hundred and fifty articles in a dozen languages. His books include Architectures of Time: Towards a Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture (MIT Press, 2001), Far From Equilibrium: Essays on Technology and Design Culture (Actar, 2008) and Requiem: For the City at the End of the Millennium and the forthcoming Soft Systems on the life sciences and their impact on design. He writes frequently on the work of young and emerging practitioners in the nascent and transdisciplinary field of experimental spatial practice. He most recently curated a Harvard University-wide exhibition of art, design and the public domain entitled “The Divine Comedy.” He is currently at work on a book on paleo-ecology and the origins of form. 

On February 8th and 9th, 2013, Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Fine Arts will host [En]Coding Architecture, a conference on the autonomy of architecture, code, fabrication material, robots, machinic desire and a computational theory.

[En]Coding Architecture 2013 invites rising superstars, experienced researchers and designers to present their experimental work derived through computational thinking and digital making. [En]Coding Architecture positions the field as an alloy of programming, digital tooling, art and science. This conference synthesizes new trajectories for the profession within the context of tectonics, cultural philosophy, architectural theory and geopolitics.

Golan Levin, associate professor of electronic arts at CMU, discusses his work and pedagogy in interactive art and computational design. This lecture presentation, jointly presented by the CMU School of Design Lecture Series, the CMU School of Art Lecture Series, and the [En]Coding Architecture symposium, takes place on Thursday, February 7, 2013 at 5:00pm in CMU’s McConomy Auditorium.

Golan Levin is an artist and engineer interested in exploring new modes of reactive expression. Through performances, digital artifacts, and virtual environments, Golan applies creative twists to digital technologies that highlight our relationship with machines, make visible our ways of interacting with each other, and explore the intersection of non-verbal communication and interactivity. Golan has exhibited and performed widely in Europe, America and Asia.

As an educator, Golan’s pedagogy is concerned with reclaiming computation as a medium of personal expression. He teaches code-oriented “studio arts courses in computer science,” on themes like interactive art, generative form, digital fabrication, information visualization, game design, tangible media and audiovisual performance systems.

At Carnegie Mellon University, Golan is currently an Associate Professor of Electronic Art, with courtesy appointments in Computer Science and Design. He is also Director of the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, a “meta-laboratory” within CMU dedicated to supporting “atypical, interdisciplinary and inter-institutional” research projects at the intersection of arts, sciences and technology. Golan has spent half his life as an artist embedded within technological research environments, in places like the MIT Media Laboratory, the Ars Electronica Futurelab, and the former Interval Research Corporation in Palo Alto. Levin received undergraduate and graduate degrees from the MIT Media Laboratory, where he studied in the Aesthetics and Computation Group.

On Tuesday, February 5, performance artist Shana Moulton will speak at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art. This lecture begins at 5pm in Kresge Theater.

Shana Moulton creates evocatively oblique narratives in her video and performance works. Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech Pop sensibility, Moulton plays a character whose interactions with the everyday world are both mundane and surreal. As her protagonist navigates the enigmatic and possibly magical properties of her home decor, Moulton initiates relationships with objects and consumer products that are at once banal and uncanny. Growing up near Yosemite, California, she earned her BA from University of California, Berkeley in Art and Anthropology and her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. She has exhibited or performed at The New Museum, SFMoMA, MoMA P.S.1, Performa 2009, The Kitchen, Electronic Arts Intermix, Art in General, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Palais De Tokyo in Paris, The Migros Museum in Zurich and the Times Museum in Guangzhou.

Build a tree sculpture from twigs and conductive copper wire and mesh, then watch as your tree is energized before your eyes in a vacuum chamber, creating the glowing, sparkling phenomenon of Bremsstrahlung. Glow Trees is available as a walk up activity, included with Museum admission, from 11:00-4:00 daily through January 29.

Halos and arcs of purple light and even twinkles of bright green appear in this rare phenomenon harnessed – and made interactive! – by our FINE Artists in Residence, electrical engineer Mark Barlow and designer Kate Pfeil. You’ve never seen this before.

Glow Trees will be closed from 12:30-1:00 daily.

Visit the artists in the Studio to sculpt your tree, see it glow in the chamber, then take it home as a memento of the experience. Science and art (and a few decelerating charged electrons) will light up the Studio this January! Don’t miss it.

Presented by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, the Gallery Crawl is a free quarterly showcase of art and entertainment in the heart of the Cultural District. All events take place at a variety of galleries and spaces and are FREE and open to the public. The event is ongoing between 5:30 and 9:00 pm, and patrons may start at any location.

Want to learn how to make things spin and move? Come learn how to add motors to your next project and control them with an Arduino! From 1:00 to 5:00pm on Saturday, December 15, HackPittsburgh will host a workshop covering the basics of motors, drivers, and control code to make things move. Sign up here.

The workshop will cover motor fundamentals, motor characteristics, brushed DC motor basics, electronic control, and hobby servo control. It will focus on open loop control methods with application to speed and position control. Closed loop control, Brushless DC, and stepper motors will not be covered during this session. If you are interested in those topics, check back for the Advanced Motor Control Workshop!

By enrolling in the workshop you will receive the Adafruit Motor Shield, brushed DC motor, two servos, stepper motor, and battery pack with batteries included! You will need to bring your own laptop and Arduino for the session. Additionally, you will need to be familiar enough with the Arduino to program it by yourself and blink an LED.

NOTE: Students will need to bring their own laptops, Arduinos, USB and power cables. If you have any questions about your system compatibility or capability, please drop us a note: classes@hackpittsburgh.org

Dorkbot Pittsburgh is a monthly lecture series and show-and-tell for “people doing strange things with electricity”. It is open to the public, non-smoking, all-ages, and admission is free. We meet upstairs at Brillobox, where vegetarian dinner and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks are available.

Brillobox is donating space and resources for the meeting, so consider staying after for drink or showing up before for an early dinner to thank them for their support. Brillobox is a non-smoking bar and dorkbot pittsburgh is proud to be a non-smoking event. Brillobox is located at 4104 Penn Ave (at Main) in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA.

I Made It! Market, the city’s nomadic indie craft marketplace, will pop into Bakery Square on Friday, November 30 from 5 – 10 pm and Saturday, December 1 from 11 am – 6 pm for the sixth annual I Made It! for the Holidays event.

This year’s event features more than 80 local artisans selling all handmade wares. Shoppers can meet and talk with the artists who are our neighbors throughout the Pittsburgh region on both days at I Made It! for the Holidays.

Last year I Made It! Market welcomed 7,000 shoppers over the two-day event. This year’s artists will include a diverse mixture of goods including ceramics, housewares, jewelry, clothing, bath and body products, giftware, prints, letterpress, sweet treats, plush, children’s items and much more.

I Made It! Market, the city’s nomadic indie craft marketplace, will pop into Bakery Square on Friday, November 30 from 5 – 10 pm and Saturday, December 1 from 11 am – 6 pm for the sixth annual I Made It! for the Holidays event.

This year’s event features more than 80 local artisans selling all handmade wares. Shoppers can meet and talk with the artists who are our neighbors throughout the Pittsburgh region on both days at I Made It! for the Holidays.

Last year I Made It! Market welcomed 7,000 shoppers over the two-day event. This year’s artists will include a diverse mixture of goods including ceramics, housewares, jewelry, clothing, bath and body products, giftware, prints, letterpress, sweet treats, plush, children’s items and much more.

November 30 through December 2 is Pittsburgh’s LEGO KidsFest at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

LEGO KidsFest brings all of the creative hands-on, minds-on fun of LEGO building and experiences together in one activity- and entertainment-packed family event for children of all ages and builders of all skills and interests. Activities include the LEGO Model Museum, LEGO Club & Master Builder Academy, LEGO Art Gallery, and much more.

DATES & SESSIONS:
Friday, November 30th
4 pm – 8:30 pm
Saturday, December 1st
Session I: 9 am – 1:30 pm
Session II: 3 pm – 7:30 pm
Sunday, December 2nd
Session I: 9 am – 1:30 pm
Session II: 3 pm – 7:30 pm

On November 30, 2012, Steve Seitz, computer science and engineering professor at the University of Washington, will present a seminar on 3D modeling and visualization from large photo collections. Part of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute Seminar Series, this event begins at 3:30pm in Newell Simon Hall 1305.

Abstract
Collectively, we take upwards of a trillion photos each year. These images together comprise a nearly complete visual record of the world’s people, places, things and events. However, this record is massively disorganized, unlabeled, and untapped. This talk explores ways of transforming this massive, unorganized photo collection into reconstructions and visualizations of the world’s sites, cities, and people. After a brief recap of our work on Photosynth and reconstructing Rome in a day, I will present new work on modeling places and people from large photo collections.

Speaker Biography
Steve Seitz is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. He also directs an imaging group at Google’s Seattle office. He received his B.A. in computer science and mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley in 1991 and his Ph.D. in computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin in 1997. Following his doctoral work, he spent one year visiting the Vision Technology Group at Microsoft Research and the subsequent two years as an Assistant Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He joined the faculty at the University of Washington in July 2000. He was twice awarded the David Marr Prize for the best paper at the International Conference of Computer Vision, and he has received an NSF Career Award, and ONR Young Investigator Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and is an IEEE Fellow. His work on Photo Tourism (joint with Noah Snavely and Rick Szeliski) formed the basis of Microsoft’s Photosynth technology. Professor Seitz is interested in problems in computer vision and computer graphics. His current research focuses on 3D modeling and visualization from large photo collections.

Doreen Lorenzo, President of Frog Design, discusses the thoughtful integration of technology in design. This lecture, part of the CMU School of Design Lecture Series, takes place on Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 5:00pm in Margaret Morrison building (MMCH), room A-14.

Abstract: Digital technologies have redefined how we experience the world, offering new design tools that can help us transcend temporal, geographic and socioeconomic barriers. Thoughtfully integrating technology in design is not only an essential skill for developing products and services in the networked age. It is also an important strategy for bridging the “last mile” and improving the lives of people around the world.

Doreen Lorenzo is the President of Frog Design and the Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Aricent Group, Frog’s parent company. Doreen drives Frog’s company strategy and oversees its worldwide operations. During her 14 years with the company, she has been instrumental in re-structuring the company, taking it from a traditional design boutique to becoming one of the world’s foremost global innovation firms, securing broad-based arrangements with an array of Fortune 500 clients. A frequent resource to various business publications, Doreen has been featured by ABC Now, Bloomberg Radio, Fast Company, The New York Times, and other media. She also serves as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies. Doreen holds a B.A from State University of New York, Stony Brook (USA) and an M.S. from Boston University’s School of Communications.

November 27 to December 4, Assemble will be accepting submissions for the second annual HyperLocal Show + Art Bazaar, opening December 7.

If you are a maker, artist or technologist who lives in Garfield, Friendship, or Bloomfield (within a 10 block radius of Assemble), you are invited to submit one work that you have made to the second annual HyperLocal Show + Art Bazaar at Assemble, 5125 Penn Ave. This is open to ALL AGES. Please drop off your work at Assemble between 4-9pm on Nov 27th – Dec 4th. With your submission include your NAME, ADDRESS, AGE, PRICE and WHY YOU LIKE TO MAKE THINGS.

For more information, email assemblepgh@gmail.com or call 412.432.9127.

Dust off the code in that dream project of yours and make some progress in the company of friends. Loop Pittsburgh, a creative coding group, meets monthly to “have fun and make things” at the HackPittsburgh shop. The November meeting will take place at 6:30pm on Tuesday, November 20.

Loop Pittsburgh is a monthly meetup for people who do creative things with code for the web and beyond. Come on out and enjoy some company while you hack away at a long neglected side project or experiment with something new. If you have a project you’ve been itching to work on but just haven’t found time for, or a current project and not sure where to go next, you’ve got the perfect thing to bring to a meeting.

Dorkbot Pittsburgh is a monthly lecture series and show-and-tell for “people doing strange things with electricity”. It is open to the public, non-smoking, all-ages, and admission is free. We meet upstairs at Brillobox, where vegetarian dinner and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks are available.

Brillobox is donating space and resources for the meeting, so consider staying after for drink or showing up before for an early dinner to thank them for their support. Brillobox is a non-smoking bar and dorkbot pittsburgh is proud to be a non-smoking event. Brillobox is located at 4104 Penn Ave (at Main) in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA.

Electronic DJ Omnomnom is playing with other electronic artists at the Rex Theater on Thursday, November 15. Doors open at 10:00pm, show starts at 10:30pm.

The Rex Theater is located at 1602 East Carson Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201. More event details can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/513363428692067/.

On Thursday, November 15, The Nefarious Frink Gwokestra will perform at Club Cafe (58 South 12th Street). Doors open at 7pm, and the show begins at 8. Tickets can be purchased here.

The Nefarious Frink Gwokestra is a unique musical experience that captures the infectious grooves of Africa and the French Antilles and infuses them with the sounds of jazz and the blues. Founded in Pittsburgh by saxophonist Nathan Frink and master drummer Charles Lwanga in the fall of 2012, the band is a special blend of electric guitar and bass, horns, percussion, and more percussion that would easily blend into the street festivals of Carnival and is sure to get the audience moving.

The songs themselves are a mixed bag of originals, traditional melodies, jazz standards and afrobeat jams. Performing without a predetermined set-list, the group gives each performance of every tune an original feeling from night to night, drawing on powerful instrumental solos, driving percussion, and spontaneous vocal improvisation.

Rounding out the lineup for this eight piece ensemble are a combination of veteran Pittsburgh musicians and newcomers to the local scene including Dan McMillan and Zach Haras on percussion, Greg Brancati on electric bass, William Middleton on trumpet and guitarists Stephen Hager and John Bagnato. Each draws on his own musical background to contribute to the diverse array of musical concoctions presented on stage.

On Wednesday, November 14  at 7:00pm, the Melwood Screening Room will feature 10 short films by legendary artist Lillian Schwartz. This event is co-sponsored by the 3 Rivers Film Festival and the Center for the Arts in Society, Carnegie Mellon University.

Lillian Schwartz is best known for her pioneering work with computers and what since has become known as computer-generated art and computer-aided art analysis, including film, video, animation, special effects, graphics, and virtual reality. This presentation is a program of 10 short films, all shown on 16mm, from Ms. Schwartz’s early days at Bell Laboratories (circa 1970 –1975) where she experimented with the amalgam of image and sound. Her films can be viewed in 3D, as well (glasses provided). Also included is a short documentary about her called The Artist and the Computer. The special night concludes with a Q&A session with Ms. Schwartz via Skype. (program approx. 90 min)

View the Trailer <http://www.youtube.com/embed/MkuPY8twVo0?&controls=1&autohide=1&modestbranding=1&showinfo=0&autoplay=1&iv_load_policy=3&rel=0>

<<This lecture has been cancelled due to unavoidable circumstances. If she is able to reschedule this will be announced here: www.cmu.edu/art/lectures>>

Distinguished multi-media artist KIMSOOJA presents her work in this lecture at the Kresge Theater of the CMU College of Fine Arts (CFA), at 5pm on Tuesday, November 13. This lecture, part of the CMU School of Art Lecture Series, is free and open to the public.

KIMSOOJA is an internationally acclaimed, Korean-born, multi-media artist who lives and works in New York City, Paris and Seoul. Her work combines performance, video, and installation, addressing issues of the displaced self. Kimsooja brings together a conceptual, logical and structural investigation of performance through immobility that inverts the notion of the artist as the predominant actor. Besides taking us on her journey, Kimsooja’s work is an invitation to question our existence, and the major challenges we are facing in this era. Kimsooja has exhibited internationally, and has been featured in many biennales, solo-site-specific projects and group shows, including major exhibitions at the Hirshhorn, LACMA, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte, Reina Sofia, MIT and Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Sweden.

Renowned social-media anthropologist, danah boyd (@zephoria), lectures about the intersection of technology, society and youth culture. This presentation, part of the CMU HCII Seminar Series, takes place Wednesday, November 7th at 4:30pm (location TBD, details here), and is free and open to the public.

Dr. danah boyd is an American social media researcher known for her public commentary on the use of social networking sites by youth. A 2009 article in Fast Company named boyd one of the most influential women in technology.

boyd is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research; a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University; a Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society; a Research Fellow of the Born This Way Foundation; and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. Her research examines the intersection of technology, society, and youth culture. Currently, she’s focused on privacy, youth meanness and cruelty, and human trafficking. She co-authored Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. She’s working on a new book called “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens.”

This free, public lecture on “Engineering Architects” by IMMERSIVE KINEMATICS (Simon Kim and Mark Yim) is part of the CMU School of Architecture Lecture Series. It is held at the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater on Monday November 5th at 6:00pm.

Immersive Kinematics is a unique research group focusing on integrating robotics, interaction, and embedded intelligence in our buildings, cities, and cultures. Directed by Simon Kim and Mark Yim, IK is a collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania schools of Engineering and Design, teaming architecture and engineering students in mechatronic projects. Recent collaborations include Technology in Shakespeare, Unethical Machines, a PS1 pavilion, and a Cyborg Ballet.

Mark Yim is a Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics and has developed modular self-reconfigurable robots that can transform its shape, walking gaits, and reassemble themselves after being broken into pieces. Simon Kim is an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, and Principal of Ibañez Kim Studio. His research has been an architectural engagement with electronic devices, dynamic environments and urban space as a continually changing system.

On Friday, November 2, Cory Arcangel: Masters will be opening at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The artist will be in attendance that night and will kick off the evening with a performative artist talk. Doors open at 6 pm, the talk begins at 6:30, and the reception follows until 9 pm. And its free!

Cory Arcangel is a computer programmer, cyber sculptor, comedian, web designer, and artist living and working in Brooklyn. He is a founding member of BEIGE, a group of like-minded computer programmers, with whom he has pioneered the practice of recycling obsolete 8bit computers and video game systems to make art and music. Arcangel also works on research projects about hacker culture and co-operates with the Radical Software Group. Besides he is the co-founder of the Buffalo, New York based punk group “Insectiside”. Legandary documentation of their first (and last) world tour has been screened at Whitechapel Gallery in London, and at Ocularius in Brooklyn.

Pioneering filmmaker and video artist Charles Atlas presents a survey of his work in this lecture at the Kresge Theater of the CMU College of Fine Arts (CFA), at 5pm on Tuesday, October 30. This lecture, part of the CMU School of Art Lecture Series, is free and open to the public.

Charles Atlas has been a filmmaker and video artist since the 1970s. He has made pioneering media/dance works, multi-channel video installations, feature-length documentaries, video art works for television and live electronic performances. His recent projects include solo shows: The Illusion of Democracy at Luhring Augustine Bushwick and Discount Body Parts at De Hallen Museum in Holland; live performance/installations In Residence at the 2012 Whitney Biennial and The Pedestrians, in collaboration with Mika Tajima/New Humans at The South London Gallery and “Ocean,” a film of Merce Cunningham’s epic dance which premiered at the Walker Art Center. Atlas has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, three “Bessie” (New York Dance and Performance) Awards and was the 2006 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Art’s biennial John Cage Award.

<<LECTURE HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER>>

This lecture by Matias del Campo, of SPAN Architecture & Design, is part of the CMU School of Architecture Lecture Series. It takes place Monday October 29th at 6:00pm, at the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater, and is free and open to the public. 

Matias del Campo heads the Vienna-based Architecture firm SPAN, founded in 2003. Their award-winning architecture designs are informed by an ecology of sources including Romanticism, Geometry, Biology and Botany. Employing the most sophisticated computational design and fabrication tools, SPAN has become among the leaders of a new generation of form based practices in Europe. Their works include the Design of the Austrian Pavilion for the Shanghai Expo 2010 and the award winning Brancusi Museum in Paris. Currently their work is on show at the 13th Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy.

On Saturday, October 27, 2-5pm, Creators Coalition will be providing a workshop on OpenFrameworks, taught by Andrew Bueno. There is a $3 charge for this workshop, and materials will be provided.

This workshop covers getting started with OpenFrameworks, and is particularly useful for those already familiar with Processing or programming in general. Topics covered will be getting OpenFrameworks to work with your particular system, some of the basic functions and libraries it offers, and contributing to the OpenFrameworks project through Github.

Creators Coalition is an advocate for artists by artists. As students, we create the tools that we want to use, in the hope that fellow creators will want to engage with them as well.

To sign up, visit www.creatorscoalition.org/Workshop-RSVP

Part of the Robotics Institute Seminar Series, Ren Ng will speak on October 26 at 11am at Disney Research Pittsburgh. The seminar will discuss the technology behind light field cameras and its effect on the future of photography.

Abstract
Lytro is a startup in Mountain View that has introduced the first light field camera for consumers. Light field cameras provide many new capabilities, including the ability to focus pictures after the shot is taken. The underlying technology is based on founder Ren Ng’s PhD dissertation on light field photography, which he completed at Stanford in 2006. The Lytro camera has been featured in hundreds of articles and TV shows, and won numerous awards including Popular Science’s Innovation of the Year and Time Magazine’s 50 Best Inventions of the Year. In this talk, Ren will discuss various aspects of the Lytro journey to date, including the technology, entrepreneurship, the camera and living pictures, and future of photography.

Speaker Biography
Ren Ng is the founder of Lytro, and developed the underlying technology during graduate school. Ren’s Ph.D. research on light field technology won the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award and Stanford University’s Arthur Samuel Award. Ren’s leadership of Lytro has also earned him a number of entrepreneurship honors in 2012, including Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business” and MIT Tech Review’s TR35 and “Entrepreneur of the Year.”

Dr. Ivan Tashev of Microsoft Research will be will be delivering a seminar at 10am on Friday October 26th. Ivan is a highly regarded member of the speech and audio community and is responsible for the microphone array processing in Microsoft Windows and the Kinect. The seminar will be held at CMU in Gates Hillman Center, room 8102.

Abstract
Kinect was released on November 4th 2010 as peripheral device for Xbox – Microsoft’s gaming console. It entered the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest selling electronic device in the history of mankind with more than eight millions sold in the first three months after release. From the very beginning it was obvious that the potential applications of the device go way beyond gaming. After Microsoft released Kinect for Windows Development Kit (KDK) many researchers and technology enthusiasts started to use the device for building creative and from time to time unexpected applications. The talk with present and demonstrate the core technologies in Kinect, the processing modules in KDK, and discuss their potential use for creating advanced human-machine interfaces by adding audio, speech recognition, gesture recognition, etc. The presenter, Dr. Ivan Tashev from Microsoft Research, created most of the audio processing algorithms in the audio pipeline and served as audio architect of the device.

Speaker Bio
Dr. Ivan Tashev obtained his Diploma Engineer in Electronics and PhD in Computer Science from the Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria. He was an Assistant Professor in the same university when he joined Microsoft in 1998. Currently he is a member of Speech Technology Group in Microsoft Research. Ivan Tashev works in the area of audio signal processing, and has created numerous technologies transferred to Microsoft Windows, Round Table, Microsoft Auto, and the Microsoft Kinect. Dr. Tashev is a senior member of IEEE Signal Processing Society and its Audio and Acoustic Signal Processing TC. He has published more than 70 papers, four books, and has been granted 18 US patents. Dr. Ivan Tashev is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering of University of Washington in Seattle.

This one-day educational conference on web design will take place at the New Hazlett Theater on October 26, 2012.

Pittsburgh Web Design Day is an annual, one day web design and web development conference for Pittsburgh! Topics include CSS, HTML5, Mobile Development, User Experience, Web Design, Web Development, and Web Standards. For more information click here.

AB Coffeehouse presents their annual Halloween Show, featuring Shlohmo and RL Grime, October 26 at CMU’s Rangos Hall. The event is free with a CMU ID, $10 without.

Shlohmo got his start in the Los Angeles beat scene, popularized by Flying Lotus and Baths. With downtempo beats that can hit hard or be delivered with an eloquent soulful spin and a steady groove of low-end bass, Shlohmo blends in glitched, droning 8-bit blips for a new spin on the ever-expanding subgenre of experimental hip-hop.

RL Grime is a trap superstar and has garnered the support of Diplo, A-Trak, and Flosstradamus. His melodically infused, Houston influenced flavor is connecting the roots of southern hip hop with the new age of electronic dance music.

Come to 5106 Penn Avenue on Friday, October 26, for underground hip hop by Evolve, Cemcom, and more, plus projections and live drawings. This event begins at 8pm.

From Cincinnati, courtesy of REALICIDE YOUTH RECORDS:

EVOLVE - avant-hip-hop, sound collage, magick electronics

CEMCOM - Freak One & Beta Max, frequent collaborators with Evolve

With locals:

STILLBORN IDENTITY - diy hiphop punk dude

CINCINNATUS C - toilet electronics, back in Pgh after time in Philly & VA

Projections by:

RON COPELAND - million art shows per year industrial consumer culture collage

Live Drawing by:

SETH LEDONNE - homespun spiritual americana

Dorkbot Pittsburgh is a monthly lecture series and show-and-tell for “people doing strange things with electricity”. It is open to the public, non-smoking, all-ages, and admission is free. We meet upstairs at Brillobox, where vegetarian dinner and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks are available.

Brillobox is donating space and resources for the meeting, so consider staying after for drink or showing up before for an early dinner to thank them for their support. Brillobox is a non-smoking bar and dorkbot pittsburgh is proud to be a non-smoking event. Brillobox is located at 4104 Penn Ave (at Main) in the Bloomfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA.

Join Spark, K+C Network members for a Lunch & Learn on October 24, 2012 at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Oakland. From 12-1pm, Artist Carolyn Speranza will present on a project that turned the Carnegie Libraries into hubs for digital and public art. 

The presentation will tell the multi-dimensional story that paved the way for the libraries’ shift to digital labs. Lisa Link, project co-author, will be joining remotely from the University of Massachusetts. The presentation also features special guests from the “End of the Line: Building Bridges with Pittsburgh Busways” project!

“End of the Line: Building Bridges with Pittsburgh’s Busways” (1996-1997) was a community-based public artwork and collaboration by Lisa Link and Carolyn Speranza. In their examination of historic as well as contemporary issues in Pittsburgh communities, the artists held workshops at neighborhood Carnegie libraries. Four common themes surfaced from participants’ oral histories, photographs and photo-montages: The Unsung Hero, Urban Removal, Rebuilding Our Neighborhoods and Community Gardening. Digitally collaged artwork was created from these themes, printed on vinyl and displayed on a fleet of city buses, driving their routes throughout Allegheny County.

This event is free to attend, but registration is required. RSVP at http://sproutnet.org/civicrm/event/info?id=26&reset=1

Be a part of history and join us as we celebrate the 5th induction of robots into the Robot Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony will take place on Tuesday, October 23, 6:30pm to 9pm, at the Carnegie Science Center. This event is being held in conjunction with the RoboBusiness Leadership Summit.

The Robot Hall of Fame recognizes excellence in robotics technology worldwide and honors the fictional and real robots that have inspired and made breakthrough accomplishments in robotics. The Robot Hall of Fame was established by the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 2003 to call attention to the increasing contributions from robotics to human society.

Agenda:
6:30 – 8:00 Reception
8:00 – 9:00pm Robot Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Pricing Details:
$99 per person, or purchase a group of 3 tickets for $225! Purchase your tickets here.

The Listening Spaces one-day conference seeks to investigate the impact of mediating technologies on our social and personal interactions with music. This FREE symposium and workshop, hosted by the Center for the Arts in Society, features world-renowned experts on the intersections of music, technology, social media and culture.

The event takes place on October 19th, 2012 at 11:00am at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry (CMU College of Fine Arts, room 111 — Google Map at bit.ly/cmucfa)

Event Schedule:
Speakers Symposium: 11:00am-1:30pm
Lunch: 1:30pm-3:00pm
Workshop/Moderated Discussion: 3:00pm-5:30pm

Speakers:
Jonathan Sterne, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University
Trebor Scholz, Department of Culture and Media Studies, The New School
Graham Hubbs, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
Larisa Mann, Department of Media Communications and Culture, New York University

Workshop:
Workshop subjects include Public/Private Listening, Acquiring Music, Utility of Music, Playlists and Mixtapes, Musical Meaning, and The Technology of Listening, all oriented toward exploring four fundamental questions: What do we do with music? Where do we get music? How and why do we share music? How and why do we recommend music?

Sep Kamvar – data scientist, software artist, and associate professor at the MIT Media Lab — will present a broad overview of challenges in social computing. This lecture, part of the CMU HCII Seminar Series, takes place Wednesday, October 17th at 4:30pm on the CMU campus (location details here) and is free and open to the public.

Abstract: Social computing has come to refer to three things: the development of algorithms that use personal and social features, the mining of social data, and the building of systems that interact with networks of people. These three branches tend to have quite different technical challenges. I’ll discuss one problem from each area to highlight both the differences and the overlap between the three branches, and I’ll discuss the challenges that this new field poses to research in numerical linear algebra, machine learning, human-computer interaction, and programming languages.

Sep Kamvar is the LG Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT and Director of the Social Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab. Prior to MIT, Sep was the head of personalization at Google and a consulting professor of Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University. Sep’s artwork has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens. He is the author of two books and over 40 technical publications in the fields of search and social computing.

Dust off the code in that dream project of yours and make some progress in the company of friends. Loop Pittsburgh, a creative coding group, meets monthly to “have fun and make things” at the HackPittsburgh shop. The October meeting will take place at 6:30pm on Tuesday, October 16.

Loop Pittsburgh is a monthly meetup for people who do creative things with code for the web and beyond. Come on out and enjoy some company while you hack away at a long neglected side project or experiment with something new. If you have a project you’ve been itching to work on but just haven’t found time for, or a current project and not sure where to go next, you’ve got the perfect thing to bring to a meeting.

In this lecture Lewis Hyde offers a defense of our cultural commons, that vast store of art and ideas we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present. Part of the CMU University Lecture Series, this presentation takes place at 4:30pm on October 15th in CMU’s Porter Hall 100, and is free and open to the public.

Suspicious of the current idea that all creative work is “intellectual property,” visiting scholar Lewis Hyde turns to America’s founders — men like Franklin, Adams, Madison, and Jefferson — in search of other ways to imagine the fruits of human wit and imagination. What he ends up describing is a rich tradition in which knowledge was assumed to be a commonwealth, not a private preserve.

For the founders, democratic self-governance itself demanded open and easy access to ideas. So did the growth of creative communities like that of eighteenth-century science. And so did the flourishing of public persons, the very actors whose “civic virtue” brought the nation into being.

The lecture elaborates especially this final point, that we need to understand the creative self in its collectivity rather than its individuality, and illustrates the case with examples ranging from Benjamin Franklin’s refusal to patent his own inventions to the young Bob Dylan’s acknowledged debts to the American folk tradition.

Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. He teaches during the fall semesters at Kenyon College, where he is the Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing. He is a former director of undergraduate creative writing at Harvard and currently a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Chosen a MacArthur fellow in 1991, he is the recipient of grants from the NEH, the NEA, the Lannan Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is the author of The Gift, an inquiry into the situation of creative artists in a commercial society; Trickster Makes This World, a book about the value of disruptive imagination; and Common as Air, a defense of our “cultural commons.” His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including the Kenyon Review, the American Poetry Review, the Paris Review, and the Nation.

Demosplash is a computer art festival in the spirit of the demoscene. In its second year, the festival will be held on October 12th and 13th, on the 4th floor of CMU’s Hillman Center for Future Generation Technologies. Events are free to CMU students and staff and open to registration from the general public.

Demosplash goes into greater depth on the artistic and technical skills of the demoscene through a thorough screening of classic demos and an exhibition of the large collection of retro and relatively modern computers used for the screenings. Demosplash features talks on writing for retro and modern platforms, open retro and LAN gaming rooms, competitions for attendee-submitted demos, and the screening of a classic demoscene film.

Join Carnegie Museum of Art for this symposium in conjunction with the opening of the groundbreaking exhibition Inventing the Modern World. Beginning at 9am on October 13 in Carnegie Lecture Hall, the program features talks by the exhibition catalogue authors and a panel discussion moderated by Robert W. Rydell (Michael P. Malone Professor of History, Montana State University).

Presentations include:

– “Modern Renaissance”: Revival and Progression in Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, Jason T. Busch, Carnegie Museum of Art
– “The Federation of Mankind”: Cross-Cultural Influences in Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, Catherine L. Futter, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
– From Progress to Modernity: Invention and Innovation at the World’s Fairs, Regina Lee Blaszczyk, University of Pennsylvania
– Modernity Revealed: The World’s Fairs from 1900 to 1925, Stephen Harrison, Cleveland Museum of Art
– Kings, Peasants, Dragons, and Flowers: National Symbolism in Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, Ethan Robey, Parsons, The New School for Design
– Style through Science: Modern Industrial Design and the World’s Fairs of the 1930s, Kevin W. Tucker, Dallas Museum of Art

Call 412.622.3288 for reservations and further information, or purchase tickets online.

On Friday, October 12, 2012, Carnegie Mellon University CyLab will host a panel discussion of CODE 2600, an award-winning full-length documentary on the societal implications of cyber security and cyber risk. CyLab experts will join the filmmaker for a discussion of the film and the important issues it highlights. The panel will be followed by two evening screenings of the film, at 7pm and 10pm.

In Code 2600, writer/director Jeremy Zerechak not only documents the rise of the Information Technology Age, but he also interviews many of those involved in this extraordinary shift in how we communicate, learn, transact business, and yes, conduct war. Cyber security and privacy luminaries featured in Zerechak’s film include: world-class cryptographer and security commentator Bruce Schneier, BlackHat and DEFCON founder Jeff Moss, leading security iconoclast Marcus Ranum, as well as Jennifer Granick, Director of Civil Liberties at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, and CyLab’s own Lorrie Cranor, Director of CyLab Usable Privacy and Security (CUPS) Laboratory.

The panel discussion will be held as a special CyLab Seminar Series event from 12pm to 1pm in the CIC DEC. In the panel discussion, the filmmaker Zerechak will be joined by CyLab researchers Lorrie Cranor, Nicolas Christin and Norman Sadeh.

On Friday, October 12, 2012, Carnegie Mellon University CyLab will host two screenings of CODE 2600, an award-winning full-length documentary on the societal implications of cyber security and cyber risk. These evening screenings will be preceded by an afternoon panel in which some CyLab experts will join the filmmaker for a discussion of the film and the important issues it highlights.

In Code 2600, writer/director Jeremy Zerechak not only documents the rise of the Information Technology Age, but he also interviews many of those involved in this extraordinary shift in how we communicate, learn, transact business, and yes, conduct war. Cyber security and privacy luminaries featured in Zerechak’s film include: world-class cryptographer and security commentator Bruce Schneier, BlackHat and DEFCON founder Jeff Moss, leading security iconoclast Marcus Ranum, as well as Jennifer Granick, Director of Civil Liberties at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, and CyLab’s own Lorrie Cranor, Director of CyLab Usable Privacy and Security (CUPS) Laboratory.

The screenings will be held at 7pm and 10pm in CMU’s McConomy Auditorium (University Center). A reception and question and answer session with Jeremy Zerechak and Lorrie Cranor will be held at 9pm These events are free.

Demosplash is a computer art festival in the spirit of the demoscene. In its second year, the festival will be held on October 12th and 13th, on the 4th floor of CMU’s Hillman Center for Future Generation Technologies. Events are free to CMU students and staff and open to registration from the general public.

Demosplash goes into greater depth on the artistic and technical skills of the demoscene through a thorough screening of classic demos and an exhibition of the large collection of retro and relatively modern computers used for the screenings. Demosplash features talks on writing for retro and modern platforms, open retro and LAN gaming rooms, competitions for attendee-submitted demos, and the screening of a classic demoscene film.

On October 12, 2012, Rodney Brooks will conduct a seminar on the new class of industrial robot being developed by Rethink Robotics. The seminar takes place at 3:30pm in CMU’s McConomy Auditorium (University Center).

Abstract
At Rethink Robotics we have been developing a new class of industrial robot. The transition from mainframes to PCs completely transformed office work, and then transformed how we access information in our daily lives. With mainframes only specialists had direct access to computation. With the PC ordinary people were empowered to control computation and to use if for their own purposes. The Baxter robot is aimed at an analogous transformation from current industrial robots which are installed, integrated, and controlled by specialists, to a situation where anybody who can work on a factory floor can install a robot and have it doing useful work within an hour. The important metrics for this new class of robot are adaptability, flexibility, and ease of use. And low cost. This talk will show how we defined and drove the design of the robot and its own manufacture to these metrics.

Rodney Brooks is the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus) at MIT. He is a robotics entrepreneur and Founder, Chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics). He is also a Founder, former Board Member, and former CTO of iRobot Corp. Dr. Brooks is the former Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. He has published many papers in computer vision, artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life.

In this lecture, scientific storyteller Sam Kean discusses the hidden human stories behind carbon, neon, gold, and every single other element on the table. Part of the CMU University Lecture Series, this presentation takes place at 4:30pm on Thursday, October 11 in CMU’s Porter Hall 100, and is free and open to the public.

Why did Gandhi hate iodine? Why did the Japanese kill Godzilla with missiles made of cadmium? Why did tellurium lead to the most bizarre gold rush in history? The Periodic Table may be one of humanity’s crowning scientific achievements, but it’s also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, folly, betrayal, and obsession. The Disappearing Spoon finds the hidden human stories behind carbon, neon, gold, and every single other element on the table.

Sam Kean, an independent writer, has contributed to Science magazine, and his work has been featured on “Radiolab” and NPR’s “All Things Considered,” among other shows. The Disappearing Spoon, a New York Times bestseller, was his first book. His new book is The Violinist’s Thumb, a romp through the human genome.

On Thursday, October 11, Bjoern Hartmann will provide a seminar on designing user interfaces for the era of post-personal computing. The talk, part of the HCII Seminar Series, begins at 4pm in Newell Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium).

Abstract
My research in Human-Computer Interaction focuses on design, prototyping and implementation tools for the era of post-personal computing. As computation moves away from single-user desktop applications, I investigate how new algorithms, applications, and design principles can support the creation of novel user interfaces.

In this talk, I’ll present one slice through my group’s work: research that enables designers and developers to rapidly prototype and later robustly implement post-desktop interfaces. Making headway in this area involves working in both hardware and software. For example, my group is developing authoring tools that leverage digital fabrication processes to construct functioning prototypes of physically embodied user interfaces in a matter of hours. As a first step, we have recently developed Midas, a design tool to rapidly fabricate capacitive touch sensors based on high-level graphical specifications. Our work on input architectures supports developers that have to write robust gesture recognition code for devices that use such sensors. Our Proton system introduces a declarative gesture specification language that enables static analysis for gesture conflicts and automatic generation of gesture recognizers.

Bjoern Hartmann is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Division at UC Berkeley. He co-directs the Berkeley Institute of Design and the Berkeley Swarm Lab. His research has received numerous Best Paper Awards at ACM CHI and UIST, and an NSF CAREER award in 2012. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2009.

For one weekend, FIGMENT transforms The Allegheny Commons in Pittsburgh into a large-scale collaborative artwork. This free interactive arts event takes place Saturday & Sunday, October 6-7, 2012 from 10am to 6pm.

FIGMENT is a forum for the creation and display of participatory and interactive art by emerging artists across disciplines. It challenges artists and our communities to find new ways to learn, share, create, think and dream. This is a FREE event that is completely family-oriented, interactive, and inclusive. There are no vendors, no paid artists, and nothing – absolutely nothing – for sale. As a Leave No Trace event, the organization team, volunteers and artists alike will work to reduce any impact on the event site.

For one weekend, FIGMENT transforms The Allegheny Commons in Pittsburgh into a large-scale collaborative artwork. This free interactive arts event takes place Saturday & Sunday, October 6-7, 2012 from 10am to 6pm.

FIGMENT is a forum for the creation and display of participatory and interactive art by emerging artists across disciplines. It challenges artists and our communities to find new ways to learn, share, create, think and dream. This is a FREE event that is completely family-oriented, interactive, and inclusive. There are no vendors, no paid artists, and nothing – absolutely nothing – for sale. As a Leave No Trace event, the organization team, volunteers and artists alike will work to reduce any impact on the event site.

VIA is Pittsburgh’s own festival of new media and audiovisual performance. The 3rd annual “festival as laboratory” highlights cutting-edge musicians and visual artists from home and around the world. 

Saturday’s events include:

Workshops MAKE + BREAK with Assemble – 3:00pm at Deeplocal (6101 Penn Ave.)

Multimedia Performances with Mikey McParlane, Erica Gressman, and Robotcowboy – 3:00pm at 6119

A/V Showcase with Nadastrom, Moodymann, Gatekeeper, Daughn Gibson, Andrew Benson, THV, Tabor Robak, Luke Wyatt, and Chris Smalley – 8:00pm at Penn & Highland Avenue

100% Silk Afterparty with Ital, Laurel Halo, Magic Touch, M. Geddes Gengras, and Ben Tabas – 11:00pm at 6119

You’ve seen it at Burning Man, Pyrotopia and even on Katy Perry: Colorful wire that glows like neon. Now learn how to create your own art illuminated with electroluminescent wire (EL-wire). This 4-hour workshop, held at HackPittsburgh, will teach you everything you need to know to get started, including:

– How EL-wire works
– How to solder the wire and assemble controllers
– Using EL-wire in clothing, signage and other projects
– Safety and design considerations

Each student will receive a starter kit with 2 meters of wire, an EL-wire controller, batteries and additional components. Additional lengths of EL-wire in a variety of colors will be available for purchase at the class.

Pre-requisites:
You don’t need to know anything about circuits or wiring, however basic soldering experience is required. We will provide soldering irons and other tools. Also, please bring reading glasses if you wear them since we will be joining wires the width of a human hair.

Tickets can be purchased here. Cost is $55 per person and includes all materials. Seating is limited to 8 people per session.

This class is open to the general public, no shop membership required. Anyone under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.

VIA is Pittsburgh’s own festival of new media and audiovisual performance. The 3rd annual “festival as laboratory” highlights cutting-edge musicians and visual artists from home and around the world. 

Friday’s events include:

NEW AGES 3 with Jacob Ciocci, Ryder Ripps, and Jeremy Bailey at 6119 (6119 Penn Avenue)

How To Babycastles! Build/Play Your Own Indie Arcade – 5:00pm at Deeplocal (6101 Penn Ave. Ste. 401)

Workshop DATA GARDEN: Plants, Music + Technology – 6:00pm at Center for PostNatural History (4913 Penn Ave.)

A/V Showcase with Tiger & Woods, Spinn & Rashad, SSION, Zuzuka Poderosa, Jeremy Bailey, Katie Torn, Scott Andrew, and Timothy Sherman – 9:00pm at Penn & Highland Ave.

Afterparty with Santiago Salazar, REVY live, Jason Cuban, and Casey Hallas – 11:00pm at 6119

In Gamification @ Work, presented by HCII, Janaki Kumar provides an introduction to game mechanics for business applications. The seminar begins at 3pm on October 5 in CMU’s Newell Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium). 

Abstract
Gamification is the application of game design principles and mechanics to solve real world problems. Gamification makes technology more inviting by encouraging users to engage in desired behaviors by showing the path to mastery and autonomy, and by taking advantage of human being’s innate enjoyment of play.

VIA is Pittsburgh’s own festival of new media and audiovisual performance. The 3rd annual “festival as laboratory” highlights cutting-edge musicians and visual artists from home and around the world. 

Thursday’s events include:

A/V Showcase with Girl Unit, Le1f, Poirier, Slowpitch, Di-ay Battad, Kevin Ramser, and Audra Wist – 9:00pm at 6119 (6119 Penn Ave.)

The CMU Design League board will be hosting a screening of Design & Thinking, a documentary about “design thinking,” on Thursday, October 4th at 7:30pm in CMU’s Porter Hall 100.

On October 4, 2012, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science alumnus Dr. Marc Donner will discuss the Google Art Project, an online platform through which the public can access high-resolution images of artworks. The talk begins at 3:30pm in Rashid Auditorium (CMU Gates/Hillman Center 4401). 

The Google Art Project was a 20% engineering project that has turned into an online platform through which the public can access high-resolution images of artworks housed in the initiative’s partner museums. The project was launched on 1 February 2011 by Google, in cooperation with 17 international museums, including the Tate Gallery, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. The platform enables users to virtually tour partner museums’ galleries, explore physical and contextual information about artworks, and compile their own virtual collection.

Dr. Marc Donner is an engineering director at Google looking after the interests of the infrastructure networking software engineers as well as helping with cybersecurity and advising Google’s work with major museums on the Google Art Project, all while writing articles about science fiction for an engineering magazine.

For more details, visit http://calendar.cs.cmu.edu/scsEvents/demo/8093.html.

This lecture, jointly presented by the CMU School of Design Lecture Series and the CMU HCII Seminar Series, takes place Wednesday, October 3rd at 4:30pm in Newell Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium), and is free and open to the public.

Hugh Dubberly, President of Dubberly Design and former Vice President of Design at Netscape, sheds light on what he considers to be one of today’s biggest problems: managing systems change. Hugh discusses this problem by addressing several important questions including: What does it mean to broaden the focus of design to include relationships? And how might we integrate a systems perspective into design practice?

Hugh Dubberly is a design planner and teacher. At Apple Computer in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Hugh managed cross-functional design teams and later managed creative services for the entire company. While at Apple, he co-created a technology-forecast film called “Knowledge Navigator,” that presaged the appearance of the Internet in a portable digital device. While at Apple, he served at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena as the first and founding chairman of the computer graphics department.

Intrigued by what the publishing industry would look like on the Internet, he next became Director of Interface Design for Times Mirror. This led him to Netscape where he became Vice President of Design and managed groups responsible for the design, engineering, and production of Netscape’s Web portal. Hugh graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in graphic design and earned an MFA in graphic design from Yale.

VIA is Pittsburgh’s own festival of new media and audiovisual performance. The 3rd annual “festival as laboratory” highlights cutting-edge musicians and visual artists from home and around the world. 

Wednesday’s events include:

DEMDIKE STARE Live Film Re-score of Jean Rollins’ 1970 La Vampire Nue - 7:00pm at Pittsburgh Filmmakers (477 Melwood Ave.)

A/V Showcase with Andy Stott, Three Legged Race, Nate Young,Ben Hernstrom, Lafidki, and Drainolith – 10:00pm at Brillobox (4104 Penn Ave.)

In the first installment of the 2012-13 iCON-Edu Speaker Series, the Institute for the Future’s Gabriel Harp will discuss an ongoing research project which explores and forecasts the future of the Internet in 2022. The event begins at 4:00pm on Wednesday, October 3 at the Pittsburgh Technology Council, 2000 Technology Drive, Suite 100 (1st Floor, Resource Room).

Agenda:
4:00-4:30: Registration & Networking
4:30-5:30: Presentation, Q&A
5:30-6:30: Networking Reception & Refreshments

Gabriel Harp
Gabriel’s research pivots on the interactions between ecology, design, and infrastructure as pervasive enabling resources for services, technology, and evolutionary change. As Research Manager in the Technology Horizons program, Gabriel draws on work in the life sciences, public health and disaster preparedness, education, experimental media, and design.

About the iCON-Edu Speaker Series
The Leading Edge of Education, Creativity + Technology
The 2012-13 Series brings national innovators to Pittsburgh for talks that will inspire, educate and raise awareness about the evolving intersections of education and business. iCON-Edu provides opportunities for educators, entrepreneurs and the community to connect with and learn from leading-edge game changers.

Pricing: iCON-Edu Series Pass: $299
The Series Pass includes admission to two iCON-Edu stand alone events, the Full two-day 2012 TRETC Conference, and the 2013 Design, Art and Technology Awards and Creative Technology Showcase (a $400 value). Email events@pghtech.org to purchase your Series Pass.

Full series details are available at www.pittsburghartandtech.org.

VIA is Pittsburgh’s own festival of new media and audiovisual performance. The 3rd annual “festival as laboratory” highlights cutting-edge musicians and visual artists from home and around the world. 

Tuesday’s events include:

Jonathan Walley: Lecture & Experiments in Paracinema at Carnegie Mellon University (5000 Forbes Ave.)

Julia Holter (RVNG Intl): The Garment District at the Warhol Museum (117 Sandusky St.)

VIA is Pittsburgh’s own festival of new media and audiovisual performance. The 3rd annual “festival as laboratory” highlights cutting-edge musicians and visual artists from home and around the world. 

Monday’s events include: 

3D BURNS!, curated by Michael Mallis and Katie Torn, at Fe Gallery (4102 Butler Street)

On display at SPACE Gallery through November 18, 2012, Circles of Commotion and Moving Pauses is an exhibition by “the 181″ (Brandon Boan, Abby Donovan, Tom Hughes, and Jason Rhodes). SPACE (812 Liberty Ave.) is part of the Cultural District Gallery Crawl and will feature music by DJ Edgar Um on September 28.

The 181 composes perceptual and situational architectures which expand, contract, or reassemble as information sloshes about. Circles of Commotion and Moving Pauses is the construction and assembly of a system of interacting, fundamentally digital elements to create and display dynamic perceptual architectures for an exhibition and documentation in catalog form.

Part of the September 28th Cultural District Gallery Crawl, Cell Phone Disco is a surface that visualizes the electromagnetic field of an active mobile phone. This installation piece can be found at the intersection of Tito and Exchange Way (behind Crazy Mocha Coffee at 801 Liberty Avenue).

In 2006, architect Ursula Lavrenčič and information designer Auke Touwslager created the first version of Cell Phone Disco, an installation which transforms a part of the electromagnetic spectrum into another frequency range – the range of visible light. Their fascination lies with the transmission quality of the mobile phone; its presence beyond the shell of the device. With funding from The Fine Foundation, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust commissioned the Netherlands-based artist collective, Informationlab, to create Cell Phone Disco, the city’s first art+science interactive installation. Several thousand lights illuminate when you make or receive a phone call in the vicinity of the installation.

This exhibition, presented by Wood Street Galleries with guest curator Justin Hopper, opens September 28 as part of the Cultural District Gallery Crawl and will be on display through December 31, 2012. Wood Street Galleries is located at 601 Wood St. in Downtown Pittsburgh (Above the Wood St. / Sixth Ave. T station).

Justin Hopper is a Pittsburgh-based conceptual artist and writer who frequently works in Britain as well. Hopper has won Keystone and Golden Quill awards for his writing primarily about music and the arts, and recently published Making The Connections, a book about community projects enacted as a part of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary celebration.

For the artists in The City & the City, London, England is both hometown and inspiration. This groundbreaking exhibition brings together visual artwork by renowned authors of experimental poetry, fiction, history and geography, exploring new ways to combine literature and art in an examination of the modern city. Featured artists include Caroline Bergvall, Rachel Lichtenstein, Tom McCarthy & Rod Dickinson, Iain Sinclair & Chris Petit, and Sukhdev Sandhu.

World-renowned violinist Conrad Harris will perform works by John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Giacinto Scelsi, Alvin Lucier, and Gordon Mumma on Friday, September 28. This free avant-garde performance, sponsored by the BXA Intercollege Degree Programs and The Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, begins at 5pm in Kresge Theatre, CMU College of Fine Arts.

Conrad Harris has performed new works for violin at Ostrava Days, Darmstadt Ferrienkürse für Neue Musik, Gulbenkian Encounters of New Music, Radio France, Warsaw Autumn, and New York’s Sonic Boom Festival. In addition to being a member of the FLUX Quartet, he is concertmaster/soloist with the S.E.M. Orchestra, Ostravská Banda, and STX Ensemble. He has performed and recorded with such artists as Elliot Sharp, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Jean-Claude Risset, Rohan de Saram, and Tiny Tim.

On Wednesday, September 26, Phantom of the Attic Comics will host a book signing for local comics creator Ed Piskor. Ed is the writer and artist behind Wizzywig, a fictionalized account of the early days of computer hacking. In addition to signing copies of his book, he is producing an exclusive bookplate for the event. Ed will be at Phantom (411 S. Craig St.) from 4 to 8pm.

Ed Piskor is a Pittsburgh native who has been cartooning professionally in print form since 2005, starting off drawing American Splendor comics written by Harvey Pekar. The duo continued working together on two graphic novels, Macedonia, and The Beats. Ed designed the characters for the Adult Swim series, Mongo Wrestling Alliance. Currently he is working on The Hip Hop Family Tree, a definitive cartoon history of Hip Hop, serialized weekly at BoingBoing.net.

Ed began self-publishing Wizzywig after developing a huge interest in the history of Hacking and Phone Phreaking. Wizzywig has drawn the attention of such magazines as Wired, who called it a “delight, wryly rendered and packed with dead-on details of the hacker life.” Rolling Stone referred to Piskor as “the next big thing in graphic novels.”

Started in California in 2006, the Maker Faire is the premiere event for grassroots American innovation! This year, the Pittsburgh Maker Faire will be held September 22nd, at the Buhl Community Park at Allegheny Square (formerly known as Allegheny Public Square), on the Northside, right across from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh.

This family-friendly event features both established and emerging local “makers”. It will feature DIY science and technology, unique hand-made crafts, music and food, educational workshops and installations, and more! Main website: http://pghmakerfaire.com/

In this lecture, poet and translator Clayton Eshleman discusses cave art and the dawn of humankind’s cultural awakening. Presented by the CMU University Lecture series and the Victor M. Bearg Science and Humanities Scholars Speaker Series, this presentation takes place at 4:30pm on Thursday, September 20, 2012 in CMU’s Porter Hall 100, and is free and open to the public.

“Archaeologists and artists have written on southwestern European cave art, but none have given us a book like this. Clayton Eshleman has explored and inspected almost all of the great cave art of southwestern Europe including many caves that are not open to the public and require special permission. Now with visionary imagination, informed poetic speculation, deep insight, breathtaking leaps of mind, Eshleman draws out the underground of myth, psychology, prehistory, and the first turn of the human mind toward the modern. Juniper Fuse opens us up to our ancient selves: we might be weirder (and also better) than we thought.”
– Gary Snyder, Pulitzer Prize winning American

Clayton Eshleman, American poet, translator and editor, Professor Emeritus, Eastern Michigan University, has been at the heart of American poetry since the early 1960s. His work has earned him international acclaim, as testified by a National Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and two Landon Translation Prizes from the Academy of American Poets.

During his career Eshleman has published over forty books. He was also founder and editor of two literary journals: Caterpillar (1967-1973, 20 issues) and Sulfur (1981-2000, 46 issues). In the past decade he has also published three collections of prose, including Juniper Fuse: Upper Paleolithic Imagination & the Construction of the Underworld. This last title is a groundbreaking collection of poetry and prose that is the culmination of Eshleman’s twenty-five years of research into the origins of image-making via the Ice Age painted caves of southwestern France.

Open to the public. Cash, credit cards, or PayPal accepted.
We’re at 1936 Fifth Avenue, in the garage around back (on Watson).

Interactive artworks “tough” enough to withstand kid handling by six innovative artists nominated for a Tough Art Residency. Compose on a robotic “drum”, play with a giant ball of yarn, send oil drums cascading and make clouds, birds and planes “fly” across the sky! Featured artists include: John Pena, Scott Andrew + Jonathan Armistead, Jeremy Boyle + Kevin Clancy, Will Schlough, and more. More information: (412) 322-5058, http://pittsburghkids.org‎.

IMPERFECT HEALTH
The Medicalization of Architecture
Curated by Giovanna Borasi + Mirko Zardini
Organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal
Sept. 15, 2012 – Feb. 24, 2013

Opening Night: Sept. 14, Friday
4:30pm: Exhibition Tour with the Curators
6-8pm: Opening Reception

Dr. Vincent Aleven, Associate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at CMU, will present recent work integrating instructional design and game design in systems for young children. This lecture, part of the CMU HCII Seminar Series, takes place Wednesday, September 12th at 4:00pm in Newell Simon Hall 1305 (Michael Mauldin Auditorium), and is free and open to the public.

Abstract: How can a team of HCI and learning scientists, and a team of professional game developers work together to create effective educational games? Dr. Aleven reports on progress in the ENGAGE project, a collaborative effort between a group in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and one in the Entertainment Technology Center. Less than a year into our project, we have two games, data from a formative evaluation study in two schools, and some reflections on a design process that integrates distributed expertise in instructional design and game design.

Dr. Vincent Aleven is an Associate Professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute and has 20 years of experience in research and development of advanced learning technologies, grounded in cognitive theory. A recent focus of his work is virtual worlds and game-based learning. He is a firm believer in the notion that the most effective educational games emerge when the best practices and practitioners in game design and instructional design come together. Dr. Aleven is a member of the Executive Committee of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center (PSLC), an NSF-sponsored research center spanning Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. He has been or is PI on seven major research grants and co-PI on seven others. Dr. Aleven has taught numerous courses, workshops, and summer schools on the development of intelligent tutoring systems and educational games.

Award-winning computational artist, Camille Utterback, presents an overview of her interactive art in the Kresge Theater of the CMU College of Fine Arts (CFA), at 5pm on Tuesday, September 11th. This lecture, part of the CMU School of Art Lecture Series, is free and open to the public.

Camille Utterback is an internationally acclaimed artist whose interactive installations and reactive sculptures engage participants in a dynamic process of kinesthetic discovery and play. Utterback’s work explores the aesthetic and experiential possibilities of linking computational systems to human movement and gesture in layered and often humorous ways. Her work focuses attention on the continued relevance and richness of the body in our increasingly mediated world. Utterback’s extensive exhibit history includes more than fifty shows on four continents. Her recent awards include the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Transmediale International Media Art Festival Award, Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship and a Whitney Museum commission for their ArtPort website. Recently completed public commissions include works for the City of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, the City of San Jose, California and the City of Sacramento. Camille is presently Fall 2012 Kraus Visiting Professor of Art in the CMU School of Art.

Come and play with these live demonstrations and hear a little bit about the inspiration and the technology behind them. Share your ideas and help us think of new ways to use these technologies.

The exhibition “Project: Lido” brings together an eclectic mix of artists, patrons, professionals, and community members. Join us at LESLIE Park Pool for a twilight celebration where hundreds of attendees will convene for an evening of ephemeral art, exceptional conversation, and evocative music by Edgar Um. It’s a backyard garden party/ international gallery opening in the heart of Pittsburgh’s most vibrant neighborhoods.

Project: Lido, curated by Amanda Donnan, produced by the Lawrenceville Collective, features immersive installations across all media in the decommissioned Leslie Park Pool. Located in the bustling neighborhood of Lawrenceville, the site is an enchanted urban ruin with a rich history and unparalleled character.

This exhibition brings together thirteen artists from diverse backgrounds, all of whom have ties to Pittsburgh, for a multisensory outdoor gallery experience. From organic sculptures to sound and video projects, the artists reimagine the purpose and perception of a public space to transform the former pool site into an interactive and groundbreaking exhibition.

Featuring the work of: Nina Marie Barbuto, Chris Beauregard, Brian Brown, Felipe Castelblanco, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Cara Erskine, Suzie Silver with Scott Andrew, and Harrison Apple, Tobias Madison, Stephanie Ross, and Shaun Slifer/Jessica McPherson.

Taken from the Italian word for “shore,” the word “lido” is a commonly used vernacular in the UK to glamorize an everyday public pool. The artists restore the dynamic to Leslie Pool through a series of ambitious works that will be on view for a very limited duration.

Funded and supported by the Heinz Endowments Small Arts Initiative, PA Council on the Arts, Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Special thanks to: Lawrenceville Corporation, Pittsburgh CitiParks, Pittsburgh Department of Public Works, and Mattress Factory.

You’ve seen it at Burning Man, Pyrotopia and even on Katy Perry: Colorful wire that glows like neon. Now learn how to create your own art illuminated with electroluminescent wire (EL-wire). This 4-hour workshop, held at HackPittsburgh, will teach you everything you need to know to get started, including:

– How EL-wire works
– How to solder the wire and assemble controllers
– Using EL-wire in clothing, signage and other projects
– Safety and design considerations

Each student will receive a starter kit with 2 meters of wire, an EL-wire controller, batteries and additional components. Additional lengths of EL-wire in a variety of colors will be available for purchase at the class.

Pre-requisites:
You don’t need to know anything about circuits or wiring, however basic soldering experience is required. We will provide soldering irons and other tools. Also, please bring reading glasses if you wear them since we will be joining wires the width of a human hair.

Cost is $55 per person and includes all materials. Seating is limited to 8 people per session. (There are two sessions, one on July 14 and this one; they are the same class, you only need to attend one.)

This class is open to the general public, no shop membership required. Anyone under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.

$10 ADVANCE TICKETS: http://www.showclix.com/event/malaobvious

$12 AT THE DOOR

21+ event

MALA
[DMZ, Deep Medi /// London, U.K.]

This is a rare performance by one of the SE London legends that brought us dubstep. This show is not one to miss.
Thunder St. Clair
[Sub:merged, CLE]
JAMES GYRE
[Garden of Earthy Delights, ¿qué qué?]
Mr. Owl
[DOMINANT FORCE, PGH]

PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

If you would like to submit, please email a brief description of your presentation, along with one or two slides, to info@aiapgh.org.

More information at: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/night/pittsburgh/12

Spaces Corners is pleased to welcome Ron Jude & Danielle Mericle from Ithaca, New York the evening of Thursday, June 21 from 6 to 9 pm. An artist talk will be held at the 2013 Carnegie International Satellite Apartment in Lawrenceville. Jude and Mericle will be presenting their photographic and video work and sharing their experiences as founders of the small publishing house, A-Jump Books.

RSVP encouraged, but not required.
For more info visit: http://www.spacescorners.com/events.html

Wed & Thur, 11am-6pm
Fri & Sat, 11am-8pm
Sun, 11am-5pm

Part of the Distinctively Dutch Festival, over a dozen visual artists—including Peter Bogers, Gerard Holthuis, Marnix de Nijs, Folkert de Jong, Guido van der Werve and Karen Sargsyan—will be featured in this exhibition that examines the very nature of global exploration. This contemporary Dutch expedition will traverse the terrains of the Internet and new media as well as mine the historical context of Dutch exploration.

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has a long history of presenting visual artists from the Netherlands, including most recently Edwin van der Heide, telcosystems and Informationlab, which created Pittsburgh’s first art+technology public art installation entitled Cell Phone Disco.

For more information click here.

Design, Art, and Technology (DATA) Awards, Hosted by the Pittsburgh Technology Council

It’s that time of year again: the Pittsburgh Technology Council is raising the roof, and raising the bar, at Pittsburgh’s biggest creative tech party of the year. Join us, and some of the hottest art and techies around, for an awards ceremony like no other. Get ready for a streaming mash-up of networking, interactivity and inspiration! With an all new format, the 2012 event features: “Pop-Up Awards” every 20 minutes, for a full night mixing and mingling; “Technology Drive” Interactive Exhibition space, featuring 40 of this year’s most innovative and creative tech projects; the all-new “People’s Choice Award” Tour and Tweet – an interactive exhibition juried by you live via Twitter; plus door prizes, dancing and the sounds of DJ Tracksploitation. Don’t miss this mash up of creativity, business – and fun!

For more information click here

Register for the 2012 DATA Awards

ONGING until June
open weekends, Sat 11am-8pm & Sun 11am-5pm

Path is a site-specific labyrinthine structure by Elin Hansdottir that weaves through each space it inhabits, filling the physical area with its winding course. Each exhibition site dictates the form of the zigzagging tunnel. Working with the boundaries determined by the external space, the structure is outlined directly on the floor, with the objective of having the structure occupy as much of the site as possible, thus creating a unique shape each time. The only light source emanates from vertical and horizontal slits throughout the construction. Due to the structure´s sharp edges, the light is dispersed in such a way that one mistakes shadows for walls, walls for space, and light for walls.

A screening/reading featuring highlights from “Strange Attractors: Investigations In Non-Humanoid Extraterrestrial Sexualities“. Be the first to see this fabulous publication in person!

Featuring art, writing and film by 70 contributors, Strange Attractors envisions the sexualities of beings that may some day be encountered – if not in outer space than at least in our dreams! Strange Attractors presents an extraordinary range of expressions that expand our conception of the possibilities of alien life forms and the nature of sexual desire. What kinds of sentient beings, what types of sexualities, how many erogenous zones and forms of erotic pleasure exist out there in the cosmos?

Strange Attractors is a collaboration between Encyclopedia Destructica and The Institute of Extraterrestrial Sexuality.

The FRAME Gallery presents Unsettling Space: A Study of the American Suburbs, an exhibition featuring work created by Sarah Keeling. She questions the current state of suburbia and its impact on the economic and sociological functioning of the community through examining its physical forms and the distinct culture that surrounds these areas. The show contains a wide variety of artistic processes such as printmaking, video and interactive installations.

The Frame is a non-profit, CMU student-run art space

Steve Brusatte
American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University, New York, NY

Dinosaurs dominated terrestrial ecosystems for more than 100 million years in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, and their great diversity, range of bizarre skeletal features, and (in some species) enormous size have made them icons of prehistory to the general public. How, then, did dinosaurs become so successful?

More information at: http://www.carnegiemnh.org/programs/moriarty.html

Have you ever wanted to turn real life things into 3D virtual objects using commercial off-the-shelf hardware? Come to HackPGH this Friday at 7:00PM to find out how to use the world’s first consumer 3D depth camera – the Xbox Kinect – to digitize the world around you. Live demos will be shown, but you can also bring your own computer and Kinect to get started with the world of 3D scanning.

Check out the image in this post for an example of what you can do. 2D pics of 3d objects aren’t quite as cool because you can’t rotate them around, but you’ll just have to come to the talk to get the third dimension!

More information at: http://www.hackpittsburgh.org/3d-scanning-with-the-kinect

IACD is an advanced studio course in arts-computing and new media practice. Topics surveyed include: experimental interface design, information visualization, game design, real-time audiovisuals, locative and mobile media, computational form-generation, image processing and vision-based interactions, augmented reality, simulation, networked crowd-sourcing, dynamic typography, mechatronic and device art, physical computing, and other topics. This showcase will feature final projects across a broad range of media.

Projects Inlucde:
J.Ota + J.Brieger-3rd Person Kinect Virtual Reality
Eli Rosen- Civil War Data Visualization
A.Wolfe + M.Nagda- Kinetic Origami Wearable
N.Inzucchi + D.Boehle- Binaural Soundscape
Evan Sheehan- Be A Tree
…and more!

An exhibition of photographs inspired and informed by neuroscience opens at the Mellon Institute on Thursday, May 3! Join members of the community for a reception at 4:00pm in the Institute’s 4th floor lobby.

Keynote Lecturer: Ron Weiss, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The “6th annual GBMES Distinguished Speaker Symposium: Discussions at the INTERFACE of NATURE & TECHNOLOGY” will explore multidisciplinary research areas that have emerged from unique intersections of nature, science and engineering, such as synthetic biology, and the potential impacts of these fields on medicine, technology, and entrepreneurial prospects. Main events include lunch, an informal discussion forum, student presentations in the form of a networking poster session, and the keynote seminar.

More information at: http://www.cmu.edu/uls/may/weiss.html

Pyrotopia will entertain and enchant attendees with the use of fire and related media such as electricity and light in artistic ways. We’re offering special activities for kids in the afternoon and fiery fun for all after dark. Activities at Pyrotopia will include:

• fire dancing, spinning, hooping, swallowing and other performances
• interactive fire sculptures and games
• fire-related demonstrations
• a gallery show of fire-related and inspired imagery, sculpture, video and other media
• workshops and lectures on fire science, history, safety and other topics
• and more

Pyrotopia.net

The Cyborg Cabaret explores human, robot, and cyborg relationships in a variety show format featuring everything from cutting edge metal machines to cardboard-suited meat bags. Expect tear-jerking vignettes, frequent non-sequiturs, and lots of humor through avant art-meets-science theater.

Main website: http://cyborgcabaret.org/

TICKETS HERE: http://www.showclix.com/event/CyborgCabaret
Presale: $8 – Student, $12 – General, $15 VIP
Door:__ $10 – Student, $15 – General, $20 VIP

A first of its kind, this interdisciplinary show features talents from CMU’s Robotics Institute, School of Art and the larger Pittsburgh community. We live in a world of technological artifacts and connectivity, already romantic partners; interdependent, disruptive and enabling. Our Cyborg Cabaret explores this relationship at its source by leveraging collaborations between the arts, robotic and technological fields. Don’t forget your power plugs!

Contributors include: Heather Knight (co-director), Dan Wilcox (co-director), Julia Cahill, Riley Harmon, CMU Professor Golan Levin and Manuela Veloso, North Star, and David White.

Because I’m Drawn That Way!: Ed Piskor Talks Comics

Ed Piskor has been cartooning professionally in print form since 2005, starting off drawing American Splendor comics written by Harvey Pekar. The duo continued working together on two graphic novels, Macedonia, and The Beats. Ed began self publishing Wizzywig after developing a huge interest in the history of Hacking and Phone Phreaking. Three volumes, making up 3/4 of the full story, have been published to date.

Hosted by the Humanities Scholars program and the Creative Writing Program

Mark Newman is an assistant professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. His research interests lie broadly in the field of human-computer interaction, and particularly in the areas of ubiquitous computing and end-user programming. Prior to the Summer of 2007, he was a research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC, formerly known as Xerox PARC) and a doctoral candidate in Computer Science at UC Berkeley.

The Kim & Eric Giler Lecture in the Humanities
A Sensational Drink: Chocolate Before and After the Spanish Conquest of Mesoamerica

Before 1492, no European had ever tasted chocolate. Along with tobacco, chocolate came to conquer Europe on a scale unsurpassed by any other American resource or product. Norton considers the material, social, and cultural interaction between Europe and the Americas in her portrayal of the Columbian exchange.

Dr. Marcy Norton is Associate Professor of History at George Washington University. She is the author of Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco & Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Cornell, 2008).

Mobot Race Day!
Course Map
(race course is in front of Wean Hall)

An awards presentation and reception follows at 3:00pm in the Rashid Auditorium – Gates&Hillman 4401.

12:00 noon – 4:00 pm:
ROBOTICS PROJECT DEMOS

Location: Planetary Robotics Lab Highbay – 1st floor, Gates and Hillman Centers
Open to the public.

Demos will include:

River Exploration and Mapping with Small Micro Aerial Vehicles
These vehicles can fly without GPS and find the river through a camera.

Snake Robots

Calliope
A prototype small-scale mobile manipulation platform that roams around on a tabletop and uses its five degree-of-freedom arm to interact with the world.  In CMU’s Cognitive Robotics course, students learn to program intelligent behaviors for Calliope using the Tekkotsu software framework and C++.

Canine – Robots that play fetch!
This requires a diverse set of behaviors: interacting with the operator in order to determine the object that’s being thrown, searching for and driving to the object, picking up the object, and returning to the operator, who may have moved.

12:00 noon – 4:00 pm:
ROBOTICS INSTITUTE LAB TOURS

Tours will meet and depart from GHC 2109

Lab tours will include:

HERB (Home Exploring Robot Butler) makes dinner demo!
A mobile manipulation system and household robot prototype for providing physical assistance with instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) in the home.

Visualization Laboratory – The building of an Immersive Reality Dome

Search-based Planning Laboratory - PR2 dual-arm mobile robot, Segbot and possibly Hexarotor UAV with on-board sensing/processing

Multi-Robot Laboratory - Small size soccer robots (CMDragons), and the CoBot and CreBot robots.

TANK the roboceptionist - The goal of the project is to produce a robot helpmate that is useful, exhibits social competence, and remains compelling to interact with for an extended period of time.

Ballbot - A person-sized mobile robot that has only a single spherical wheel.

Please join CMU Associate Professor of Art Jon Rubin and Culinary Director Robert Sayre for a discussion on Conflict Kitchen, a take out restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States is in conflict. The food is served out of a take-out style storefront that rotates identities every six months to highlight another country.

Operating seven days a week in the middle of the city, Conflict Kitchen reformats the preexisting social relations of food and economic exchange to engage the general public in discussions about countries, cultures, and people that they might know little about outside of the polarizing rhetoric of U.S. politics and the narrow lens of media headlines.

Conflict Kitchen is co-founded by Jon Rubin and Dawn Weleski.

An Installation by Wade Kavanaugh & Stephen Nguyen in the College of Fine Arts Great Hall.

Wade Kavanaugh was born in Portland ME and received his AB in Economics from Bowdoin College in 2001. Stephen B. Nguyen was born in Little Falls MN and received his MFA in painting from the University of Victoria, British Columbia in 2002. They both live and work in Brooklyn, NY.

Kavanaugh and Nguyen’s collaborative work has been exhibited at the Dumbo Arts Center, Brooklyn NY; the Maproom, Portland ME; Islip Art Museum, Islip NY; The Soap Factory, Minneapolis MN; and Mass MOCA, North Adams MA.

The 2012 wats:ON? Festival is made possible by the generous support of the Jill Watson Family Foundation.  Additional support provided by: the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, CMU College of Fine Arts, and the CMU School of Architecture.

• 2:00pm  -  Paper Airplanes with Ben Saks

Ben Saks is a Pittsburgh-based designer and producer of the documentary, FLOAT, exploring the craft of handmade free-flight model airplanes. This little known hobby involves the design, construction, and flying of ultra lightweight airplanes powered only by a wound rubber band.

• 3:00pm  -  Hacking Objects with Nina Barbuto

Nina Marie Barbuto lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. Her media includes architecture, film, sound, and art installation often with the idea of recycling noise into the system or elevating the vernacular spectacular. Over the past seven years, her works have been featured in galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and Seoul, Korea. In 2007, she co-founded the I Made It! Market, a nomadic indie crafts marketplace that provides opportunities for artists to sell their wares. Currently, Nina is focused on her storefront called Assemble Gallery, an experimental community space where one can learn through the process of making.

• 4:00pm  -  Lasersaur with A. Wagenknecht and S. Hechenberger of Nortd Labs

Nortd Labs is an international research and development studio founded in New York City by Addie Wagenknecht and Stefan Hechenberger in 2006. Nortd generates work in the area of art, architecture, and system design.

Lasersaur is their open source laser cutter project.  By providing a cheap, safe, and highly-capable machine they hope to increase the proliferation of laser cutters and make a significant contribution to the personal fabrication movement.

The 2012 wats:ON? Festival is made possible by the generous support of the Jill Watson Family Foundation. Additional support provided by: the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, CMU College of Fine Arts, and the CMU School of Architecture.

Body Music Rhythm Studio – an Interactive Rhythmic Event

Keith Terry is a percussionist/rhythm dancer and founding director of Crosspulse, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to the creation, performance and recording of rhythm-based, intercultural music and dance. His work encompasses a number of allied performance disciplines — music, dance, theater, performance art — which he brings together to create an artistic vision that defies easy categorization. As a self-defined “body musician,” Terry uses the oldest musical instrument in the world — the human body (his own) — as the basis for exploring, blending and bending traditional and contemporary rhythmic, percussive and movement possibilities.

For more information click here

The 2012 wats:ON? Festival is made possible by the generous support of the Jill Watson Family Foundation.  Additional support provided by: the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, CMU College of Fine Arts, and the CMU School of Architecture.

Nortd Labs is an international research and development studio founded in New York City by Addie Wagenknecht and Stefan Hechenberger in 2006. Nortd generates work in the area of art, architecture, and system design.

The 2012 wats:ON? Festival is made possible by the generous support of the Jill Watson Family Foundation. Additional support provided by: the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, CMU College of Fine Arts, and the CMU School of Architecture.

RI Seminar
Since 2008 Dieter Fox has been an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. His research interests lie in artificial intelligence, robotics and probabilistic state estimation. Fox is currently the director of the Robotics and State Estimation Lab, which he established in January 2001. Previously he was director of the Intel Labs Seattle, a research lab with close ties to the UW.

Leah Buechley is an Assistant Professor at the MIT Media Lab where she directs the High-Low Tech research group. The High-Low Tech group explores the integration of high and low technology from cultural, material, and practical perspectives, with the goal of engaging diverse groups of people in developing their own technologies. She is a well-known expert in the field of electronic textiles (e-textiles), and her work in this area includes developing the LilyPad Arduino toolkit. Her research was the recipient of a 2011 NSF CAREER award and has been featured in numerous articles in publications including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Popular Science, and the Taipei Times. She received PhD and MS degrees in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a BA in physics from Skidmore College.

The 2012 wats:ON? Festival is made possible by the generous support of the Jill Watson Family Foundation.  Additional support provided by: the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, CMU College of Fine Arts, and the CMU School of Architecture.

Gloria Mark is a professor in the Department of Informatics at University of California, Irvine. Her research interest is in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) which is the study of collaboration technologies and people. She studies multi-tasking in the workplace, distributed work and technology use, technology adoption, the impact of Web 2.0 technologies, and technology use in environmental crises.

Matthew Weinstein works across a variety of media (from 3D animation, painting, music composition, choreography), and contexts (galleries, museums, theaters, Opera Houses). Using the 3D modeling and rendering program Maya, he creates videos of animated spectacles, involving actors, musicians and animators. He then creates paintings and sculptures using a wide variety of technologies, such as bronze casting, rapid prototyping sculpture, airbrush, stenciling and resin casting.

Weinstein’s digitalized drawings and videos explore the often ambiguous line between reality and unreality in an American culture that increasingly experiences reality through the filter of a virtual world. The overall impact of this work is one of unreality, or rather “hyperclarity”, in which reality and unreality merge, becoming indistinguishable. Drawing on a number of influences, most notably early Japanese animation and the ancient aesthetic discipline of Ikebana floral arrangement to futuristic science fiction, Weinstein sets up a balance between the real and the abstract as well as nature and artifice.

Weinstein’s featured article in the NY Times

Tickets available at the door: $20 general, $15 students/artists

Gia T. Presents “BLINK”
A multi media dance performance in conjunction with “In Transit.”

Gia T. Cacalano is an educator, choreographer, improviser and performer currently based in Pittsburgh, PA. Ms. Cacalano’s career spans a 30 year time line and is ongoing.

Tickets available at the door: $20 general, $15 students/artists

Gia T. Presents “BLINK”
A multi media dance performance in conjunction with “In Transit.”

Gia T. Cacalano is an educator, choreographer, improviser and performer currently based in Pittsburgh, PA. Ms. Cacalano’s career spans a 30 year time line and is ongoing.

As part of the Center for Arts in Society‘s New Media Initiative, experimental filmmaker Tom Kalin will screen his feature film “Swoon”(1992) at the Andy Warhol Museum on the 20th anniversary of its release.

As part of the Center for Arts in Society‘s New Media Initiative, experimental filmmaker Tom Kalin will lecture in connection with “Gender/Sexuality/Media”.

Led by CMU Associate Professor of Art, Suzie Silver, this research/production initiative will engage in explorations of gender expression, sexuality and gender representations in media.

March 29–April 22, 2012
$35-$48

The Quantum Theatre presents the world premiere of The Electric Baby by Stefanie Zadravec reflecting the time she spent in Pittsburgh. Quantum unites her with director Daniella Topol, whose artistic start at Carnegie Mellon University and City Theatre preceded the impact she now makes across the country developing new plays.

Candy Chang is an artist, designer, and urban planner seeking to make cities more comfortable and contemplative places. Recent projects include Before I Die, where she transformed an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans into an interactive wall for people to share their hopes and dreams – a project The Atlantic called “one of the most creative community projects ever.” She is a TED Senior Fellow, an Urban Innovation Fellow, and was named a “Live Your Best Life” Local Hero by Oprah Magazine. By combining street art with urban planning and social activism, she has been recognized as a leader in developing new strategies for the design of our cities.

Lecture is brought to you by the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon

Brody Condon is an artist based in New York. Concerned with the aftermath of trauma and the over-identification with fantasy in contemporary culture, Condon’s work is best known for its influence on the re-purposing of existing pop cultural material (often computer and live-action role-playing games) to create performative situations, video, and sculpture.

VASC Seminar
Serge Belongie is a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at University of California, San Diego. His research interests include computer vision and pattern recognition. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. In 2004 MIT Technology Review named him to the list of the 100 top young technology innovators in the world (TR100). Belongie is a co-founder of Digital Persona, Inc. and the principal architect of the Digital Persona fingerprint recognition algorithm.

Show runs from March 3rd – March 31st. Gallery hours are Thur-Fri 12:00–3:00pm, Sat 12:00-4:00pm

A radioactive wand is waved, an Olympic flame is beamed across the sky, and a coal mine burns forever beneath the Earth. A history of energy proceeds not merely through rational gestures, but through the stuff of magic, of stealing from the gods.

In How to improve the world (you will only make things worse), Craig Fahner and Steve Gurysh draw from the genealogy of energy to enact a magical circuit, transporting a flame across time and space. Referencing such events as the 1976 Montreal Olympic torch relay, this work remystifies technological process into Promethean ritual, highlighting the absurdities of the Modernist spectacle.

Dickson Prize in Science
Honoring Professor Marvin L. Cohen, University of California, Berkeley
Einstein, Condensed Matter Physics, Nanoscience & Superconductivity
Award Ceremony and Lecture

Professor Cohen will describe a few observations about Einstein and his research in condensed matter physics. Einstein had difficulty getting his thesis subject approved despite some excellent proposals, which Cohen will discuss. As is well known, Einstein was at the forefront in many fields, but Professor Cohen will focus on condensed matter and quantum physics. In particular, he’ll discuss the background of this area of physics and some recent work in photovoltaics, nanoscience and superconductivity. In the latter field, Einstein suggested that we might never have a theoretical explanation, but Einstein was not always right.

FROM PETALS TO PIXELS
The Art & Science of Messing Around with Plants
Rob Kesseler

Rob Kesseler is a visual artist and Professor of Ceramic Art & Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London. The plant world is a source of inspiration and celebration throughout Rob Kesseler’s work; he is fascinated both by the plants themselves and the way in which they migrate into every aspect of our lives. This is reflected in a hybrid practice that spans Photography, Design, Fine Art and Craft. For the past twelve years he has been collaborating with botanical scientists and molecular biologists at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the Gulbenkian Science Institute in Portugal to explore the creative potential of microscopic plant material. Employing a variety of imaging processes and styles, from digital photography and scanning electron micrography to spontaneous ink drawing; he has involved a sophisticated coordination of hand, eye and intuition. Petals to Pixels will reveal some of his working processes and the diverse range of projects and products that have resulted from this.

Sponsored by the School of Art

The Center for PostNatural History is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge relating to the complex interplay between culture, nature and biotechnology. The PostNatural refers to living organisms that have been altered through processes such as selective breeding or genetic engineering. The mission of the Center for PostNatural History is to acquire, interpret and provide access to a collection of living, preserved and documented organisms of postnatural origin.

free and open to the public

Lisa Gitelman is an associate professor of both English and Media,Culture,&Communication at New York University.

Part of an in-progress work entitled ‘Making Knowledge with Paper,’ this talk considers the potential of new media to transform scholarly communications. > Focusing primarily on “new media” of the 1930s, it demonstrates some surprising points of connection between work done during the Depression and the digital humanities today.

Brought to you by the Center for Arts in Society at CMU

Are you an artist or designer who is curious about using code creatively? This workshop will get you started on exactly that! We’ll start with the basics of Processing and work our way through drawing shapes and building interactive sketches. The focus will be on demystifying visual programming concepts and giving you a foundation to build on for future exploration.

No programming experience necessary. None at all. Really! This workshop is especially for designers and artists who want to get started with visual programming. Each workshop ticket covers the cost of lunch as well as a copy of the book Getting Started With Processing.

free and open to the public

DIY Solar Power

Mark Barlow an electrical engineer and solar photovoltaic (PV) consultant who will introduce solar technology that is ready for the Do-It-Yourself community. The talk will include information on solar cell testing, electrical hardware, mechanical hardware, safety code, and the new all-in-one rooftop solar PV kits by Westinghouse Solar. The combination of affordable pricing, along with the ease of installation makes Westinghouse Solar Kits an attractive solution for contractors and do-it-yourself (DIY) homeowners.

free and open to the public

“¡Crear y Comunicar!” is a series of art workshops run by Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE): Nicaragua at Assemble Art Space. SIFE: Nicaragua is a student group at Carnegie Mellon that travels annually to Nicaragua. Through the non-profit organization Bridges to Community, the students are currently in a partnership with the rural community of Rosa Grande, Nicaragua. Since sustainability is one of our main goals, multi-year partnerships are paramount to our work in our education and environmentally focused initiatives in addition to our art initiative.

Because of SIFE: Nicaragua’s strong ties with Pittsburgh and Rosa Grande, the art projects are transnational in scope but will be local in impact. Children will learn about their own communities and about Nicaragua through collaborative projects that facilitate communication. The workshops will utilize various media, such as video, photography, and projections to promote an interactive cross-cultural exchange.

The work of last year’s participants will be on view at Assemble until February 24th.

Keynote: Eberhard E. Fetz, University of Washington

Program PDF

The Center for Bioimage Informatics will bring together faculty and researchers from the Pittsburgh area to hear about processing images and signals to solve biological and medical problems. Talks will cover computational and statistical methods for the automated analysis of these data, as well as the current and planned infrastrucuture to fasciliate its acquisition, management, and interpretation. The theme this year is “Power in numbers,” which includes talks that answer the question “How many neurons are needed to …?” The plenary speaker is Eberhard E. Fetz, University of Washington.

dECOi Architects/ MIT: ‘On Paramorphs and the Alloplastic’

Mark Goulthorpe is an Associate Professor at MIT Dept of Architecture, teaching in undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate programs, and undergoing research in digital design and fabrication. Current research centers on robotic fabrication and a variety of composite fabrication methodologies, as well as a new iteration of the dynamically reconfigurable HypoSurface.

For more information click here

Vital Dependencies: Synthetic Bio-Art and Infrastructures of Care

Jennifer Johung
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History + Director for the Art History Gallery

Synthetic biology builds or modifies organisms at the molecular level in order to generate life, while tissue engineering grows biological substitutes at the level above the cell. These current biotechnologies can be situated within wider political and philosophical determinations of vitality that are revisited when scientific developments challenge us to retool our understanding of how, and our expectations of how long, each of us might live. Attending to these changing qualifications of life, a burgeoning range of contemporary art experiments in synthetic fabrication join company with the Tissue Culture and Art Project, as well as protocell and breeding architectures, in order to intervene in the generation and maintenance of new living forms. As these artistic and techno- scientific practices converge, the encounters and exchanges between various scales of matter metabolize infrastructural relationships and precarious dependencies that care for, and potentially regenerate, cellular to human life.

Presented by the History of Art and Architecture Department at U.Pitt

free and open to the public

“¡Crear y Comunicar!” is a series of art workshops run by Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE): Nicaragua at Assemble Art Space. SIFE: Nicaragua is a student group at Carnegie Mellon that travels annually to Nicaragua. Through the non-profit organization Bridges to Community, the students are currently in a partnership with the rural community of Rosa Grande, Nicaragua. Since sustainability is one of our main goals, multi-year partnerships are paramount to our work in our education and environmentally focused initiatives in addition to our art initiative.

Because of SIFE: Nicaragua’s strong ties with Pittsburgh and Rosa Grande, the art projects are transnational in scope but will be local in impact. Children will learn about their own communities and about Nicaragua through collaborative projects that facilitate communication. The workshops will utilize various media, such as video, photography, and projections to promote an interactive cross-cultural exchange.

The work of last year’s participants will be on view at Assemble until February 24th.

New Media/News Media: How New Media are Changing the Way We Make and Consume the News

Panelists are Tony Norman, a columnist at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; John Allison, Post-Gazette opinion editor; Chris Potter, editor of the Pittsburgh City Paper; Martha Rial, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer at the Post-Gazette; and Deanna Garcia, a reporter at Essential Public Radio.

Zaha Hadid Architects, London: ‘Parametric Order – 21st Century Architectural Order’

Patrik Schumacher is partner at Zaha Hadid Architects and founding director at the AA Design Research Lab. Since 2004 Patrik Schumacher has been tenured Professor at the Institute for Experimental Architecture, Innsbruck University. Currently he is a guest professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

For more information click here

Ali Momeni is a builder, composer and performer interested in the poetics of gesture, affect and timing. His work makes use all manners of technology to explore the social lives of objects and their embedded performative qualities. His creative output ranges from kinetic sculptures and sound installations, to urban interventions and music theater performance.

Drawing on Darwin: Evolutionary History and the Use of Science in History
with UVA Professor Edmund Russell

Science offers powerful ideas that can help historians understand the past, but few historians have taken advantage of them. This talk describes some promise and pitfalls of synthesizing history and science. It will discuss evolutionary history as a young field of history that examines the impact of human beings on the evolution of populations of other species and vice versa.

Edmund Russell (curriculum vitae) is a professor in the department of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Virginia, with a joint appointment in the History department.

For more information click here

free and open to the public

“¡Crear y Comunicar!” is a series of art workshops run by Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE): Nicaragua at Assemble Art Space. SIFE: Nicaragua is a student group at Carnegie Mellon that travels annually to Nicaragua. Through the non-profit organization Bridges to Community, the students are currently in a partnership with the rural community of Rosa Grande, Nicaragua. Since sustainability is one of our main goals, multi-year partnerships are paramount to our work in our education and environmentally focused initiatives in addition to our art initiative.

Because of SIFE: Nicaragua’s strong ties with Pittsburgh and Rosa Grande, the art projects are transnational in scope but will be local in impact. Children will learn about their own communities and about Nicaragua through collaborative projects that facilitate communication. The workshops will utilize various media, such as video, photography, and projections to promote an interactive cross-cultural exchange.

The work of last year’s participants will be on view at Assemble until February 24th.

Workshop details and ticket price TBA

Famous for the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, accomplished artist, architect, and dedicated environmentalist Maya Lin takes a new approach to landscape by addressing issues involving nature, sculpture, and the environment.

Filling in the H in CHI
Terry Winograd is professor of computer science at Stanford University and co-director of the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group. He is known within the philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence fields for his pioneering work on natural language and for his book with Fernando Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (1986), which raised philosophical questions about the underlying paradigm of artificial intelligence research.

For more information on this lecture click here

“The Right to Look; Or, Why We Occupy”
Dr. Nicholas Mirzoeff is a visual culture theorist and professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is best known for his work developing the field of visual culture and for his many books and his widely used textbook on the subject: An Introduction to Visual Culture.

free and open to the public

“¡Crear y Comunicar!” is a series of art workshops run by Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE): Nicaragua at Assemble Art Space. SIFE: Nicaragua is a student group at Carnegie Mellon that travels annually to Nicaragua. Through the non-profit organization Bridges to Community, the students are currently in a partnership with the rural community of Rosa Grande, Nicaragua. Since sustainability is one of our main goals, multi-year partnerships are paramount to our work in our education and environmentally focused initiatives in addition to our art initiative.

Because of SIFE: Nicaragua’s strong ties with Pittsburgh and Rosa Grande, the art projects are transnational in scope but will be local in impact. Children will learn about their own communities and about Nicaragua through collaborative projects that facilitate communication. The workshops will utilize various media, such as video, photography, and projections to promote an interactive cross-cultural exchange.

The work of last year’s participants will be on view at Assemble until February 24th.

BRADDOCK :: http://15104.cc/
TRANSFORMAZIUM :: transformazium.org

Rabih Mroué, a key figure in a new generation of artistic voices in Lebanon, illustrates his unique interdisciplinary practice, which exists at the crossroads of theater, performance, and visual arts. In Mroué’s latest work in progress, The Pixelated Revolution (co-commissioned by The Warhol), he presents a timely lecture/performance about the usage of mobile phones during the Syrian revolution.

Doors open at 7:20 pm; presentations start at 8:00 pm.

Join the Pittsburgh chapters of AIGA and AIA for PechaKucha Night: Student & Faculty Edition. PKN is an event for local creatives to meet and network while presenters share their stories, collections, products or work in 6 minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images.

Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of conversation (“chit chat”), it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

The artists showcased in this exhibition share a commonality of practice and reflection as past participants in The Brew House Distillery Residency. The artists were challenged to investigate some properties inherent in growth, and to consider variants such as support structure, relationships between working components, and the values and meanings we assume in order to understand our world. Curated by Meghan Olson and Kara Skylling

Featuring:
Rachel Debuque Collaborating with Tifany Lee, Becky Slemmons, Jaci Rice, Ashley Pixelle Andrews, Morgan Cahn, Wendy Osher, Anna E. Mikolay, Rob Katkowski, Aimee Manion, Rose Clancy, Joshua Space, Stephanie Armbruster, Carolyn Wenning, Ryan Woodring

Gallery Hours:
Thursday 12:00-4:00pm
Friday 12:00-4:00pm
Saturday 12:00-4:00pm
Sunday 12:00-4:00pm

Probable Bodies is a group show that features work by Nathan Trevino, Caroline Record, and Justin Lin. Each artist is exploring similar themes of augmentation, tactility and bodily sensation. The show presents a broad variety of media including animation, works on paper, interactive installation and sculpture.

The Frame is a non-profit, CMU student-run art space

HC Gilje works with installations, live performance, set design and singlechannel video. Gilje has presented his work through different channels throughout the world: in concert-venues, theatres and cinemas, galleries, festivals, outdoors and through several international dvd releases, including 242.pilots live in Bruxelles on New York label Carpark and Cityscapes on Paris-label Lowave. He was a member of the video-impro trio 242.pilots, and was also the visual motor of dance company kreutzerkompani. Gilje initiated the project “Conversations with spaces” (while working as a research fellow at Kunstakademiet in Bergen 2006-9) where he explores how audiovisual technology can be used to transform, create, expand, amplify and interpret physical spaces.

Workshop details TBA

$45 Member / Non-Member; $25 Student.
Register.

Creative Clash! The Future of Creativity, Technology and a New Innovation Community in Pittsburgh

Heralding the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s new Creative Technology Network, and presented in partnership with the Carnegie Museum of Art, Creative Clash! will explore Pittsburgh’s history and future as a key innovator at the intersection of art and technology. Creative Clash! will show you some of the great things that are happening around our city right now, and will open discussions as to what more we can do to elevate this community to the next level of success. Event moderator Lynn Zelevansky, Director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, will ask the big questions to a diverse panel of industry leaders, including:

MK Haley, Associate Executive Producer at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, and Manager of Internal Communications, Disney Research Labs

Gregg Behr, Executive Director of the Grable Foundation, and founder of Pittsburgh Kids &Creativity

Carl Kurlander, Executive Producer of Steeltown Entertainment, and film/television screenwriter and producer

Tim Fletcher, Business Development Manager, Daedalus, and US Government Liaison Officer, Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)

The panel discussion is followed by a reception.

Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal, an Assistant Arts Professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, is known internationally for his on-line performative and interactive works provoking dialogue about international politics and internal dynamics. For his current project, the 3rdi, Bilal had a camera surgically implanted on the back of his head to spontaneously transmit images to the web 24 hours a day – a statement on surveillance, the mundane and the things we leave behind.

snacks at 3:30pm
free and open to the public

Scott Draves will discuss the software behind a massive Internet-wide art collaboration by 450,000 computers and their owners. His Electric Sheep project combines his own open source genetic algorithms with “hot or not” voting and Darwinian evolution. The result is a cyborg creative mind that perpetually creates generative art. The draft form is a screensaver; Scott chooses his own favorites to be re-rendered in high resolution for his museum-quality pieces, of which Generation 244, the piece at this dedication purchased by Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, is one. Scott, a PhD graduate of Computer Science at CMU, will also discuss his web-GL project in progress “Video Riot”, done as part of his job at Google Inc. in New York City.

More info on his website

“How to Use Your Eyes, and
How Some Animals Use Their Eyes”

James Elkins is the E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  His writing focuses on the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature.  Current projects include a series called the Stone Summer Theory Institutes, a book called The Project of Painting: 1900-2000, and a series called Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism in the Visual Art. His most recent book is What Photography Is, wrtten against Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida.

Prof. Elkins is sponsored by the Victor M. Bearg Science and Humanities Speaker Series and the University Lecture Series, and co-sponsored by the School of Art, Biological Sciences Department, BXA Program, School of Design, Physics Department, and the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.

Tronic Studio, NY: ‘New Spaces for New Bodies’

Tronic invents new realms of experience through the development of spaces which exist between the real and virtual. The convergence of physical architecture, video, animation, web and interactive technologies fuse idea, image, movement and experience.

Tronic is a New York City based digital design and media studio founded in 2001 by Vivian Rosenthal and Jessi Seppi. graduates of the Columbia School of Architecture. The duo, sometimes referred to as ‘visual futurists’, founded Tronic based on the principles of convergence in media. From architecture and experimental design to film and animation, Tronic blurs the lines of traditional media.

For more info click here

Mind Reading for the Left and Right Brain!
workshop with Machine Project

Learn to read minds (kind of) in this three part workshop. First, Mark Allen of Machine Project will lead participants in a hands on electronics workshop where you will built a primitive lie detector in the form of galvanic skin response meter. Then artist/inituitive duo Krystal Krunch (Asher Hartman and Haruko Tanaka) will lead participants in developing their psychic abilities. Finally, join artist and inventor Sara Roberts for sound-based group participatory activities using looping devices called Earbees.

Intimate Science, guest curated by Andrea Grover, is the most recent manifestation of artists working at the intersection of art, science and technology demonstrating a distinctly autodidactic, heuristic approach to understanding the physical and natural world. Intimate Science features artists who are engaged in non-disciplinary inquiry; they aren’t allied to the customs of any single field, and therefore have license to reach beyond conventions. This kind of practice hinges on up-close observation, experiential learning, and inventing new ways for the public to participate in the process. And through their engagement with “intimate science,” a more knowledgeable public might well be able to influence what research is supported and adopted by the larger culture, and the walls of science can become more transparent.

This event also serves as the book launch for the Miller Gallery and the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry’s new publication New Art/Science Affinities. This book, which counts Intimate Science curator Andrea Grover as a contributor, was created as a one-week long ‘book sprint’ in February 2011.

The reception is hosted with support from the Western Pennsylvania Mushroom Club.

free and open to the public

Join us Friday January 20th to learn how to use these analog mechanical calculators. While mostly supplanted by digital electronics, many speciality slide rules are still in use today. We’ll have several different kinds on hand to show the wide-variety, and also to provide hands-on experience using them. Thanks to the generosity of shop member Logan, we will also have several basic slide rules to give away!

Limited seating. Book signing immediately following.
free and open to the public

The Innovators Forum
A Conversation with Innovative Thinker Don Tapscott

Carnegie Mellon University is pleased to host Don Tapscott, thought-leader and author of Macrowikinomics, as a guest of The Innovators Forum. Alumni and friends around the globe are invited to be a part of this engaging conversation, led by Ramayya Krishnan, Dean of the Heinz College. During the discussion, we’ll learn about Tapscott’s big ideas for 2012.

Tapscott is an author, advisor and thinker and is regarded as the leading authority on the impact of the digital revolution on business and society.

Follow the conversation on Twitter #TapscottCMU
For more information click here

9:30pm-2:00am

PANDEMIC
w/ your resident dj’s Pandemic Pete and Gentleman Juddy

balkan, bhangra, gypsy brass, kuduro, cumbia, thai pop, bongo flava, kwaito, and more.

@ BRILLOBOX

https://www.facebook.com/events/258859940842627/?notif_t=event_invite

In conjunction with his exhibition titled “Strange Fruit” running from December 9-January 21, Brooklyn photographer Darin Mickey will give an artist talk on December 12 at 7:30pm at Spaces Corners bookshop and gallery. Darin Mickey is a photographer, musician, and a teacher at the International Center of Photography in New York City. His first publication, Stuff I Gotta Remember Not to Forget, was published by J&L Books in 2007 and is available at Spaces Corners.

The College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University will host its fourth annual Open Studio Day from noon to 10 p.m., Friday, Dec. 9, featuring a variety of performances and events that showcase student work and ongoing projects from the schools of Architecture, Art, Drama, Music, the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and Miller Gallery.

• Tour the Miller Gallery in the Purnell Center for the Arts: Noon – 6p.m., free admission.
• Attend the School of Music’s Annual Holiday Concert: Noon, Rangos Hall, University Center (free admission); 8p.m., Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland ($5 in advance, $7 at the door).
• See student projects in the School of Architecture: 1:30 – 6:30p.m., Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall (MMCH) and College of Fine Arts (CFA) building, free admission.
• Tour the School of Art Open Studio Day, “IDK, SRY”: 5 – 9 p.m., CFA third and fourth floors, free admission.
• The STUDIO for Creative Inquiry hosts “Envisioning High Point Pittsburgh”: 5 – 7 p.m., CFA 111, free admission, RSVP appreciated by email: studio-info@cmu.edu.
• School of Drama presents “Mad Forest” by Caryl Churchill: 8 p.m. through Dec. 10, Philip Chosky Theater, Purnell Center for the Arts ($15 adults/general, $10 students, at the door or in advance).

“The Playground of the Internet: Where Social Science and Design are BFFs”
Elizabeth F. Churchill, Principal Reserach Scientist, Yahoo! Research

Dr. Elizabeth Churchill is a Principal Research Scientist and manager of the Internet Experiences group at Yahoo! Research. Originally a psychologist by training, throughout her career Elizabeth has focused on understanding the ways in which people interact – whether their interactions are primarily face to face or are technologically mediated. She has published within the areas of theoretical and applied psychology, cognitive science, human computer interaction and computer supported cooperative work. Elizabeth has a BSc in Experimental Psychology, an MSc in Knowledge Based Systems, both from the University of Sussex, and a PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Cambridge. She regularly teaches at the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information. In 2010, she was recognised as a Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery. She is the current Vice President of the Association of Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SigCHI).

For more information see: http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/seminar/2011/12/playground-internet-where-social-science-and-design-are-bffs

Local Pop Up Crafts Marketplace Featuring 80+ Local Artists

Dec. 2 (5-10 pm) Dec. 3 (11 am – 6 pm)

Local Pop Up Crafts Marketplace Featuring 80+ Local Artists

Technology that Motivates Creative Problem Solving

Dr. Elizabeth Gerber is an expert in innovation, design, technology, and work. As a professor in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University, she holds an appointment in Mechanical Engineering and by courtesy in Management Science and Industrial Engineering, the Kellogg School of Management, and the School of Education and Social Policy.

Dr. Gerber is the principal investigator for The Creative Action Studio, which investigates how design can enable individuals and communities to thrive. Specifically, we examine how technology may help to enhance experiences in work and play. Positive design aims to integrate people’s cognitive, behavioral, and emotional needs to address complex societal challenges. Currently, she is researching crowdfunding, mobile technology, and extracurricular design based learning.

“Download. Check-in. Tweet: Mobile Technology & Art Institutions”

Many visual art institutions are delving into mobile technology as a new means of distributing their content. This lecture will cover highlights, anecdotes and fact and figures gathered during a researcher’s visits to several European and American mobile-friendly institutions and interviews with the professionals who created their respective mobile projects.

Ashley Paulisick completed her master’s degree in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London in 2011. Research for her dissertation, titled “The Impact of Mobile Technology on Art Institution Visitor Experiences,” took her to some of the world’s most prestigious art institutions, including Tate Modern and Pittsburgh’s own Andy Warhol Museum. Her interest in art and technology developed over years of using web-based resources to market her own artwork. She has applied these same skills to marketing and outreach efforts for nonprofits as small as the Louisville Visual Art Association to as internationally renowned as The Courtauld Gallery in London.

Presented by Carnegie Mellon University’s Master of Arts Management Program and Technology in the Arts.

Speakers:
Prof. Mohammed Bamyeh (Department of Sociology)
Prof. MichaelGoodhart (Department of Political Science)
Alice Mattoni (Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology)
Moderator: Asst. Prof. Annette Vee (Department of English)

A light lunch will be served. Please email DM@P at digitalmedia.pitt@gmail.com by Friday, Nov. 25 to confirm your place for the event.

Abstract:
A wave of revolutions have been sweeping the Arab world since December, 2010–from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya to Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and other countries. This so-called “Arab Spring” has been driven by widespread protests and grassroots activism, rather than military coups or powerful individuals. Although much debate surrounds their role in organizing these protests and revolutions, social media such as Facebook and Twitter have undoubtedly affected these movements. From the “We are Khaled Said” Facebook page to the #jan25 hashtag on Twitter, social media have helped to galvanize opposition to dictatorial regimes, communicate information among protestors, and disseminate news of the revolutions beyond each country’s border.

Featuring experts in social movements, politics, and digital media, this DM@P Forum will discuss the events of The Arab Spring. In the first half of the Forum, speakers will address the topic in relation to their research and discipline. An open discussion with forum attendees will follow.

Richard Sennett has explored how individuals and groups make social and cultural sense of material facts — about the cities in which they live and about the labour they do. He focuses on how people can become competent interpreters of their own experience, despite the obstacles society may put in their way. His research entails ethnography, history, and social theory. As a social analyst, Mr. Sennett continues the pragmatist tradition begun by William James and John Dewey. Sennett has written many books including “The Conscience of the Eye: The design and social life of cities”, “Flesh and Stone: The Body And The City In Western Civilization”, and most recently “Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation”.

free and open to all ages

Munehiko Sato is a PhD student researching human computer interaction at Cyber Interface Lab, the University of Tokyo. He has been working on multimedia technology for site-specific installations with embedded large displays. He holds a B.E. and M.S. in Information Science and Technology from Univ. of Tokyo and also studied computer science at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. Mune is currently researching on new sensing technology for interaction at Disney Research Pittsburgh. Munehiko will present some of his existing and new works.

Mark Barlow has designed and/or installed over a megawatt of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. His contributions to solar PV installations can be seen aside the hills of the Ohio River valley, atop a city skyscraper of downtown Pittsburgh, and among the distant lands of Nicaragua and Greece. He currently volunteers his time to the local Pittsburgh Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter, assisting with water and energy projects located in Ecuador and India. A long time student of Nikola Tesla’s work and writings, Mark is especially interested in Tesla’s ideas regarding energy production and transmission.

dorkbot pittsburgh is open to the public, non-smoking, all-ages, and admission is free. We meet upstairs at Brillobox, vegetarian dinner and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks are available.

Next Wednesday come to Assemble Gallery for the next in their learning party series: Getting Down with DNA!

Assemble, a new venue in the Penn Ave Arts District, is a place where one can engage their intrigue through hands on activities about art and technology.

$99.00, register here

The Three Rivers Educational Technology Conference (TRETC) is the premier K-16 educational technology conference in Western Pennsylvania. Over 300 educators from K-12 schools, higher education and non-profits come to the event. In addition, each year over 25 vendors showcase their new technologies. This year’s theme is Innovation & Creativity.

The conference will feature 20+ presentations from educational technology leaders and Karen Cator, Director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. Presentations will be conducted by technology vendors, Keystone Educators, Technology leaders, CoSN, Cisco, and many more.

For complete details and agenda see here

Alien Earth: Science Fiction, Posthumanism, and The Planet
lecture by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Professor of English, DePauw University

The international popularity of science fiction has made it one of the main vehicles of the social imagination of our hyper-modernizing, globalizing age. More than an artistic genre, it has become a way of thinking about things, in which contemporary concerns are projected into the future and into alien worlds. Sf is a child of the enlightenment, and reflects the Enlightenment’s drive to subject every supposedly natural category to critical reason and technological transformation. Sf artists were among the first to imagine the planet as a single thing, and humanity as a species being. Through the practice of “world reduction,” sf has produced an enormous variety of inhabited planets and simplified versions of our planet. Things may have reached a critical tipping point in our own age. Recent sf is engaged with posthumanist thought, which questions everything previous generations considered natural, including humanity and the earth itself.

Join on Wednesday, Nov 16, for a colloquium at noon hosted by English Professor David Shumway. There will be a discussion about the lecture as well as the following article:
“Dis-Imagined Communities: Science Fiction and the Future of Nations”.

free, register here

Join the Pittsburgh Technology Council and the Three Rivers Educational Technology Conference (TRETC) for “Learning Innovation: The Future of Play in Education.” This unique event features presentations from Diana Rhoten, the Senior Vice President of Strategy for News Corp, and Andy Russell, the co-founder of Launchpad Toys.

Come out and discover the changing landscape of children’s education, and find out the new criteria for great kids products and creative play. Learn about new frontiers in the design process, and how leading-edge companies are researching play patterns, kid testing and education technology in general. Don’t miss this one-of-a-kind event at the intersection of innovation and education.

For more info click here

Handmade Arcade returns to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown with Handmade Arcade for the Holidays. Shoppers can expect even more great handcrafted, indie merchandise, plus:

• Free admission
• Over 150 vendors, local and from out-of-state
• Easy to get to: close to many bus lines and the T; on-site garage
parking; also accessible by foot, bike or even watercraft
• More space than ever: wide aisles, extra vendor room
• Early Birdie passes
• Refreshments on-site
• Hands-on Handmade activities

Handmade Arcade is Pittsburgh’s largest indie craft fair, now in its seventh year. The annual Handmade Arcade was created to give grassroots, independent crafters an opportunity to show and sell their wares, and to provide an alternative to traditional craft and art fairs.

International Images ltd. invites the Pittsburgh community into the world of award-winning tattoo artist and mixed media mad scientist, Hawkeye. Mixed Media Madness boasts numerous works all stemmed from the onrush of scenery hidden in Hawkeye’s own mind. The images, both haunting and romantic in nature, are a combination of oils, acrylics, poly-acrylic, glues and various unconventional materials. The colors are strewn about in a fantastical way and the surreal mix of nature and depth are a hard comparison to most realism based landscape work. However, if one is willing to take the plunge away from the secular, empirical rules of landscape realism into a new vision, now is the perfect time. Hawkeye’s mixed media technique is highly textured with a 3-dimensional aspect thus allowing the viewer to ponder the question “How does he do it?”, a question most artists only dream of hearing.

In conjunction with the installation “Feminist Matter(s): Propositions and Undoings in the Pittsburgh Biennial Exhibition” at the Miller Gallery at CMU, previous STUDIO fellows Faith Wilding and Hyla Willis) of subRosa would like to invite you to participate in an afternoon of discussions at an event titled: “Feminist Science and Art: An interdisciplinary Dialogue with artists, scientists, students, and scholars”. We look forward to a lively discussion about the possibilities of feminist science, intersections between feminist science and art, and the ways in which we all work.

1:30-2:00 Get acquainted Brown-bag lunch
2:00 – 2:30 subRosa introduction and tour of the installation
2:45-4:00 Responses to subRosa: Presentations/performances/questions
4:15-5:30 Roundtable with Irina Aristarkhova, subRosa, and others. Informal
presentations, followed by general discussion of issues and ideas

ANTONINO SAGGIO
Sapienza University of Rome

“Space Time and Information. The IT Revolution in Architecture, a Paradigm Shift”

Antonino Saggio holds a professional degree in Architecture (1979) a diploma of Planning from the University of Rome La Sapienza, a Master of Science from Carnegie Mellon and a PhD from the Italian Ministry of research. He is currently tenured Associate Professor of Architectural design at La Sapienza Rome, Italy and has also taught and lectured at universities in Europe, Africa and the United States. He won awards in design competitions in the first phase of his career, and academic research grant from institutions such as the Fulbright Commission, the Graham Foundation and the Council of Italian Research. In 2003, he founded the research group Nitro Saggio (Nitro= New Information Technology Research Office).

Ron Baecker is the Bell Chair in Human-Computer Interaction, co-founder of the Dynamic Graphics Project, founder of the Knowledge Media Design Institute, and founder and director of the Technologies for Aging Gracefully lab (TAGlab) at the University of Toronto. He is also Affiliate Scientist with the Kunin-Lunenfeld Applied Research Unit of Baycrest and Adjunct Scientist with the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. He has been named one of the 60 Pioneers of Computer Graphics by ACM SIGGRAPH, has been elected to the CHI (Computers and Human Interaction) Academy by ACM SIGCHI, and has been given the Canadian Human Computer Communications Society Achievement Award. His B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

free and open to the public

“What Are Museums For?: Art and Science: Two Ways of Knowing and Navigating the World”

Lynn Zelevansky and Sam Taylor, director of Carnegie Museum of Natural History, exchange views on similarities and differences in scientific and artistic thinking, and how these are reflected in museums. This ongoing series of Thursday-night events looks deeply at what makes museums tick and what they offer the culture at large.

Michael Mateas, University of California Santa Cruz, Associate Professor, Computer Science Department

Jessica Rosenkrantz graduated from MIT in 2005 and holds degrees in Architecture and Biology. Afterwards, she spent 2.5 years studying architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Jesse Louis-Rosenberg also attended MIT, majoring in Mathematics. He previously worked as a consultant for Gehry Technologies in building modeling and design automation.

October 27-30, 2011

A Conference hosted by the Carnegie Mellon University Humanities Center in collaboration with the Program Committee of A.S.A.P.

Register here
See Conference Program here

PLENARY SPEAKERS:
Terry Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburgh. Author of most recently, Contemporary Art: World Currents.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Professor in Residence, Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is an artist renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments.

Paul D. ( DJ Spooky) Miller, Media Artist, and Professor of Music Mediated Art at the European Graduate School. He has released over dozen albums, and his media art has been presented at the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennial for Architecture, and the Andy Warhol Museum.

October 27-30, 2011

A Conference hosted by the Carnegie Mellon University Humanities Center in collaboration with the Program Committee of A.S.A.P.

Register here
See Conference Program here

PLENARY SPEAKERS:
Terry Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburgh. Author of most recently, Contemporary Art: World Currents.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Professor in Residence, Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is an artist renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments.

Paul D. ( DJ Spooky) Miller, Media Artist, and Professor of Music Mediated Art at the European Graduate School. He has released over dozen albums, and his media art has been presented at the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennial for Architecture, and the Andy Warhol Museum.

Factory Installed, last presented in 2006, will support and exhibit new work by a selection of artists from throughout the world who have submitted applications to our residency program. Artists Pablo Valbuena, Mariana Manhães, Natalia Gonzalez, Nika Kupyrova, Than Htay Maung and Veronica Ryan have have spent the last two months creating new site-specific works for the exhibition on view October 28, 2011 – February 26, 2012. This exhibition is curated by Michael Olijnyk, Barbara Luderowski, and Katherine Talcott.

I Put A Spell On You: Halloween Pop Cabaret

Suzie Silver’s “Pop Cabaret” course, held this fall 2011 at the Andy Warhol Museum, presents a Spectacular Halloween Variety Show, featuring 13 fabulous performers. Turn-on to Robotic Burlesque! Beware of The Crawling Chaos! Succumb to Magic Spells! Hilarious and horrifying thrills await.

Performers: Adelaide Agyemang, Harrison Apple, Julia Cahill, Murphi Cook, Kinji Cheri Ho, Chelsea Lupkin, Julie Mallis, Ippei Mori, Stephanie Ross, Tim Sherman, Ann Stone, Mitsuko Verdery, and your host, Sonny Topaz.

Using the theater at the Andy Warhol Museum as playground and performance space, students create short solo and group performances. Some themes and strategies include: Camp, Lo-Fi Glamour, Neo-Burlesque, Expanded Cinema of the Mind, Alien Vaudeville, Spectacles of Failure, Stand-Up Tragedy, New-Age Jesters, Cosmic Troubadours, Psychedelic Bards, Beautiful Noise, Imploding Vinyl Escapable, Exotic Masquerade and much, much more!

October 27-30, 2011

A Conference hosted by the Carnegie Mellon University Humanities Center in collaboration with the Program Committee of A.S.A.P.

Register here
See Conference Program here

PLENARY SPEAKERS:
Terry Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburgh. Author of most recently, Contemporary Art: World Currents.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Professor in Residence, Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is an artist renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments.

Paul D. ( DJ Spooky) Miller, Media Artist, and Professor of Music Mediated Art at the European Graduate School. He has released over dozen albums, and his media art has been presented at the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennial for Architecture, and the Andy Warhol Museum.

October 27-30, 2011

A Conference hosted by the Carnegie Mellon University Humanities Center in collaboration with the Program Committee of A.S.A.P.

Register here
See Conference Program here

PLENARY SPEAKERS:
Terry Smith, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburgh. Author of most recently, Contemporary Art: World Currents.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Professor in Residence, Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is an artist renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments.

Paul D. ( DJ Spooky) Miller, Media Artist, and Professor of Music Mediated Art at the European Graduate School. He has released over dozen albums, and his media art has been presented at the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennial for Architecture, and the Andy Warhol Museum.

This kickoff meeting is free and open to all!

We live in a world of technological artifacts and connectivity, already romantic partners; interdependent, disruptive, and enabling. The Cyborg Cabaret will explore this relationship at its source by leveraging collaborations between the arts, robotic, and technological fields, with workshops in the fall, curation of pieces in early 2012 and a series of performances in the Spring.

More information at their website

Lead by Dan Wilcox & Heather Knight

Follow us on Twitter, @cyborgcabaret

Made possible by the CMU School of Art Interdisciplinary Award 2011

EVA & FRANCO MATTES are the Brooklyn-based artist-provocateurs behind the infamous website www.0100101110101101.ORG. Pioneers of the net.art movement, they are renowned for masterful subversion of public media such as an unauthorized Nike advertising campaign, a fake Vatican website and a radioactive children playground made with scrap metal from Chernobyl. Eva and Franco Mattes works have been shown internationally including: Collection Lambert, Avignon; Fondazione Pitti Discovery, Florence, Postmasters Gallery, New York; Lentos Museum of Modern Art, Linz; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; ICC, Tokyo; Manifesta4. They received the Jerome Commission from the Walker Art Center, and they are among the youngest artists to ever participate to the Venice Biennale.

part of the CMU Art Lecture series

Franco and Eva Mattes have manipulated video games, Internet technologies, feature films and street advertising to reveal truths concealed by contemporary society. They have created media facades believable enough to elicit embarrassing reactions from governments, the public and the art world. In addition, they have orchestrated several unpredictable mass performances, staged outside art spaces and involved unwitting audiences in scenarios that mingle truth and falsehood to the point of being indistinguishable.

October 21-23

a Kinect-Hacking Conference!

Art && Code: 3D is a festival-conference about the artistic, technical, tactical and cultural potentials of 3D scanning and sensing devices — especially (but not exclusively) including the revolutionary Microsoft Kinect sensor. This highly interdisciplinary event will bring together, for the first time, tinkerers and hackers, computational artists and designers, industrial game developers, and leading researchers from the fields of computer vision, HCI and robotics. Half-maker’s festival, half-academic symposium, Art && Code: 3D will take place October 21-23 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

For more info see: http://artandcode.com/three/

October 21-23, all day

Demosplash is a computer art festival celebrating the history and bright future of the demoscene. We’ll be watching, on a huge collection of authentic hardware, many of the great demos that have been released throughout its history. There will be a general demo competition accepting remote entries and a series of talks on how this crazy hardware works and how to keep it going. Amigas, Apples, Ataris, oldskool Commodores, and more — we’ve got them. Other events too, just a few of which include a lockpicking tutorial and challenge, retro gaming, a game AI competition, and a retro clinic (got a sad piece of hardware? let everyone poke at it!). This event is held at the Carnegie Mellon University campus Oct 21-22, runs in parallel with the Art && Code 3D DIY sensing/visualization/Kinect conference, and is the same weekend as the Pittsburgh Maker Faire. Make the most of the ultimate hack weekend in Pittsburgh!

HackPittsburgh and the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh are pleased to announce the 2011 Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire! This is the first year of the Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire and while there’s a lot we will discover, we do know the Faire will be a family-friendly event that will feature both established and emerging local “makers.” It will feature rockets and robots, DIY science and technology, urban farming and sustainability, alternative energy, bicycles, unique hand-made crafts, music and food, and educational workshops and installations.

October 21-23

A Kinect-Hacking Conference!

Art && Code: 3D is a festival-conference about the artistic, technical, tactical and cultural potentials of 3D scanning and sensing devices — especially (but not exclusively) including the revolutionary Microsoft Kinect sensor. This highly interdisciplinary event will bring together, for the first time, tinkerers and hackers, computational artists and designers, industrial game developers, and leading researchers from the fields of computer vision, HCI and robotics. Half-maker’s festival, half-academic symposium, Art && Code: 3D will take place October 21-23 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

For more info see: http://artandcode.com/three/

October 21-23, all day

Demosplash is a computer art festival celebrating the history and bright future of the demoscene. We’ll be watching, on a huge collection of authentic hardware, many of the great demos that have been released throughout its history. There will be a general demo competition accepting remote entries and a series of talks on how this crazy hardware works and how to keep it going. Amigas, Apples, Ataris, oldskool Commodores, and more — we’ve got them. Other events too, just a few of which include a lockpicking tutorial and challenge, retro gaming, a game AI competition, and a retro clinic (got a sad piece of hardware? let everyone poke at it!). This event is held at the Carnegie Mellon University campus Oct 21-22, runs in parallel with the Art && Code 3D DIY sensing/visualization/Kinect conference, and is the same weekend as the Pittsburgh Maker Faire. Make the most of the ultimate hack weekend in Pittsburgh!

October 21-23

a Kinect-Hacking Conference!

Art && Code: 3D is a festival-conference about the artistic, technical, tactical and cultural potentials of 3D scanning and sensing devices — especially (but not exclusively) including the revolutionary Microsoft Kinect sensor. This highly interdisciplinary event will bring together, for the first time, tinkerers and hackers, computational artists and designers, industrial game developers, and leading researchers from the fields of computer vision, HCI and robotics. Half-maker’s festival, half-academic symposium, Art && Code: 3D will take place October 21-23 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

For more info see: http://artandcode.com/three/

October 21-23, all day

Demosplash is a computer art festival celebrating the history and bright future of the demoscene. We’ll be watching, on a huge collection of authentic hardware, many of the great demos that have been released throughout its history. There will be a general demo competition accepting remote entries and a series of talks on how this crazy hardware works and how to keep it going. Amigas, Apples, Ataris, oldskool Commodores, and more — we’ve got them. Other events too, just a few of which include a lockpicking tutorial and challenge, retro gaming, a game AI competition, and a retro clinic (got a sad piece of hardware? let everyone poke at it!). This event is held at the Carnegie Mellon University campus Oct 21-22, runs in parallel with the Art && Code 3D DIY sensing/visualization/Kinect conference, and is the same weekend as the Pittsburgh Maker Faire. Make the most of the ultimate hack weekend in Pittsburgh!

Come and learn how to draw, animate, and create truly interactive content, including advanced mouse interactions, pixel manipulation, image blending, physics and games. During this single day of hands-on training, we’ll be working through a series of specially created examples that demonstrate the techniques for drawing and animating with code.

For more info see: http://creativejsusatour3pitt.eventbrite.com/

$10.00

AIA Pittsburgh & AIGA Pittsburgh are excited to bring the 9th volume of PechaKucha Night to Pittsburgh! Join us on Thursday, October 20th at the Peirce Studio (Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Arts Education Center) for a fun evening and great presenters.

We are currently looking for interested presenters. If interested in presenting, please email a brief description of your presentation idea and one image to info@aiapgh.org

http://www.pgharts.org/venues/edcenter.aspx

Carolee Schneemann’s pioneering work ranges across disciplines, encompassing painting, performance, film and video. Her early and prescient investigations into themes of gender and sexuality, identity and subjectivity, as well as the cultural biases of art history, laid the groundwork for much work of the 1980s and ’90s. Her bold challenges to taboo and tradition can be seen as inspiring and influencing artists as varied as Paul McCarthy, Valie Export, the Guerrilla Girls, Tracy Emin and Karen Finley.

VIA Music & New Media Festival October 5-9 & 16

Tickets – (All-Access & Weekend Passes + Individual Day tickets)
Artist Profiles
facebook, twitter
PROGRAM

Sunday October 16

free and open to the public– and includes hot apple cider!

This Friday (10/14) HackPittsburgh members Mandy Stultz and Doug Philips will help you get ready for Halloween with a Needlefelted Glowing Ghosts tutorial! You’ll go home with your very own glowing ghostie, perfect for decorating or casting a soft glow into the dark. HackPittsburgh will have all the materials you’ll need on-hand.

In this tutorial you’ll learn:

How to Needlefelt
How to assemble an LED and Battery
Combine the two above for some Halloween fun!
Young makers are welcome, however due to small parts and very sharp needles, young makers will need parental / guardian assistance.

3:30pm, reception
4:00pm, lecture

Please join us as we honor and recognize the Katayanagi Emerging Leadership Prize recipient:

SCOTT KLEMMER
Associate Professor of Computer Science and Co-Director, Human-Computer Interaction Group Stanford University

THE POWER OF EXAMPLES
Abstract:
Designers in many fields rely on examples for inspiration, and examples play an important role in art and design curricula. In this talk, I’ll describe several ways that examples help the creative process by illustrating concepts and alternatives. Online media offer a corpus of examples at a scale and diversity never before seen. This wealth of examples opens up new possibilities, but also poses several challenges. How can we leverage these resources? My group’s research tools harvest and synthesize examples to empower more people to design interactive systems, learners to acquire new skills, experts to be more creative, and programmers to engage in more design thinking. This research shapes my project-based design teaching, which emphasizes creating diverse alternatives, self assessment, and using examples to provide design insights and teach abstract principles.

VIA Music & New Media Festival, October 5-9 & 16

Tickets – (All-Access & Weekend Passes + Individual Day tickets)
Artist Profiles
facebook, twitter
PROGRAM

Saturday October 8
@ TBA, 4pm-4am, 18+

performances by:
Centipede E’est (Pgh)
Raw Blow (Pgh)
Laurel Halo
Extreme Animals (a/v set)
Ford & Lopatin
Underground Resistance
Austra
Zombi
Nuel
Donato Dozzy
more TBA

visual artists: Goat Helper, Spencer Longo, more TBA

Saturday includes on-site workshops, pop-up stores, a video lounge with reels curated by Gretchen Neidert & Marina Pfenning (Pgh Filmmakers) and Michelle Fried & Ben Kinsley (CMU), and more!

“This is NOT Art” by J.D. Whitewolf

Exploring the differences between technology and design and art.

Take a self-guided tour of some of the artifacts of the latest designpocalypse and learn, by way of vivid examples, some of the ways we’ve been duped into believing that design, and the technology that underlies it, is ‘art’. Bonus Material: free definition of art with every visit!

Multi-diciplinary works utilizing materials as varied as computer monitors, freshly cut logs, and at least one toilet! Visitors are encouraged to practice the enlightening and enjoyable activity of thinking for themselves*.

*While being told what to think, of course!

VIA Music & New Media Festival, October 5-9 & 16

Tickets – (All-Access & Weekend Passes + Individual Day tickets)
Artist Profiles
facebook, twitter
PROGRAM

visual artists: Aurora Halal, A. Bill Miller, more TBA

VIA Music & New Media Festival October 5-9 & 16

Tickets – (All-Access & Weekend Passes + Individual Day tickets)
Artist Profiles
facebook, twitter
PROGRAM

Thursday, October 6
@ Kresge Theater, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University
5:30pm-7:00pm, free and open to all ages

free and open to the public

Alternate Anatomical Architectures: The Cadaver, The Comatose, and The Chimera

Stelarc is a performance artist who has visually probed and acoustically amplified his body. He has made three films of the inside of his body. Between 1976-1988 he completed 25 body suspension performances with hooks into the skin. He has used medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, Virtual Reality systems, the Internet and biotechnology to explore alternate, intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body. He has performed with a THIRD HAND, a VIRTUAL ARM, a STOMACH SCULPTURE and EXOSKELETON, a 6-legged walking robot. His FRACTAL FLESH, PING BODY and PARASITE performances explored involuntary, remote and internet choreography of the body with electrical stimulation of the muscles. His PROSTHETIC HEAD is an embodied conversational agent that speaks to the person who interrogates it. He is surgically constructing an EXTRA EAR on his arm that will be internet enabled, making it publicly accessible acoustical organ for people in other places.

For more information see: http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/seminar/2011/10/alternate-anatomical-architectures-cadaver-comatose-and-chimera

VIA Music & New Media Festival October 5-9 & 16

Tickets – (All-Access & Weekend Passes + Individual Day tickets)
Artist Profiles
facebook, twitter
PROGRAM

Wednesday, October 5
VIA Kickoff Party
@ Brillobox 9pm-2am, 21+
*limited capacity – will sell out!*

An intimate kickoff just for yinz. Last year we had the idea to invite Trans Am to perform their 1999 game changing LP, “Futureworld”. 12 months later, we’re not only excited to announce this is happening, but that Thrill Jockey liked the idea so much they’ll be re-issuing the LP on vinyl September 13th.

performances by:
Pure Hype (Pgh, a/v set)
Trans Am
Kingdom

stage design and visuals by Thunder Horse Video

‘Speaking of…’, Pittsburgh’s newest quarterly arts series, presents a congregation of modern ballet, spoken word, cello, hip-hop and literature at the New Hazlett Theater, October 1st, 2011 at 8:00 PM. The event features Texture Ballet, writer Alan Olifson, local hip-hop artist Billy Pilgrim, and writer Taylor Grieshober (of the New Yinzer) along with spoken word artists and classically trained musicians. ‘Speaking of…’ is building on an eclectic yet cohesive tradition— the creation of a space in which artistic forms that are normally practiced in completely separate spheres are brought together. The result is always remarkable, and sometimes scientific. This October, look for electronica meeting ballet, a DJ spinning alongside a writer and an encounter of spoken word poetry with classical cello.

Like ‘Speaking of…’ on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @ #speakingofpgh.

Come to this years Web Design Day, a one-day low-cost conference for web professionals in Western Pennsylvania!

Featuring Lawrence Malstaf, Arnold Dreyblatt, Laurent Mignonneau, and Christa Sommerer, Parallel Universe investigates the development of duel technologies that run parallel and never overlap but share a common goal.

“Exploring Impossible Spaces: Practical Illusions in Virtual Reality“

Evan Suma, Post Doc, The Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California

Providing natural locomotion is one of the fundamental challenges for immersive virtual environments. Numerous studies have shown that when using head-mounted displays, it is beneficial to support the same body motions and energy expenditure as real world movement. However, virtual locomotion techniques, such as joystick-based control mechanisms, are more commonly employed because real walking is impractical for setups with limited physical workspace. In this talk, I will describe experiments with “impossible spaces”—environments that leverage perceptual illusions to relax the physical space constraints when walking naturally through the virtual world. Results have shown that these illusions can successfully fool the senses into believing that an expansive virtual environment is being experienced, despite taking place in a considerably smaller physical workspace.

For more information see: http://www.hcii.cmu.edu/news/seminar/2011/09/exploring-impossible-spaces-practical-illusions-virtual-reality

Johannes Grenzfurthner is an artist, writer, curator, and director.  He is founder and artistic director of monochrom; he is founder and director of the sex+technology festival Arse Elektronika in San Francisco (since 2007); and he co-hosts Roboexotica , the Festival for Cocktail-Robotics (2002-).  Recurring topics in Johannes’ artistic and textual work are contemporary art, activism, performance, humor, philosophy, postmodernism, media theory, cultural studies, sex tech, popular culture studies, science fiction, and the debate about copyright.

He and his projects have been featured in New York Times, Liberation, Spiegel, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, Reuters, Slashdot, Boing Boing, New Scientist, The Edge, LA Times, NPR, ZDF, Gizmodo, Wired, Süddeutsche Zeitung, CNet and the Toronto Star. Johannes is a popular presenter; he has given talks at SXSWi, O’Reilly ETech, FooCamp, Maker Faire, HOPE, Chaos Communication Congress, Google (Tech Talks), ROFLCon, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Influencers, Mozilla Drumbeat Barcelona and the Neoteny Camp Singapore.

Johannes will present at 5pm in Giant Eagle Auditorium, in Baker Hall (building 3A on the CMU Campus Map).

“Music Understanding and the Future of Music”
Roger B. Dannenberg

Music understanding is the automatic recognition of pattern and structure in music. Music understanding problems include (1) matching and searching symbolic and audio music sequences, (2) parsing music to discover musical objects such as sections, notes, and beats, and (3) the interpretation and generation of expressive music performance. Music understanding is only beginning to find a range of applications, but the potential impact on the future of music is considerable. I will describe how music will be changed through intelligent audio editors, artificial musicians, and intelligent music displays.

HCII presents: Jason Pearson

The seminar presentation will describe the custom visualizations and interaction methods that were developed to realize Economy Map: an online, interactive visual map of the United States economy and its environmental impacts. Seminar participants will be invited to engage in a discussion about Economy Map in the context of broader efforts to use customized information visualization in support of public interest objectives such as education, advocacy, and policymaking.

$149 Member, $299 Non-Member

“Tech 50 A New World”

The Pittsburgh Technology Council’s Tech 50 Awards represent southwestern Pennsylvania’s most successful and innovative technology companies. The awards represent transformative technology centers of excellence with companies at all stages of growth. We’re also honoring the industry’s top executives.

Agenda:
5:30 p.m. Registration & Pre-Awards Reception
6:30 p.m. Awards Show Begins
7:30 p.m. New World Reception

For more information see:
http://www.pghtech.org/events/default.aspx
http://tech50.pghtech.org/?utm_source=110830&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EVENTS

Pauline Oliveros, composer, performer and humanitarian is an important pioneer in American Music. Acclaimed internationally, for four decades she has explored sound — forging new ground for herself and others.
Through improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation she has created a body of work with such breadth of vision that it profoundly effects those who experience it and eludes many who try to write about it. “On some level, music, sound consciousness and religion are all one, and she would seem to be very close to that level.” John Rockwell Oliveros has been honored with awards, grants and concerts internationally. Whether performing at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., in an underground cavern, or in the studios of West German Radio, Oliveros’ commitment to interaction with the moment is unchanged. She can make the sound of a sweeping siren into another instrument of the ensemble.

Jennifer Gooch is an artist, crafter, and musician who creates mixed media and object based installations. She lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA.

Joshua Space is a sculptor and designer who creates interactive, light-based, kinetic installations. His work marries time-based elements with contrasting spatial scenarios to address the convoluted relationship between sense, rationalization and identity. He lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA.

Gregory Witt creates kinetic sculptural works and installations, which involve mixtures of high and low technologies. His work counters schemas we create to further our understanding of our environment and the dominant assumptions of our investigations. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

View Pittsburgh Center for the Arts Biennial Artists
View Event information

opening reception: 3:30pm-5:00pmEST

Once home to such cultural luminaries as Mary Cassatt, Willa Cather, Martha Graham, and Gertrude Stein, today’s Pittsburgh continues to produce and/or play home to some of the most talented women artists in this nation. For the Pittsburgh Biennial 2011, The Warhol will assemble an exhibition dedicated to these great artists whose work aims at transgressing boundaries and engendering transformative change in an apparent nod to Stein and her important life’s work. Artists included in the show either currently live or work in Pittsburgh, or once spent a period of many years here. Works included will span all media and will aim to challenge and provoke the status quo.

Featuring: Elise Adibi, Lilith Bailey-Kroll, Kim Beck, Patricia Bellan-Gillen, Cara Erskine, Dara Birnbaum, T. Foley, Jill Freedman, Amisha Gadani, Vanessa Louise German, Deborah Kass, Eileen Lewis, Jill Miller, Ayanah Moor, Dulce Pinzon, Madelyn Roehrig, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Diane Samuels, Karen Seapker, Renee Stout, Alisha B. Wormsley

more info: http://www.warhol.org/webcalendar/event.aspx?id=3861
http://pittsburghbiennial.org/

5:00pm, Exhibition Tour with Curator and Artists
6:00pm-8:00pm,  Collective Reception

Featuring: Justseeds, Lize Mogel, Sarah Ross, and Ryan Griffis, subRosa, Temporary Services, Transformazium

The Miller Gallery at CMU’s presentation, organized by gallery director Astria Suparak, features artists who work collaboratively, harmonizing individual perspectives, ideas, and talents. Embodying self-sufficiency within a cooperative spirit, the collectives and collaborators encourage us to reassess our assumptions and values, reveal the global in the local and the personal in the political, and imagine alternate realities and possible futures. The exhibition unveils four new installations and includes sculpture, printmaking, painting, video, publications and workshops.

For more information see: http://millergallery.cfa.cmu.edu//exhibitions/pittsburghbiennial2011/

4:30pm: Global Cities, Model Worlds Talk by R. Griffis, S. Ross and L. Mogel
5:30pm: Screening of Meishi Street (Ou Ning & Cao Fei, 85 min.) Presented by the CMU School of Architecture.

The Miller Gallery at CMU’s presentation for the 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial, organized by gallery director Astria Suparak, features artists who work collaboratively, harmonizing individual perspectives, ideas, and talents. Embodying self-sufficiency within a cooperative spirit, the collectives and collaborators encourage us to reassess our assumptions and values, reveal the global in the local and the personal in the political, and imagine alternate realities and possible futures. The exhibition unveils four new installations and includes sculpture, printmaking, painting, video, publications and workshops.

free and open to all ages

Featuring presentations by:
HackPittsburgh
AssemblePGH
BirdBrain Labs
Nucleus (Eric Singer)
MakeCMU (Max Hawkins)

Dorkbot is an international movement centered around people who like to do strange things with electricity.

“Tough Art Exhibition 2011″
September 14 – January 16, 2012

Check out the fifth annual exhibition of original, interactive artworks “tough” enough to withstand kid handling.

Artists:
Felipe Castelblanco, Zach Dorn, Daniel Luchman & Jennifer Nagle, and Christina Zaris

Melissa Ragona‘s critical work focuses on sound design, film theory and new media practice and reception. By forging approaches from the disciplines of film studies, art history, and new media technologies, her work has sought to present a more complex aesthetic, theoretical, and historical foundation for the analysis of contemporary time-based arts. Her essays and reviews have appeared in October, Frieze, Art Papers and in the edited collections Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound, eds. J. Beck and T. Grajeda (U of Illinois Press, 2008), Women’s Experimental Cinema, ed. Robin Blaetz (Duke University Press, 2007), and Andy Warhol Live (Prestel, 2008), among others. She is currently completing a book on Andy Warhol’s tape recordings tentatively titled Readymade Sound: Andy Warhol’s Recording Aesthetics, forthcoming from University of California Press, Berkeley. She is an Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Art History in the School of Art at Carnegie-Mellon University.

September 2-September 30

DigitalSalad is an edible art project that will host a number of events during the month of September. A small farm will be installed in the gallery offering visitors fresh local fruits and veggies while providing a space to connect to others in the community. Each Friday from 3pm until dusk, visit the pop-up produce stand and participate in digital salad making. Join them, September 9th at 10am for an onsite chef prepared brunch tasting of harvest from Churchview Farm.

For more information see their Facebook event

“Messages on Balloons”
free and open to the public

Join us as we celebrate the successful launch of our 4th balloon with more fun with balloons. We have often talked about sending a payload of ping pong balls up with our big balloons and then drop them with messages to people. Friday we are going to try this on a smaller scale. We will be making customized ping pong balls on a few of our egg-bots and sending them up on biodegradable party balloons. There will be room for you to add a personalized message to each ball also.

We hope others will find our ping pong balls and read them. To add to the fun we have created a form for anyone who finds a ball to let us know where they found it (http://bit.ly/HckPGHAPP). We hope to create a map of found ping pong balls to track their travels once they have been found. Don’t forget also that BirdBrain Labs will also be in with Tech-To-Go for his second Friday. If you are in need of a new arduino or other electronics parts, stop in and see Ben.

$15 Member
$30 Non-Member

Interaction with technology today is continuously evolving and with an increased focus in making it completely transparent to the user at work and at home. We bring you two industry pioneers who have radically changed the way people interact with technology: Mickey McManus, CEO and Principal at MAYA Design and Roger Byford, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Vocollect. Our speakers will share their experiences, thoughts and insights on the future trends of human-computer interaction. Don’t miss this thought stirring discussion and the chance to network with fellow designers and technologists.

Details at: http://www.pghtech.org/networks/creative-technology/events.aspx

$5, open to all ages

Graphation is a short film festival that adapts films into comic books.

The Graphation Film Festival No. 1 is an event that will include a screening of comic book oriented films, and a selection of the absolute best of the Robot Film Festival presented by Heather Knight of Marilyn Monrobot and Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. Knight will also bring her robot friend, Data, and will have the audience rolling in the aisles with their one of a kind live robot stand-up comedy. After the films and robot stand-up there will be an interactive reception in the theater, including a costume contest!

For more info see PGH Filmakers and Oak Theatre.

$10

Come to the Brew House for a tasty meal as you raise funds to support a local artist’s project! As you dine amidst live entertainment, you will review four or five artist proposals, and cast your vote for the best project. The winning proposal is funded directly from the proceeds collected at the door (so the more people in attendance, the more funds for the project). The grantee presents their project’s progress to the community at the following SOUP N’AT. Documentation of previous SOUP N’AT events and grantees’ artworks will be presented at future meals and on the SOUP N’AT website.

Birdbrain Labs Tech-to-Go’s Grand Opening will be Saturday August 6th at Assemble from 10a-2pm. We’ll have free coffee & donuts, in addition to over 6,000 parts in stock.

This is the First of many Saturdays! Stop by and grab some donuts and coffee and electronics!

Details at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=195593823828203

Conflict Kitchen is a project by Jon Rubin, and Dawn Weleski and is funded by the Sprout Fund, The Waffle Shop, the Center for the Arts in Society, and the sale of food. Graphic design by Brett Yasko. Architectural design by Pablo Garcia of POiNT. Special thanks to Illah Nourbakhsh, Sohrab Kashani, Marti Louw, Najibah Tursonzadah, Mohammed Sidky, and all of those from the Iranian and Afghan community who supplied us with their input and perspectives.

Larisa Mann / DJ Ripley: Larisa is a Fellow, Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies, at Berkeley Law, her research for a forthcoming PhD in Jurisprudence and Social Policy) situates a specific local culture of music-making within modern global colonial capitalism through examining music-making’s relationship to copyright law. As Larisa, she will give a dorkbot presentation on her researh. After dorkbot is over, she will perform as DJ Ripley upstairs at brillobox

Matt Gray is an actor, director, and Assistant Professor of Drama at Carnegie Mellon who has performed at many prestigious schools such as LAMDA, the Royal Academy of Dance, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the Arts Council of the Isle of Man and Concordia in Shanghai. The productions he directs often weave in a significant technological element, examples can be seen in his recent productions “RUR” and “Richard III”.

$5.00 admission

PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of “chit chat”, it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

A sci-fi version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, this classic takes us to Altair-4, where a rescue ship has been sent to find out what happened to a colony of settlers who landed 20 years before. They find only Dr. Morbius and his daughter. The rest have been murdered by an invisible force that now starts killing the rescuers. Features Robby the Robot (who steals any scene he’s in), sets of extraordinary scale, and all-electronic musical effects. (Fred M. Wilcox; 1956; 98 min)

April 29th – June 19th, 2011

Gallery hours:
Wed, Thur 11:00am-6:00pm
Fri, Sat  11:00am-8:00pm
Sun 11:00am-5:00pm

Born and living in Montreal, Bill Vorn has been active in the field of Robotic Art since 1992. His installations involve robotics, motion control, sound, lighting, video and cybernetic processes that evoke human qualities in articulated metal structures.

A night of fiction from the writers of ‘Pittsburgh Noir’ featuring dubstep/ballet/break dance fusion, soul and jazz, and the spoken word.

Featuring: Peggy Ahwesh, Stephanie Beroes, Brandon Boan, Lenka Clayton, Ed Eberle, Fabrizio Gerbino, Jamie Gruszka, Zak Prekop, Frank Santoro

Come to the inaugural meeting of Pittsburgh’s Opensource Digital Fabrication group!

Join us on June 12 for a presentation/demo by the artist, Eric Singer

Despite the lack of flying cars, jet packs and personal worm holes, Eric Singer enjoys living in the future. In fact, this is where he draws inspiration for his artwork. With this in mind, Eric presents a proto-retro-spective of his work combining sound, video, robotics and technology. Plus, you get to play with the art, too.

Jonathan Minard and Michael Pisano are the principals of deepspeed media, currently producing a documentary about the first-ever privately funded mission to the Moon. They will show a trailer from that project, as well as two other short films about art and science in extreme environments.

http://moonarts.org/index.html

5:30pm-9:00pmEST
Pittsburgh Center for the Arts
6300 Fifth Avenue, Shadyside

Jacob Ciocci, Thea Augustina Eck, Mark Franchino, Paul LeRoy, Jennifer Gooch, Luke Loeffler, William Kofmehl III, Christopher Kardambikis, Dennis Maher, Jesse McLean, Elizabeth Mooney, Erika Osborne, Natalie Settles, Adam Shreckhis, Joshua Space, & Gregory Witt

8:00pm-11:00pmEST
Pittsburgh Filmmakers
477 Melwood Avenue, Oakland

Olivia Ciummo, Carrie Schneider, Ben Hernstrom, Emily Newman

Grab a blanket and head out for an unforgettable evening of free cinema under the stars. Family-friendly movies are shown at six Pittsburgh area parks six days a week (a different park each night, except Mondays) and run from the second weekend in June through the end of August. Best of all – they’re free!

Movies for 2011 include Tangled, The Karate Kid, Justin Bieber Never Say Never, Secretariat, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and other classic and current movie favorites for all family members. The specific movie schedule for each park is listed here:

http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/parks/assets/11-schedule-cinema-in-the-park.pdf

Contemporary ballet based on Artistic Director and choreographer Maria Caruso’s experience shadowing physicians and surgeons of the Advanced Heart Failure Program at UPMC as they cared for patients undergoing Heart and Lung Transplantation.

for more info and to purchase tickets

The Three Rivers Arts Festival is a 10-day celebration of the arts held annually in downtown Pittsburgh

Make and take kids WorkShops and artists selling handmade wares
20 IMI Artists will join this event

Love wires? Super into electricity?! Well make sure you join us for some hands on fun! Our next show is an interactive exhibition involving low level electronics. There will be hand soldering/assembly, and random outputs. “It’s about assembling the world.”

Eric Brockmeyer is a designer specializing in digital fabrication, tangible interaction, parametric design, and making things. He has a Master of Architecture from Ball State University and is finishing his Master of Tangible Interaction Design at Carnegie Mellon University.

Kuan-Ju Wu is a tangible interaction designer / toy maker / kinetic sculptor with a strong interest in design and a background in electrical engineering.  He graduated from CMU mTID.

I Made It Market Presents: Chili With the Works

Come and Get it! Chili Tasting Cookoff + Entertainment + Kids Activities + I Made It! Market hops into action again {near REI and across from Cheesecake Factory} for all of your handmade needs. Parking in the SouthSide Works lots is only $3 on weekends! RSVP on Facebook! Meet the Artists!

$10; includes museum admission, gallery discussion, and two drink tickets.

The scientific and artistic watercolors in the exhibition Andrey Avinoff: In Pursuit of Beauty are the starting point for this discussion with Louise Lippincott, curator of the exhibition, and guests.

The Culture Club meets on select Thursday night to engage in provocative conversations in the galleries about art and life. The salon-style conversation begins around 6 p.m. unless otherwise noted.

From xkcd http://xkcd.com/353/

Joshua Smith along with members of the Python PGH group will be hosting a Python code sprint at HackPGH. If you’ve ever wanted to contribute to an open source project but didn’t know where to start, now is your chance! Don’t worry if your python skills are shaky or non-existent, you will have a chance to interact with real live python developers!

Ignite Pittsburgh highlights notable ideas coming to life in the City of Bridges.
[21+]

This land is your land Miranda Crotsley
Robot Self-Reflection Heather Knight
Assemble PGH Nina Marie Barbuto
Solid-Liquid-Gas: Three States That Matter Laura Scott
Animal-Inspired Defensive Dresses Amisha Gadani
Pyrotopia Susan Englert
TBD Caroline Savery
Float and the planes Benjamin Saks
Demystifying Depression Stephanie Rexroth
Storytelling and chronic illness Lauren Chapman
Nucleus Eric Singer
Snake-O-Phobia Jonny Goldstein
Childhood Education and handwork B. Konefal-Shaer

The exhibition takes place Thursday, 28 April 2011, from 4:00-7:00pm in the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, at the North end of the 1st floor hallway in the CMU College of Fine Arts, room CFA-111, Carnegie Mellon University. Map: http://bit.ly/cmucfa . More information: http://golancourses.net/2011spring/final.

More than 40 students, spanning eight departments, created personal research investigations into arts-engineering, freestyle computing, and new media practice. These projects explore experimental interfaces, information visualization, games, real-time audiovisuals, computationally generated forms, interactive robotics, new interactions with the Kinect, crowd-sourcing, physical computing, digital fabrication and rapid prototyping.

This event is free and open to the public. Snacks will be served.

General: $75, Student: $40

REGISTER NOW, All tickets must be purchased in advance: 412.918.4266.

The Pittsburgh Technology Council is proud to present the 2011 DATA Awards, Pittsburgh’s signature Art + Technology event. Join us as we honor our region’s leading edge intersections of tech and creativity.

Lyn Heward, international Creative Director and Executive Producer of Cirque du Soleil, will present “The Spark: Igniting the Creative Fire That Lives Within Us All.”

Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center will present the second annual Pausch Prize to internationally-acclaimed game developer, Will Wright, designer of The Sims game series.

free and open to all ages of the public

Dorkbot

Suzie Silver is an artist working primarily in video, sound and performance. Silver’s work has exhibited and screened widely nationally and internationally at venues including The Whitney Museum of Art, The New Museum, Documenta, ICA Boston, Pacific Film Archives, Anthology Film Archives, London Film Festival, and the Seoul Film Festival. Currently, Silver is Associate Professor in Electronic and Time Based Art in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Fruit Machine, a campy hour-long media performance, created in collaboration with Hilary Harp, has been performed nationally at venues including the Phoenix Fringe Festival, Old Dominion University and University of California, San Diego. Silver is Associate Professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.

Amisha Gadani is a Pittsburgh-based artist interested in curious creatures and their unique adaptations, from swarming patterns and elegant defense mechanisms, to superorganisms and animals of the deep sea. She is currently developing a series of “animal homunculus” drawings to visually compare differences in sensory and motor adaptations in the animal kingdom, and a new animal-inspired defensive costume to partner her blowfish, porcupine and skink dresses, this time inspired by ink-squirting cephalopods. Through her drawings, videos, and kinetic wearables, Amisha aims to inspire curiosity in her hand-picked wonders of the world.

April 14- April 23, 2011
Buy Online for: $15 general, $10 students

“Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing—turn out your toes as you walk—and remember who you are!”
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There takes us into a delirious, contrary world behind the mirror. This hallucinogenic journey across a futuristic chessboard ends with a 21st century Alice carrying out the White Queen’s proclamation: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.” This innovative production was be developed through a year long interdisciplinary collaboration.

The International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) features 10 invited talks by top researchers from many fields, a demo and poster session and 15 research paper talks.

Registration required, purchase tickets here

Talks by:

Illah R. Nourbakhsh, CMU
Gigapixel Imaging for Science

Peter Belhumeur, Columbia Univ.
Lessons from Photographing and Identifying the Word’s Plant Species,

Lihong V. Wang, Washington St Louis
Photoacoustic Tomography: Ultrasonically Breaking through the Optical Diffusion Limit

Ed Dowski, Ascentia Imaging
A New Paradigm for Future Application-Specific Imaging Systems

Markus Testorf, Dartmouth College
Phase-Space Tools for Computational Imaging and Photography

Bill Freeman, MIT
Photographing Events over Time

Luc Vincent, Google
Google Street View: Challenges of Photography at Large Scale

Ramesh Raskar, MIT
Looking Around Corners: New Opportunities in Femto-Photography

Paolo Favaro, Heriott Watt University and University of Edinburgh
Portable Light Field Imaging: Extended Depth of Field, Aliasing and Superresolution

The International Conference on Computational Photography (ICCP) features 10 invited talks by top researchers from many fields, a demo and poster session and 15 research paper talks.

Registration required, purchase tickets here

Talks by:

Illah R. Nourbakhsh, CMU
Gigapixel Imaging for Science

Peter Belhumeur, Columbia Univ.
Lessons from Photographing and Identifying the Word’s Plant Species,

Lihong V. Wang, Washington St Louis
Photoacoustic Tomography: Ultrasonically Breaking through the Optical Diffusion Limit

Ed Dowski, Ascentia Imaging
A New Paradigm for Future Application-Specific Imaging Systems

Markus Testorf, Dartmouth College
Phase-Space Tools for Computational Imaging and Photography