Posthuman Feminist AI: Bits & Bytes

Christine Barron

Christine Barron is the Director of Software at Mira, a mobile-first augmented reality company, which recently launched its Prism headset. Christine was drawn to the company’s mission to enhance the way we interact with technology and each other. Prior to joining Mira, Christine worked as a Virtual Reality Associate for Sony Pictures Entertainment, where she developed immersive VR content, including working on an experience for the 2016 Ghostbusters film. She is a self-taught programmer, currently exploring machine learning for artistic applications. Christine graduated with a degree in Animation and Digital Arts from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Stephanie Cedeno

Stephanie Cedeño is a visual and technology designer whose design practice models alternative presents and possible futures in material and experiential form. She has recently presented her work at the Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, will be exhibiting at the 2017 Ars Electronica Festival, and is an interaction designer in AT&T’s Experience Design Studio.

Currently, she is an MFA Candidate in the Media Design Practices program at ArtCenter College of Design and holds a BA from Boston University.

Yvonne Cruz

Yvonne Cruz is a painter, Feminist AI Projects Bits & Bytes member, community leader, and mother of four. She is using her Bits & Bytes experience to start her own community project, in which she uses AI and painted pamphlets to explore patterns in unhealthy and abusive relationships.

Debra Do

Debra Do is a software engineer who has worked on everything from embedded software running on naval ships to tax and accounting software running on desktops. The first computer she programmed on was the Apple IIe. She spent more time playing video games than coding on the Apple IIe. Her favorite games were David's Midnight Magic, BurgerTime, and Dino Eggs. She credits her older brothers for getting her into computing.

Veronica Flint

Veronica Flint is a Virtual Reality Designer and Developer in the Los Angeles area. She has worked on many different VR projects within the past few years and has been shown at festivals such as Tribeca Film Festival and Sundance. Most recent big project was short cinematic VR experience called Remember Remember sponsored by AMD. She has previous worked at Nonny De la Pen'a Emblematic Group, Digital Domain and other vr projects for companies like Google.   

Cathy Hillman

Cathy Hillman is the Founder and President of the Greater L.A. Chapter of the USNC for UN Women. The organization advocates on behalf of UN Women throughout the Greater Los Angeles region.  Cathy also directs the chapter's 'Safe Cities LA Initiative' which began in early 2013 and was launched with an event in 2014. The Initiative encourages local cities to bring the Global UN Women program home locally while also developing a meaningful space for collaborative efforts to ensure the wellbeing of women and girls in local urban environments. Cathy serves on the board of WICI (Women In Cities International), a not-for-profit network focusing on gender equality and the participation of women in urban development. Cathy is also the Director of ‘Green Our Walls Initiative’, a grassroots effort inspired to make our communities healthier, more participatory and relational by maximizing the productivity of urban walls in our built environment with Green, Living Walls and Vertical Gardens.  Cathy’s multifaceted experiences and expertise in architecture/urban design, disaster recovery and research in gendered spaces, as well as having lived and/or traveled throughout these communities give her a unique perspective on global and local challenges. Her global ethnographic fieldwork focuses on the causes and consequences of gendered spatial separateness in the built environment. Cathy has dedicated her life's work to empowering women to organize and become truly active participants in reclaiming and re-imagining their own communities.

Olive Midori Kimoto

Olive Midori Kimoto is a musician, artist, and social justice advocate. She spends a lot of her time writing about how her Asian heritage and female identity coalesces with the internet, technology, and society as a whole. She is a member of the feminist arts collective Honey Power with the goal of creating change in her community for an inclusive future through culture and creative expression.

Olive will also be discussing her involvement with Honey Power. Honey Power Collective is an LA-based feminist music and arts collective focused on cultivating community through creative expression. Whether it be through organizing benefit shows for local non-profits, curating art shows, or moderating panel discussions, our goal is to create a supportive and inclusive space that celebrates musicians, artists and change makers of Los Angeles.

Melissa Michelson

Melissa Michelson is an organizer-activist in local and state-wide social and environmental justice issues. She is a former Bernie Sanders national delegate to the national convention and is an ESL professor at a local community college.

Amanda Stojanov

Amanda Stojanov, born in Ottawa, ON, Canada is an artist and designer with a professional background in visual communication. She has experience working with design teams in large design studios, independent agencies, non-profit organizations and has worked as a freelance designer. She is a recent graduate of the MFA Design Media Arts department at UCLA. Her work is centered around creating interactive video/animation, sculpture, and narratives that interrogate gender identity, agency / body politics, and visibility in virtual spaces. The subjects of her work focus on sci-fi narratives and world-building themes around gender expression and transformation.

Member / Co-founder at voidLab, and co-founder of the Decentralizing The Web series by voidLab

Tricia Stokes

Tricia Stokes, a Senior Environment Artist, is a 17-year veteran of the gaming industry and a graduate of the OTIS School of Art & Design. She is also VR/AR content creator. Most recently she worked at the award-winning Emblematic Group with Nonny de la Pena on VR experiences for PBS FRONTLINE and NOVA. Before that, she worked on numerous blockbuster game titles including the Medal of Honor series for Electronic Arts, the Call of Duty series for Activision / Blizzard, and the Battlefield series for DICE Los Angeles. She is interested in exploring VR and AR, specifically in areas such as interactive storytelling and gaming. Together with colleague, Ivana Coleman she is developing a therapeutic VR meditation experience for combating stress and anxiety.

Selwa Sweidan

Selwa Sweidan is an artist and researcher who conducts movement and systems-based investigations. She prototypes emerging technologies, ranging from the designing of our senses in immersive technologies to speculative quantum computing systems. She holds a Master's of Fine Art from Art Center College of Design and a Bachelor's degree from Smith College.

Selwa currently teaches at Santa Monica College in the Design and Technology Department's pilot Bachelor's Interaction Design program and is a Fellow at the George Greenstein Institute. Selwa has been a Design Fellow at Fabrica, an Artist-in-Residence at UC Irvine and a post-graduate Fellow at ArtCenter College of Design. She has exhibited in CapeTown, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Treviso and Venice.

Todd Terrazas

Todd Terrazas - inventor, creative technologist, and co-founder/CEO of Brainitch, an applied AI technology company developing intelligent research tools to capture and analyze audience data to revolutionize consumer first strategies. Since the age of 11 Todd has been inventing new approaches, products, and experiences that inspire others to think differently. Todd works with world famous artists, music festivals, and media companies to develop a recurrent feedback loop that gives insights into consumer behaviors and nurtures better brand ambassadors. Todd graduated from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, focusing on short-form storytelling. Todd has spoken at conferences about new technologies, lectured at USC’s Applied Psychology masters program - focusing on chatbots and artificial intelligence, and leads the largest AI community in LA.

Astha Vagida

Astha Vagida is an aspiring Product Designer, designing in the field of UX for future mobility from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. She discretely combines technology and design to deliver a simplified product experience. She has worked on a range of projects from designing products for different users to designing experience modules in future cars and spaces for companies like Acura, Land Rover and Genesis.

Michaella Vu

Michaella Vu is a virtual reality director coming from a background in film behind and in front of the camera. Her dive into VR began in 2015 and aims to explore immersive filmmaking by using different technologies like Janus VR (the immersive web), Google Tango, and Artificial Intelligences, and marrying them to find innovative ways to tell stories.

Lauren Williams

Lauren Williams is a graduate student in the Field track of the Media Design Practices program at Art Center College of Design. Her core research interests are in social and economic inequality and injustice, race, and public trust.

Xin Xin

Xin Xin is an artist and journalist who questions the relationship between agency and technology through video, web, and community projects. Xin has most recently co-founded The School of Otherness, an artist-run organization made to preserve experiences of the other. They initiated voidLab, an intersectional feminist collective that programs exhibitions and forums at the crossroad of art, technology, and society. Their work had been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, IndieCade Festival, Gene Siskel Film Center, and Machine Projects. Xin holds an M.F.A from UCLA Design Media Arts. They have given numerous talks at universities and currently teaches web and video courses at UCLA and Loyola Marymount University.