CyborgCamp

Updates from September, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  Amber Case 11:37 pm on September 22, 2010 Permalink
  Tags: mark colman, photography, portland ( 20 ), portland2010 ( 12 )   

  Meet Mark Colman – CyborgCamp Portland’s Official Photographer 

  The idea of photography itself is very cybernetic. Cameras help humans to extract moments and memories from one point in time and access them at another. This makes photographs veritable time machines, and photographers relative time stewards.

  A good photographer chooses settings, lighting and moments to capture, and a good camera has certain characteristics and capabilities that allow a photographer to be a better time steward. Beauty results when photographers, setting and camera operate in symbiotic harmony.

  We’re excited to announce that local photographer Mark Colman will be CyborgCamp’s official photographer! Mark is excited to help capture CyborgCamp on film, so that our memories of it will be highlighted by his own flavor of cyborg history. Mark was CyborgCamp’s official photographer in 2008 and took a bunch of really excellent pictures.

  About Mark

  Mark Colman is a professional photographer with over twenty years of experience, working in numerous major markets including Milan, Italy; Madrid, Spain; San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest. Mark works with many top models, and recording artists including The Red Hot Chili Peppers. His dynamic and uniquely creative images have been exhibited worldwide. Mark is available for portraits, advertising and editorial work locally in Portland.

  

  Mark Colman is one of the friendliest people you’ll meet. Feel free to say hello to him and nerd out with him about cameras and lenses. He loves that kind of thing. He also has quite the collection of analog cameras. If you’re into photography at all, you’ll love Mark.

  With that said, we’re really excited to have him at CyborgCamp, and hope you all are too! Thanks Mark!

  Contact Mark

  You can find Mark Coleman on Twitter @kram, and more of his professional work at MarkColmanPhoto.com.

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  Amber Case 3:38 am on September 11, 2010 Permalink
  Tags: civic apps, hackathon ( 2 ), open government ( 2 ), portland ( 20 ), portland2010 ( 12 )   

  Post-CyborgCamp Open Government Hackathon: 8 Hours of Open Source Action on Sunday, Oct. 3rd! 

  

  Join us on Sunday for a 8-hour hackathon to see who can build the best open government application in just one day!

  It’s free! You can participate as an individual or a team.  Prizes will be awarded to the winners by the Hackathon Partners. Breakfast, lunch, coffee and beer will be available throughout the day, and there will be high speed Internet access and comfortable couches.

  

  REGISTER HERE

  Add to Google Calendar

  Schedule

  • Breakfast and coffee will be served at 8:30am, followed by Lunch at Noon.
  • Coding will stop at 5:30pm, and teams and individuals will demo their apps.
  • Prizes will be awarded at 6:30Ppm.

  Location

  NedSpace Old Town, 117 NW 5th between Couch and Davis.

  Backspace is right downstairs, Davis Street Tavern is right next door, there’s a parking lot across the street, and it’s right on the MAX line.

  Who Should Attend?

  Ruby, Python, PHP, web developers, coders, interaction designers, graphic designers and anyone who has a passion to code, hack or conceptualize applications that will free (or otherwise enhance) the accessibility and usefulness of government-shared data.

  Although the sprint takes place On Oct 3rd after CyborgCamp Portland, you don’t have to be attending the conference to join us.

  Participation is free and open to anyone… we just ask that you register in advance so we know how many individuals or teams we need to accommodate.

  What’s Going to Happen?

  There will be organizers onsite to help get things rolling. At 5:30pm, each app will be evaluated by the Hackathon Partners and prizes will be awarded to those teams or individuals that develop the best applications in the 8 hour. Participants need not show up right at 8:30am, but those who do will have the most time to code!

  Hackathon Partners

  Partners are companies and organizations that provide tools or services that can enhance open government apps. They’re also providing the prizes and will be choosing the winners. If your organization has tools or services that you think would be useful to the Hackathon, contact @aaronpk or @caseorganic and we’ll see about adding you to the list:

  • Tropo – Tropo is a powerful yet simple API that adds Voice, SMS, Twitter, and IM support to the programming languages you already know.
  • Geoloqi – A secure, real-time mobile and web platform for location sharing.

  REGISTER HERE

  Add to Google Calendar

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  Amber Case 2:53 am on September 11, 2010 Permalink
  Tags: anthropologist, cyborg, phd, portland ( 20 ), portland2010 ( 12 ), sally applin, speakers ( 5 )   

  Anthropologist Sally Applin to speak at CyborgCamp on “Cloaked Cyborgisms” 

  
  We are excited to announce that Anthropology Ph.D. student Sally Applin will be visiting from San Francisco to speak at CyborgCamp Portland! Sally is also known as @anthropunk on Twitter, and is heavily involved in the study of open source, mobile and steampunk ideologies. She’s also an early adopter of technology, evidenced by the fact that she owns Sally.com.

  About Sally

  Applin is a Ph.D. student at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK, in the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing (CSAC). She holds a Masters degree from the graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) within New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a BA in Conceptual Design from San Francisco State University. Sally has had a 20 year career in the science museum design, computer software, telecommunications, and product design/definition industries working as a Senior UX designer and ethnographic researcher.

  At Kent, Sally is advised by Dr. Michael D. Fischer, Professor of Anthropological Sciences, Director of CSAC, and Director of Enterprise. Dr. Fischer is the founder of Anthropunk, a movement that examines how people promote, manage, resist and endure change; hack their lives (and those of others); and create the context of the individuation of their experiences. Sally is a founding member of Anthropunk and is currently researching the impact of technology on culture, and the consequent inverse: specifically the reifications of Virtual Space in Personal Space.

  Cloaked Cyborgism

  Sally will discuss the notion of the “invisible cyborg.” Cyborg modification that is unseen by others by being cloaked or embedded can create the invisible cyborg in humans. For example, one might have an ankle with a titanium implant in it. That cyborg ankle is there, but unseen to others. Dick Chaney’s heart was cyborg and unseen for a long time. Now it is seen because he has to wear an external device mounted on top of his chest. The notion of “Invisible Cyborg” can be also be created as a goverment policy or plan that subsequently impacts large groups in a seemingly “invisible” way. Slavoj Žižek touches on topics tangential to these concepts. For instance, “trillion-dollar organisms” – patented bugs excreting biofuels, generating clean energy or producing tailor-made food. There are ideas of synthesising new viruses or other pathogens. Extreme genetic engineering may create substantially different organisms: we’ll find ourselves in a terrain full of unknowns. In the west, we have debates about whether we should intervene to prevent disease or use stem cells, while the Chinese just do it on a massive scale.

  Applin’s talk will discuss many more concepts in greater detail, and will invite discussion on what the future might hold for humans, machines, and the things that are in-between.

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  Amber Case 6:16 pm on September 3, 2010 Permalink
  Tags: cybernetic, matthew lippincott, portland ( 20 ), portland2010 ( 12 ), sewage   

  Mathew Lippincott to speak on Mechanical Intestines and Cybernetic Waste Management 

  Mathew Lippincott is doing amazing things with balloons, like building ones that can take aerial photos of the Gulf of Mexico. He’s also toxicologist and the one to ask if you’re curious about the plastics in your house or car. One of his strongest areas is in the field of waste management and sewage systems.

  Sewage is something everyone contributes to but never sees. It’s an important part of everyday life, but it is rarely discussed. This is why Matthew Lippincott is going to speak about it. If we’re lucky, he might show a few DIY aeiral photography balloons as well.

  Abstract of Mathew’s talk:

  Your toilet is the human interface for a baroque yet ineffective mechanical system whose outdated and moralizing logic is re-enforced with every flush. This talk will cover the class-based ideologies of hygiene and control that drove installations of municipal sewage in the 19th century, and what “waste” management might look like in a networked world conscious of biology.

  

  Who is Mathew Lippincott?

  A designer and artist residing in Portland, Mathew’s work addresses augmentation, autonomy, and aerospace. Recent projects include balloon construction and commodity plastics assessment with Grassroots Mapping and de-digitizing animation processes with Fernando Renes. With partner Molly Danielsson, he is currently launching the Cloacina project, an all-out assault on sewage systems. Mathew and Molly also work with partner organizations PHLUSH and ReCode Oregon. Lippincott’s work has been displayed in Portland, LA, New York, Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid.

  DIY Aerial Photography

  Here’s a video of Lippincott’s super cheap DIY aerial photography balloon project. He sent a bunch of these with Max Ogden to MIT kids who used them to photography the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico.

  Here he inflates a DIY balloon using a hair dryer.

  Read more about it on Mathew’s Blog.

  Grassroots Mapping PDX 6/26/2010: helium flight from mathew lippincott on Vimeo.

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