Held every October, in the beautiful seaside village of Camden, Maine the PopTech Conference brings together 700 influential participants for one of the world’sbest thought leadership events.
Andrew Stein Raftery is a printmaker specializing in narrative scenes of contemporary American life. Trained in painting and printmaking at Boston University and Yale, he has focused on burin engraving for the past 17 years, publishing the portfolios Suit Shopping in 2002 and Open House in 2008. Andrew’s current project (working title: The Autobiography of a Garden in Twelve Plates) involves transfer printing from engraving onto pottery.
Zach Lieberman talks about teaching creativity in the information age at his School for Poetic Computation.
“We are not sitting in front of a screen. We are trying to create a space for reimagining what is possible.”
For most of us, synesthesia—the attachment of colors to sounds and other such cross-sensory cognition—is more concept than lived experience. But “nerd artist researcher hacker” Zachary Lieberman could change that.
His work uses technology in a playful way to break down the fragile boundary between the visible and the invisible.
Augmenting the body’s ability to communicate has always been at the core of Lieberman’s work. Working with collaborator Golan Levin, he created installations—"Remark” and “Hidden Worlds”—that presented interpretations of what the voice might look like if we could see our own speech.
more: www.thesystemis.com
Adam Magyar: Photos of time from PopTech on Vimeo.
Adam Magyar is a photographer. He uses high-tech digital tools and cameras adapted from industrial applications to examine the human existence through a machine eye. His images look into and challenge our identities as individuals in the urban crowd. He lives in Berlin.
Helen Marriage is a co-director of Artichoke, a creative company, which she founded with Nicky Webb in 2005. In seven years the company has become renowned for its large-scale city-wide events. Artichoke works with artists to invade public spaces and create extraordinary and ambitious moments that live in the memory forever.Through its ephemeral transformation of familiar landscapes, Artichoke aims to leave an indelible mark on the cities and societies where it works.
Shantell Martin's art evolution from PopTech on Vimeo.
The work of Shantell Martin is a meditation of lines; a language of characters, creatures and messages that invite her viewers to share a role in her creative process. Part autobiographical, and part dreamlike whimsy, Martin has created her own world that bridges fine art, commercial and the everyday.
Pioneering gamer Kevin Slavin takes the PopTech audience on a colorful tour of the history of luck in America, games of chance, gambling and mathematical formulas.
“That’s amazing, the idea that anything that seems to be built out of chance or instinct or luck can yield to a computational assault.”
As an entrepreneur, Slavin has successfully integrated digital media, game development, technology and design.
He is a pioneer in rethinking game design and development around new technologies (like GPS) and new platforms (like Facebook).
Kevin Slavin: Debunking luck from PopTech on Vimeo.
Charlie Todd: Improv invite from PopTech on Vimeo.
Charlie Todd is the founder of Improv Everywhere, producing, directing, performing and documenting the group’s work for over 12 years. He is also a performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City. Charlie is the author of “Causing a Scene,” a book about Improv Everywhere published by Harper Collins.
Renowned curator Pedro Alonzo sits down with preeminent street artists Swoon and Vhils, and Fame festival organizer Angelo Milano to discuss the issue of agency in reclaiming public space in the name of art.
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Simonetta Carbonaro, a consumer psychologist, encourages us to think differently about consumption. She reminds us that a consumer-hungry outlook for cheaper and faster is outdated, and that we now know that consuming and producing less, in fact, creates more jobs, more free time, and more happiness. |
First inspired by the mysterious and mathematical qualities of a caterpillar’s crawl, artist Reuben Margolin creates large-scale kinetic sculptures that use pulleys and motors to create the complex movements and structures we see in nature. Margolin takes to the PopTech stage to share some of his extraordinary mechanical installations.
Reuben Margolin: On Kinetic Art from PopTech on Vimeo.
As a child, he started playing with stilts and was enamored with math. After going in a few different directions in school, he set out with a typewriter strapped to the back of a motorcycle to write poetry as he traveled across the country. This resulted in the creation of a mobile, which he drove for five months in order to have deep, meaningful conversations with people he met along the way.
Soon after, on a hike, he saw a transparent caterpillar that inspired him to try and replicate it as a machine. Although the finished product didn’t move as elegantly as a caterpillar in nature, it fueled his interest in examining movement in the natural world. Still seeking a way to perfectly capture the wave of a caterpillar’s motion, he demonstrated on the PopTech stage a much sleeker machine made of wood, thin rope and metal that did indeed undulate like caterpillar creeping. He’s now exploring applying this principal to giant circles, wooden frames and other forms.
Margolin ended his presentation by revealing a gorgeous, sparkling sculpture suspended from the Opera House Ceiling, which swung gently above the crowd as though wind was blowing through a giant, gilded glass net.
Margolin noted that there are two ways of looking at things: one is at the sparkle and the dawns and the beauty of the world, and one is at the structure and the meat and the math. His art brings both of these elements together in a way that is both aesthetically pleasing and intellectually interesting.
Erica Williams is a Washington DC-based activist who works to get under-represented communities to take part in the political process. She asked the PopTech crowd to put aside any pre-conceived notions about her generation (the Millennials, born in 1978-2000). Williams was raised by two pastors and defines her childhood by two things:faith and church.
Australian choreographer Gideon Obarzanek of Chunky Move showed a brief sequence of his choreography, which included dances that looked like giant spiders scuttling across the stage, the illusion of rose petals blowing across prone dancers and intertwined bodies bathed in pulsating, monochromatic shards and shafts of light.
John Fetterman is the hulking, tattooed and impassioned mayor of Braddock, PA, a tiny town ten miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Braddock was built around the steel industry: vintage pictures show a thriving downtown area boasting 30 tailors, 5 banks, 51 barbers in their community. Over the last few decades, the town has imploded and now none a single one of those businesses remain.
Sculptor Reuben Margolin works in the medium of motion. As a child, he started playing with stilts and was enamored with math. After going in a few different directions in school, he set out with a typewriter strapped to the back of a motorcycle to write poetry as he traveled across the country.
An eminent roboticist and Ph.D. at MIT's Media Lab, Kelly Dobson is exploring "machine therapy" - a personal, societal and psychoanalytical study of machine design and its effects on peoples' everyday lives. Watch as she exhibits Screambody, Blendie and Omo, three fascinating robots that respond to - and influence - their users in provocative ways. See Pop!Cast videoAlphachimp LLC is a visual learning company based in Houston, Texas.
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