Project Leader

Yacov Sharir     A native of Israel, Yacov graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem with a degree in ceramics and sculpture. He continued his studies in dance at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance, the Bat-Sheva Dance Company and School, the Stuttgart Ballet and Ballet Theatre Contemporaine. A dual citizen of Israel and the United States, Yacov was the founder of the American Deaf Dance Company, which pioneered the inclusion of deaf artists in professional dance. He subsequently founded Sharir Dance Company, the resident professional dance company of The University of Texas at Austin's College of Fine Arts. Twice a recipient of NEA Choreographer Fellowships, Yacov received a 1989 Meet the Composer/Choreographer grant with New York composer Pauline Oliveros. Since 1978 he has been an instructor of dance for The University of Texas at Austin, where he received the 1991 Student Council Teaching Excellence Award. Additionally, he has served on dance panels and task forces for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Yacov has choreographed for companies such as Boston Ballet, Hartford Ballet, Dallas Ballet, Repertory Dance Theatre of Utah, Bat-Sheva Dance Company and Kibbutz Dance Company of Israel, and has created over thirty works for Sharir+Bustamante Danceworks. In the spring of 1996, his work was selected by the American College Dance Festival for presentation at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Yacov's choreography has been showcased at international festivals in Israel, France and at the Future Moves Festival for dance and new technologies in Rotterdam, Holland. In 1992 he received a two-year fellowship from the Banff Centre for the Arts as part of the Arts in Virtual Environments Project. Yacov lectures and conducts workshops throughout the world on the subject of arts and technology and was a featured speaker in 1994 at the National Endowment for the Arts conference, Art 21: Art Reaches into the 21st Century. Yacov's work was also featured in ACARTE 97 in Lisbon, Portugal and at the Man, Technology and Society conference in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1998, Yacov led a team of high school students, teachers, computer technicians and artists in the creation of Robo-City, an educational, interactive technology exhibit that was installed at Austin Children's Museum.

Team Leader

Wei Yeh     A native of Houston, Wei graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BS in Radio Television Film with a concentration in New Media in 1999. Currently, Wei is continuing his studies in the Radio Television Film graduate program with a concentration in Convergent Media. In order to apply the ideas from his research, Wei founded Applied Bozonics, LLC, a pervasive technologies company in 1998. He feels that the technological revolution currently taking place is merely a glimpse of what lies ahead when established paradigms are pushed aside. With his background in HCI and design as well as practical experience in server and network technologies, Wei sees technology as something that is not supposed to be intimidating to the user. Rather, the technology should adapt to the individual’s need. His work seeks to redefine the way in which one views the world. This is especially evident in "Metaspace", his work in which GPS information collected over a period of time is transposed graphically to allow the view to explore the interrelationships between space, time and location.

 

Engineers

Andrew Litt    Andrew has been interested in the sciences and technology from an early age. He has worked with computer / hardware interface systems since the age of nine, when he learned to program on his Apple //e. A high school and college internship at Automated Products in Irving, Texas introduced him to the worlds of embedded computers and control systems where he worked on hardware and firmware for a computer controlled dental porcelain furnaces, an automotive data logger, and a CAD/CAM milling machine. Andrew is currently on hiatus from the University of Texas at Austin Computer Engineering program to pursue his career in the technology sector as an applications engineering specialist in the Embedded Products Development group at Cirrus Logic in Austin. In his spare time he freely contributes to Everything2.com, the online knowledge database.

Michael Leibowitz

 

Programmers

Brandon Wiley    Brandon is a sassy Java programmer specializing in online communities and universal interoperability. His role in the project is making all of the parts talk to each other. In his spare time, he writes plays.

Chris Brown

 

Designers

Anita Pantin

Samantha Krukowski    Dr. Samantha Krukowski is Co-Director of the Convergent Media program in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. She received a B.A. in political science at Barnard College/Columbia University in 1988, an M.A. in art history at Washington University in 1992, an M.Arch. at The University of Texas at Austin in 1997 and a Ph.D. in Art History at The University of Texas at Austin in 1999. Dr. Krukowski is a practicing artist, architectural designer, author and critic. Her research interests include: space, place and topography, architectural and 2/3/4D design, perceptual systems, virtual/physical dimensionality, hypermediated graphic and textual storytelling, ritual and the apotropeic.

Dr. Krukowski's current artwork is based on the discoveries and problems associated with moving between the physical and virtual domains. Her large-scale oil paintings are integrated ecosystems of astronomical, biological, architectural and neurological bodies. These paintings, or parts of them, are adapted as fields and players forvirtual environments. There is reciprocity between the virtual and the physical touch, the digital and the dimensional image. In both the painting-on-canvas and the painting-on-screen there is evidence of the tap of a digit on a keyboard, the hairy touch of a brush saturated with pigment and oil, the pointed finger thumb extended wrist curved grasp of a mouse, the distanced and paced evaluation of the pictorial image from afar. Digital and physical artworks that arise simultaneously present a new figure set for the now familiar term "interactivity."

Interactivity is rendered extra-machinic. Digital images and processes compel physical images and processes to act differently, to come into being differently. One of the overarching questions for this body of work: What is the effect of the digital (images, processes, situations) on the physical world? Another related question: How do the myriad simulations introduced by the digital (toolboxes full of "pencils" / "paintbrushes" / "paper") relate to the objects which are their source and how do they change the way in which we understand and utilize both the original and the simulation?

Architecture (the making of structures of geographical consequence) is another practice in which Dr. Krukowski explores issues of representation and construction. Representations of buildings, no matter how detailed or fantastic, are permeable and translucent in the face of the tools of construction. A drawn line, though precise, fails to register the violence of a cut in the land. Drawings and models contain no sawdust, nail spirals, piles of splintery wood, no white PVC pipes swiped with purple caulk, no noise, cigarette butts, white and red Lone Star beer cans. Client tastes in gardening, furniture and utility change the vision of a design, sometimes to the point of eradicating it. Virtual architectures further extend the dichotomy between representation and construction, offering up zones for an inhabitation of weightlessness, places for the displaced and imaginary body. Dr. Krukowski's first residential design was completed in 2000.

Her second project for a house addition is under construction. She is currently working on the conversion of a TV and film production studio at the University of Texas at Austin for use as a convergent media facility. This studio, now in its first phase of renovation, will serve as the hub for the Convergent Media program there.

Dr. Krukowski is at work on her first book, tentatively titled Instruments of Vision.

 

Website

Dancer: Destinee Walker (left) - Destinee is currently a Junior at the University of Texas at Austin majoring in Dance. Photographer: Michelle Herrin (right) - Michelle is a student of film production at the University of Texas at Austin. For the last three years she has worked on the crew for several local and student productions as a Production Assistant, Grip, Assistant Camera, and Production Manager. Prior to studying film, Michelle was a student of Architecture at UT. Michelle's work in film reflects her interests in Architecture and space, utilizing lighting and cinematography as her key means of expression. Designer: Wei Yeh