We’re excited to announce that CyborgCamp Portland will be held on November 3rd at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Keynotes and unconference sessions to be announced soon!
Please mark your calendars for the opening party on Friday, November 2nd, and for the Cyborg zine-writing workshop on Sunday, November 4th!
What’s a CyborgCamp?
CyborgCamps are small, in-depth unconferences about the future of the relationship between humans and technology. Attendees discuss a variety of topics such as the futures of identity, privacy, surveillance, hardware to wetware, drones, 3D printing, cyberpunk, human augmentation, constructed reality, the second self, ethics, robot rights, sexuality, urban design, and anthropology. Topics are discussed the morning of the conference and scheduled into the conference grid by attendees themselves, making it a DIY conference experience.
In addition to the above topics, the following has been discussed at CyborgCamps around the world: cyborgs, wearables, prosthetics, sensors, control systems, assistive tech, transcendence, transhumanism, technological singularity, artificial intelligence, intelligence amplification, utopia / dystopia / weird topia, identity, quantified self, exocortex, ubicomp, robots, sensory augmentation, steampunk, philosophy, ethics, intelligence, the borg, hackerspaces, telepresence, science fiction, DIY, cryonics, cybernetics, open source, nanotech, augmented reality, brain-computer interface, artificial life, functional electrical stimulation, and neural science. Each CyborgCamp has its own mix of topics created by what the attendees want to discuss. All CyborgCamps follow a Code of Conduct.
CyborgCamps are Small
CyborgCamps generally have less than 100 attendees, making it easier to have more in-depth discussions with people across different fields. The small format increases the chances of getting to really know your fellow attendees.
CyborgCamps are Diverse
Every CyborgCamp welcome people from different backgrounds, including social, business, academic and trade-related. Just as cyborg studies sit at the crossroads of multiple academic disciplines, we like to invite people at the crossroads of different disciplines and boundaries as well.
CyborgCamps are Designed by Attendees
At CyborgCamp, attendees make the conference. Some attendees come prepared with ideas of what they want to talk about, and others come to listen and learn. Some attendees have relevant experience and prepared talks, and others just have a woolly idea needing discussion. At the start of the conference, attendees write their ideas up on a board and the conference begins!
Cyborg Camp Morning Speakers
Interaction Designer, Deaf Musician, and CymaSpace founder Myles de Bastion
Myles de Bastion is an Artistic Director, Musician, and Creative-altruist who develops technology and art installations that enables sound to be experienced as light and vibration. His work has appeared in the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Portland Art Museum and on the Jimmy Kimmel Live! Show. He has built large-scale installations for music festivals and Grammy-award winning jazz artist Esperanza Spalding.
A dual citizen of the UK and the United States, Myles grew up in England where he obtained a BA from University of Teesside (UK), focusing on computer science & animation and was the chairman of the Musician’s Society for two years. He has taught at Austine School for the Deaf (VT) and at the world’s first Deaf Music Camp (MI), where he developed the curriculum and was responsible for the music and sound program.
In 2012 Myles moved to Portland OR and founded CymaSpace, a non-profit that facilitates arts & cultural events that are inclusive of the Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing, where Myles further develops his technological artistic works that translate sound into visual mediums. In 2015 Myles took his concepts into the commercial sector and founded Audiolux Devices, a technology company that now produces professional products featuring the synergy of light and sound.
Myles continues to live in Portland with his partner Kimberly and CODA daughters Zebra & Juniper.
Anselm Hook
Anselm will speak Civics and Augmented Reality
Anthropology and Sociology Professor Deborah Heath
Heath is interested in cyborgs, food, and epigenetics.
She participated in midwifing cyborg anthropology, and attended the Cyborg Anthropology seminar in Santa Fe, NM that led to the book Cyborgs & Citadels. For several years she followed the human and nonhuman alliances involved in genetic knowledge production [cf: Genetic Nature/Culture, Univ. of California Press. Currently, she is captivated by the techne and technoscience of food and drink, including the science and rhetoric of the foie gras controversy.
Deborah Heath is a Professor of Anthropology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She earned her Ph.D. in 1988 at Johns Hopkins University, her M.A. University of Minnesota at Minneapolis–St. Paul, and her B.A. at Reed College.
You can learn more about Deborah at https://college.lclark.edu/live/profiles/109-deborah-heath.
Shashi Jain
Shashi Jain is a Portland-based entrepreneur, technologist, startup mentor, and instructor. He currently serves at Intel Corporation as an Innovation Manager, pathfinding new applications for Internet of Things and Machine Learning. Outside of work, he organizes the Portland 3D Printing Lab Meetup, 3D prints prosthetic hands for kids via the eNABLE community, and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship to high school students through TYE Oregon. Jain also actively mentors early-stage startups. You can follow him online at @skjain2.
Stephanie Mendoza
Stephanie Mendoza is an Immersive Reality developer and researcher focused on helping underserved communities. Her primary focus is on VR/AR, Unity and WebVR (A-Frame).
Stephanie is currently the Director of the VR Development Center at Portland Community College (cascade campus), and she’s spoken at MIT, University of Oregon, and exhibited with Portland art collective xhurch.
You can see her work online at https://liooil.space/CV/CV.html.
Schedule
Friday, November 2nd, 2018
6pm - 12am - CyborgCamp Preparty and art show at an undisclosed location. Will include sonic arts, live music, interactive installations, and VR. Address provided after RSVP.
Saturday, November 3rd, 2018
9:00am - 9:30am - Doors open. Registration, Coffee, Breakfast, Networking, and Setup
9:30am - 9:45am - Conference Begins – Morning Introductions, Speakers, Sponsors, Unconference Overview. Livestream accessible to remote attendees.
9:45am - 10:05am - Opening Speaker: Amber Case: Cyborgs and Calm Technology
10:10am - 10:20am - Deborah Heath – Cyborgs, Food and Anthropology
10:20am - 10:30am - Klint Finley – Scraper Bots and the Secret Internet Arms Race
10:35am - 11:15am - Keynote Speech and Performance: Myles de Bastion, deaf sound designer and musician
11:15am - 11:30am - 15 minute break
11:30am - 11:40am - Stephanie Mendoza – Mixed Reality
11:45am - 11:55am - Shashi Jain, 3D printing
12:00pm - 12:05pm - Jeff Brown, robotic growing and food activism
12:05pm - 12:25pm - Unconference Planning
12:25pm - 1:00pm - Lunch Break
1:00pm 3:15pm - Unconference sessions
3:15pm - 3:30pm - Afternoon Break
3:30pm - 5:15pm - Unconference sessions
5:20pm - 6:00pm - Conference wrap up, sponsor thanks, and cleanup
6:00pm - Conference Over!
Sunday, November 4th, 2018
Collaborate on a Cyborg zine with other conference attendees to produce and publish an archive of the conference in a single day! Details forthcoming.
Media Partners
FuturePrairie Podcast
FuturePrairie will run a tea bar at CyborgCamp! They are looking for participants to interview about the future!
FuturePrairie is a podcast about futurism run by Joni Whitworth. The show interviews scientists, creatives and techies about the future. You can read more about the project here: https://www.futureprairie.com and hear the latest episodes on iTunes or SoundCloud here: https://soundcloud.com/futureprairie/sets Check out @FuturePrairie on Twitter for more!
Blaze Streaming Media
Blaze Streaming Media delivers Internet video production to the event industry and is one of the original livestream providers for CyborgCamp! We’re so excited to have the team back and Livestreaming the event! If you’re looking for an awesome livestreaming team, consider hiring Blaze Streaming! They've done amazing work for O’Reilly and other large conferences!
Blaze Streaming: http://blazestreaming.com/hire-us/
Silicon Florist
Silicon Florist is a long-running tech-focused blog about Portland tech.
Check it out for news and job postings! https://siliconflorist.com/ You can contribute to the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/turoczy