*Bits.Atoms.Neurons.Genes*
Micro_Gestures at the Edge of Invisibility
The b.a.n.g. lab is an On/Off line space for artists in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD to explore and present works at the edge of invisibility, at the edge of the digital and biological, at the edge of micro-robotics and nano-art, from in-virtu to in-vivo works and back.
The b.a.n.g. lab is directed by Ricardo Dominguez.
Current projects include the Transborder Immigrant Tool.
Current lab members include Micha Cardenas, Christopher Head, Elle Mehrmand, Amy Sara Carroll and Brett Stalbaum.
Ricardo Dominguez is a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group that developed Virtual-Sit-In technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. One of his recent Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0 projects with Brett Stabaum, Micha Cardenas, Amy Sara Carroll, and Elle Mehrmand is the *Transborder Immigrant Tool* (a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border. It was the winner of “Transnational Communities Award,” funded by *Cultural Contact*, Endowment for Culture Mexico – U.S. and handed out by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico), also funded by CALIT2 and two Transborder Awards from the UCSD Center for the Humanities. The Transborder Immigrant Tool has been exhibited at the California Biennial 2010 (OCMA), Here Not There (MOCA, La Jolla), and recently in San Salvador, El Salvado. Ricardo is an Associate Professor at UCSD in the Visual Arts Department, a Hellman Fellow, and Principal/Principle Investigator at CALIT2 (http://bang.calit2.net). He is also co-founder of *particle group* combines new media, the paraliterary, performance, artivism, and humor to produce different gestures that forge a subversive relationship with the newest frontiers of technological science in an effort to undermine some of their assumptions of authority and power. *particle group* has exhibited at ISEA (San Jose) 2006, House of World Culture (Berlin) 2007, “Inside the Wave” at the San Diego Museum of Art 2008, Oi Futuro (Brazil) 2008, CAL NanoSystems Institute (UCLA), 2009, Medialab-Prado, Madrid (Spain), 2009, Nanosferica, (NYC) 2010. (pitmm.net)
Micha Cárdenas is an artist/theorist whose transreal work mixes physical and networked spaces in order to explore emerging forms of queer relationality, biopolitics and DIY horizontal knowledge production. She will be starting her PhD in Media Arts and Practice (iMAP) in the School of Cinematic Arts at University of Southern California in Fall 2011. Micha is the Interim Associate Director of Art and Technology for UCSD’s Sixth College in the Culture, Art and Technology program. She is an artist/researcher with the UCSD School of Medicine, CRCA and the b.a.n.g. lab at Calit2. She was previously a lecturer in the Visual Arts department and Critical Gender Studies program at UCSD. Her recent publications include Trans Desire/Affective Cyborgs, with Barbara Fornssler, from Atropos Press, “I am Transreal”, in Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation from Seal Press and “Becoming Dragon: A Transversal Technology Study” in Code Drift from CTheory. Her collaboration with Elle Mehrmand, “Mixed Relations,” was the recipient of the UCIRA Emerging Fields Award for 2009. She has exhibited and performed in biennials, museums and galleries in cities around the world including Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana, New York, San Francisco, Montreal, Egypt, Ecuador, Spain, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Dublin, Ireland and many other places. Her work has been written about in publications including Art21, the Associated Press, the LA Times, CNN, BBC World, Wired and Rolling Stone Italy.
Christopher Head is an MFA candidate at the University of California, San Diego in the Visual Arts department. He received his BFA in Digital Media Arts from San Jose State University and the CADRE Lab for New Media. He is a software developer, focusing on simulation, real-time rendering, visualization, and interactive games.
Elle Mehrmand is a performance/new media artist and musician who uses the body, electronics, video, sound and installation within her work. She is the singer and trombone player of Assembly of Mazes, a music collective who creates dark, electronic, middle eastern, rhythmic jazz rock. Elle is currently an MFA candidate at UCSD, and received her BFA in art photography with a minor in music at CSULB. She has received grants from UCIRA, the Russell Foundation and Fine Arts Affiliates. Elle is a researcher at CRCA at UCSD and is a member of the electronic disturbance theatre 2.0/b.a.n.g. lab. Her performances have been shown in Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, Durham, Tijuana, Montreal, Dublin, Istanbul and Bogotá. Her work has been discussed in Art21, the LA Times, Juxtapoz Magazine, Networked Performance, Reno News and Review, the LA Weekly, the OC weekly, VICE, and Furtherfield.org.
Brett Stalbaum is a C5 research theorist specializing in information theory, database, and software development. A serial collaborator, he was a co-founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater in 1998, for which he co-developed software called FloodNet (http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ecd.html), which has been used on behalf of the Zapatista movement against the websites of the Presidents of Mexico and the United States, as well as the Pentagon. As Forbes Magazine put it “Perhaps the first electronic attack against a target on American soil was the result of an art project.” For EDT, this was all learned behavior taught by the example of the Zapatistas. Also known for his work with C5 corp and paintersflat.net, Stalbaum holds an MFA in fine art from CADRE at San Jose State University, a BA in Film Studies from San Francisco State University, and an AA in Music from Napa Valley College. He is a full-time lecturer with security employment in Visual Arts at UCSD (Academic Senate faculty) and coordinator for the Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts Major (ICAM). Current research can be found at www.walkingtools.net, an umbrella site for generative walking algorithms, the development of mobile software and GPS APIs (walkingtools reference APIs), applications for narrative walking art (HiperGeo), and related activist software (Transborder Immigrant Tool). Walkingtools.net work has been presented world wide, most recently at SCANZ (New Zealand), FILE (Brazil), and the Edith Russ Haus (Germany). Staubam lives in an unincorporated area of Eastern San Diego County, USA.
Amy Sara Carroll is Assistant Professor of American Culture / Latino / a Studies and English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received a Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University (2004), and an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Cornell University (1995). Her research, teaching, and writing interests include Latino/a American contemporary cultural production (performance, art, video, and literature), feminist, queer, and postcolonial theory, visual culture, cultural studies, inter-American studies, border studies, and critical creative writing. Her poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies such as Talisman, Carolina Quarterly, The Iowa Review, Mandorla, Chain, Bombay Gin, Seneca Review, Borderlands, Faultline, This Bridge We Call Home, and Not For Mothers Only: Contemporary Poets on Child-Getting and Child-Rearing. She has exhibited poem-prints at the Audre Lorde Project (Brooklyn, New York), Duke University Museum of Art, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center (Auburn, New York), and State-of-the-Art Gallery (Ithaca, New York).
