In appreciation for their incredible assistance in helping launch HacDC, Dorkbot DC overlords Gareth Branwyn and Alberto Gaitán were inducted as full-fledged HacDC members at our December 02 member meeting.
Once they get keys to the place, we’re sure they’ll be redecorating with some steampunk gadgets and painting robots.
More on Gareth:
Gareth Branwyn writes about technology and tech culture. For 12 years, he was a contributing editor at Wired, co-creating and writing the Jargon Watch column. Through that work, he was asked to be the consultant on computer and Internet terms for the Oxford American Dictionary. Gareth is currently a contributing editor for O’Reilly’s MAKE magazine and Make: Blog, and he’s also an editor at Make: Books.
Gareth is also the author of numerous books, including the first book about the World Wide Web (Mosaic Quick Tour: Accessing and Navigating the World Wide Web) and The Happy Mutant Handbook (which he co-wrote with Mark and Carla of Boing Boing). He recently contributed the introduction to Device 1: Fantastic Contraption, a book celebrating post-industrial surrealism, published by Device Gallery and IDW Publishing.
More on Alberto:
Alberto Gaitán was born in Quito, Ecuador, moving to DC when he was 14. He has since worked as a composer and programmer in the DC metropolitan area working collaboratively in cross-media projects with DC’s best musicians, poets, choreographers, and visual artists. His new-media work has included the very first computer-based installation presented in a DC nightclub, as well as some videography and photography. He has been working with digital audio, including sampling and synthesis, and computer controlled interactive sound environments since 1985.
His music has been played in the Kennedy Center and in performance spaces around DC and in Europe. His work with collaborative artist group Art Attack International has won international critical acclaim and his solo sonic pieces have been presented internationally and locally. He has written music for conventional ensembles and for the less conventional, such as automobiles. His road-based sound installation, Loci, was commissioned by Arlington, Virginia, and by the city of Aachen, Germany. Arlington County has also commissioned him to create a permanent, net-aware, interactive sound sculpture at the site of the original courthouse.
He has written for exhibition catalogs and for publications including The Washington Post, Kustforum (DE), The Baltimore Sun, and The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog. He has lectured nationally on the collaborative process at universities and galleries and taken part in peer review panels, including the National Endowment for the Arts’ New Forms Regional Grants Initiative. He recently developed, Remembrancer, a cybernetic, net-aware piece for a solo exhibition at Curator’s Office, in DC, April/May 2007 as part of ColorField Remix, a Washington, DC, citywide project, spanning the spring and summer of 2007 and linking numerous art venues to celebrate the many legacies of the generation of Color Field and Washington Color School artists.