Liveware

Shawn Lawson is a computational artist and researcher creating the computational sublime. He performs under the pseudonym Obi-Wan Codenobi where he live-codes real-time computer graphics with his open source software, The Force and The Dark Side. Lawson’s non-performance work explores a range of technology: stereoscopy, camera vision, touch screens, game controllers, hand-held devices, random number generators; and output formats: print, sculpture, mobile apps, instruction sets, animation, and interactive.

 

He has performed at NIME, Australia; Radical dB, Spain; ICLI, Portugal and UK; ICLC, UK, Canada, and Mexico; ISEA, Canada; GENERATE!, Germany; CultureHub, NYC, and more. Shawn’s artwork has exhibited or screened in museums, galleries, festivals, and public space in England, Denmark, Russia, Italy, Korea, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Turkey, Malaysia, Iran, and Canada; locally in ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE ProCams, ACM MM, The Art Institute of Chicago, Milwaukee Art Museum, Chelsea Art Museum, Eyebeam, Aperture Foundation Gallery, Nicholas Robinson Gallery, MIT, OSU, ASU, and LTU. He has given workshops in programming or live coding in Europe and the USA. Shawn is published in Dancecult Journal and the proceedings of ICLC, ACM CC, ACM SIGGRAPH, ACM SIGCHI, ACM MM. 

 

Lawson studied fine arts at Carnegie Mellon University and École Nationale Supèrieure des Beaux-Arts. He received his MFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. He is a Professor of Computer Visualization in the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

 

Michael Century, pianist, accordionist, and composer, is Professor of New Media and Music in the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which he joined in 2002. Musically at home in classical, contemporary, and improvisational settings, Century has enjoyed a varied career as university teacher, new media researcher, inter-arts producer, and arts policy maker (Banff Centre for the Arts (1979-93), McGill University (1998-2002), Government of Canada Canadian Heritage and Department of Industry 1993-98)). Century studied piano with Reginald Godden in Toronto, and holds degrees in musicology, from the Universities of Toronto and California at Berkeley. At the Banff Centre, he directed the Centre's inter-arts program, jazz and improvised music programs, and was the founding director of its Media Arts program. Century’s works for live and electronically processed instruments have been performed and broadcast in concerts and festivals internationally, including ISEA, The Music Gallery, Diapason Gallery and Le Poisson Rouge (New York City), Vancouver Jazz Festival, Banff Festival of the Arts, CBC’s Two New Hours.

 

 

Jeremy Stewart is a multimedia artist and performer researching the affective potential of distributed multimedia systems through the creation of improvisational performances, wearable hardware, and machine learning-driven software. He is interested in the ways that technology can affect, interact with, and alter an individual’s agency, perception, and autonomy. He is a PhD Candidate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.