Brittany Ransom is an artist and educator currently living in Long Beach, California. Ransom is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including the competitive Workshop Residency in San Francisco (2016), the Arctic Circle Research Residency (2014), University Research council and Instructional Technology Grant Awards (2013-2014), and the prestigious College Art Association Professional Development Fellowship (2011). Ransom has shown internationally and nationally and has been featured in numerous publications. Her most recent work has been exhibited in Berlin (as part of Transmediale 2017), Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas. Ransom served as the 2017 SIGGRAPH Studio Chair and will serve as the 2019 SIGGRAPH Art Gallery Chair, both in Los Angeles. She collaborates with a number of local contemporary art institutions and science museums. Ransom received her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Electronic Visualization from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2011) and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University with a concentration in Art and Technology (2008). Ransom is currently serving as the Program Head of Sculpture/4D and is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture + New Genres at California State University Long Beach. As a member of the faculty of the College of The Arts, she works within the sculpture area and specializes in 3D computerized production / digital fabrication and physical computing / kinetics. Prior to living in Long Beach, California, Ransom was the Assistant Professor of Digital / Hybrid Media at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas for three years. Ransom has also lived and worked in Chicago, Illinois and Columbus, Ohio. Ransom is half african american and italian / german and was born and raised in the small city of Lima, Ohio.

Jennifer Berry currently resides in the San Francisco Bay area in California. Her childhood on military bases in Alaska, Delaware, Maine, Texas, Michigan, and Illinois provided her with the perfect places to interact with urban wildlife. Berry studied biology, art, and writing in a place where encounters with animals such as moose and coyotes were an everyday occurrence on her way to class. Berry is now an artist, consultant, and educator who specializes in collaboration with and design for wildlife and nature. Her art is to inspire her audience to see the natural world from a perspective of wonder. She teaches a range of topics, from computer-aided design/build to mindfulness to natural sciences, and in both academic and non-conventional teaching venues. Relevant degrees, certificates, and awards include a Bachelor of Science from Northern Michigan University, Biologist at the Design Table certification from The Biomimicry Institute, LEED certification, plus residencies and awards for various artworks.

Heidi Boisvert (PhD) is a new media artist, creative technologist, experience designer, researcher, and writer. She founded and serves as the CEO and Creative Director of the futurePerfect lab, a boutique creative agency that works with nonprofits to develop imaginative applications of integrated media and emerging technology. Heidi was formerly the Media Director at Breakthrough where she designed, developed, and promoted a range of viral, new media and pop culture campaigns that helped raise awareness and instigate policy change on pressing social issues. She created the first 3D social change game, ICED I Can End Deportation, to shift the frame around unfair U.S. immigration policies. Heidi also designed America 2049, an alternative reality game on Facebook about pluralism, which was nominated for Games for Change and Katerva awards.

Most recently, she co-founded XTH, an open-source bio-creative technology startup, and was named a Harvestworks Creativity + Technology = Enterprise Fellow as well as a Media Impact Fellow at the Harmony Institute and USC’s Norman Lear Center. She received her PhD in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is currently the Director of Emerging Media Technology at New York City College of Technology (CUNY) and a research affiliate at MIT OpenDoc Lab.

Les Joynes (PhD) is a New York-based artist and scholar on contemporary visual cultures at Columbia University and founder of FormLAB, a multimedia art installation series that interface local and global visual cultures which has been awarded the Fulbright-Hays US Public Diplomacy Awards for Mongolia and China.

He has exhibited at Brazilian Museum of Sculpture; the Norimatsu Museum Japan; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Bangkok Experimental Film Festival; Museu Brasileiro de Arte, São Paulo; The Barbican, London; and the Inside Out Art Museum, Beijing. His work has featured in Sculpture Magazine, NHK Television Japan, and Art Monthly, London. He has curated exhibitions in London and Tokyo and assisted the curatorial team for the First Taipei Biennial: Site of Desire. He serves on the editorial board for the peer-reviewed journal ProjectAnywhere (Australia), and has contributed to Art in America, Museum 2050 (Long Museum, Shanghai), and Going Beyond: Art as Adventure (UK).

Les is a visiting faculty member at Renmin University, Beijing at the Institute for Cultural Industries; the Doctoral Program at Peking University, Beijing; the Cambridge University Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH); and Columbia University. At Columbia he also explores applications for the digital classroom and interactive critique. He has degrees from Central Saint Martins School of Art, London; Goldsmiths, University of London; Musashino Art University, Tokyo; and Boston University. Specializing in multimedia art, he received his PhD from Leeds Metropolitan University and his Post-Doctorate from the Escola de Comunicações e Artes at University of São Paulo, Brazil. He was a fellow at UAL’s Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) in London. He is represented by Thomas Jaeckel Gallery in New York.

Ram Devineni produced The Russian Woodpecker, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. His most recent film, The Karma Killings, about the Nithari serial killings is out exclusively on Netflix worldwide. He is the creator of the augmented reality comic book, Priya’s Shakti and Priya’s Mirror, which received the Tribeca Film Institute New Media Fund from the Ford Foundation and supported by the World Bank, and showcased at 2016 New York Film Festival. For creating India’s first female superhero who is a rape survivor, he was named a “gender equality champion” by UN Women. He was named by Fast Company magazine as one of the most creative people in business in 2017 for his innovative use of augmented reality to address social issues.

ZERO1 is a nonprofit arts organization that aims to address complex social challenges by producing community-driven new media and digital art projects. We believe that artistic experimentation with emergent technologies inspires novel creative strategies and broadens our critical understanding of the world. Through a global network of partners, we bridge governmental, academic, corporate, and cultural worlds to build engaged and vibrant communities that drive social action.