Protected: Open Metaverse Intensive

Mark is a creative technology consultant for cultural institutions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond and the owner of Hellar Studios LLC. He specializes in innovative yet practical digital media and software-based solutions for multimedia artists and the institutions that support their work, emphasizing developing systems and best practices for exhibition, documentation, and long-term preservation. Mark is a consultant on new media conservation initiatives at SFMOMA, including the conservation and care of their software-based artworks. In addition, Mark has presented on the preservation and exhibition of computer-based artworks at Harvard University, the Smithsonian Institute, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the DOCAM research alliance, and the American Institute of Conservation. He is also faculty at the Gray Area, Academy of Art University, and San Francisco Art Institute(formerly), where he teaches on the topics of virtual reality, augmented reality, and physical computing. Currently, he is leading the Open Metaverse Intensive, a 10-week Online Course in Decentralized Worldbuilding.

Niki Selken 👩🏻‍💻 (she/her) is an artist, technologist and educator. Niki spent over a decade working across game design, physical computing, experimental theatre, interaction design and education. As a designer and technologist, Niki focused on working with nonprofits and small businesses in the inclusion and social impact space (Ms. Foundation, Girls Write Now, LYRIC, Hesperian Health Guides) and as an educator, she taught a range of creative coding courses in both New York and San Francisco. A graduate of Parsons School of Design, Niki has taught at her alma mater, at St. Joseph's College in Brooklyn, at the University of San Francisco, at the Bay Area Video Collective and at Gray Area—where she is the Creative Development Director and manages the artist incubator and creative code education programs. Niki's work has been featured by Yahoo Tech, Buzzfeed, Make Magazine and Adafruit, among others. Niki identifies as Latina and hails from a long line of Mexican artists and craftsmen.

Victoire Poumadere brings her experience as a Spatial Designer to build Gray Area's virtual immersive exhibitions and showcases. Drawing from psychology, film, and new media, her multidisciplinary work explores & exposes time and place perception through narrative sets, virtual worlds, architecture, and design. She is one class away from completing her master’s degree in Architecture, with a never ending thesis on shaping serendipity in the built environment.

coley mixan is a musician, public library educator, performance artist, radio DJ, and pastry/prairie enthusiast. They currently create work in Phoenix, AZ, thrusting through a multiverse of clues, hunches, and downright queer shenanigans.

Amelia Winger-Bearskin is an artist/technologist who empowers people to leverage bleeding edge technology to effect positive change in the world. In 2019 she was an invited presenter to His Holiness Dalai Lama’s World Headquarters in Dharamsala for the Summit on Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion. In 2018 she was awarded a McArthur and Sundance Institute fellowship for her 360 video immersive installation in collaboration with the artist Wendy Red Star (supported by the Google JUMP Creator program), exhibited at the Newark Museum and ASU in 2019. The non-profit she founded IDEA New Rochelle, in partnership with the New Rochelle Mayor’s Office, won the 2018 $1 Million Dollar Bloomberg Mayor’s Challenge for their VR/AR Citizen toolkit to help the community co-design their city. She is a Sundance Institute Creative advisor and alum of their New Frontiers Story Lab and Festival(AR/VR/XR/AI tech section). In 2018 she was awarded the 100k Alternative Realities Prize for her Virtual Reality Project from Engadget and Verizon Media. Amelia is the founder of the stupidhackathon.com. Amelia is Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of the Seneca-Cayuga Nation of Oklahoma, Deer Clan.

A diverse thinker with 19+ years of achievement in academia and the creative digital research and production space. Marko’s experience includes a range of digital startups and educational projects from artificial Intelligence-intensive video game titles for major corporate clients to co-founding  5 of his own startups.

Marko was the founder of the Computer Arts Department at the Academy of Art in Serbia, and serves as the CEO of the multi-national game studio O2D, Inc. He has lectured internationally at schools and conferences in the U.S.A., U.K., India, Serbia, China, and Norway.