About dorkbotSF:
dorkbot-sf is a spinoff of dorkbot-nyc, which is “a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/etc), designers, engineers, students and other interested parties from the New York area who are involved in the creation of electronic art (in the broadest sense of the term.)”

The purpose of dorkbot is to:
–Give artists/programmers/engineers an opportunity for informal peer review.
–Establish a forum for the presentation of new art works/technology/software/hardware.
–Help establish relationships and foster collaboration between people with various backgrounds and interests.
–Give us all a chance to see the cool things that our neighbors are working on.

Presenters

Tim Hunkin – Tim Hunkin’s Recent Arcade Machines
http://www.timhunkin.com

Includes Fly Drive (a simulator where you are a fly, trying to eat as much as possible without getting swotted). Also Whack a Banker (an enhanced version of wackamole) and the coin operated nuclear reactor he is building at the moment.
Tim Hunkin trained as an engineer, but then became a cartoonist (drawing a strip for a UK sunday paper called The Rudiments of Wisdom for 15 years). His next career was in television (writing and presenting three series called The Secret Life of Machines for Channel 4). For the next ten years he worked for museums, building interactive exhibits and curating and designing exhibitions. He is currently obsessed with his amusement arcade on Southwold pier.

Eric Gradman – The Cloud Mirror: Your Virtual Self is Leaking
http://monkeysandrobots.com/

You gaze into the Cloud Mirror, and it gazes deep into you. It will violate your privacy, especially if you carelessly litter the Internet with sensitive personal details. The Cloud Mirror is an art piece which temporarily merges visitors’ online identities with their physical selves. It uses augmented reality, computer vision, accesses many Internet web services in parallel using cloud computing resources to identify visitors by name; mine the Internet for photographs and facts (dirt) about them; and superimpose that data in an on-screen comic book thought bubble that follows them onscreen.
Eric will talk a little about the interactive art that’s been coming out of SyynLabs in Los Angeles, and the games that have been coming out of the Virsix Game Lab.

Eric Gradman is an interactive artist in Los Angeles, CA. His work often features computer vision, large-scale projections, unusual sensors, and custom electronics to produce fun environments that compel people to interact.

He is a frequent speaker on robotics and interactive systems. He is co-founder of Virsix, an immersive entertainment company in Los Angeles; SyynLabs, a Los Angeles-based tech-art collective; and a founding member of Crashspace LA, Los Angeles’ first hackerspace.

Eric’s work has been seen at various conferences and events, including Sundance Film Festival, Los Angeles Brewery ArtWalk, TEDxUSC, TEDxBerkeley, Opportunity Green Conference, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), BIL, TEDActive, and the Los Angeles Hammer Museum.

Annalee Newitz – Revenge of the Meatsack, Or Four Arguments Against Immortality
http://io9.com
http://techsploitation.com

A lot of science fiction promises us a future where we are immortal, enhanced posthumans. And scientists are trying to make that happen. But immortality isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. In this presentation I’ll offer four arguments against immortality, both as a scientific/technical phenomenon and a social goal.
Annalee Newitz writes about science, technology, and pop culture. Currently she’s the editor in chief of io9.com, a blog about science fiction and the future. She’s published articles in Wired, 2600, The Washington Post, New Scientist, Popular Science, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. She’s the author of Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters In American Pop Culture, and the co-editor of the essay collection She’s Such A Geek. Formerly, she was the policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a lecturer in American Studies at UC Berkeley. She was the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT.