Animating Human Rights: Games, Animation and Multimedia

Animating Human Rights: Games, Animation and Multimedia

Recent innovations in science and technology have provided human rights advocates, journalists, and scientists with new tools to expose war crimes and other serious violations of human rights and to disseminate this information in real time throughout the world.

The Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley is pleased to showcase these recent developments and push new frontiers of applied research.

Alison Cornyn - Alison Cornyn is an artist, founding partner and Director of Picture Projects. Her installation and video work as well as curatorial projects have been exhibited in Europe, South America and the U.S. She has worked as an art director on films in Los Angeles and New York and has extensive experience in interactive and web design as well as in building online communities. Cornyn produced an international, online dialogue for The New York Times, "Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace" (1997) the first website to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She has taught at City College and guest lectured about digital documentaries at New York University and other institutions. Cornyn curated b/t*, a new media show at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Fl (1998). The exhibition was part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival in 2001. She has a BA from Connecticut College, a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU and an MFA from Hunter College. She was an artist in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, 2000-01.

Ken Goldberg - Ken Goldberg is an artist and professor of engineering at UC Berkeley. Goldberg's art installations such as the Telegarden have been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, Pompidou Center (Paris), Walker Art Center, Ars Electronica (Linz Austria), ZKM (Karlsruhe), ICC Biennale (Tokyo), Kwangju Biennale (Seoul), Artists Space, and The Kitchen (New York). Goldberg is Founding Director of Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium and has held visiting positions at San Francisco Art Institute, MIT Media Lab, and Pasadena Art Center. The Tribe, a short film he co-wrote, was selected for the Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals. Ballet Mori, a multi-media project he developed to commemorate the 1906 Earthquake, was performed by the SF Ballet at the San Francisco Opera House. Goldberg is an IEEE Fellow and Vice President of Technical Activities for the Robotics and Automation Society. His PhD is in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University; he and his students have published over 150 research papers and six US patents on robotics, automation, and geometric algorithms. Goldberg is editor of several books, including The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet (MIT Press, 2000). Goldberg was awarded the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1994, the NSF Presidential Faculty Fellowship in 1995, the Joseph Engelberger Robotics Award in 2000, the IEEE Major Educational Innovation Award in 2001. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain.

Alex Quinn - Alex Quinn is the Executive Director for Games for Change. Before joining Games for Change, Quinn was Executive Director of the Adult Literacy Media Alliance (ALMA), a project of Education Development Center. ALMA produces the Emmy Award-winning television series, TV411, accompanying website and workbook series, and a range of multimedia literacy and life skills curricula on such topics as health, finance, and family literacy. Quinn served as the principal investigator for a multi-year National Science Foundation funded project to develop, promote, and broadly distribute a television-based basic math curriculum for adults. Quinn has a background in instructional design, video production, and telecommunications policy, and was the executive director for community media centers in Oregon and New York City. Quinn holds a B.A. degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Massachusetts and an M.A. in Broadcast Communication Arts from San Francisco State University.

Andrew Schlussel - Andrew Schlussel applies his experience in filmmaking, animation, and visual effects to his career in education. He has taught 3D computer graphics classes using Maya at Pixar Animation Studios, is a member of the Visual Effects Society, and is the co-author of Maya Visual Quickstart Guide published by Peachpit Press. Before joining Ex'pression College for Digital Arts where he is currently the Director of the Animation & Visual Effects Program, he taught at NYU School of Continuing Education and The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. In 2007 he travelled to Myanmar (Burma) to train local people on 3D computer animation for social marketing in the fight against AIDS. More recently he was the Director of Photography on a feature film called "Sisu", a historical narrative set in Saskatchewan, Canada due for a Spring 2009 release.

Peggy Weil - Peggy Weil, Visiting Assistant Professor, USC-SCA Interactive Media Division, is a digital media artist and designer focusing on interactive and immersive design. As a member of the original Architecture Machine Group (now the M.I.T. Media Lab) she worked on pioneering interactive projects going on to create titles for The Voyager Company, Broderbund, Electronic Arts, Von Holtzbrinck and Ravensburger Interactive including the award winning titles, A Silly Noisy House and Moving Puzzle. She was creative producer and designer for the Redistricting Game, a USC Annenberg Center sponsored project to increase voter awareness about congressional redistricting. Current projects include Gone Gitmo, a virtual installation of Guantanamo Prison and Mauerkrankheit (Wallsickness), a visualization of the world's border fences.

# Can Role-Playing Games Bring Human Rights to Life?

# Become a Guantanamo Detainee in Second Life