Background in advertising and psychology. I currently live in Austin, Texas, USA, working at a tech-focused ad agency as a copywriter. I do not like writing about myself in third person . I am strongly in favor of Oxford commas.
Previously attended Andy’s hiking hackathon in Panama, back in 2015. Now, I’ll be helping document DiNaCon – definitely in the form of daily write-ups, but I’m also a big of instant photography, so hella Polaroids, too.
Pretty into karaoke, personality tests, theme parties, glitter, hula hooping, and tarot readings (and will have my cards on me, if you’re interested!) I will be mentally sorting you into your Hogwarts house, sorry. Trying to learn the guitar; so so so bad at it.
2007 Seattle-Area Pokémon Spelling Bee Champion, Age 21 and Up.
Jorge Medina Madrid, es un estudiante de 24 años que cursa el último año de la carrera de Biología Animal en la Universidad de Panamá. Mi interes está en el grupo de las Aves, especialmente las Aves Nocturnas.
Jorge Medina Madrid, is a 24-year-old student who is in the last year of his degree in Animal Biology at the University of Panama. My interest is in the group of Birds, especially the Night Birds. He’s an expert at taxidermy, and costume designer for one of the larger Carnival events in Panama!
I am a biologist in love with bees! My passion for these amazing insects has created in me a huge curiosity about the mysteries of their sensory systems. With the help of flashlights, cardboard, tape, plastic hoses, cameras, and some other common stuff, I’ll be creating bio-crafts to conduct olfaction experiments and to understand more about these cuties we call bees!
As part of the Dinacon Team, I’ll be helping and be your guide to find your way to creativity!
Hi, I am an artist originally from the subtropics (Sydney), now living in Berlin. I have been researching and making work on the subtropics, tropics, and rainforest ecosystems in recent years, as well as on global patterns and flows of food distribution and certain ubiquitous edible and inedible materials used in mass produced and niche products (plastics, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, gemstones). I make rhythmic objects with text, sound, sculptural assemblage and video, forming repeat patterned motifs for performances and installations, which I use to explore behavioural patterns and systems of labour, energy expenditure, depletion, and exchange. The work often has an absurd or humorous bent.
I plan to work on both a video and a sound work at Dinacon where I’ll make field recordings as well as voice recordings and additional post processed sound with rainforest flora as original sources for larger food crops as a focus. I am interested in the encroachments from the rainforest at Gamboa onto the human built settlements at its fringes where Dinacon takes place, (the Gamboa baseball field and playgrounds, for example) and the reverse process that took place historically, the Panama Canal as a massive human intervention that cut through the forest and landscape, as well as the changes that are taking place now. Human and non human interactions in urban and human made environments within subtropical and tropical landscapes is an area of interest and I will research these topics and seek feedback during the conference where I hope to talk to Dinacon’s field biologists and other local residents as well as Digital Naturalism’s neighbouring biologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. I also wish to make on-site sculptural assemblages incorporating forest and local food packaging debris, and to use the wood workshop and 3D printer to make sculptural forms using found rainforest and fringe objects as a basis. I will also be researching for an experimental novel I am writing that takes place in various towns and cities in the shifting and expanding (as the globe warms) geographical bandings of the tropics and subtropics. Additionally, I am very interested in birdsong and will make field recordings of the Gamboa rainforest birds.
I am looking forward to meeting you all and finding out about your projects and potentially collaborating with you!
Studio portrait photo by Walker Esner at The Wassaic Project with a few leafy additions from me.
I am a writer, musician (Dezmediah), social worker, and amateur programmer. At Dinacon 2, I’ll be writing an electronic literature piece, which will write automatic poetry or prose using words said at Dinacon.
Project: I plan to research and write an ethnographic article about how the Digital Naturalists form a community, building “swift trust,” and then work together to accomplish various goals. What counts as sustainability for us? What aspects of a living environment should be conserved? What makes a technology instrumentally or morally good? What values characterize digital naturalism as a novel discipline? And what role does it play in global movements for planetary health and justice?
Bio: I’m a Ph.D. candidate in the anthropology of technology within Harvard University’s Department of the History of Science. Currently, I’m researching agricultural technology startups. My dissertation examines the rise of vertical farming in New York City.
I’m also a research associate regarding controlled environment agriculture at Cornell University, a research advisor to the nonprofit FarmTech Society, and a marketing advisor for the smart agriculture startup Grow Computer.
I’ll be playing with different ways to capture elusive and unusually quick moving bats in the jungle canopy. I have been using the powers of duct tape, cheapo dash cams and some ingenuity to capture bats attracted to their prey by use of sound or acoustic playback only… I would like to streamline this process and make longer running camera traps that don’t require constant maintenance and battery exchanges.
I’m also hoping to use the powers of intrigue and creativity to bring local residents attention to living in a national park and how going with the jungle is way funner than ignoring the principles of nature (ie: croc awareness; reducing waste; housing beneficial neighbors like insectivorous bats!)
Project: Connected experience with feelings & wires
Bio: I’m a lowkey software engineer, part-time goofbal, and full-time bricoleur with an interest building some physical representation of two human connections with wires, colorful headbands, and guages.
In the early 1900s the Panama Canal was forged through the jungles of Panama. This shipping channel became a major factor in the expansion of globalised trade. In many ways, Panama’s Canal Zone represents the epitome of the Anthropocene. Industrial progress rupturing unique ecosystems.
In this setting I was inspired by broken nature. I collected introduced butterfly species, leaves that had been stripped to their skeleton by destructive fungus, dead insects and plant matter. I prepared these samples and photographed their finer qualities under microscope. I also collected a selection of field recordings using a hydrophone, two contact mics and a stereo atmospheric mic. Most audio recordings in Panama’s Canal Zone contain the sounds of engines. Sounds from passing ships, tug boats, dredging machines, cargo trains and light aircraft form the backdrop to birdsongs, monkey calls and frog choirs. The clash of nature and industry is palpable. Finally, I collected data relating to the temperature, light, movement and moisture of different ecosystems. This was done using an Arduino and a series of environmental sensors.
I presented the photo-microscopy images, audio and environmental data in an Open Studio showing at the Digital Naturalism Lab on 17 August 2019. The outcome of this residency was later captured in a 3-minute single channel video work. This video features photo-microscopy and audio recordings from three consecutive environmental art residences that I undertook in 2019 – Digital Naturalism (Gamboa, Panama), LabVERDE (Amazon, Brazil) and the EV Residency (Rio, Brazil).
PluginHUMAN is an Australian art-technology duo featuring Dr Betty Sargeant and Justin Dwyer. They have exhibited in Asia, Europe, North America and Australia. PluginHUMAN has an acute understanding of the role that technology plays in contemporary society. Their progressive work places people in the centre of a human to digital encounter. They won a Good Design Award [2018] and a Premier’s Design Award [2017] and are creators-in-residence at the Exertion Games Lab, RMIT University, Australia.
I’m an Australian visual artist, working with kinetic sculpture (cheap servos, Arduino, pretty low tech) , video, performance, photography etc. My practice deals with how people interact with both the environment and technology, especially at the intersections of these. I work a lot with simulations of nature.
Recent work has been documentary based, I hope to explore the jungle and speak with a lot of researchers, and build some kind of speculative narrative about interactions with the environment. Also keen on some en plain air electronics tinkering 🙂
