Thomas A. Beckett lives with his family in Hendersonville, North Carolina. He is an attorney, MBA and entrepreneur. Through his business law practice, Beckett offers guidance to small and startup businesses ranging from software and technology ventures to agricultural enterprises. He is intensely interested in creative, sustainable business, grassroots economic development, and authentic experience. An original organizer of Meet the Geeks, Beckett also co-founded the InterNetWorker community in the Research Triangle area. He is legal advisor to the Media Arts Project. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Asheville Slow Food Convivium and the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project
Curt Cloninger is an artist, writer, and designer living in western North Carolina, US. His art undermines language as a system of meaning in order to reveal it as an embodied force in the world. His materials are spoken words, sounds, hand-written words, lines, objects coupled with words, objects as words, light, and time. He orchestrates these materials using video, software, performances, installations, and networks. Cloninger is an Assistant Professor of Multimedia Arts & Sciences at the University of North Carolina Asheville. His work has been featured in the New York Times, ABC World News, and at festivals and galleries from Korea to Brazil. Exhibition venues include Digital Art Museum [DAM] Berlin, L'Instituto de México à Paris, Living Arts of Tulsa, and The Art Gallery of Knoxville. He is the author of several books, including "Fresher Styles for Web Designers" (2009) and "Hot-Wiring Your Creative Process" (2006). Cloninger also maintains lab404.com, playdamage.org, and deepyoung.org in order to facilitate a more lively remote dialogue with the Sundry Essences of Wonder.
Gillian Coats got involved with audio production 8 years ago when she helped start WPVM a Low Power FM station in Asheville, NC. In 2006 she worked with the Buckminster Fuller Institute to bring the Design Science Lab to Asheville. Gillian has produced audio documentaries for the past 4 years and has recently closed her used bookstore to start New Mediacast, an audio podcasting production company. She is currently working on an economic development strategy for digital and interactive media arts in wetern North Carolina. Previously, she has served on the Board of Directors of the MAP.
Steve Cohen's music business career evolved over what in hindsight looks like a very natural course - from bass player to band leader to Vice President of Original Artists to founder and President of Music + Art Management. His current client roster includes turntable polymath DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid; poet/writer/singer Carl Hancock Rux; pianist/composer/band leader Vijay Iyer; former Digible Planets DJ and house music legend King Britt; tabla player Suphala; and singer/songwriter Haale.. Cohen is a consultant for a variety of musicians and producers, and has done music supervision for film. He teaches a course about the music business at at both UNCA and Western Carolina University, having forrmerly taught music management at NYU, and has been a guest lecturer at Harvard College and Northeastern Universities. Cohen's solid music education and his years as a working musician, combined with the traditional skill set that most managers develop over the course of their work, gives him a perspective that enables him to genuinely appreciate the ideas and goals of artists and to help bring those ideas and goals to fruition. During the course of his nearly ten years at Original Artists, Cohen represented Laurie Anderson and Bobby McFerrin, acting as administrator, event producer, ersatz lawyer, and diplomat, and negotiating and interacting with a wide cast of sometimes unexpected characters. In addition to working with those artists, Cohen was involved in the careers of The Story, David Byrne, Dianne Reeves, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Raffi, and others.
Gene Felice currently splits his life into 3 current directions: Art, Design & Education. In the art world, he calls himself an "Interactive Artist" examining relationships between himself and the outside world. His art is a lens through which he is able to focus and make sense of connections. Through Design, he has found an outlet for simultaneously sharpening his ability to communicate visually while constantly pounding his way through the walls of the latest technology available. This includes Flash based web design, print, 3D modeling & Rapid Prototyping. Via the world of Education, he attempts to give back to the greater good while simultaneously dipping into the well of fresh creativity. So far it's a balancing act that produces a unique and fresh result.
Scott Furr is a multimedia artist, theorist, and tinkerer. He currently resides in Asheville and reBlogs about media arts, technology, and philosophy at MonkeyPlunger.com.
G. Craig Hobbs is a multimedia developer and video artist and currently in graduate school at University of California in Santa Cruz. He completed undergraduate studies in fine art and digital synthesis at the California Institute of the Arts. A founding member of the Asheville-based multimedia collective Black Box Studio, Mr. Hobbs client list includes Volvo, Moog Music, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, NC Arts Council, Asheville Global Report, and the National Percussion Ensemble of Guinea. Mr. Hobbs specializes in live video mixing and large-scale projection for theater and live music. As a projectionist he has worked with artists including Thomas Dolby, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Deep Sky, LTJ Bukem, Robot, Afromotive, Ahleuchatistas, and Terpsicorps Theater of Dance. Mr. Hobbs is currently in production on the independent science fiction film Moon Europa where he serves as Executive Producer.
Meegan Kelly is a professional grant writer with years of experience in proposal writing, development, and fundraising for nonprofits. She also worked as an AmeriCorps CTC VISTA to support community media and technology at a nonprofit addressing the needs of low-income and at-risk communities and also helped launch Asheville Free Media, a nonprofit online community radio station.She earned her Bachelor of Science in Communications from the University of Miami and majored in Journalism and Philosophy. Meegan is Grants Manager at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
Mark Koven has spent many a year wandering from here to there before arriving in Asheville in 2009. When he is not teaching Sculpture and Extended Media at UNCA he can be found tinkering with Art that is an amalgamation of mediums from Magnetic Bacteria and Bioluminescent Fungi to Wind Turbines and Sound/Video utilized in a wide array of Interactive/Reactive Computer Interfaced Installations. Whether it is caring for an adopted seedling, contributing your own bacteria, playing children’s games, or physically interacting with objects, the goal is to provide an experience as both content and product. In this utilization of an interdisciplinary and a multi-media approach new technologies are combined with traditional physical interactions to create an “experiential social structure” encouraging passive art consumers into becoming active participants. In addition to his life as Artist and Teacher, he works towards furthering his ideals of spreading Art to the public by serving on the City of Asheville’s Public Art Board as well as helping out with the Black Mountain College Museum.
Emi Kubota is the Director of Marketing & Strategy and the Interim Global Supply Chain Manager at i play., Inc., her mother’s company that has been operating in Asheville since 1982. Emi grew up in Asheville, went away for college, international volunteer work, and graduate school, and has returned to an Asheville developing into a regional hub for the new economy. She believes this new economy will be based on creative and green technologies. While in NYC, Emi was an active participant in new media technology networking events and hopes to foster a similar community in Asheville. In her spare time, she enjoys playing ultimate frisbee, practicing yoga, and cooking.
Greg Lucas sold his telecommunications consulting firm in 2003, and moved to Asheville to promote global media art and local media artists. Greg is Vice President of the Asheville based firm Music + Art Management and runs the company's New York office. Together with Steve Cohen, Greg manages a roster of six internationally touring transmedia performers ranging from DJ Spooky to King Britt. He is a graduate of Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service
David McConville, the MAP's founder, works internationally with museum, theater, gallery, and research projects to develop immersive digital theaters and productions. In 2003 He co-founded the elumenati, which researches and develops custom optical system designs and media production techniques for interactive and immersive environments and exhibits. He also serves on the boards of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the Buckminster Fuller Institute.
Jeff Schmitt enjoys a rich life filled with science, music, art, and family. He did his undergraduate work at Wake Forest University followed by graduate fellowships at the University of Bath and Oxford University. Jeff holds an adjunct professorship at Wake Forest University Health Sciences in Physiology/Pharmacology, Integrative Medicine, Biochemistry and the Translational Sciences Institute. He is a founding member of a leading biopharmaceutical company (Targacept, Inc.) where he led the creation one of the world’s leading drug discovery platforms, Pentad™. Jeff has published 100 peer-reviewed publications, patents and abstracts, and is currently on the editorial advisory boards of 5 international scientific journals and is a Business Journal top patent holder. He has held Board positions on numerous non-profit organizations. As a member of the leadership team of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, Jeff created the Computational Drug Design Focus Group in an effort to promote research in making drug design more efficient through computer simulation. Jeff also spearheaded the development of the first operational scientific computing grid in the Southeast and has pioneered the use of quantum molecular dynamics in drug discovery. Currently, Jeff continues work with his colleagues at Wake Forest University Health Sciences on the design of cancer therapeutics based on fatty acid synthase. He is also been recently appointed to head up the university’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative.
Scott Shepard’s favorite work is creative collaboration. A former Walt Disney Imagineer, he specializes in multidisciplinary storytelling projects including theme park rides, museums, events, etc. Shepard is the founder of Kuma Sonics and as such has consulted on projects worldwide, design through post-opening.
Gordon Smith is a Child and Family Therapist in private practice at Looking Glass Center for Counseling and Psychiatry. He is an Asheville City Council Member elected in 2009 to a four year term. As part of his Council role, Gordon is liaison to the Public Art Board and eight other boards and committees. He is a founder and contributor to the group blog Scrutiny Hooligans as well as a founder of BlogAsheville. A community organizer for years, Smith brings a great network with him to the board. He and his wife live with their two dogs in West Asheville.
Lorraine Walsh is Director and Associate Professor of Multimedia Arts and Sciences at UNC Asheville. Walsh’s art, inspired by the sciences and nature, is exhibited internationally in venues that include the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, and the José Martí National Library in Havana, Cuba. Walsh’s new artwork will be exhibited in the Greece Biennale at the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki. Additionally, she has exhibited work in a broad range of galleries and museums, and her work belongs to several collections. She lectures internationally, and is the recipient of numerous awards and grants. In 2008, Walsh received a grant titled e-MobiLArt (European Mobile Lab for Interactive Media Artists Collaborative Project), a new Euro project for the creation of interactive installation artworks. This grant is in association with the University of Athens, University of Lapland, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Other grants include working with multimedia and physics students on a collaborative astronomy grant from the National Science Foundation for the visualization of the radio sky. As a designer, Walsh has developed graphics and interactive media for the Petrosains Discovery Center and Science Museum in Malaysia, The National Geographic Society and The Smithsonian Institution. As an artist and a teacher, she believes in combining digital technologies with traditional techniques. Her interdisciplinary work in animation, print, and interactive installation merges time-honored practices in art alongside digital methodologies. Former Visiting Assistant Professor in Digital Design and Interactive Media at Pratt Institute in N.Y., Walsh received her BFA from Parsons The New School for Design and her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Other academic appointments and guest artist invitations have included Lafayette College, Rutgers University, Vassar College, Wellesley College, Western Carolina University, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
