Handcrafting Soft Circuits Workshop focuses on ways to learn about circuits via paper crafts. Beyond the value of crafts as creative practice and art they provide a respite from the tyranny of the screen, in a world where we primarily engage with computers to learn/make. From soft circuits and paper switches to pen and paper drawing we will examine the ways you can work with your hands to combine electricity, interactivity, light and imagination.
Niki Selken 👩🏻💻 is artist and technologist whose skill set spans game design, physical computing, experimental theatre and interaction design. Niki has spent over a decade working at the intersection of art and technology. She is the Creative Development Director at in the Gray Area where she manages the artist incubator and creative code education programs. 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. Niki is considered one of the foremost Emoji experts and has earned global recognition for her emoji work as well as her gaming and wearables projects. Niki is the co-founder of the Emoji Foundation, an organization that promotes, explores, and translates the written word into the pictorial alphabet of Emoji. Her Emoji Dictionary project debuted at The Proof is in the Processor art show in New York City and was featured at Currents New Media Art Festival in Santa Fe. She followed up that work with a VR Emoji game, EmojiFlower VR, that is available for download in the iTunes store. Niki is a global finalist and a NASA Space Apps winner for her wearable tech project, Senti8. Her game, Find Maria Rivera, exhibited at Indiecade and was selected as an Indiecade Award Finalist. And her Augmented Reality platform, Wayscape, earned her recognition as a Kill Screen game design scholar and a Parsons E-Lab fellow. Niki's work has been featured by Yahoo Tech, Buzzfeed, Make Magazine and Adafruit, among others.
