Vision
We envision empowered Black and Caribbean communities that engage with, learn, and interrogate AI to benefit ourselves, celebrate Black joy, and contribute to global discourses on AI, data, creativity, and society. Our vehicle for engagement is the Trinidad Carnival – later known as the Trinidad & Tobago Carnival – of which there are more than 70 around the world in the Caribbean, US, UK, and Europe.
This project was funded by The Mozilla Foundation and its Creative Media Award. Special thanks to the University of Florida, School of Architecture for their support.
Team
Dr. Vernelle A. A. Noel
Computational Design Scholar, Architect, Artist
Dr. Vernelle A. A. Noel is a design scholar, architect, artist, and founding Director of the Situated Computation + Design Lab. Her research examines traditional and automated making cultures and practices, interdisciplinary creativity, and their intersections with society. Dr. Noel’s scholarship and expertise include design in the Trinidad Carnival, craft practices, architecture, and art. She builds new expressions, tools, and methodologies to explore social, cultural, and political aspects of making, computational design, and emerging technology for new social and technical reconfigurations of design practice, pedagogy, and publics. Before joining Georgia Tech. as an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Interactive Computing, Dr. Noel was an Assistant Professor of Architecture & Computational Design at the University of Florida.
Dr. Noel’s work in design and computation has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Mozilla Foundation, and ideas2innovation (i2i), among others. Her TEDx Talk is titled, “The Power of Making: Craft, Computation, and Carnival.” Dr. Noel is a recipient of the 2021 DigitalFUTURES Young Award for exceptional research and scholarship in the field of critical computational design. She was a Keynote Speaker at ACADIA 2020, and has been featured on Madame Architect.
Vernelle has practiced as an architect in the USA, India, and Trinidad & Tobago and is the founder, creator, and editor of Architecture Caribbean, an online platform that showcased and promoted design by Caribbean nationals. She is currently on the board of ACADIA, and Co-Chair of ACADIA 2021.
Dr. Nettrice Gaskins
Digital artist, academic, cultural critic
Dr. Nettrice R. Gaskins is an African American digital artist, academic, cultural critic and advocate of STEAM fields. In her work she explores “techno-vernacular creativity” and Afrofuturism.
Dr. Gaskins teaches, writes, “fabs”, and makes art using algorithms and machine learning. She has taught multimedia, computational media, visual art, and even Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles with high school students who majored in the arts. She earned a BFA in Computer Graphics with Honors from Pratt Institute in 1992 and an MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. She received a doctorate in Digital Media from Georgia Tech in 2014. Currently, Dr. Gaskins is a resident in the Autodesk Technology Centers Outsight Network. She is the assistant director of the Lesley STEAM Learning Lab at Lesley University. Her first full-length book, Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation through The MIT Press will be available in August.
Gaskins served as Board President of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (The Alliance) and was on the board of the Community Technology Centers Network (CTCNet). She is currently on the board of Artisan’s Asylum.
Valencia James
Performer, maker, researcher
Valencia James is a Barbadian freelance performer, maker, and researcher interested in the intersection between dance, theatre, technology, and activism. She believes in the power of the arts to inspire change.
Valencia’s work explores how emerging technologies like machine learning and computer vision might enhance creativity in her contemporary dance practice and vice-versa. In 2013 Valencia co-founded the AI_am project, which combines machine learning and AI with dance. She has presented her work at several international forums such as the 2015 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires and TEDxGoteborg.
Valencia has been a 2020 Rapid Response Fellow at Eyebeam, where she co-founded the Volumetric Performance Toolbox, a project that responds to the global pandemic by envisioning live online 3D dance performance as a new way for artists to connect to audiences from their living spaces using minimal equipment. She was a Spring 2021 Remote Resident for Open-Source Software Art Tools at Carnegie Mellon University.
Photo credit: Tamas Talaber