speakers

Xin Xin (they/them) is a Taiwanese-American cultural producer exploring community-driven technology in creative and educational spaces. As creator of TogetherNet and co-editor of the Critical Coding Cookbook, Xin advocates for liberatory software culture through the reclamation and subversion of power dynamics embedded within digital systems. Born in Taipei and raised in Massachusetts, Xin brings a multicultural perspective to questions of technology and sovereignty. An Eyebeam Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future Fellow and Sundance Art of Practice Fellow, their genre-bending practice weaves together art, education, organizing, and technological experimentation—interrogating who controls technology, who benefits from it, and the power of collectives in building a more equitable digital future.

From Information to Intuition: Human-Scale Ways to Experience Abstract Tech. Many of today's most important technologies are not immediately intuitive because they're abstract, invisible, or uncertain. In this talk, I'll share ways designers can translate data- and model-driven systems into tangible, playful encounters. Not to oversimplify them, but to make them legible, experiential, and fun. We'll explore how materiality, interaction, and performance can help audiences build intuition for complex ideas like climate signals, GenAI meaning drift, and probability.

A director and cinematographer, Jonny Ouk focuses on creating immersive experiences that enrich his storytelling. Using Unreal Engine for indie virtual production, photogrammetry for photo realistic characters and spaces, spatial video and motion capture, his development of novel workflows highlights the transformative use of emerging tools. Balancing technical acumen with creative vision, he’s committed to creating innovative media experiences that educate, inspire, and tell meaningful impactful human stories.

Y. Jenny Wang, Ph.D. is the Director of medVR, where she leads program development for the Medical XR Accelerator and guides teams in building commercially-viable solutions to real-world medical challenges. She also serves as the Hardware Track Director of MIT Reality Hack. A multidisciplinary builder and strategist, her background spans business development, education, and product design. She has developed go-to-market strategies, led VR and electronics workshops, and founded two companies, including Clever Rock Labs, which builds products blending software, hardware, and human interaction.

Steven Max Patterson is the Executive Director of medVR, a non-profit providing catalytic education in medical XR. With a background in engineering, project management, and technology journalism, Steven has written for Ars Technica, Quartz, Fast Company, and IDG. He has built open source and mobile tech communities for over two decades and has worked to expand AR/VR into new fields since 2014. He founded and led the AR/VR hackathon at the MIT Media Lab in 2015.