CADRE 40 Symposium

Geri Wittig is an artist and Principal Global Web Producer at Adobe. She received her MFA in Computers in Fine Art from SJSU’s CADRE program. One of the core values CADRE espouses is collaboration, which aligns with Wittig’s approach to any creative endeavor, whether it be her work at Adobe or her art, non-profit, and social activism involvement: community and collaboration are key. A founding member of C5 Corporation, Wittig worked for 10 years with the organization that specialized in cultural production informed by the blurred boundaries of research, art, and business practice. She has served as Board President at Works/San Jose and on the San Jose Mineta International Airport Art Program Oversight Committee. Currently, Wittig’s collaborative efforts focus on her involvement with Indivisible, a political activist organization dedicated to protecting democracy in America.

Danielle Siembieda is a systems artist whose work bridges emerging technology, climate science, and community. An internationally exhibiting artist, she has led efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the arts. She founded the nationally recognized Climate Art Program through the City of San José and leads creative economy efforts in the Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs. She holds an MFA from the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San José State University and previously served as Chief Creative Officer of Leonardo/ISAST. For more information, please visit siembieda.com @alterecoartist

Noura Wedell is a mother, writer, translator, educator, and editor. She has translated books by Pierre Guyotat, Toni Negri, Christian Maurel, among others, and has collaborated with artists A.L Steiner, on the film To Change Everything, and Rachelle Sawaski, on the embodied writing project Container. Her book of poetry, Odd Directions was published in 2009. She taught at the Center for Studies in Poetics at the ENS Lyon, France, and at the Roski School of Art and Design at USC, Los Angeles, before joining the Humanities and Art and Art History Departments at SJSU. She is an editor for Semiotext(e), and contributed to the upcoming bookshelf residency at the ICA, LA.

G. Craig Hobbs: Professor Gary Craig Hobbs’ video projection mapping workshops involve collaboration with artists, students and communities working across cultures and borders. His projection mapping collaborations with Yannick Jacquet of AntiVJ, VPM3D, Robin Lasser, Migratory Cultures, 2014-2019 3rd Space Labs, Social Weavers, 2016-18, Hidden Lily, 2018-19 (India) and PUCP Entre la Tierra y el mar, 2024 (Lima, Peru) combine workshop and  peer-to-peer learning to develop community-based public artworks addressing issues of globalization and technology through large-scale video projection mapping. Hobbs received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts and his MFA from the Digital Arts and New Media program at University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently Professor of Digital Media Art (DMA) in the CADRE Media Lab at San José State University in San José, California.

Ashleigh Dong: Coming from a commercial illustration background, Ashleigh focuses on the horrors of the flesh in relation to fetish, identity politics, and queer bodies. Currently, they are interested in the intersection between tangible materials and the exploration of the metaphysical. Ashleigh currently has a BFA in Illustration at RISD and is working towards a DMA MFA at SJSU.

Damaris Guzman produces hyperreal moving images and interactive projections that fold screen light into an embodied experience. She shapes 3D animation and simulations into sequences where liquid chrome textures ripple, fluid meshes bloom, and rhythms swing from dopamine charged instant gratification to meditative tranquility. Working across animation, net art, digital fabrication, and projection mapping, she examines how perception, technological embodiment, and posthuman identity mutate as code infiltrates flesh, asking who truly holds agency. Damaris is an MFA candidate and Teaching Associate in Digital Media Art at San José State University.

Nica C. Tanaka is the writer, artist, and narrator of Kwento by Nica, a Living Memoir. Her work binds together nonlinear literary forms with digital media and art installation.

Daria Orlova is a Digital Media artist and President of the CADRE Student Organization at San Jose State University. Her multidisciplinary practice investigates recurring patterns found in nature and simulations of real world systems. As a student leader, she is passionate in providing new and exciting opportunities for Digital Media artists to collaborate together, grow professionally, and showcase at public events.

Vanessa Chang is a writer, curator, and cultural producer, currently serving as  Director of Programs at Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology. Her interdisciplinary practice is grounded in the history and philosophy of media, technology, and science. She earned a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, where she was a Geballe Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. She taught in Visual & Critical Studies at California College of the Arts and was lead curator with CODAME Art & Tech.  Chang has curated exhibitions and public programs at venues including SFMOMA, the Beall Center for Art + Technology (UC Irvine), SOMArts, Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, and the Midway. Her work has been featured in Art in America, Science Magazine, Science Quickly, and On the Media, and her writing has appeared in Slate, Wired, Noema, Lithub, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, Leonardo, and Journal of Visual Culture, among other venues.  She is the author of The Body Digital: A Brief History of Humans and Machines, from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT (Melville House, 2025).

Zoë Latzer is a writer and curator, currently serving as Curator and Director of Public Programs at the Institute of Contemporary Art San José. After five years at the ICA, she has made a profound impact on the institution through transformative exhibitions, publications, public programs, outreach initiatives, and the integration of technology into audience engagement. Her practice centers on immersive, multi-sensory exhibitions that explore technology, new media, and speculative, research-driven world-building. Latzer prioritizes collaborative care, supporting artists whose work engages archives, material experimentation, and cross-disciplinary research.

Miguel Novelo is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work utilizes algorithmic cinema, game engine environments, and human computer interaction design. His research-based practice investigates non-human perspectives and speculative world-building, creating systems where audiences engage with geological change, animal cognition, and the liminal spaces between landscape and data. He received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2018 and an MFA from Stanford University in 2022. His work has been presented at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, the Recology AIR Program, and international film festivals. Novelo teaches at Stanford University and in the CADRE program at San José State University.

Nick Szydlowski is a librarian with experience in digital scholarship, scholarly communication, preservation, and web development. At the SJSU MLK Library he is also a liaison librarian with a focus on the performing arts. In over 20 years in libraries he has worked on a wide variety of projects with many wonderful collaborators. His research work addresses areas including digital humanities practice, critical bibliometrics, and the intersection of intellectual freedom and social justice.

Wade Wallerstein is an anthropologist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work centers on communication in virtual spaces and the relationship between digital visual culture and contemporary art. Wallerstein is currently Associate Curator at Gray Area, a Bay Area non-profit dedicated to interdisciplinary creative practice and arts-based technology education. He is also Co-Director of TRANSFER Gallery, an exhibition space dedicated to simulation and other forms of computational art, and Content Strategist for HTC VIVE Arts, a company supporting the integration of cultural heritage and extended reality technologies. His curatorial work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Dazed, Artforum, and more.

Whisper is an artist based in Los Angeles, working across poetry, performance, software, and hardware.  Whisper dreams of computing that feels like augmented presence, cultivated through generations of loving care. Lately, their work has been almost entirely collaborative, with their partner Hal as Resonant.love, and friends in Secret Server Club. Whisper is a 2026 recipient of the LACE Lightning Fund award with Secret Server Club, a 2025-2026 Supercollider Sci Art Ambassador Fellow, a 2024 Eyebeam Democracy Machine Fellow, and a Y10 Incubator Member in New Inc's Extended Realities track. They founded New Art City, an online art space with Don Hanson (CADRE MFA Candidate) and Benny Lichtner in 2020, which now hosts over 100,000 digital artifacts across thousands of virtual spaces.

Tanya Zimbardo is an independent curator and writer based in San Francisco. She organized Click on My Mouth: Language and Technology, on view through May 22 at the Natalie and James Thompson Art Gallery at SJSU. Zimbardo has guest (co-)curated exhibitions for a range of Bay Area nonprofit arts organizations. As an assistant curator of media arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, she curated several exhibitions and screenings. Her survey “Bonnie Ora Sherk: Life Frames since 1970” (Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture) will travel this fall to the Art, Design & Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara. Zimbardo has contributed to publications including Feminist Media Histories, INCITE: Journal of Experimental Media, and VoCA Journal.

Rhonda Holberton is a transdisciplinary artist who uses installation, digital media, sculpture, and scent to explore how technological systems become bodily, environmental, and affective realities.  Moving between digital and physical materials, her work is interested in what computation feels like: how networked systems shape memory, perception, and the conditions of everyday life, while leaving tangible marks on bodies, landscapes, and shared futures. Holberton has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at CULT | Aimee Friberg (SF), Transfer Gallery (NY), San José Institute of Contemporary Art, the San Francisco Arts Commission, RMIT Gallery (Melbourne), La Becque (Switzerland), and FIFI Projects (Mexico City). Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, SFMoMA, and the McEvoy Family Foundation. She holds an MFA from Stanford University and is Associate Professor of Digital Media Art at San José State University.

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982 he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and Olats in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology, and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche, for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC.

Joel Slayton is a pioneering artist, researcher, and curator with over 35 years of experience involving art and technology. His work engages a wide range of practice including media, installation and performance and has been featured in over 100 exhibitions around the world. Joel is Professor Emeritus at San Jose State University where he was Founding Director of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media. Joel Slayton was a 2018-2019 Stanford University Sterling Visiting Scholar in the Department of Chemical Systems and Biology in the School of Medicine. Joel was curator for the 5th LAST Festival Exhibition at the SLAC National Accelerator at Stanford University in 2018. From 2008-2016 Joel was Executive Director of ZERO1, a Silicon Valley-based arts organization where he was responsible for the ZERO1 Biennial, an international exhibition program celebrating creativity and innovation in the arts. Joel serves on the Board of Directors of LEONARDO/ISAST (International Society for Arts, Science, and Technology) where he founded the Leonardo-MIT Press Book Series in 1999. Joel Sllayton is a Senior Fellow of the Silicon Valley American Leadership Forum. Currently, Joel Slayton is Founding Partner in The L&J Ranch, specializing in research and projects involving complex ecologies.

Andrew Blanton is an Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the CADRE Media Labs at San Jose State University. He is also currently a Ph.D. student in music composition working at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at the University of California Berkeley. His work has been performed and presented around the world in venues such as Google Cultural Lab in Paris, The University of Brasilia, The City University of Hong Kong, and STEIM Amsterdam among many others. His current work focuses on the emergent potential between cross-disciplinary arts and technology in the context of Composition, New Media Art, and building sound + visual environments through software development. Andrew has advanced expertise in percussion, 3D environments/graphics programming, creative software development, and developing projects in the confluence of art and science.