People

Saber Khan (he/they) is a Bengali-American educator based in New York City. He is a veteran K12 educator with over 15 years of experience teaching math, science, and computer science in public and private middle and high schools. Currently, he teaches multiple introductory and advanced computer science classes in creative coding and web development. And he organizes events and spaces for educators to engage with code, ethics, and equity. He loves email.

Tsige Tafesse (she/her) is a technologist, artist, community organizer, and media equity advocate. With a degree in directing from The New School, Tsige has collaborated with numerous institutions including the New Museum, MoCA, Brooklyn Museum, TED, Seattle Art Museum, Queens Museum, Allied Media Conference, MoMA, The Studio Museum of Harlem, School for Poetic Computation, Google, The New York Times, University of Washington, NYU, Vera List Center, Afrotectopia, New Inc., Princeton University, Creative Time, NYU, The Africa Center, MoMA PS1, Rubin Museum and others. Her work spans various mediums, including curation, production, video, VR, community organizing, and social practice art. As a co-founder and organizer of collective project BUFU, she has worked across different sectors co-creating in(ter)dependent structures to bloom emergent visions. She is passionate about holding and creating spaces rooted in designing liberatory cultures of care and vision. Throughout this work she has been a past Ford Foundation Art & Technology 2021–22 New Media Leaders cohort, formerly a resident of Eyebeam as well as Brooklyn Community Foundation. She has been recognized as one of the ‘22 People Who Show Us Where Culture is Going’ by Fader Magazine, and as one of ID Magazine’s ‘Female Curators to Watch in NY.’ Tsige’s commitment to Healing Justice, Design Justice, Loving Justice, Transformative Justice, and Disability Justice frameworks, alongside her passion for technology, media, and commitment to equity positions her brilliantly to support the future of Processing Foundation.

Suhyun (Sonia) Choi (they/them) is a Queerean artist and organizer. Growing up in different contexts has given them first-hand experiences in understanding the complexity of globalization, capitalism, colonialism, and how the macro affects the micro levels of human ontology and relationships. This third-culture kid upbringing informs the nature of their art practice and organizing. They are a co-founder of BUFU, a project-based collective centering QTBIPOC. BUFU has been covered by publications such as the Village Voice, NYLON, Hyperallergic, the Fader, and many more. They have worked with institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, New Women Space, the New Museum, and Abrons Art Center.

Charles Reinhardt (he/him) is a bookkeeper and financial manager based in Queens. He has a background in DIY and independent arts and an MPA from NYU's Wagner School of Public Service, focusing on non-profit financial management. He loves reading books, cooking and practicing languages.

Raphaël de Courville (Processing Community Lead Fellow) (he/him) is a generative artist and designer from Paris. Since 2012 he is a co-founder and co-host of Creative Code Berlin, a community that promotes collaboration between artists and coders. Raphaël streams twice a week on Twitch, mostly about Creative Coding. He lives and works in Berlin.

Qianqian Ye (p5.js Project Lead) (they/she) is a Chinese artist, creative technologist and educator based in Los Angeles. Trained as an architect, she creates digital, physical, and social spaces exploring issues around gender, immigration, power, care, and technology. Qianqian has has shown work or collaborated with institutions including Mozilla Foundation, LACMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, MUTEK, Gray Area Foundation, Goethe Institut, MMCA Korea, Internet Archive, NYU, UCLA, UC San Diego, Google, Creative Commons and others. They currently teach creative coding as an Adjunct Associate Professor at USC Media Arts + Practice and 3D Arts at Parsons School of Design. For 2022-2023, Qianqian is a NYU ITP/IMA Project Fellow and Civic Media Fellow at USC Annenberg Innovation Lab.

Rachel Lim (p5.js Editor Project Lead) (she/her) is a Korean-American programmer whose works explore articulating vulnerability, discomfort, and grief with gentleness and humor. She is currently a software developer within the edtech space. She holds a master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, where she also received a BA in Art History. In her spare time, she loves crafting knick-knacks and running outdoors.

Jonathan Feinberg (Processing.py Lead) created Python Mode in order to provide the existing ecosystem of Processing concepts, programs, and libraries available to Python programmers. He is a musician, husband, and father of two boys, living in Lincoln, Massachusetts. He is the tech lead/manager for a team that makes a high-performance vector graphics drawing engine, at Google.

Casey Reas (Processing Mentor) (he/they) is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles. He has exhibited, screened, and performed his work in galleries and museums. Reas is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Sciences as well as a bachelor’s degree from the School of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing in 2001.

Cassie Tarakajian (p5.js Editor Mentor) (they/them) is an Armenian-American educator, technologist, and artist based in Chicago, IL. Their work centers around creating accessible and inclusive tools for making art, and interrogating the relationship between technology and pop culture. They are the creator of the p5.js Editor, an open-source in-browser code editor for creative coding in p5.js, supported by the Processing Foundation. They are also an adjunct professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (NYU ITP), teaching creative coding, web development, and making cursed content. They are a Y8 and Y9 member of NEW INC’s Art + Code Track, and in the past have held residencies at NYU ITP, Pioneer Works, and the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon.

Kenneth Lim (p5.js Mentor) (he/him) is an interaction designer and creative coder working with text and language in all its forms. His work and research focuses on translations, machine understanding of language, and development of language in the modern age. As a freelance creative coder, Kenneth has worked on web design/development, AR app development, and interactive installations. He is a Processing Foundation Fellow of 2018 and also a maintainer of the open source p5.js creative coding library. Kenneth has a BA in Graphic Design from Central Saint Martins, an MA in Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art and a MRes in Creative Computing from UAL Creative Computing Institute. Kenneth is currently a Lecturer and Acting Course Leader of BSc Creative Computing at UAL CCI.

Ben Fry and Casey Reas (Processing Leads) started Processing in 2001 and are co-founders of the Processing Foundation.

Daniel Shiffman (he/him) works as an Associate Arts Professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Originally from Baltimore, Daniel received a BA in Mathematics and Philosophy from Yale University and a master’s degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program. He is the author of Learning Processing: A Beginner’s Guide to Programming Images, Animation, and Interaction and The Nature of Code (self-published via Kickstarter), an open source book about simulating natural phenomenon in Processing.

Dorothy R. Santos (she/they) is a Filipino American writer, artist, and educator. She earned her Ph.D. in Film and Digital Media with a designated emphasis in Computational Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her service to the field includes being a steward and mentor to Collective Action School (formerly known as Logic School), an online, experimental school for tech workers produced by Logic Foundation with support from Processing Foundation. She serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Processing Foundation. She is also an advisor to art and culture organizations including slash art, POWRPLNT, Looking Glass, and House of Alegria.

Kate Hollenbach (she/they) is an artist, programmer, and educator. She creates video and interactive works examining human habits shaped by technology, with a recent focus on cellphone cameras, data collection, and surveillance. Kate’s art practice is informed by years of experience as an interface designer and product developer. She has presented and shown her work in venues including SFMOMA, Young Projects, Stamps Gallery, INST-INT, and SIGGRAPH. Kate holds an MFA from UCLA Design Media Arts and is currently an Assistant Professor of Emergent Digital Practices at University of Denver.

Xin Xin is an interdisciplinary artist and community organizer working at the intersection of technology, labor, and identity. Xin co-founded voidLab, a LA-based intersectional feminist collective dedicated to women, trans, and queer folks and they were the Director and Lead Organizer for Processing Community Day 2019, a worldwide initiative celebrating art, code, and diversity. Their work has been exhibited and screened at Ars Electronica, DIS, Dodd Galleries, Gene Siskel Film Center and Machine Project. Xin received their M.F.A from UCLA Design Media Arts and teaches at Parsons School of Art, Media, and Technology at the New School as an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design.

Lauren Lee McCarthy (creator of p5.js) (she/they) is an artist having social relationships in the midst of automation, surveillance, and algorithmic living. She has received grants and residencies from Creative Capital, United States Artists, LACMA, Sundance, Eyebeam, Pioneer Works, Autodesk, and Ars Electronica. Her work SOMEONE was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica and the Japan Media Arts Social Impact Award, and her work LAUREN was awarded the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. Lauren's work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as the Barbican Centre, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Seoul Museum of Art, Chronus Art Center, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, Science Gallery Dublin, and the Japan Media Arts Festival.

Lauren is also the creator of p5.js, an open-source art and education platform that prioritizes access and diversity in learning to code, with over 10 million users. She expanded on this work in her role from 2015–21 on the Board of Directors for the Processing Foundation, whose mission is to serve those who have historically not had access to the fields of technology, code, and art in learning software and visual literacy. Lauren is a Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. She holds an MFA from UCLA and a BS Computer Science and BS Art and Design from MIT.

evelyn masso (p5.js Mentor) (she/they) is a person (all the time), a tech worker (on weekdays), and a poet (on weekends). She has been contributing to p5.js (on-and-off) since 2016, was a p5.js co-lead for 2021, and is serving as a p5.js Mentor for 2022. Originally from Ohio, she currently lives on unceded Tongva land (near Los Angeles) with a collection of moody houseplants. She enjoys roller skating, babysitting her two godsons, and hanging out by the Los Angeles River.

Toni Pizza (Grants and Finance Manager) (she/her) is a game designing, event organizing, community building, irregularly tweeting, grant managing, narrative-design teaching, soccer playing, tiny queer girl.

Casey Reas (he/they) is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles. He has exhibited, screened, and performed his work in galleries and museums. Reas is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Sciences as well as a bachelor’s degree from the School of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing in 2001.

Xiaowei R. Wang (they/them) is an artist, writer, organizer and coder whose work centers community driven tech and the importance of care in organizing for a more just future. Their collaborative project FLOAT Beijing created air quality-sensing kites to challenge censorship and was an Index Design Awards finalist. Other projects have been featured by The New York Times, BBC, CNN, VICE and elsewhere. Their most recent project, The Future of Memory, was a recipient of the Mozilla Creative Media Award. They are the author of the book Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech In China's Countryside and one of the lead facilitators of Logic School, an organizing community for tech workers.

Taeyoon Choi is an artist and educator based in New York and Seoul. His art practice involves performance, electronics, drawings, and storytelling that often leads to intervention in public spaces. Choi collaborates with fellow artists, activists, and professionals from other fields to realize socially engaged projects and alternative pedagogy. He was an artist-in-residence at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He has published books about urbanism and is currently working on a book of drawings about computation. Choi cofounded the School for Poetic Computation in 2013, where he continues to organize and teach. Recently, he's been focusing on unlearning the wall of disability and normalcy, and enhancing accessibility and diversity within art and technology.

Stalgia Grigg is an artist and activist that is loyal to the indeterminate. His art practice uses simulation and inconsistent algorithms to explore the boundaries of change within seemingly metastable systems. Stalgia learned to code with tools made by the Processing Foundation. That experience heavily informs his tool-making and community-building practice.He is currently working on a new body of studio work, polishing an XR library for p5.js, and designing a collaborative platform for prisoner advocacy education. Stalgia has exhibited work at Human Resources, the Hammer Museum, and Coaxial Arts Foundation. He received his MFA from UCLA, and his BSVA from Purchase College.

Claire Kearney-Volpe is an Art Therapist, Digital Accessibility Professional, Designer and Researcher. She holds a Master's Degree from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program and is currently a PhD Candidate in NYU's Rehabilitation Sciences Program, Web Accessibility Fellow at CUNY, and Research Fellow at the NYU Ability Project. Her work centers around Participatory Design, Disability, Human Computer Interaction, as well as, the accessibility of code languages and code pedagogy.

John Maeda is Global Head, Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic. He is a former Design Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the former President of the Rhode Island School of Design from 2008 to 2013. He is a recipient of the National Design Award and his work is represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Beginning in 1996, lasting for 13 years, he was a Professor at MIT, where he served as an Associate Director of Research at the MIT Media Lab and was responsible for managing research relationships with 70+ industrial organizations. He received a Ph.D. in Design Science from the University of Tsukuba Institute of Art and Design in Japan. In May 2003, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art. He received an MBA from Arizona State University in May 2006.

Josette Melchor is the Founder of Gray Area, and the Head of Cultural Programming for the future cities initiative at the We Company. In 2008, she led the effort to incorporate Gray Area into a 501(c)3 nonprofit, enacting her pioneering vision of a living creative hub for the integrated practice of art and technology, a uniquely San Franciscan institution globally recognized for its forward-looking programming around creative coding education and cultural incubation. Melchor’s background as a queer, third-generation Mexican-American has grounded her deep commitment to safeguarding diverse communities in the midst of a rapidly gentrifying San Francisco. In collaboration with the City of San Francisco, she created the first Urban Prototyping Festival in 2012, creating a platform for citizens to address civic issues through public activations, which has since been copied worldwide. In 2016, Melchor instigated the first exhibition that paired artificial neural networks with artists, which helped establish the Artists and Machine Intelligence program at Google, ushering in a new movement in Artificial Intelligence assisted artwork. She most recently spearheaded the development of Gray Area’s Knight Foundation-supported Experiential Space Research Lab, developing sustainable models for artists to work within the quickly evolving format of immersive experiences.

Phoenix Perry creates physical games and user experiences. Her work looks for opportunities to bring people together to raise awareness of our collective interconnectivity. A consummate advocate for women in game development, she founded Code Liberation Foundation. Code Liberation catalyzes the creation of digital games and creative technologies by women, nonbinary, femme, and girl-identifying people to diversify STEAM fields. Since starting in 2012, this project has helped to foster a new generation of creators. Currently, she is a Lecturer in Physical Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Dr. Rhazes Spell is enamored with media art and technology as a platform for creation and learning. As an artist he is interested in speculative data narratives: how stories shape facts and how “facts” shape cultural plots and identity. As an educator he is continuously fascinated with the power of media art and technology platforms for engaged learning within the humanities and sciences. He is particularly interested in pedagogical practices of mathematics and computational science, media and cultural theory, and design research. Rhazes’s background includes a PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke University, a MFA in Design|Media Arts from UCLA, and experience consulting for companies in a variety of industries. He has been a faculty member in the School of Design at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and is currently a part-time faculty member at University of Southern California, where he is teaching creative web coding and design speculative narratives. Lately his musings include a burgeoning fascination with opera and learning to navigate a socially mediated world as an introvert.

Boaz Sender manages the web platform consulting company Bocoup where he works to make the web more predictable and inclusive through technology standards development and engineering. At the Berkman Klein Center, Boaz is active in the ethics working group, where he is working on a critique of the values embedded in “open source” production. Between 2016 and 2017, Boaz ran a contemporary art gallery with a focus on tech criticism. During this time he curated works from artists exploring the role and impact of technology on society. From 2011 until 2017, Boaz was an invited expert to the W3C where he started the Games community group, outlining a roadmap for “open web games”, and contributed to the web-platform-tests initiative. During this same period, Boaz also contributed to the jQuery, Backbone, and Grunt projects and helped start the jQuery Foundation where he served as a board member until its relaunch as the JS Foundation. Prior to Bocoup, Boaz worked as a front-end developer for a dot-com where he built early client side web applications. Boaz studied Liberal Arts at Bennington College from 2003 to 2005. His software production education came from working in open source communities, writing documentation, and working as a web developer.