This Week In Brilliance: Our AB2011 Speakers

Today we’re bringing you a special edition of our weekly roundup of brilliance from around the web to help you get to know the amazing group of people who will be speaking at AB2011 and some of the things they have been working on.

• In the above video, composer, artist, and mathematician Vi Hart explains the science and mathematics of sound, frequency, and pitch in her signature whimsical style.
• Sameer Padania is a consultant on human rights, media, journalism, tech, and philanthropy. He has worked on projects such as Cameras Everywhere, which “aims to ensure that the thousands of people using video for human rights can do so as effectively, safely and ethically as possible.”
• Until recently, Hugo de Garis was Director of the Artificial Brain Lab (ABL) at Xiamen University, China. He is now doing what he calls “ARCing” (After-Retirement Careering) and devoting his time to only the interests that he is truly passionate about.
• Jay Finch is the co-founder and CEO of Common Equity and is now working on launching SocStock, an organization that funds small businesses through their communities.

Pickup Sticks, 15.5 x 33.5

• Judith Selby Lang, along with her husband Richard, makes colorful art out of plastic debris collected on Kehoe Beach in Northern California. We previously posted a short documentary profile of the Langs’ work here.
• Steve Vogt is an astronomer and professor at UC Santa Cruz. He was part of the team that discovered the first potentially habitable extrasolar planet, Gliese 581 g, last year.
• Peter Baumann is one of the authors of Ego: The Fall of the Twin Towers and the Rise of an Enlightened Humanity, a book that explores “the positive evolutionary potential hidden in one of the most destructive events in history.”
• Environmental psychologist Sally Augustin’s latest book, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design, will be published early next year.

• Jeff Hancock is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Communication at Cornell University. In the above video, he discusses “how important deception is to human communication, and how the intersection of deception and technology affects us all.”
• Ami Ronnberg is the curator of The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) and editor of The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images, published by Taschen in 2010.
• Nick Fortugno is a game designer, co-founder of Playmatics, and professor at Parsons The New School for Design. He was the lead designer of the popular game Diner Dash and of the award-winning educational game Ayiti: the Cost of Life.
• Karl Schroeder is one of Canada’s leading science-fiction authors, who just completed his Master’s degree in Strategic Foresight and Innovation at OCAD University in Toronto. His next book Ashes of Candesce will be published in Feb. 2012.

Sounding Door by Julijonas Urbonas

• Julijonas Urbonas is former amusement park director who is now a designer, artist, writer, engineer and PhD student researching Gravitational Aesthetics. His Talking Doors installation won an Award of Distinction in Interactive Art at Prix Ars Electronica 2010.
• Dr. Allan Hamilton is not only a professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Arizona, but he also holds professorships in Psychology, Radiation Oncology, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. On top of all of that, he is an accomplished horseman!
• Now a retired business and government executive, Russell Schweickart is a former astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 9. He performed the first in-space test of the Portable Life Support System used by the astronauts who walked on the moon.