Keynote – Chris Garcia

Please help us to welcome our 2011 Keynote Speaker!

 

photo by Andrew Trembley

 

Chris Garcia

is a filmmaker, historian, curator and Hugo-nominated fan writer based in Sunnyvale, CA. His filmmaking career has including production, directing and writing short films, including a documentary, Steampunk: Building a Better Yesterday, that showed at the ZerOne Digital Art Festival in San Jose. Chris started his curatorial career in 1999 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, and hand a hand in creating the games, PC and graphics sections of Revolution: The First Two Thousand Years of Computing exhibit that opened in January 2011. In 2005, Chris became involved in zines with The Drink Tank, his Hugo-nominated fanzine on eFanzines.com. In 2009, he launched Exhibition Hall, also available on eFanzines.com,  along with James Bacon and Ariane Wolfe. He has had writing appear in Gatehouse Gazette, Clarkesworld, the Internet Review of Science Fiction and on Tor.com during Steampunk Fortnight. Chris has also been a speaker and presenter for our 2008 California Steampunk Convention and 2010 Steampunk Exhibition.

James Ng at Nova Albion!

All the way from Hong Kong

and with new art to debut, we are pleased to welcome

“Asian Steampunk” Artist, James Ng!

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We knew we were getting his art… but we didn’t know we’d have the artist until this week! James says he’s been working on a few new pieces that he’s looking forward to showing – you’ll see them first!

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“The recently deceased key keeper and his pet cats had the responsibility of organizing all the keys and locks for the imperial dungeon. With the keeper gone, no one except his pets could pair the thousands of keys to their corresponding lock, but the feline family refused to go to work without their master. The Imperial Inventor, with permission from the court, reanimated the keeper’s skeleton with steam engines to keep the loyal pets satisfied until they find a better solution. The skeletal remains of the eldest cat was also reanimated to serve as a pack leader and a mobile key cutting machine.” ~ www.jamesngart.com


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James was recently interviewed on Brazil’s SteamCast; (he appears at around 4 minutes in, for those of you who want to cut to the chase!) http://steamcast.com.br/steampunk-steamcast-002/#For more in-depth info, please check out our [Featured Artist Bio Page]; you can also go to James’ site to see what he’s up to and pre-order prints.

Ay-leen the Peacemaker

Featured Presenter: Ay-leen the Peacemaker

Photo by Matt Laskowski

We have been following Ay-leen’s blog, Beyond Victoriana, for quite some time – with  the intelligent multicultural and specifically eastern-inspired bend of the discourse, we couldn’t resist bringing her in as a speaker for our Wild, Wild East theme in 2011.

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Ay-leen’s Beyond Victoriana blog has covered a miriad of interesting topics, from “Africans in Ancient China” to “Asians in the Americas” and she has a good deal to say about Boilerplate, by our Artist Guests of Honor Paul Guinan and Anina Bennet! She has featured several guest bloggers on her site and speaks with authority, compassion and a spirit of exploration that we find admirable.

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Ay-leen will be presenting at Nova Albion alongside Jaymee (Jha) Goh – check out Jaymee’s blog, Silver Goggles and her thoughts on The Golden Age of Islam on Beyond Victoriana.