Artists Statement n.a.

• Jessica Parris Westbrook is an Associate Professor in the School of Design, College of Computing and Digital Media (CDM) at DePaul University, Chicago, USA, (2016) where she teaches courses in UxD, HCI, Games, Media Arts, Creativity, and Semiotics. Prior to joining DePaul’s School of Design, Westbrook was a tenured Associate Professor of Contemporary Practices and Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Chicago, IL (2010-2016) where she also served as the Director of Technology Initiatives. [sourcce: linked-in]
• Paige Treebridge (she/her) is a new media artist and designer whose work has been commissioned by the National Security Agency (NSA), Rhizome, Turbulence Net Art, and Spaces Gallery. Since 2010, she has worked in collaboration with Jess Westbrook as Channel TWo [CH2], a Chicago, USA, based media studio that produces critical playware. Her projects have been exhibited/screened in museums, galleries, and culture centers nationally and internationally and can be found in the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY and The Kinsey Institute Art Collection at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. She and Westbrook co-founded Divergent Design Lab in 2016. Divergent Design Lab (DDL) is located in the College of Computing and Digital Media at DePaul University in Chicago, IL USA. Reality is highly malleable. Design can shape reality, and designers and technologists are responsible for doing so ethically. We consider identity, privacy, and security from an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective. We investigate vulnerability and exploitation, new media art, user experience design, and social psychology paradigms. divergentdesignlab.org/index.php