What do a pasty, computer nerd and a genderqueer, post-punk artist have in common? On the surface, very little, but once you smoosh them together, putting them both on the board of directors for their local Hackerspace, amazing ideas start to bubble forth. From an electrified carnival fundraiser featuring a Jacob's Ladder, capacitor-bank explosions, burlesque and a handlebar-mustachioed busker MC to taking over one of the most famous mobile Hackerspace-vans.
While DIY, the maker movement, and body hacking are familiar topics to many Defcon attendees, as two individuals willing to ride the bleeding edge and avidly pursue new skills without bias, we hope to bring a unique perspective through our exceptional willingness to take unusual risks, learn new techniques for practically any tangent, and tie it together under an umbrella of collaboration and its importance in risk mitigation, idea-breeding, and support structure.
We've extensively put our own bodies and health at risk for learning, art, and thrill-seeking. We hope that the cautionary tales that come out of exploits provide both entertainment and warning. Most importantly, we'll talk about how additional viewpoint and input might have reduced risk, improved the outcomes, and drastically altered the experiences for the better.
Mar is not very good at sitting still. This leads to a variety of activity including art, more art, and occasionally a bit more art related stuff. When Mar is not art-ing, she cooks, gardens, tinkers with things she shouldn't, builds playhouses for her spoiled cats, and comes up with schemes to avoid gainful employment. Mar has won a DEFCON art contest, a DEFCON people's choice, and is now part of the DEFCON art team. In the pursuit of enhancing her understanding of her meatsack, Mar has spent 10 months on testosterone to better understand the male experience, implanted a finger-magnet (ultimately rejected), tattooed herself extensively by her own hand, and is currently using her boyfriend as a human guinea pig. About body modification, Mar firmly believes her body "is not a temple. It's a playground." Mar is also on the Board of Directors for the Denver Hackerspace, where she arts even more, and plans carnival fundraisers, as well as coordinating outside educational opportunities for the hackerspace.
Matt Yoder started firmly down the path of DIY when he found out he could make his own wooden pens. Thousands of dollars in equipment later, he has now outfitted his house for many aspects of small woodworking, electronics assembly, mosaic art, fine cooking, and his current tangent, soapmaking. He is also currently growing his own crop of Habanero, Jalapeno, and Cayenne peppers to further his homemade hot sauce pursuit. Matt is on the board of directors of his closest hackerspace, the Denver Hackerspace, while also maintaining membership in the next closest space, the Boulder Hackerspace, to further support the movement. One of his commitments to his hackerspace is to teach classes on pretty much any topic he thinks he can learn well enough before the class starts. Recently, Matt's motto has become one stolen from the "Self-Repair Manifesto": "If you can't fix it, you don't own it."