On April 13, 2010, I had the great pleasure of interviewing a local Santa Cruz historian and curator of visual language and  visualization pioneer,  Bonnie DeVarco. Exploring the emergence of Visualization Convergence for Collective, Connective, Distributed Intelligence, Bonnie is  a writer, researcher, archivist, futurist and curator for the mirror worlds of Cyberspace and Earth.  She will give the first talk on Sunday, April 18th, at the one day event, Design Renaissance at the Dream Inn.

She began her training at UCSC in Cultural Anthropology. During this time in Santa Cruz, she had the opportunity to see Buckminster Fuller speak and lecture. We  spoke of Buckminster Fuller’s influence on Bonnie’s work beginning as an undergraduate, and her later position as the first posthumous archivist for Fuller’s archive from 1989-1995.  She continues to work with Fuller’s collection which now resides at Stanford (SULAIR) as she completes her book, Invisible Architecture II.  Bonnie  is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Stanford’s Media X Research Network and is a founding adviser with the international traveling exhibition “Places & Spaces: Mapping Science”  and a founding adviser to BFI’s Buckminster Fuller Challenge, a yearly competition with a $100,000 prize.

Locals, Helen and Newton Harrison, are in the 2010 BFI Challenge semifinals with their work entitled “Tibet is the High Ground, 3rd Variation”.  They will be the last presenters at the 2010 Design Renaissance event talking about the San Lorenzo watershed.

From the past (her work in virtual reality with Bruce Damer in the early 90s) to the future helping to usher in a new understanding of the power of visualization technologies, Bonnie only works on what has not yet been done, a true pioneer.  We spoke of her belief that the approach to our future involves a shift in understanding time and space (i.e. see Antikythera mechanism). She is also inspired by the megalithic cultures of both the past and present.  She believes that ancient wisdom can help us today as we face global warming and life sustainability.