In-person

"Project Aurora" Panel Discussion with Ginny Ruffner, Ed Fries, and Wanda Gregory

2655 NW Market Street, Seattle, WA 98107

206.789.5707

Learn about the making of Project Aurora from the creators—artist Ginny Ruffner, technologist Ed Fries, and scholar Wanda Gregory—in a panel discussion moderated by Chief Curator, Leslie Anderson. This program celebrates the National Nordic Museum's acquisition of this important work of art.

Speakers

Ginny Ruffner

Ginny Ruffner is a Seattle artist, trained at the University of Georgia as a painter, graduating with honors and an M.F.A.Ruffner has had 90 solo shows, several hundred group shows, and her work is in 59 permanent museum and public collections around the world.
Bio

Ginny Ruffner

Ginny Ruffner is a Seattle artist, trained at the University of Georgia as a painter, graduating with honors and an M.F.A.Ruffner has had 90 solo shows, several hundred group shows, and her work is in 59 permanent museum and public collections around the world.

Seattle public art installations include a 30-foot tall kinetic water feature downtown and a permanent installation in the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park. Recent Augmented Reality projects include ‘Reforestation of the Imagination’ was exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum in DC; Accompanied by a book, it is currently traveling around the US. And the upcoming Augmented Reality Walking Tour at the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) facility at Hanford WA. She has written two books and been the subject of an award winning, full-length documentary titled “A Not So Still Life, the Ginny Ruffner Story”. In 2016 Ruffner founded the non-profit SOLA to recognize female artists. Ruffner has lectured and taught extensively and has served as an artist in residence numerous times at schools and universities around the world.
Ed Fries

Ed Fries created his first video games for the Atari 800 in the early 1980s. He joined Microsoft in 1986 and spent the next ten years as one of the early developers of Excel and Word.
Bio

Ed Fries

Ed Fries created his first video games for the Atari 800 in the early 1980s. He joined Microsoft in 1986 and spent the next ten years as one of the early developers of Excel and Word.

In 1996 he left the Office team to pursue his passion for interactive entertainment and created Microsoft Game Studios. Over the next eight years he grew the team from 50 people to over 1200, published more than 100 games including more than a dozen million+ sellers, co-founded the Xbox project, and made Microsoft one of the leaders in the video game business. In 2004, Ed retired as a Microsoft Vice President and began working as a board member and advisor with entrepreneurs in the video game business as well as serving on the board of many non-profit organizations including the International Game Developers Association, the Pacific Science Center and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2019 Ed joined with some friends to launch 1Up Ventures, a venture fund to support independent game developers. Since then, 1Up Ventures has made more than 70 investments in game development companies around the world.
Dr. Wanda Gregory

Dr. Wanda Gregory is a faculty member at the University of Washington, Bothell campus. Before her academic career, she worked in the game industry for companies such as Sierra Online, Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, and Microsoft Xbox.
Bio

Dr. Wanda Gregory

Dr. Wanda Gregory is a faculty member at the University of Washington, Bothell campus. Before her academic career, she worked in the game industry for companies such as Sierra Online, Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, and Microsoft Xbox.

Dr. Gregory holds a doctorate in Human Sciences from University College Dublin, an MBA from the University of Washington Foster School of Business, and an MA in Communications from the University of Washington, where she also worked on VR/AR at the Human Interface Technology Lab (HitL).

In Fall 2022 and 2023, she was a Fulbright Scholar and Specialist in Iceland. She will be returning to Iceland again this fall to teach courses in computer science with a focus on AI, along with ethics and emerging technologies. Her work in both industry and academia centers on exploring innovative ways to use games, avatars, and technologies like AI, VR/AR, and wearables to advance and transform health and medicine.
Leslie Anne Anderson

Leslie Anne Anderson is Chief Curator at the National Nordic Museum, a mayoral-appointed Seattle Arts Commissioner, and chair of Seattle’s Public Art Advisory Committee.
Bio

Leslie Anne Anderson

Leslie Anne Anderson is Chief Curator at the National Nordic Museum, a mayoral-appointed Seattle Arts Commissioner, and chair of Seattle’s Public Art Advisory Committee.

Prior to her arrival in the Pacific Northwest, she held curatorial positions at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts/University of Utah and Indianapolis Museum of Art. She has been an American Scandinavian-Foundation Fellow and a Fulbright scholar at the University of Copenhagen. She has organized dozens of exhibitions with collaborators like the Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery and Sweden’s Nationalmuseum, published in numerous scholarly journals, and acquired over 1,000 works of fine and decorative art for collections in her purview. Recently, she was also the commissioning curator of Jónsi: FLÓÐ and co-curator of the traveling exhibition Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century. Leslie is the recipient of the international Association of Art Museum Curators Award for Excellence (First Place) in 2018, the Utah Museums Association Award for Excellence in 2020, and the University of Florida Alumni Association’s “40 Gators Under 40” honor in 2023.