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clang

Pen and sword equally mighty for science fiction's Stephenson

LAS VEGAS -- It's been a double-whammy of stardom for the attendees of the 15th annual Black Hat USA conference. Many people here suffered a line more commonly associated with Comic-Con or CES to get into an exclusive performance by electronica and trance legend Paul Oakenfeld at Club PURE last night.

And then this morning, they rubbed the hangover from their eyes and the ringing from their ears to listen to an on-stage conversation with noted science fiction author Neal Stephenson in the Caesar's Palace convention center.

Stephenson spoke for almost an hour with Brian Krebs, the investigative journalist who writes about security. While they ranged from his childhood influences to his books to his non-writing projects, Stephenson's face lit up as they discussed his recent Kickstarter project, "Clang." … Read more

Shooting long-distance family portraits via Skype

John Clang lives in New York, thousands of miles from his Singaporean family. But that hasn't stopped him from posing in family portraits. He hasn't even needed a plane ticket.

Using a Webcam, the photographer and visual artist made live recordings of his family, transmitted them via Skype, and projected them onto a wall of his New York apartment. He then jumped into the frame, and his wife, Elin Tew, photographed him next to his telepresent family for a modern take on the traditional family portrait.

After trying his new long-distance portraiture method on his own family, Clang traveled from New York to Paris, London, Hong Kong, and other locales to create long-distance portraits of similarly scattered families. "Being Together," the resulting series, "documents and examines our condition of new-wave diaspora -- Singaporean families of various races and ethnicities grappling with the same predicament of separation through time and space," Clang says in an artist's statement. … Read more