Gershon Dublon (they/them) is an interaction researcher, electrical engineer, and artist working with sensing and mixed reality to empower human perception. Currently, Dublon is a Senior Researcher in the Advanced Technologies team at Sonos, focusing on applications of multimodal sensing to next-gen audio UX.
Dublon's doctoral work proposed systems and methods to comprehend massive, longitudinal sensor data and AI systems in the service of a sensory connection to self and environment. Dublon has published articles in the journal Presence, Scientific American, Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI), IEEE Sensors, New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), Body Sensor Networks (BSN), International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), and others, and recently contributed a chapter to the MIT Press book Swamps and the New Imagination. Dublon’s projects and studio productions have been exhibited in venues and festivals including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Mexico’s National Center for the Arts, Ars Electronica, and the Sundance Film Festival, and covered by the New York Times, Associated Press, BBC, NHK, and others.
In 2018, with artist Xin Liu, Dublon co-founded slow immediate, a creative engineering studio incubated by The New Museum’s NEW INC program and ONX Studio. As the firm's applied researcher, Dublon designed electronic controls for a microgravity robotic system that was launched into space, scent micro-delivery systems, experimental audio-haptic immersive experiences, and more. Dublon is also a board member of Living Observatory, a Boston-based non-profit organization focused on the future of wetland restoration. Dublon received an SM and PhD from the MIT Media Lab, where their research in the Responsive Environments Group was supervised by Prof. Joe Paradiso, and a BSEE from Yale.
Publications
Gershon Dublon and Xin Liu. 2021. The Wandering Mind: Planetary Scale Dreaming in Latent Spaces. To appear in International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME '21). Shanghai, China.
Gershon Dublon and Xin Liu. 2021. Living Sounds: Live Nature Sound as Online Performance Space. To appear in International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME '21). Shanghai, China.
Glorianna Davenport and Gershon Dublon. 2021. Swamp in Process. Book chapter in Nomeda Urbonas, Gediminas Urbonas and Kristupas Sabolius (eds.). Swamps and the New Imagination. MIT Press.
Clement Duhart, Gershon Dublon, Brian Mayton, Glorianna Davenport, Joseph A. Paradiso. 2019. Deep Learning for Wildlife Conservation and Restoration Efforts. In proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). Runner Up Best Paper Award!
Clement Duhart, Spencer Russell, Felix Michaud, Gershon Dublon, Brian Mayton, Glorianna Davenport, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2019. Deep Learning for Environmental Sensing Toward Social Wildlife Database, in 9th International Conference on Climate Informatics (CI), Paris, France.
Clement Duhart, Gershon Dublon, Brian Mayton, Glorianna Davenport, Joseph A. Paradiso, Thilina Surasinghe. 2019. Decoding the Soundscape Using Deep Learning Models: A System to Support Long-Term Acoustic Monitoring of Wildlife Occupancy with Citizen Science Input. In proceedings of the American Fisheries Society and The Wildlife Society (AFS & TWS).
Gershon Dublon. 2018. Sensor(y) Landscapes: Technologies for New Perceptual Sensibilities. Thesis: Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences.
Clement Duhart, Gershon Dublon, Brian Mayton, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2018. Deep Learning Locally Trained Wildlife Sensing in Real Acoustic Wetland Environment. In proceedings of the 2018 Springer International Conference on Signal Processing and Intelligent Recognition Systems (SIRS '18), Bangalore, India. Best Paper Award!
Brian Mayton, Gershon Dublon, Spencer Russell, Evan F. Lynch, Don Derek Haddad, Vasant Ramasubramanian, Clement Duhart, Glorianna Davenport and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2017. The Networked Sensory Landscape: Capturing and Experiencing Ecological Change Across Scales. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 26(2), MIT Press.
Don Derek Haddad, Gershon Dublon, Brian Mayton, Spencer Russell, Xiao Xiao, Ken Perlin, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2017. Resynthesizing Reality: Driving Vivid Virtual Environments from Sensor Networks. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2017 Talks (p. 51:1--51:2). Los Angeles, California: ACM.
Jifei Ou, Gershon Dublon, Chin-Yi Cheng, and Hiroshi Ishii. 2017. Cilllia: Method of 3D Printing Micro-Pillar Structures on Surfaces. In Menges A., Sheil B., Glynn R., & Skavara M. (Eds.), Fabricate 2017 (pp. 184-189). UCL Press, London, U.K.
Jifei Ou, Gershon Dublon, Chin-Yi Cheng, F. Heibeck, K. Willis, and Hiroshi Ishii. 2016. Cilllia: 3D Printed Micro-Pillar Structures for Surface Texture, Actuation and Sensing. In proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI '16), Santa Clara, CA.
Spencer Russell, Gershon Dublon, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2016. HearThere: Networked Sensory Prosthetics Through Auditory Augmented Reality. In proceedings of the 7th Augmented Human International Conference 2016 (ACM AH '16), Geneva, Switzerland.
Nan Zhao, Gershon Dublon, Artem Dementyev, Nicholas Gillian, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2015. EMI Spy: Harnessing Electromagnetic Interference for Low-Cost, Rapid Prototyping of Proxemic Interaction,” in proceedings of the 2015 IEEE Conference on Body Sensor Networks (BSN '15), Cambridge, MA.
Rebecca Kleinberger, Gershon Dublon, Tod Machover, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2015. PHOX Ears: Parabolic, Head-mounted, Orientable, eXtrasensory Listening Device. In proceedings of the the 2015 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME '15), Baton Rouge, LA.
Gershon Dublon, Edwina Portocarrero, V. Michael Bove, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2015. ListenTree: Audio Haptic Display in the Natural Environment. In CHI Interactivity, Seoul, South Korea.
Gershon Dublon and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2014. How a Sensor-Filled World Will Change Human Consciousness. Scientific American Magazine (July 2014 cover article).
Gershon Dublon and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2014. FingerSynth: Wearable Transducers for Exploring the Environment and Playing Music Everywhere. In proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME '14), London, U.K.
Gershon Dublon, Edwina Portocarrero, V. Michael Bove, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2014. ListenTree: Audio Haptic Display in the Natural Environment. In proceedings of the conference of the International Community for Auditory Display (ICAD '14), New York, NY.
Brian Mayton, Gershon Dublon, Palacios, S., and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2012. TRUSS: Tracking Risk with Ubiquitous Smart Sensing. In proceedings of the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Sensors (SENSORS '12), Tapei, Taiwan.
Gershon Dublon and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2012. Tongueduino: hackable, high-bandwidth sensory augmentation. In proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Austin, TX.
Brian Mayton, Gershon Dublon, Nick Joliat, and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2012. Patchwerk: Multi-User Network Control of a Massive Modular Synthesizer. In proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME '12), Ann Arbor, MI, 2012.
Gershon Dublon. 2011. Beyond the Lens: Communicating Context through Sensing, Video, and Visualization. S.M. Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Media Arts and Sciences.
Gershon Dublon, Laurel S. Pardue, Brian Mayton, Swartz, N., Nick Joliat, Hurst, P., and Joseph A. Paradiso. 2011. DoppelLab: Tools for Exploring and Harnessing Multimodal Sensor Network Data. In proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Sensors (SENSORS '11), Limerick, Ireland.
Thiago Teixeira, Gershon Dublon, and Andreas Savvides. 2010. A Survey of Human-Sensing: Methods for Detecting Presence, Count, Location, Track, and Identity. ACM Computing Surveys.
Thiago Teixeira, Deokwoo Jung, Gershon Dublon, and Andreas Savvides. 2009. PEM-ID: Identifying people by gait-matching using cameras and wearable accelerometers. In proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras (ICDSC '09).
Thiago Teixeira, Deokwoo Jung, Gershon Dublon, and Andreas Savvides. 2009. Recognizing activities from context and arm pose using finite state machines. In proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Smart Cameras (ICDSC '09).
Patents
Jifei Ou, Gershon Dublon, Chin-Yi Cheng, Liang Zhou, Hiroshi Ishii. Micro-Pillar Methods and Apparatus. 2016.
Teaching
• Human-Machine Symbiosis (MIT), Visiting Lecturer (inv. Dr. Pattie Maes)
• MAS.S67 Sensing Across Species (Lecturer, Teaching Assistant)
• MAS.S63 Silicon Menagerie: From Bioinspiration to Biomimetics (Lecturer, Teaching Assistant)
• MAS.837 Principles of Electronic Music Interfaces (Teaching Assistant)
• MAS.836 Sensor Technologies for Interactive Environments (Teaching Assistant)
• MAS.S61 Emerging Technologies in Location-Aware Computing (Teaching Assistant)
Invited Talks & Lectures
• EMPOWERING PERCEPTION, Les mercredis de STMS, IRCAM, Paris, France (2021)
• A DIGITAL PLANETARY SENSORIUM, EPIC Group, Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA (2020)
• EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION, In Conversation with Prof. Stavros Didakis, NYU Shanghai, China (2020)
• From Sensing to Hearing: Extending Perception through Audio Augmented Reality, International Symposium on Bone Conduction Hearing and Related Technologies (OSSEO), Keynote,
Miami, FL (2019)
• "Listening Machines and the Future of Extended Intelligence" National Hearing Conservation Association Annual Conference, Keynote, Dallas, TX (2019)
• "Sensory Landscapes: Extended Intelligence and a New Ecological Sensibility" Here Be Dragons, MIT Oceans Exploration Initiative, Boston, MA (2018)
• "Introduction to Sensory Substitution" Human Machine Symbiosis lectures (2016, 2017)
• "On Vibration and Being There" Listening Machines, Microsoft Research, NYC (2015)
• “Matter is Movement” Drink Salon, EMW Bookstore, Cambridge, MA (2015)
• “Being There” TEDx Warwick, U.K. (2014)
• "Sensory Presence and the Living Observatory" (with Glorianna Davenport), Information Design & Data Visualization Symposium, Northeastern University, Boston )(2013
• "Perception, Space, Architecture" Catalyst Conversations / Four Sculptors, SMFA, Boston, MA (2013)
• “Human I/O” WE Summit, Shenzhen, China (2013)
• "Culture of Invention” TechVisions, Chile (2011)
Selected Media
• Associated Press: "Live-streaming a marshland for fun and science," by Matt O'Brien, 2018
• Dezeen: MIT researchers create 3D-printed fur, opening up "a new design space", 2016
• BBC News: “The glove that makes sounds through touch” by BBC Click, 2015 (TV)
• Scientific American: "Extrasensory Perception” by Gershon Dublon and Joe Paradiso, 7/2014 (cover)
• WBUR Boston Public Radio: “MIT Shows How A Tree Can Be A Documentary” by Erin Trahan, 2014
• NHK Japan: DoppellLab sensor browser, 2013 (TV)
• New Scientist: “Tongue-tingling interface lets you taste data” by Hal Hodson, 2013.
• New York Times: “A Guinea Pig’s Night at the Theater” by Dave Itzkoff, 2012.
• Gizmodo: “Sleep No More: What It’s Like Inside the World’s Most Interactive Play” by Leslie Horn, 2012.
• Wired: “Control a Giant Modular Synthesizer From the Comfort of Your Home” by Geeta Dayal, 2012.
Selected Exhibitions
• MAXlive | Wandering Mind | New York Live Arts, New York, NY | 2021
• ARS ELECTRONICA | Wandering Mind Performance Series | Linz, Austria | 2021
• MAKE ME A SIGNAL | Radio broadcast curated by Shu Lea Cheang | Paris & Linz | 2021
• YOU AND AI | You Start to Wonder Whether It's a Dream | Athens, Greece | 2021
• SPRINT Milano | Living Sounds | Milan, Italy | 2020
• Points North Institute | Living Sounds: Maine Island | Whitehead Island, ME | 2020
• ARS ELECTRONICA | The Wandering Mind | Linz, Austria and online | 2020
• CURRENTS Festival | Living Sounds | Santa Fe, NM | 2020
• CURRENTS Festival (accepted) | Living Distance VR | Santa Fe, NM | 2020 (canceled)
• SXSW (accepted) | Living Distance VR | Austin, TX | 2020 (canceled)
• Sundance Film Festival | Living Distance VR | Park City, UT | 2020
• Broedplaats Lely | otherabilities | PHOX ears | Amsterdam | 2019
• Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) | LISTENTREE | Camden, ME | 2018
• Museum of Fine Arts (MFA Boston) | Hot Milks Foundation (series) | Boston, MA | 2017
• Centre Pompidou | Cilllia | “Mutations-Creations” exhibition | Paris | 2017
• CHI Interactivity | ListenTree | Seoul, South Korea | 2015
• National Center for the Arts | El Bosque de Los Murmullos | Mexico City | 2014
• Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) | ListenTree Hexagram | Montreal | 2014
• Performance Studies | The Dark Sound of Sexual Differentiation | Stanford University | 2013
• McKittrick Hotel (Punchdrunk) | Extending Sleep No More | New York, NY | 2012
• MIT Museum | Patchwerk: Internet-Connected Modular Synth |Cambridge, MA | 2012
• MIT | My New Friend SU (with Robert Wilson) | Cambridge, MA | 2011
• Ars Electronica | DoppelLab: Origin | Linz, Austria | 2011
• MIT Story 2.0 | Flurry |Cambridge, MA | 2010
• MIT Media Lab 25th Anniversary | semblance | Cambridge, MA | 2010
• MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies | The ReOrder of Things | Cambridge, MA | 2009
• Yale University Art Gallery | The Small Figure 3 (for solo bassoon) | New Haven, CT | 2008
Awards and Fellowships
• MAXMachina, Residency & Commission (2020-2021)
• European ARTificial Intelligence Lab, International Residency & Commission (2019-2021)
• ONX Studio, Member (2020-2022)
• Pioneer Works, Technology Resident (2019-2020)
• NEW INC, Creative Experiments Program (2018-2020)
• MIT Center for Terrestrial Sensing (CTS) Fellow (2014-2016)
• MIT Energy Initiative Fellow (2011)
• MIT ENEL Fellow (2010)
• Yale University Edward O. Lanphier Memorial Prize in Electrical Engineering (2008)