Rashaad Newsome, Status Symbol #31 (2010) Continuing with our announcing the artists and technologists paired for Seven on Seven, our next team is Rashaad Newsome & Jeri Ellsworth. Rashaad Newsome once hacked a Nintendo Wii controller for real-time remixing of the performance "Shade Compositions" at The Kitchen. Jeri Ellsworth invented a Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick. Rashaad Newsome's works dismantles power structures one shiny block at a time. Using the equalizing force of sampling, he crafts compositions that frequently surprise in their associative potential and walk the tightrope between identity politics and abstraction.  Rashaad Newsome was born in New Orleans, Louisiana where he received a B.A. in Art History at Tulane University before studying Film at Film Video Arts in New York City.  Newsome has exhibited nationally and internationally at such creditable institutions and Galleries as: The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; PS1MoMA, New York, NY; Glassbox Gallery, Paris, France; ar/ge Kunst Galerie Museum, Bolzano, Italy; Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, Russia and Galerie Stadpark, Krems, Austria.  Recent awards include: 2011, Artist in Residence, Pilchuck Glass School, Seattle, Washington; 2010 The Urban Artist Initiative individual Artist Grant, UAI, New York, NY; 2009 Rema Hort Mann Foundation, Visual Arts Grant, New York, NY and 2009 BAC Community Arts Regrant, New York, NY.   Jeri Ellsworth (born 1974) is an American entrepreneur and self-taught computer chip designer. She is best known for creating a Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, in 2004, called Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV. That "computer in a joystick" could run 30 video games from the early 1980s, and was very popular during the 2004 Christmas season, at peak selling over 70,000 units in a single day via the QVC shopping channel. Ellsworth currently lives in Oregon.