Biographies
Romy Achituv (USA) creates work in both “New” and “Old” Media. Most recent projects include installations and experimental work exhibited at the InterCommunication Center (ICC), Tokyo, Japan, Postmasters Gallery, NYC, European Media Art Festival (EMAF), Osnabrück, and Media City Seoul 2000. Most recent grants and awards include two years’ consecutive project support from the Greenwall Foundation, a grant from The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, an OLB Media Art Prize at European Media Art Festival 2000, and a 2000 I.D. Interactive Media Design Review award.
Marie-Luise Angerer (A) born 1958, and attended the Art Institute for Media in Cologne. Her publications include: Body options. Körper.Spuren.Medien.Bilder., Vienna 1999; The Body of Gender (Ed.), Vienna 1995; and numerous works dealing with media theory, art theory, and new technologies with particular emphasis on the body, gender and sexuality.
Bruce Bagemihl (USA) is a biologist, linguist, and author. Previously on the faculty of the University of British Columbia and a consultant to Microsoft, Bagemihl is an internationally recognized scholar whose interdisciplinary work explores the frontiers of language, biology, gender, and sexuality. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed book, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. Bagemihl holds degrees in biology and linguistics/cognitive science, and has published widely on subjects ranging from zoology to cognitive ethnomusicology to queer theory.
Robin Baker (UK) was Reader in Zoology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester from 1980–1996. Since leaving academic life in 1996, he has concentrated on his career in writing, lecturing and broadcasting. He has published over one hundred scientific papers and fourteen books. These include the international bestseller Sperm Wars, which was based on his own original research on human sexuality, and Sex in the Future. His work and ideas on the evolution of human behaviour have been featured in many television and radio programmes around the world.
Alexander Balanescu (UK). Romanian-born Alexander Balanescu finished his studies at Julliard School, New York. He was a member of the Arditti Quartet from 1983 to 1987. In 1987 he formed the Balanescu Quartet, with the goal to create much more accessible and communicative new music. He gained an enviable reputation as a truly interdisciplinary artist—a composer and improviser as well as a performer. He has collaborated with musicians from such wide-ranging fields as John Lurie, Gavin Bryars,Michael Nyman, Jack de Johnette, John Surman, Andy Shepperd and Carla Bley. In his quest to reconnect with his Eastern European roots, and using folk music as a source of inspiration, Balanescu created the album Luminitza, which combines a personal and political level in its discussion of the changes after 1989.
Be aka Bernd Holzhausen. 1991–1996: Kommunikations Gestaltung, FH Hildesheim/Holzminden, Germany. 1993–1998: free art director and illustrator. 1996 to present time: addicted to icontown and all its citizens, updates and visitors. 1998: cofounded kd-e (keimkraft design). 1998 to present time: creative direction, project management at keimkraft design. Today head of design and owner of keimkraft design (kd-e) and founder of be-e.
Guy Ben-Ary (IL), manager of the Image Analysis and Acquisition Facility (IAAF), Department of Anatomy and Human Biology, University of Western Australia. Specializing in microscopy and biological imaging. Trained in programming and web development.
Stefan Betke aka POLE (D). Structurally, the music of Pole is based on abstract, irregular rhythms created by a defect, analogue sound filter Betke uses, namely the “Walldorf-4-Pole” filter. Quoting the production methods of Jamaican dub—taking monotonous rhythms out of context by using echoes and repetitive loops—Betke has put out three albums, titled “1,” “2” and now, “3.”
Isabella Bordoni (I), born 1962. Poet, theatre director, performer. Co-founder in 1985 of Giardini Pensili (theater company and media lab). She presents her texts in theater pieces, concerts and in telematic and networked projects. She wrote several hoerspiele – mostly performed live-produced by SFB, YLE, RNE, ORF and RAI. In 1987 she was artist-in-residence at the Djerassi Foundation, San Francisco.
Kaucyila Brooke (USA) is a Los Angeles based artist who produces photo and text narratives for installation and publication, photographs, critical texts and works in video art. She has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at Art Resources Transfer, New York; L.A.C.P.S., Los Angeles; SF Camerawork and Eye Gallery, San Francisco; Beacon Street, Chicago; Installation, San Diego; and A Space, Toronto. Her visual work and writing has appeared in Eikon, the American film and video journal, Jump Cut, Deborah Bright’s The Passionate Camera, and Diane Neumaier’s Reframings: New American Feminist Photographers.
Raoul Cannemeijer and Laurence Desarzens, founder of Boombox. Since 1996 BoomBox.net has streamed the best of club culture on the net. Boombox.net pull over 80 netcasts per year, and with streaming media becoming the new darling of the net economy, BoomBox.net proves with over 200‚000 viewers a month that the beat goes and will go on and on. But what‘s the point? For the 2 founders Raoul Cannemeijer and Laurence Desarzens it’s a way to show the vitality of club culture from anywhere anytime, an alternative to mainstream entertainment, its ever-changing mosaic of styles, constantly evolving for our aural pleasure.
Oron Catts (AUS), research fellow at the Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Lab, Massachusetts General Hospital,Harvard Medical School. Coordinator of SymbioticA: The Art & Science Collaborative Research Lab, Department of Anatomy & Human Biology, the University of Western Australia. Trained in product design, and specialized in the future interaction of design and biologically derived technologies.
cHmAn: Founded in 1998 by Sebastien Kochman and Bernard Candau, cHmAn is a young and innovative company specializing in the production of Internet entertainment programs. Following their numerous successes in on-line entertainment (Rave,Winiped, Zouga TV, The Space Boys), cHmAn presents Banja. Banja represents a step forward in on-line gaming with a multimedia environment and playability never before achieved on the web.
Joe Davis (USA), born 1950. Painting, sculpture, and public art projects; computer graphics; laser teleoperator systems; electron beam construction and applications; video telecommunications; small, self-contained space shuttle payload systems; extensive research and practice in molecular biology and bioinformatics for the production of genetic databases and new biological art forms; teaching experience in MIT architecture graduate program and in undergraduate painting and mixed media at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Carl Djerassi (USA, born in Vienna), writer and professor of chemistry at Stanford University. He is one of the few American scientists to have been awarded both the National Medal of Science (in 1973, for the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive—“the Pill”) and the National Medal of Technology. For the past decade, he has turned to fiction writing, mostly in the genre of “science-in-fiction.” In addition to five novels and an autobiography (The Pill, Pygmy Chimps, and Degas’ Horse), he has recently embarked on a trilogy of “science-in-theatre” plays of which the first is An Immaculate Misconception. He is also the founder of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program near Woodside, California. http://www.djerassi.com
dominoa project group (A). Petra Harml-Prinz, Graphic artist; studied at the Linz Institute for Design; free-lancer since 1984.—Angelika Mittelmann, Computer expert; employed by VOEST-ALPINE STAHL LINZ GmbH in organizational development, innovation and knowledge management projects; lecturer at the University of Linz.—Renate Plöchl studied German language and literature in Salzburg and Berlin; since 1986, active in the production of artistic and cultural events; projects dealing with the “feminine script.”—Ilse Wagner studied German language and literature in Salzburg; workes as a teacher, and on numerous theater projects as director and puppeteer.—Anja Westerfrölke, artist, studied in Salzburg, Linz and Lodz, Poland; spatial installations, objects, video films, multimedia and Internet projects; exhibitions in Austria and abroad.
Wolfgang Dorninger (A), born 1960, attented the Institute for Applied Arts in Vienna where he completed the Master Program for Visual Media Design. He is also a musician, playing in the groups Monochrome Bleu, Josef K. Noyce and Wipe Out. He has composed numerous musical works for film, theater and dance. He operates the Sonic Sound Studio in Linz.
Katie Egan (USA), born 1972. Freelance photography; laboratory assistance in art and molecular biology and microbiology; gallery construction, installation, coordination and management; production assistance, audio-visual support, and technical demonstrations for an international lecture series in art and biology.
Kodwo Eshun (UK), born 1968. Contributing Editor, i-D Magazine. Contributes to Dazed and Confused, The Wire, Artbyte, Spin, Groove. Author of “More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction” (Quartet, 1998). Curated “Dub Housing for Remake Remodel”, Steirischer Herbst, 1999. Lectures on Electronic Music, Media Theory and Science Fiction.
etoy is a successful incubator officially incorporated in 1994. The etoy.CORPORATION is owned by international art collectors, venture capitalists, the etoy.MANAGEMENT and 1800 TOYWAR.soldiers. etoy is a typical internet early mover (online since 1994) and developed rapidly into a controversial market leader in the field of experimental internet entertainment. etoy blurs the lines between art, corporate identity, fashion, technology, community research and business to create massive impact on global markets and culture. The “digital hijack” ( www.hijack.org 1996) was the first global etoy.HIT (1.5 million hostages on the internet) followed by spectacular stunts such as “protected by etoy” and “TOYWAR” ( www.toywar.com 1999/2000). Since 1998 etoy.TANKS (12 meter long standardized windowless shipping containers) have formed the mobile and multifunctional etoy.OFFICE-SYSTEM.
exonemo. In 1996 Kensuke Sembo and Yae Akaiwa formed “exonemo” when they detonated on impact with the WWW, feeling the infinitely great possibilities in new senses of distance and dynamics. The have continued to publish their art on the Web ever since, still after that new feeling.
Joanne Finkelstein (USA) is a sociologist from the Chicago School. She has a doctorate from the University of Illinois, USA, and teaches social theory and cultural studies at The University of Sydney in Australia. Her research is in consumer trends, fashion, food and mass entertainment. She is the author of Dining Out: a Sociology of Modern Manners; The Fashioned Self; Slaves of Chic, and After A Fashion.
Bernhard Fleischmann (A), born in 1975, was trained as a pianist and drummer, and played drums in the bands “speed is essential” and “sore!.” the cd my idea of fun has been launched at venues throughout Austria, including szene wien, wiener chelsea, flex, schlachthof wels and kapu linz.
Masaki Fujihata (J), born 1956; Board member of Japan Animation Film Association, since 1987 Member of ASIFA, since 1990 Associate Professor, Faculty of Environmental Information at Keio University. Since 1998 Professor at Keio University, Faculty of Environmental Information; since 1999 Professor at National University of Fine Art and Music, Inter Media Art course. Masaki Fujihata was awarded among others a Golden Nica by the Prix Ars Electronica jury for his entry Global Interior Project in the category Interactive Art (1996). Together with Kiyoshi Furukawa and Wolfgang Münch he developed Small Fish.
Veena Gowda (India), is a graduate from the National Law School of India University. Presently, she is practising law in Bombay and is also associated with Majlis, a legal and cultural center for women. The focus of her work is to create spaces for women within the legal system and evolve a feminist jurisprudence. Towards this aim she is also engaged in legal research and paralegal training.
Reinhold Grether aka agent.NASDAQ. PhD in economics, politics, and aesthetics. Numerous publications on the Net, among them World Revolution After Flusser and Net.art and Global Imaginary. Holds an assistant professorship with Constance University to handle the project “net.science.” The German version of “How the etoy Campaign Was Won” was published by the netzine “Telepolis” on February 9, 2000, the English version not until February 25, 2000.
h0l aka Simon Carless (UK), founder and label-boss of Monotonik, an entirely Internet-based “virtual record label” that’s been releasing electronica online, as freely downloadable MOD and MP3 files, for almost 5 years. He is also a columnist and advisory board member for Gamasutra, the noted computer games industry online resource. Simon collaborated with the band Wiggle from Tokyo.
Chris Haring (A), choreographer, dancer; studied music and exercise for motor coordination at the Institute of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna; advanced training in New York. He has worked with DV8 (Lloyd Newson), Pilottanzt, Nikolais/Luis Dance Cie., Nigel Charnock, Tanz Hotel, Willi Dorner and many others, performing in Europe, the US, South America and Japan. Since 1993, he has been active as a choreographer.
Ursula Hentschläger (A) has been doing interdisciplinary work since 1990 in the media theory (online interviews since 1992) and literature, particularly science fiction and Zeitbilder (“vignettes of the times”). In 1999, she and Zelko Wiener founded the ZEITGENOSSEN as an independent artistic duo focusing on the development of Web projects.
Dieter Huber (A), born in 1962; 1980–85 attended the Mozarteum in Salzburg, studying stage set design, costume design, and painting for the theater; his works are held in prominent collections including the Caixa de Pensions Madrid-Barcelona, Saatchi Collection London, and DG Bank Frankfurt; has collaborated on many exhibitions and projects in public spaces in Austria and abroad.
Rupert Huber (A), born 1967, composer, musician, studied music and electronic music, and has been active in the area of (electronic) music since 1982. 1988 Recognition Prize of the Province of Lower Austria, 1992 Patronage Prize “die ganze Woche,” Culture Prize of the City of Baden. Guest of DAAD / Berlin 1997 (together with Sam Auinger).
Catherine Ikam (F) has been known for her innovative work in video, photography and electronic sculptures exploring the concept of identity and artificiality, the notion of self and otherness in terms of relationships between real space and the virtual word. Her work has been exhibited extensively at such institutions as PS1 New York, Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, Massachussets Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Cité des Nouvelles Technologies, Montreal, Kunstverein Bonn, Tate Gallery Liverpool, Ontario Science Museum, Power Plant, Toronto.
Jan Jelinek aka “gramm” (D) born 1971, studies philosophy/sociology at the Technischen Universität und Humboldt Universität, Berlin. He is known for his four highly sought after EP-Releases as “farben” on Klang Elektronik. personal rock is Jan’s album-debut.
jomasounds (A) formed in 1997 out of a variety of different network and music activities, initially conceived as an audio network base; in 1998, expansion into an Internet radio station cooperating with counterparts in Canada and Great Britain; radio programming on an irregular basis featuring local DJs; in 1999, based on the audio base idea in the Internet, development proceeded further to include a DJ sound system as well as work on signal processing architecture.
Istvan Kantor (USA) is a media artist/producer, active in many fields, performance, robotics, installation, sound, music, video and new media. His work has been shown at many major new media venues and performance festivals throughout North America and Europe. His main subjects are the decay of technology and the struggle of the individual in technological society. His work has been described by the media as rebellious, anti-authoritarian, intellectually assaultive as well as technically innovative and highly experimental.
Kenji Komoto (J), born 1975. 1996–2000 studies at the University of Osaka, Art Department.
Lackluster aka Distance. Helsinki’s Esa Ruoho has been releasing lush ambient idm-techno on the label for some years now, and recently got signed to release 12”s and a CD in the UK on Focus/DeFocus (run by ex.Clear and Rephlex honcho Clair!) because his music was heard via Monotonik.
Lawine Torrèn (A) is a group of dancers, actors,media artists, technicians and musicians under the artistic direction of Hubert Lepka. He has worked with Lawine Torrèn since 1989 on contemporary theatrical events staged throughout Europe. From their place of origin in Wiestal near Salzburg, personal mechanized narratives take shape for remarkable locations and dramatic spaces.
Andrew Leonard (USA) is a senior technology writer at Salon.com. His work has appeared in Wired, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, the New York Times Book Review, the Far Eastern Economic Review and numerous other publications. He is the author of Bots: The Origin of New Species, and has been covering the intersection of technology and culture on the Net since 1993.
Leonardo. In 1967, Leonardo was founded to provide an international channel of communication between artists and others who use science and developing technologies in their creations. Leonardo covers media, music, kinetic art, performance art, language, environmental and conceptual art, computers and artificial intelligence, and legal, economic, and political aspects of art as these areas relate to the arts, tools, and ideas of contemporary science and technology.
Golan Levin (USA) is interested in creating artifacts and experiences which explore supple new modes of nonverbal expression. He is a recent graduate of the MIT Media Laboratory, where he studied with John Maeda in the Aesthetics and Computation Group. Prior to MIT he worked at Interval Research Corporation on the design of tools and toys for multimedia play and production.
Jason E. Lewis (USA). Studies of philosophy and computer science. He is working on dynamic poetry, experimental typography, dynamic interaction and computation. he has received commissions from Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno and has been featured in I.D. Magazine, Upper & Lower Case, Ctheory, etc.
Lo-ser aka Christoph Kummerer, born in 1974. He is currently joining the group effort to establish the label pilot.fm which will be a “kind of mpeg label with open source midi music type thing.” Most recently he wrote pocketnoise for Nintendo Gameboy, the first cartridge to turn your Gameboy into an experimental music unit (read: gadget).
John Maeda (USA) is Sony Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Associate Professor of Design and Computation at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he directs the Aesthetics & Computation Group (ACG). A major component of the ACG’s efforts involves outreach to the design and art community in the form of workshop and events that introduce the underlying concepts of computing technology, as exemplified in the ongoing Design By Numbers project. A collection of work by Maeda is visible at http://www.maedastudio.com.
MAIZ is an association unaffiliated with any political party or government agency; since 1994, it has dealt primarily with the problems faced by female labor migrants and the situation in Austria of female sex workers originally from other continents. MAIZ is active in the following areas: counseling and follow-up work in social, legal and labor market policy questions, prophylactic health care measures for sex workers, education and public relations, cultural involvement, and work with members of the second generation (children and young people). http://www.servus.at/maiz
Xin Mao (PR China) started his medical training in West China University of Medical Sciences, Chengdu, China in 1978. His post-doctoral training was at Hokkaido University, Japan, from 1989 to 1990, in the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, UK, from 1993 to 1996, and in the Institute of Cancer, UK, from 1996 to 1999. Since 1983 he has been actively working in the fields of human genetics, cancer cytogenetics, and genetic ethics. Now he is the director of the Eurasia Millennium Limited, an UKbased company which is involved in the promotion of scientific and cultural exchanges between China and the UK.
Marta de Menezes (P) degree in Fine Arts from the University of Lisbon. For some years Marta has been working in the interface between art and biology, also known as bio-art. Residency at the Institute of Evolutionary and Ecological Sciences at the University of Leiden. She is currently completing an M.St. at the University of Oxford on the relationship between art and science. Alongside this theoretical work, Marta de Menezes is developing new artistic projects in bio-art.
Natacha Merrit (USA), born 1977, studied law in Paris, but quit after three months. Her law-studies had taken a back-seat to a part-time job—photographing models. With her first digital camera and no formal knowledge about photography, she began to discover the thrill of taking sexy pictures. Back in the US, she started taking pictures of her own sexual encounters and publishing them on the Internet: www.digital-diaries.com.
Sergio Messina (I), born 1959, started working in radio as soon as the pirate radio movement bloomed in Italy (1975); in 1980 he went to work for Radio Città Futura where, he worked as a dj, as an engineer and as an artist. In 1985 he made his first broadcast for the national radio of Italy (Rai) and was broadcasted by Audiobox (the station’s radioart program). Since 1990 he works exclusively on his projects wich involve music (making and production) and multimedia, as well as radio.
MIX: The New York Lesbian&Gay Experimental Film/Video Festival seeks to integrate the lesbian, gay and experimental film communities by creating an innovative festival that serves as a home for both established and emerging makers while promoting and encouraging the awareness,making and preservation of work that challenges and expands our vision of media and the world. For more info visit www.mixnyc.org
Mouthwatering. We once jokingly called our clubnight an audiovisual barbeque, and in a way this stuck. Mouthwatering means music, visuals and food in ever-changing sequence, combination and flavour, yet with always the same intensity and freshness. Mouthwatering was born out of the idea of having a monthly clubnight, a party with variations in music, cuttingedge visuals bound to blow your mind and good vegetarian clubgrub each time …
Klaus Obermaier (A), media artist and composer, has created and directed projects such as the Linzer Klangwolken 1998 job-Opera and 2000 actOpera, and the opening event of Ars Electronica 2000. He has collaborated with Ensemble Modern, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ornette Coleman, John Scofield, Peter Erskine, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Tänzern des Nederlands Dans Theaters, Chris Haring and many others.
Craig T. Palmer (USA) is an Instructor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He has been evaluating alternative evolutionary explanations of rape for fifteen years. His other research interests include religion, altruism, and ecology.
Casey Raes (USA) received a bachelor’s degree in Science and Design from the University of Cincinnati (1996). Since June 1999 he has been a research assistant in the Aesthetics Computation Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, and is working in a combined domain of design and computer science. He is engaged in research, creating experimental works that combine image, sound, and interaction in the creation of adaptive compositions.
Heimo Ranzenbacher (A), born 1958, journalist, art critic, theorist and artist. Various publications in catalogues and specialized journals; diverse addresses at symposia. In 1993, he founded TXTD.sign, a studio for aesthetic services. Diverse art projects (Klang Figur, 1991; Lichtzeichen, Utopie Kunststraße, 1994; Sonderartikel Esc, 1995; Ipzentrum, 1997; Liquid Space, 1999; Wet_Ware, 2000).
Radio FRO 105.0 MHz (A) is a free, non-commercial station that works according to the open access concept and has been broadcasting on-the-air since September 1998. Over 300 programming providers turn out over 100 radio shows a month. Areas of emphasis are informational and public service programs by NGOs and local initiatives, foreign language shows, a cultural and educational channel, broadcasts for young people as well as seniors, and a variety of music programming.
raster-noton (D) is a label cooperation for electronic music. In 1999 both artist labels Rastermusic and Noton.archiv für ton und nichtton merged. Rastermusic was founded by Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider in 1996. Their main interest was to give repetitive minimal-music following the direction of pop. Noton.archiv fuer ton und nichtton was founded by Carsten Nicolai more as a platform for conceptional and experimental-related projects in music, art and science.
Jens Reich (D), born in 1939 and grew up in East Germany; 1956–62, studied medicine at Humboldt University in Berlin; 1962–64, practiced as a physician; 1964–68, studied biochemistry at the University of Jena; 1968–90, staff member of the Academy of Sciences, specializing in the use of computers in biomedicine; 1989, co-founder of the NEUES FORUM; 1990, representative in parliament of the NEUES FORUM (Bündnis90/Grüne coalition); since 1992, affiliated with the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine as chief of the bioinformatics working group; since 1998, professor at the Humboldt University School of Medicine in Berlin, and staff physician at the university clinic.
Marina Rosenfeld (USA) trained as a concert pianist and composer, and works primarily with turntables running as a parallel array. She prepares records, uses small samplers and sound effects devices to string together loops that, when mixed together in additive fashion, tower like waves. Her first CD came out in 1999 on the Charhizma label (Vienna).
Joshua Eli Schachter. Cutting a swath of destruction wherever it turns its malignant gaze, memepool.com has been at the forefront of the new media revolution. Formed by Joshua Schachter in 1998 as an experiment in collective, editorially-guided content selection, memepool has expanded to include a hundred contributors, two editors, and has a daily readership of over eight thousand people.
Georg Schöfbänker (A). Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Salzburg. 1987–93, research projects at the University of Salzburg’s Senate Institute for Political Science, focusing mainly on public policy issues including nuclear policy and the history of nuclear weapons, risk analysis, arms control, and nuclear proliferation. 1996–98, scholar on the staff of the Austrian Center for the Study of Peace and Conflict Solution in Schlaining. Consultant and political advisor on scientific issues.
Christine Schöpf (A). Since 1989 head of the department art and science at the ORF Upper Austrian Regional Studio, focusing on Ars Electronica and Prix Ars Electronica. Since 1979 in a number of different capacities, she has made key contributions to the development of Ars Electronica. Together with G. Stocker artistic co-director of Ars Electronica since 1996.
Science Education Team (A). The science education team is a group of young scientists of the University of Salzburg who have taken up the task of presenting complicated sciences in a understandable way. The focal points of their work are ecology, genetic engineering an electron microscopy. The work for Ars Electronica 2000 is being led by Reinhard Nestelbacher and supported by Torsten Klade, Robert Lindner, Gernot Bergthaler, Barbara Loidl, and Gerlinde Schnitzhofer.
David Small (USA) is a doctoral candidate at the MIT Media Laboratory where his research focuses on the display and manipulation of visual information.The design of complex information environments has led him to construct novel physical interfaces for manipulating virtual objects. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Print, Communication Arts, the Atlantic Monthly, ID magazine’s 42nd Annual Design Review and the book Information Architects. He has designed interactive information environments for such companies as IBM, LEGO and Nike.
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau currently work as artists and researchers at the ATR Media Integration and the Communications Research Lab in Kyoto and teach Interactive Art at the IAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences Gifu (J). They created interactive computer installations such as “Interactive Plant Growing” (1992/93),“Anthroposcope” (1993), “A-Volve” (1994), “Phototropy” (1995), “Trans Plant” (1995), “Intro Act” (1995), “MIC Exploration Space” (1995), “GENMA” (1996), “HAZE Express” (1999), “VERBARIUM” (1999), “Industrial Evolution” (2000) and “PICO_SCAN” (1999/2000).
Stadtwerkstatt (A). Independent cultural association since 1979. Initiative for the incitement of critical confrontation with the conditions of life, for the encouragement of initiatives aimed at the “opening of free spaces” and for artistic and cultural development. Stadtwerkstatt is a communication platform for the regional and local cultural scene—on one hand, a stage for events: Do it yourself and Café Strom; on the other hand, headquarters of initiatives working on behalf of the democratisation of new media—servus.at, the stage in cyberspace, and FRO, free radio in the cable network.
Lincoln Stein (USA) has a MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School. He worked at the MIT Genome Center for several years, eventually becoming its director of informatics. He is now an associate professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he works on information systems for the Human Genome Project.
Stahl Stenslie (N) is working on the development of different interface technologies and tools for digital culture within the fields of art, media and network research. He is presently working with extreme cognition and perception manipulative projects. He became one of the Fathers of Cybersex after he built the world’s first full-body, tele-tactile communication system in 1993 (cyberSM). He has co-organized 6cyberconf and together with Knowbotic Research was a founding member of mem_brane—network research laboratory—in Mediapark, Cologne, Germany.
Gerfried Stocker (A), born 1964, media artist. In 1991, he founded x-space, a team for the realization of interdisciplinary projects. In this framework numerous installations and performance projects have been carried out in the field of interaction, robotics and telecommunications. He was also responsible for the concept of various radio network projects and the organization of the worldwide radio and network project Horizontal Radio. Since 1995 he is one of the managing directors of the Ars Electronica Center. Together with Christine Schöpf artistic co-director of Ars Electronica since 1996.
Stylo is a professional writer based in Central Europe. To be more exact, he lives in a penthouse formerly occupied by a gay sauna club and, briefly, a brothel. He learned politics in Chicago, fashion in New York and savoir-vivre in France. A fiction, “A Skim Deep World” is available at www.skim.com/webend/sitcom.
Subi. English video-game coder and anime artist, he puts out sublimely dated oldskool breakbeat, and we’ve even given him his own sublabel,Mono-rave-ik. :) An example of how the Net can nurture even the quirky—he doesn’t have to moderate or change his sound to get heard.
Randy Thornhill (USA) is Regents’ Professor and Professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico. His research interests include insect, bird and human behavior, characterizing the process of sexual selection, and the study of adaptation and methodology in evolutionary biology in general. Over the last 10 years, he has focused his research on human sexuality. He is the co-author, with evolutionary anthropologist Craig T. Palmer, of the recent (2000) book A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. MIT Press, Cambridge,MA.
Time’s Up (A). Laboratory for the creation of experimental situations. Founded in 1996 in the Linz harbor district, the group surrounding Tina Auer, Tim Boykett and J.A. Merit sees the focus of its work as primarily occupying the arc at the interface of art and science. At the centerpoint of this work by Time’s Up is the investigation of the individual’s dependencies upon biomechanics, perception and control.
TNC Network (www.tnc.net) is a Paris-based label dedicated to the emerging digital culture and specializing in advanced net-inspired electronic entertainment. Established in 1995, TNC Network has developed concepts and projects for a diverse group of partners in Europe, Japan and North America (TV, Internet, radio, museums, festivals). TNC Network has received international acclaim for the design of ground-breaking Internet events (Clone Party) as well as for the production of netbased media fictions (The GreatWeb Crash, Millennium Park).
To Rococo Rot (D) is a mostly Berlin-based post-rock trio composed of bassist Stefan Schneider, and brothers Robert (guitar, electronics) and Ronald Lippok (drums, effects). The group have described their work as an overt attempt to reconnect the art-school proclivities of musical experimentalism with the accessibility and “use-value” of pop. The group‘s debut arrived in 1996 in the form of an untitled picture disc. In 1997, the group recorded an album’s worth of material with producer David Moufang. Following a move to Mute Records, the band released The Amateur View in 1999.
Monika Treut (D) studied literature and politics at the Marburg Phillips University in Germany. The topic of her doctoral theses was The Cruel Woman. Female Images in the Writings of Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Basel/Frankfurt, 1984. Since 1984 has been running an independent film production company, Hyena Films, and writes, directs and produces award-winning features and documentaries which are distributed internationally.
Stefan Trischler (A), born in 1980; In 1996, using the stage-name “exxon,” his track “Paradise”made it to the Austrian finals of the “Scype” music competition as the only piece that wasn’t guitar music; since 1996, member of the Hiphop band “Broken Silence,” later “Kaputtnicks.”Winner of a music competition held in conjunction with the Steirischer Herbst.
Nobuya Unno (J), born in 1956, and graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, in 1982. Obstetrician/gynecologist, Ph.D. (Dr. of Medical Science) degree in 1993 from the University of Tokyo. Unno is currently Assistant Professor of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Medicine, and Chief of Department of Obstetrics, Nagano Children’s Hospital.He is a member of the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Japan Society of Neonatology, the Japanese Society of Perinatal Medicine, and the Japanese Society for Artificial Organs.
Camille Utterback (USA) is a media artist working at the intersection of computation, representation, and interaction. Her interactive installations have been exhibited internationally at venues including Postmasters Gallery in New York, the NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, The European Media Art Festival in Osnabruck, Germany, and Media City Seoul 2000. She is currently an Interval Research Fellow and an adjunct Professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Alex Weyers (USA). The enigma known as Alex Weyers first emerged from the Alexandria, Virginia music scene as founding member of the experimental electronic collective BuS PeOpLe. He hold degrees in both art and computer science from the University of California at Santa Cruz and servex as the primary programmer at the Arts Alliance Laboratory, an Art + Technology research studio in San Francisco.
Tom White (USA) is a research assistant at the MIT Media Laboratory, working in the Aesthetics and Computation group under professor John Maeda. His work focused on creating new ways of communicating with computational media, often through the design of new hardware devices. Currently a PhD candidate at the lab, Tom is working on a new software system for representing, constructing, and interacting with complex asychronous computation.
Zelko Wiener (A), since 1982 media art projects in the areas of telecommunication (Biennale di Venezia 1986), audio-visual composition (Ars Electronica 1990) and digital graphic worlds (Vienna International Airport 1998). In 1999, he and Ursula Hentschläger founded the ZEITGENOSSEN (contemporaries) as an independent artistic duo; since 2000, the focus of their collaborative work has been on the development of Web projects.
Hans Wu (A), born in 1969 in Vienna; as a child, was once a computer game addict. At some point, puberty came between the two of them, thank God. At FM4, he’s responsible for new media and electronic music.
Eric Zimmerman is a commercial game designer, artist, and academic exploring the emerging field of game design. Recent projects include the award-winning computer game BLiX (www.stationblix.com), the interactive paper-back “Life in the Garden,” and “RE:PLAY,” a conference and book about digital gaming (www.eyebeam.org/replay). Eric is the President of Gamelab, a new New York-based game development company.
Ionat Zurr (UK), research fellow at the Tissue Engineering and Organ Fabrication Lab, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Studied photography and media studies, specializing in biological and digital imaging.
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