Biographies




Marko Ahtisaari (FI). Recently appointed to be Director of Design Strategy for Nokia. He studied economics, philosophy and musical composition at Columbia University, New York City, where he subsequently lectured in logic, philosophy of economics, and the history of thought. Prior to working at Nokia, he developed mobile applications for major clients at the design consultancy Satama Interactive. Marko continues to make music, and was awarded a Grammy Showcase Award for new artists.

AES-F (RU). Artists united as AES group in 1987 (Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky). In some projects since 1995, AES group collaborates with photographer Vladimir Fridkes (AES+F group).

Scott Arford (US). His works include sound and visual performances, fully immersive multichannel sound and video installations, and low frequency spatial-acoustic explorations with Randy H.Y. Yau as Infrasound. He is currently an instructor at the California College of Arts in Oakland, CA.

Alexander Baratsits (AT), born 1970. Member of the foundation of Radio FRO (1994), chairman of Radio FRO since 1997, chairman of the “Verband Freier Radios Österreich” (association of the public access radios in Austria).

Solomon Benjamin (IN) is an independent researcher operating from Bangalore, India. He has a PhD from MIT in urban studies and planning; his work now focuses on issues of urban governance, land policy, poverty, and employment. Recently, he was Sector Leader for the design phase of the Economic and Livelihood component for Kolkata (Calcutta) Urban Services Program. He has lectured extensively in universities in research institutes in the US and Europe, and is a fellow of the Salzburg Seminar.

Erich Berger (AT), artist and researcher, lives and works in Oslo (N). http://randomseed.org.

Nicoletta Blacher (AT), born in 1965; studied theater, psychology, philosophy and German language and literature; has worked since 1998 conceiving cultural and artistic projects, in PR and culture management in Vienna, Berlin and Paris, including establishing and directing the Österreichischer Kultur-Service; since 2005, director of the Ars Electronica Center Linz—Museum of the Future.

Massimo Canevacci (IT) is professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He has been a visiting professor in Brazil since 1984, where he researches urban and native communication.

Franz Cerami (IT), Italian designer, creator of Miss Digital World Competition.

Roger Clarke (AU) is Principal of Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra. He is also a Visiting Professor in the E-Commerce Programme at the University of Hong Kong, Visiting Professor in the Baker & McKenzie Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre at the University of N.S.W., and Visiting Fellow in the Department of Computer Science at the Australian National University.

Dieter Daniels (DE), born 1957; 1984 co-founder of the Videonale Bonn; 1991-1993 head of the Mediatheque at the ZKM, Karlsruhe (D); since 1993 professor for Art History and Media Theory at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) in Leipzig (D); most recent book publications Kunst als Sendung (2002) and Vom Ready-Made zum Cyberspace (2003); since 2001 co-editor of Media Art Net.

Derrick de Kerckhove (CA), head of the Marshall McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto since 1983, member of the Club of Rome, scholar at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and author of numerous books including The Skin of Culture, Brainframes: Technology, Mind and Business and The Architecture of Intelligence, Derrick de Kerckhove is a frequent intercontinental traveler in his capacity as advisor to governments, major corporations and cultural initiatives, and is himself a living example of the hybrid nature of media culture.

Alain Dépocas (CA). Head of the Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D) of The Daniel Langlois Foundation since September 1999, Alain Depocas has been named Director of the CR+D in March 2003. In this capacity, he is in charge of a documentary collection covering the history, works and practices associated with the media, electronic and digital arts. He has also set up a database for managing the collection and information on CR+D’s areas of interest.

Donatella Della Ratta (IT) received a degree in Mass Communication in 1998 with a thesis on Arab satellite TV channels. She is author of Media Oriente. Models of productions, strategies of distribution, technologies of trasmission in new Arab TV channels and a regular contributor on Arab media issues for the Italian independent national daily newspaper Il Manifesto. She also works as independent filmmaker producing documentaries and TV programmes about Middle Eastern issues. She is currently finishing a book on Al Jazeera and preparing the TV and movie section of the art exhibition “Western cultures and values portrayed by the Arab world” to be held in Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, May 2005.

Mathias Dolfi (DE), computer scientist, has worked in the Institute of Visual Media in ZKM from 1994, where he was in charge of the development and programming of many artisctic projects of virtual reality. In 2001 he joined the department of Basic Research where he develops tools to analyse and visualize scientific data.


Ollivier Dyens (CA) is Associate Professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is the founder and webmaster of Metal and Flesh (metalandflesh.com) and Continent X (continentx.com), websites dedicated to the study of cyberculture. He is also the author of Metal and Flesh, The Evolution of Man, Technology Takes over, MIT Press. Among his other publications are Les Murs des planètes suivi de la cathédrale aveugle (VLB Éditeur), Continent X, Vertige du nouvel Occident (VLB Éditeur), and The Profane Earth (Mansfield Press).

Helen Ferry (AU), artist and writer, creates artworks in traditional, digital and interactive media. She also writes professionally about her enduring passion: the boundless creativity of gifted artists and designers from around the world.

Andreas Fischer (DE), born 1972, studied with Michael Irmer, Klaus Rinke, Georg Herold.

Monika Fleischmann (DE), born 1950, is a research artist and the head of MARS—Media Art Research Studies
at the GMD Institute for Media Communication in Sankt Augustin, Germany. In 1988 she was co-founder of Art + Com, Berlin, a research institute for computer-assisted media research.

Carlo Formenti (IT) is a philosopher, writer and journalist specialized in new media and third culture issues: finally he has decided to try out some fiction. His first novel, Nell’anno della signora, is published by Shake/Decoder.

Rudolf Frieling (DE), born 1956; studied humanities at the Free University of Berlin; 1988–1994 curator of the International VideoFest Berlin; since 1994 curator and researcher at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, until 2001 head of the video collection and organizer of the annual International Media Art Award; 2001–2004 head of the Internet project Media Art Net at ZKM.

Matthew Fuller (UK) is the author of Behind the Blip, essays in the culture of software and Media Ecologies, materialist energies in art and technoculture. He has worked with groups such as I/O/D and Mongrel and is currently Reader in Media Design at the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, http://www.pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/.

John Gerrard (IRL), born 1974, is an artist whose varied works investigates the emotional possibilities of digital technologies, creating works which question our identities, our relations to each other and toward the physical environment. His sculptures frequently hinge around the new temporal and experiential possibilities to be found in realtime 3D. See www.johngerrard.net. In 2004 he completed a long term artists residency in the Ars Electronica Futurelab.

Pascal Glissmann (DE), born 1973, studied communication Design in Düsseldorf (DE). Since 2001 he is working at the Kunsthochschule für Medien, Cologne. His works have been shown in Lissabon, Ankara, Helsinki, Vancouver, New York, and Tokio

Oliver Grau (DE) is an art historian and media scientist and is head of the German Science Foundation project Immersive Art in Berlin. Since 2000 he is also developing with his team the first international Database of Virtual Art. Currently he is director of “Refresh! First International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology”, Banff 2005. He is presently professor at Siegen University.

Ramon Guardans (ES) is a biologist (Universitat de Barcelona 1976). From 1987 to 2000 he was in the Ecotoxicology of Air Pollution Group in the Research Center for Energy Environment and Technology (CIEMAT) in Madrid. From 1990 has worked with the UN on long range transport of air pollution. Based on the research and development cooperative called soundplots, in 2001 he started the project Algorithmic Echolocation in collaboration with ZKM Karlsruhe and medialabmadrid. He has participated at SONAR2001 and SONAR2005, Barcelona.

Carolyn Guertin (CA), PhD, is a Learning Environment Architect at the Academic Technologies for Learning unit in the Faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta in 2003–04 and a McLuhan Postdoctoral Fellow in the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto in 2004–05. As a scholar of the feminist avant-garde, object-oriented design,and the new media arts, she also teaches at Athabasca University, Canada, the trAce Online Writing School at Nottingham Trent University, U.K. and the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, Spain.

Usman Haque (UK) designs interactive architecture systems and researches how people relate to each other and their spaces. He has created responsive projection environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and choreographed performances. He teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture, has been artist-in-residence at the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Japan, and has worked in USA, Malaysia and UK. His current projects touch on the application of open source strategies to architectural systems; softspace technologies (e.g. smell outputs, temperature zones, wireless networks); and the non-tangible, non-physical aspect of spatial interactions. target=blank class=link> http://www.haque.co.uk/

Yuki Hashimoto (JP) has been attending the graduate school at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, Japan. He is researching virtual reality technologies and the human interfaces.


Jens Hauser (DE / FR), born 1969, is a Paris based art curator, writer, cultural journalist and film maker. He has organised a huge show on biotechnological art at the National Arts and Culture Centre Le Lieu Unique Nantes/France, including eleven artists employing biotechnology as a means of expression, and published L’ Art Biotech (2003). His forthcoming exhibitions deal with the paradigm of “skin as a technological interface.” He is teaching at universities and art schools internationally and is a PhD candidate in media studies at Ruhr University Bochum. He is contributing to the european cultural channel ARTE since 1992.

Garnet Hertz (US) is a Fulbright Scholar, Research Fellow at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and is also completing the Critical Theory Emphasis at UCI. He has shown this work at SIGGRAPH, and also is founder of Dorkbot-Socal, a monthly lecture series.

Andreas Hirsch (AT) is a specialist in conceiving and engineering cultural systems. Two decades of work for leading cultural organizations in the arts, theater, music, film, literature and the media include conceptualizing and curating as well as developing and managing projects. He has created numerous media environments and online projects, among them the first Internet café in Vienna. His written contributions to print and online media deal with the social and cultural impact of digital technology and various aspects of cultural systems. http://electrolyte.net/

Martina Höfflin (DE), born 1971, studied media informatics focussing on interaction design and online applications (Fachhochschule Furtwangen, San Francisco State University). Co-founder of Büro für Brauchbarkeit, Cologne.

Theo Jansen (NL), artist, studied science at the University of Delft Holland. The first seven years of being an artist he just made paintings. Then he started a project with a big flying saucer, which could really fly. It flew over the town of Delft in 1980 and brought the people into the street and the police into commotion. For about ten years he has been occupied with the making of a new nature. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic matierial of this new nature. He makes skeletons which are able to walk on the wind. Eventualy he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.

Werner Jauk (AT) studied psychology, pedagogy and philosophy at the University of Graz; since 1995, assistant professor and instructor of systematic musicology at the University of Graz; program: music/technology/society; specialty: perception and (new) media.

Pardon Kimura (JP) is a frequency surfer, composer, producer, and electronic musician who makes his uniquely crafted sounds playing analog modular synthesizers, guitars and electronics. He is the dub-engineer of the Naruyoshi Kikuchi Live Dub Quintet. Since 1999, Kimura has released multiple albums that investigate his unique and unprecedented brand of “pop” electro-acoustics.

Hans Kropshofer (AT) was born in 1963; studied at the University of Art in Linz under Prof. Helmuth Gsöllpointner and at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art in Christian Megert’s class for integration of plastic arts and architecture; has lived and worked as a free-lance artist in Linz since 1995.

La Fiambrera Obrera (ES) forms part of local and political networks such as the Red de Lavapiés in Madrid and the Asamblea vecinal de La Alameda in Seville. It has collaborated with organisations such as Amnesty International, Molotov and Ninguna Persona es Ilegal, preparing campaigns and material together with them. Its work has been presented at institutions such as the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; New Yok University Performing Arts; and the MIT.

Ulf Langheinrich (DE), born 1960; 1981 studied Design and Art in Halle (GDR), and Kassel; 1987 Instructor at the Kunstschule (Art School) Göttingen; artistic collaboration with Kurt Hentschläger under the name of GRANULAR SYNTHESIS. 2003 Guest professor at HGB University for Graphics and Book design Leipzig, department for New Media. 2003 Guest Artist and since 2003 Lecturer of audiovisual design at the FH Salzburg, department Multimedia. He lives in Vienna (AT)and Kumasi(GH).

Daniel Lee (US), known as Lee Siaojin in Chinese, born in Chongqing, China (1945) and raised in Taiwan. He moved to United States after he received his BFA in painting from College of Chinese Culture. Then he got his MA degree majored in Photography and Film from Philadelphia College of Art and worked as an Art Director in New York until the late seventies, at which point he changed to photography as a career. Within one and a half decades, he went through different stages in fashion, people to still life collage. Since 1993, computer technology allowed him to combine his various drawing, photographic and fine art skills in one medium.

Gicheol Lee (KR) is an interactive designer and programmer who is interested in applying art and science concepts to information and interface design through programming. He holds an MFA degree in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and a BS degree in Mathematics from Sogang University in Korea. His experimental web site http://www.Typorganism.com received awards from the Communication Arts Interactive Annual and in the HOW Magazine’s Interactive Design Competition.


Veronika Leiner (A), born in 1974, is the director of Radio FRO. She studied German language and literature and Romance languages and literature in Salzburg, Seville and Dublin, and has worked on social welfare projects, in the field of adult continuing education, and on cultural initiatives. She has been a program manager and project coordinator for Radio FRO since 2002, and is currently studying cultural and media management.

Lawrence Lessig (US), Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is the author of The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. He also chairs the Creative Commons project. Professor Lessig is a boardmember of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Board Member of the Center for the Public Domain, and a Commission Member of the Penn National Commission on Society, Culture and Community at the University of Pennsylvania.

Golan Levin (US) is an artist, performer and engineer interested in the exploration of new modes of reactive expression. His work focuses on the design of systems for the creation, manipulation and performance of simultaneous image and sound, as part of a more general inquiry into formal languages of interactivity, and of nonverbal communications protocols in cybernetic systems. Presently he is Assistant Professor of Electronic Art at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

Zachary Lieberman (US) is an artist, engineer and educator whose work explores the creative and human uses of technology. He produces installations, on-line works and concerts concerned with the themes of kinetic and gestural performance, interactive imaging and speech visualization. He was recently Artist-in-Residence at the Futurelab, Ars Electronica, working on a suite of immersive installations for children with profound multiple learning disabilites as part of a NESTA education grant.

Matt Locke (UK) is Head of Innovation for BBC New Media & Technology. He is responsible for developing and running research programmes within the BBC and with external partners. Before that, he was Head of Creative Research & Development within the same division. He also chairs the External Advisory Panel for the Creative Archive License Group. Before joining the BBC, Matt ran a centre for research in digital culture based in Yorkshire, and he worked as a curator and writer. He still continues to write regularly about these themes for journals, websites and his own site at http://www.test.org.uk

Jin-Yo Mok (KR) is a multimedia artist living and working in New York. He received his BFA and MFA sfrom Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea, and continued his studies at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. His artwork has been featured and invited from a lot of online/offline venues over the world: Artport at Whitney Museum of America, WIRED NextFest, PixelAche at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Chelsea Art Museum in New York, the Media City Seoul, Korea web-art festival, the Seoul Museum of Art Netart Gallery etc. He recently received an artist in residency from the Harvestworks Media Art Center in New York.

Federico Muelas (ES/US), new media artist living and working in New York. He was born in Madrid, Spain, where he obtained his undergraduate degree in fine arts. In 1998 He founded d2ec creative group developing artistic and commercial pro-jects for companies and individuals.

Geetha Narayanan (IN) is founder and Director of Srishti. She has dedicated her life to finding and establishing new models of educational institutions that are creative, synergistic and original in their approachto learning. An administrator, researcher, teacher and facilitator, she has pioneered many courses and projects that examine a wide variety of needs, social and educational. She is at present involved in a radical overhaul of Srishti’s design pedagogy, curriculum development and social responsibility. She is also involved in a program that seeks to develop and train teachers for underserved communities.

Dietmar Offenhuber (AT), born 1973. Studied Architecture. 1995–96 Group Relais, in collaboration with Manuel Schilcher and Gerda Palmetshofer. Worked at the Ars Electronica Futurelab until 1997. Teaches at the FHS Hagenberg since 2000, and in 2002 also at the Art University Linz. Works with Animation, Virtual Environments and Exhibition Planning.

Karin Ohlenschläger (ES), co-director of the I. International Festival of Art, Science and Technology, Cibervisión 02, as well as of MediaLab Madrid (Conde Duque Cultural Centre, Madrid). Director of Chips: emergent circuits of digital culture, European Institute of Design, Madrid (2001). Director of Cibervisión 99, at Madrid’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (1999); the International Festival of Infoarchitecture, Madrid (1997); as well as IN ART—International Cybernetic Art Festival, Tenerife (1996), and the International Video Forum at the former Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid (1986–88).

Santiago Ortiz (CO) studied Mathematics at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia; he also studied music and literature. He has taught Mathematics, given Masters in Art and Technology and Digital Design at different International Universities. He is co-founder of the magazine for digital art and culture Blank, and a constant collaborator of the medialabmadrid. His works are related with the intersections between art and science, artificial life, languages and narrative, information spaces, sound spaces and education. Information about exhibitions and texts in moebio.com. He lives and works in Cape Verte and Spain.


Nikolaus Passath (AT), born 1977. Studied at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna (Peter Weibel, Thomas Fürstner, Karel Dudesek).

Orna Portugaly (IL), new media artist, short story and script writer. 2000–2005 studied script writing and digital media art at the Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel-Aviv. Interested in the mutual Interaction between the art and the observer and their influence on each other.

Melanie Puff, born 1974, is a free curator and critic and author of Postmoderne und Hybridkultur (2004).

Sabrina Raaf (US) is a Chicago-based artist who works in both experimental sculptural media and photography. She is a producer of creative machines—machines that independently make art when cross-pollinated with human interaction. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at UIC in Chicago.

Peter Rantasa (AT) is the Executive Director of mica—music information center austria (since 1999) and Secretary of the board of IAMIC (International Association of Music Information Centers). He is Lecturer at the Institute of Cultural Management at the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He designed and currently coordinates the EU funded project “European Music Navigator.” He is the founder of the music festival phonotaktik (Vienna) and the electronic musics platform rhiz (Vienna).

Heimo Ranzenbacher (AT), born 1958, is a journalist, art critic, theorist and artist. Various publications in catalogues und specialized journals; diverse addresses at symposia; diverse art projects. In 1993 he founded TXTD.sign, a studio for aesthetic services. Diverse art projectes.

Luis Rico (ES), artist, designer and producer. Co-director of the I. International Festival of Art, Science and Technology, Cibervisión 02, as well as MediaLab Madrid (Conde Duque Cultural Centre, Madrid). Co-author and co-director of the itinerant “Banquete” project (Palau de la Virreina, Barcelona; ZKM Karlsruhe; and Conde Duque Cultural Centre, Madrid, 2003), as well as the interactive teaching project “Yumga ga,” sponsored by UNESCO.

Marc Ries (AT) is a culture and media theoretician. He has been teaching in Austria and Germany since 1989, including a stint in 2000–01 as guest professor of comparative picture theory at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena; 1997–2001, head of THE THING Vienna (http://thing.at), art and culture providers; projects and publications at the nexus of media/culture/architecture and art; latest publication: Medienkulturen, Sonderzahl, Vienna 2002. Marc Ries lives in Vienna.

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh (US) is a lead scientist at Great Ape Trust of Iowa—a world-class research center dedicated to studying the behavior and intelligence of great apes. The first and only scientist doing language research with bonobos, Savage-Rumbaugh joined Great Ape Trust following a 23-year association with Georgia State University’s Language Research Center (LRC).

Franz Schmidbauer (AT) , Salzburg District Court Judge, is the moderator of the information forum Internet4jurists http://www.internet4jurists.at.

Christine Schöpf (AT) , since 1981 head of the department art and science at the ORF Upper Austria. Since 1979 in a number of different capacities, key contributions to the development of Ars Electronica. Together with Gerfried Stocker artistic director of Ars Electronica.

Oliver Schürer (AT) is an architectural analyst, free-lance author and editor; numerous publications in Austria and abroad; assistant professor in the Architectural Theory program, Department of Architecture, Technical University of Vienna; current field of research: technical perception awareness in adaptive environments.

Barbara Siegel (AT) studied theatre, film, and media sciences in Vienna (2002 – 2003) and photography at the Höhere Graphische Bundes-,lehr- und versuchsanstalt, Vienna.

Scott Snibbe (US) , born 1969, holds a Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Fine Art, and a Master’s in Computer Science from Brown University. His films have been widely shown internationally. He has taught media art and experimental film at Brown University, The Rhode Island School of Design and UC Berkeley. Snibbe has held research positions at Adobe Systems and Interval Research.

Christa Sommerer (AT) and Laurent Mignonneau (FR) are internationally renowned media artists working in the field of interactive computer installation. They currently hold positions as Professors for Interface Cultures at the University of Art and Design in Linz Austria and at the IAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan. Descriptions of their works can be found at Christa’s homepage:
http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~christa/

Gerfried Stocker , born 1964, media artist. In 1991, he founded x-space, an independent working group of artists and technicians specialized in the realization of interdisciplinary projects. In this framework, numerous installations, performances and exhibition projects have been carried out in the field of interaction, robotics and telecommunications. He has also been responsible for the conception and realization of various worldwide radio network projects. Since 1995, he has been artistic and managing director of the Ars Electronica Center and, since 1996, together with Christine Schöpf, artistic co-director of Ars Electronica Festival.


Wolfgang Strauss (DE) , born 1951. is architect and visiting professor in interactive media. Strauss studied Architecture at the Academie of Fine Arts Berlin and has held teaching positions in Visual Comunication at the HDK Berlin and at the KHM Media Art School Cologne. He was a co-founder of ART+COM, Berlin in 1988. His recent work at the GMD Institute for Media Communication in Sankt Augustin is about interfaces related to the human body and to digital space.

Marco Susani (IT / US) , architect and industrial designer, is Director of the Advanced Concepts Group, Consumer Designs Organisation at Motorola, and was until recently Director of the Domus Academy Research Center in Milan, where he conducted projects, research and teaching on design and innovation.

Vincenzo Susca (IT) is a Doctoral candidate in Sciences Sociales at the Université Paris-V “La Sorbonne” and in Scienze della Comunicazione at the Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”. He is a researcher at the ISIMM in Rome and the CeaQ di Paris. He published Tutto è Berlusconi. Radici, metafore e destinazione del tempo nuovo (2004), with A. Abruzzese; edited Immaginari postdemocratici. Nuovi media, cybercultura e forme di potere (2005), with A. Abruzzese.

Daphna Talithman (IL) is a graduate of the Camera Obscura School of Art, Digital Media department (2004), specializing in interactive design. As a new media artist who has created interactive installations, her main interest is exploring the reciprocal influence of art/viewer.

Enrique Tomás (ES) is telecommunications engineer (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid 2004), where he currently is a researcher in the field of Signal Processing. From 2003 to 2004 he participates in research projects with the National Research Council (CSIC) on real time voice processing. He is currently working on his engineering PhD and completing a Musical Composition degree at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música in Madrid.

Aminata Traoré (ML) is a Doctor in Social Psychology and Psychopathology, and a former Minister of Tourism and Culture in Mali. Traoré is a staunch promoter of several cultural projects. She initiated Soi les voisins, le quartier, a project that mobilises the people that live in the same district to help rebuilt the infrastructure and the accessibility of public services. Aminata Traoré is the Co-ordinator of the “Forum pour l’autre Mali,” a forum that envisages to follow-up the World Social Movement in Europe, and author L’Etau (1999) and Le Viol de l’Imaginaire (2002).

UBERMORGEN.COM is an artist duo that was founded in Vienna, Austria in 1999 by Hans Bernhard (founder of etoy) and lizvlx. UBERMORGEN.COM is one of the most uncatchable identities —controversial and iconoclast—of the contemporary European techno-fineart avantgarde. ubermorgen is a German word for “the day after tomorrow” or “super-tomorrow”.

Muneteru Ujino (JP) , born 1964. Graduated from Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in 1988. He is well known in Tokyo as half of the art band Gorgerous.

David Weinberger (US) , co-author of the The Cluetrain Manifesto, the bestseller that cut through the hype and told business what the Web was really about. His latest book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined has been published to rave reviews hailing it as the first book to put the Internet in its deepest context. He writes an influential business technology newsletter and a daily “weblog.” He has a Ph.D. in philosophy and is currently a Fellow at Harvard’s prestigious Berkman Institute for Internet & Society.

Wolfgang Winkler (AT) studied musicology under Prof. Flotzinger at the University of Graz; since 1998, member of the board of directors and artistic director of LIVA; instructor at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz, the Johannes Kepler University of Linz and the Salzburg Academy.

Mahir M. Yavuz (TR) , Visual Communication Design, Istanbul Bilgi University.

Sharon Younger (IL) is an artist who creates interactive multimedia installations that utilize the viewer’s natural sense of curiosity and motivate him/her to explore and test the relationships between the human body, space and illusion both mentally and physically.

ZEITGENOSSEN (contemporaries) and www.zeitgenossen.com were set up in 1999 by Ursula Hentschläger and Zelko Wiener. Their objective is to generate art and knowledge for the World Wide Web. The project has been the recipient of numerous awards. Ursula Hentschläger (AT) has a doctorate in communications. In 1993 and 2003, she presented two extensive collections of online interviews of creative artists. Parallel to this, she develops literature online and offline in the form of images of time focused on the present. Zelko Wiener (AT) has been working in the area of new media for 20 years. He teaches and does research at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. At the focal point of his creative activities is the individual’s search for orientation in the midst of electronic, mediatized environments.