Participants' Projects & Bios

Bios for UK Participants
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Giles Lane

Giles Lane is an artist, researcher and teacher who works with Orlagh Woods and Alice Angus who will also participate in Paralelo. Alice and he founded and co-direct Proboscis, a non-profit creative studio based in London where, since 1994, he has led projects such as Urban Tapestries; Snout; Mapping Perception; Experiencing Democracy; Everyday Archaeology; and Private Reveries, Public Spaces. Giles is a Visiting Tutor on the MA Design Critical Practice at Goldsmiths College (University of London) and is a Research Associate of the Media and Communications Department at London School of Economics. Giles was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2008 for his contribution to community development through creative practice. At Paralelo Proboscis will be bringing some of their public engagement and creative brainstorming tools, such as the Diffusion eBooks and StoryCubes to assist in the processes of capturing and documentation.

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Alice Angus, artist and co-director of Proboscis, is inspired by rethinking perceptions of our relationships to the land, engaging the social, cultural and natural histories of sites and territories. Over the recent years she has been creating a body of work exploring concepts of proximity and remoteness and presence, against the lived experience and knowledge of a place and has recently completed: 'At the Waters Edge: Grand River Sketchbook' a commission as part of a long term collaboration between Proboscis and Render at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, investigating the interlocking histories and local heritage of the Grand River; and Topographies and Tales a collaboration and short film with Joyce Majiski investigating issues of landscape and identity in the North. Her work with Proboscis includes: 'Lattice' a project for the British Council's Creative Cities initiative in East Asia, 'Being in Common' a new commission for Gunpowder Park, London; Perception Peterborough a consultancy to devise and deliver a creative vision for the future development of the city of Peterborough; Sutton Grapevine a commission by Arts Development in East Cambridgeshire exploring communication in rural settings where there is a lack of shared cultural spaces.
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Bronac Ferran is Senior Tutor (Research) at the Innovation Design Engineering Department at the Royal College of Art in London and also a freelance writer and researcher. She recently produced a Mapping of DIgital Culture in Brasil, with Felipe Fonseca, for the Dutch SICA organisation and was on the jury of this year's Transmediale Festival in Berlin. She is a former Director of Interdisciplinary Arts at Arts Council England and is leading on research for Paralelo.
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Calvin Taylor Calvin is a researcher and teacher at the University of Leeds in the UK where he holds the Chair in Cultural Industries. His work concerns the cultural dynamics of creativity. He is particularly interested in the social organisation of creative activity - of which the cultural industries - are just but one manifestation. His latest interests are in creativity, knowledge and governence. He is particularly interested in dialogues between technological innovation and models of creative practice - where do these converge, where do they diverge, what modes of governance - ethical, epistemplogical and ideological govern their practices? Calvin has worked with UNESCO, WIPO, the British Council, and a range of regional agencies - in Europe, South America and East Asia. His latest project (with David Smith and Roberta Comunian), Knowledge Transfer and the Creative Industries - funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council examines the models, motivations and modalities of the relationship between academic creativity and innovation in the creative industries. He will be involved in reflecting on research outputs from Paralelo.

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Mike Stubbs
Director and CEO of FACT since May 2007, jointly appointed by Liverpool John Moores University as Professor of Art, Media and Curating. Encompassing a broad range of arts and media practice his arts management, curating and artwork have been internationally acknowledged.
As founding Director at Hull Time Based Arts (HTBA) his work won recognition as a primary promoter of new media and performance art in an international context, setting up the venue Time Base, EMARE (European Media Arts Residency Exchange) and the international ROOT Festival.
Mike moved to Melbourne in 2003 to the world-leading Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI) as Curatorial Manager, becoming Head of Exhibitions the following year. An award-winning and respected moving image artist, Mike Stubbs' work encompasses film, video, mixed media installations, performance and curation. He has won more than a dozen international awards including first prizes at the Oberhausen and Locarno Film Festivals, and in 1999 was invited to present a video retrospective of his work at Tate Gallery, London. A selection of his work featured at the 2003 Adelaide International Film Festival.
During his career, Mike has commissioned over 250 interactive, site specific,
performative, sonic and moving-image based artworks. Originally educated at the Royal College of Art and Cardiff College of Art, Mike’s own internationally commissioned artwork encompasses broadcast films, video art, large-scale public projections and new media installation, much made through a process of interdisciplinary research and residency.
Mike arrived at FACT in the final lead up to Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture 2008, with the opportunity to work with other cultural leaders in further developing Liverpool as a major international cultural centre and destination.
FACT itself is an engine for the production and presentation of cutting edge moving image and new media art, whose work Mike is intent on refocusing through experience, consciousness, articulation and building-wide programming via interdisciplinary partnerships.
[http://www.fact.co.uk]

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Siân Prime Siân has worked for Natverkstan and Globalverkstan in Goteborg, IIMB in Bangalore and nationally for the Arts Council England, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts and for the Cultural Enterprise Office, Scotland. She’s also worked within a number of sub-regions to deliver business advice, training and coaching for creative individuals and organisations. She worked with the original Creative Pioneer Team at NESTA and was responsible for the content and delivery of The Academy – NESTA’s residential enterprise development programme for highly talented creative individuals; she has since developed the material for Insight Out and Starter for Six. Siân is now the Course Convenor for the newly created MA in Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths College. All of her work is about developing and understanding impact and ambition.Siân has also worked as a creative producer. Her most recent project was a collaboration with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the British Council, Visiting Arts and the Arts Council of England and was aimed at developing the critical and choreographic skills of both UK and China-based choreographers. More recently Siân has developed a new programme “You mean I’m in charge” for the Entrepreneurs as Leaders strand of the Cultural Leadership Programme, in England. This has been designed for creatives who have established a business and are now facing the challenges of leading an organisation, rather than a project. She has also worked as a consultant and facilitator for Emerging Cultural Leaders based in Mixed Arts Venues (Watershed, FACT, Broadway, Showroom, Tyneside Cinema and Cornerhouse) for a project funded by the Cultural Leadership Programme exploring New Models of Leadership and Personalisation. Sian is leading facilitation for the Open Space aspect of Paralelo.

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Caroline Baylon - Head of International Affairs, AHRC - UK (virtual participation)

Following a degree in Politics and Management of Public Institutions and a Masters degree is European Studies, Caroline Baylon worked for the several British Government departments as Research Assistant, Financial analyst, Editor and Project Manager. She then worked for the University of Bristol as Project Manager (mostly managing the large International Projects and Programmes), often advising senior members of the University and its faculties on their international engagement and strategy.

Caroline Baylon is currently the Head of International Affairs at the Arts and Humanities research Council and has been in that position since July 2008.

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Katherine E. Bash
Katherine was born in Texas and has received a BA in Biology and an MFA in Design, both from the University of Texas at Austin. She is founder and Principal Investigator of the Itinerant Laboratory for Perceptual Inquiry facilitating interdisciplinary collaborations and she spent significant time in Brazil and in the deserts of the Southwest of the United States, prior to commencing her current endeavor: a PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College of London. Her ongoing project, A Field Guide to Observable Phenomena, manifests her engagement with imaging, imagining, language, and experience of place as both creative analysis and critical practice.

Related Endeavors:
Broken Symmetries: Between physics and shifting perceptions.
Equation: a balanced state? : Exhibition (New Mexico) exploring contemporary currents in land art engaging environmental challenges.
Floating Point Operation: Cognitive mapping project in the Bonneville Salt Flats produced from work created during residencies at the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Part of a larger collaboration with William L. Fox. Forthcoming book by the Black Rock Press, University of Nevada, Reno.
Pragmatic Aesthetics: Poetic Constructions from the Observation of Natural Phenomena: PhD topic that addresses the poetic, ethical and political dimensions of aesthetics.

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Dominic Price is a Research Fellow at the Mixed Reality Laboratory, The University of Nottingham. Research interests include development of software tools to support artists and non-developers the the creation of rich interactive experiences. Most recently he was involved in the Participate project (http://www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/participate.html)

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Tapio Makela
Tapio Mäkelä is a researcher and a media artist based in Manchester, UK and Helsinki, Finland. He is currently an AHRC Research Fellow with department of Creative Technology, School of Art and Desigh, University of Salford. He is working on a book about social and cultural uses of location based media and applied project in the same field.Mäkelä is a co-founder with Marko Peljhan, of Marin Association and M.A.R.I.N. (Media Art Research Interdisciplinary Network), an art, science and ecology research residency and network initiative.
Mäkelä was the programme chair of ISEA2004, the 12th International Symposium of Electronic Art. He is working mostly on new media and cultural studies research as well as research driven media arts practice.

M.A.R.I.N.
Tapio Makela with Marko Peljhan: M.A.R.I.N. is a networked residency and research initiative, integrating artistic and scientific research on ecology of the marine and cultural ecosystems.

For the first three years M.A.R.I.N.’s operational focus is a mobile residency program set on a catamaran sail boat, redesigned and equipped to be a sustainable environment for transdisciplinary research in arts, sciences and technology. Emerging from long experience of collaboration within media art, M.A.R.I.N. develops integrative arts/science/technology practice models.

The name of the project is an acronym of Media Art Research Interdisciplinary Network. The founders of the project, Tapio Mäkelä (FI/UK) and Marko Peljhan (SL/US/LV) emphasize that M.A.R.I.N. is a collaborative platform that acts as a catalyst between organizations, and forms a social network between individual practitioners. The residency allows for concentrated dialogue and work: it is the depth of the ocean, while networks are horizontal.

We are launching the project at Belfast ISEA2009.

Tapio Makela, talk during Paralelo
Ecolocatedness: Art and Science Practice as Situated Information Design

The term environment seems to resist constructive positions for the self that would be in favor of agency for action. How to challenge environmental passivity? How, then to make environment in a given point of time and location, more tangible, open for interaction and constructing response-able positions?

Ecologists find it difficult to use second hand data sets because they lack the first hand experiential information of the environment that had been surveyed. I would also argue that ecological data is often presented through regional rather than locational interfaces.

Media artists and designers have skills in constructing participatory processes, interfaces, and tangibility to information. I am arguing for art+sci collaboration methods beyond (yet perhaps including) visualization, having to do with how knowledge is constructed in relation to environment, and how it is offered for public engagement. As such a paradigm, I suggest “ecolocatedness” as a way of combining environmental data with experience and location, thus basing art and science practice on situated information design.

Rob La Frenais is a curator and critic, living in London and Ambialet, France who has curated and produced interdisciplinary and visual art projects since 1987. Since 1997 he has worked with the Arts Catalyst, the science-art agency. Before that he was a freelance curator and organiser working in a European context in various countries, including being the Chief Executive of the Edge Biennale Trust in London and Madrid and the Artistic Director of the Belluard-Bollwerk International in Switzerland. In 1979 he founded the ground-breaking Performance Magazine which continued as an authoritative cultural voice in Europe until 1992. He has a PhD in curatorial practice across disciplines at Brunel University, London and is an honorary Doctor of Arts at Dartington College of Arts.
While at Paralelo Rob will show visual material about the work of The Arts Catalyst. 'The Arts Catalyst commissions art that experimentally and critically engages with science. It bring together people across the art/science divide and beyond to explore science in its wider social, political and cultural contexts. It produces provocative, playful, risk-taking projects to spark dynamic conversations about our changing world.'
(from www.artscatalyst.org)
Project Worktitles: Republic of the Moon, Back to The Moon. Rob ( with Mike Stubbs of FACT), in the private sessions of Paralelo will initiate a conversation with participants around a project about humanity's relationship with the moon, both in terms of of cultural meaning, the possible return by humans in spacecraft to the moon, whether space travel by large and smaller nations is desirable and if it is possible for artists to really participate in the type of military/industrial effort it would take to create a habitat on the moon.

James Wallbank is an artist, educator and free technology advocate. Currently he is CEO of Access Space.
In the mid 90's James founded arts group "Redundant Technology Initiative" (RTI) with a simple decision - to be creative with "trash"
technology that cost nothing. Two years later the RTI warehouse contained more than 2000 donated machines - they'd solved the problem of access to technology - now they needed to get more creative.
The group's solution was to start "Access Space". Running since 2000, the project provides an open access ICT lab which invites members of the public to learn, create and communicate with recycled technology and free, open source software. The lab provides the facilities and framework for participants to pursue their own artistic and technical projects. The group has created a charity which now runs the lab, believed to be the longest-running (and most sustainable) free technology centre in the UK.
Access Space works at the intersection of the creative arts, community learning and urban regeneration, providing a platform for participants to develop their skills, networks and creativity. Recently the organisation has been working to advise and assist others to set up similar labs, and is involved in wider projects to advocate technology re-use and creative approaches to self-directed learning.

Jane Prophet is a British visual artist who across disciplines with a range of collaborators. Works in development include Net Work, a large floating installation (comprising hundreds of illuminated buoys). In 2008 she made (Trans)Plant (a collapsing and self-assembling sculpture based on the structure of a plant). Her art reflects her interest in science, technology and landscape. Among her past projects is the award-winning website, TechnoSphere, inspired by complexity theory, landscape and artificial life. In 2005 she won a National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts Fellowship to develop interdisciplinary artworks. Prophet works on a number of internationally acclaimed projects that have broken new ground in art, technology and science. In CELL (2002-2006) she collaborated with Mark d'Inverno, a mathematician, and Neil Theise, a scientist whose ground-breaking research into stem cells and cell behaviour is changing the way that we understand the body. In 2006 she had a solo Show at Paco das Artes, Sao Paulo.

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Matt Watkins is an artist, technologist, designer and lecturer and co-founder of the award winning Active Ingredient. Matt started in performance where he formed and toured the UK and Europe with his performance company until 1995 acting as both performer and writer. After re-training in computer-aided design he formed Active Ingredient in 1996.As Artistic and Technical Director he has been responsible for the visual and technical design of a large number of interactive work which has ranged from web-based projects to live video streaming, robotics and sensor based work, locative and pervasive games, CGI/Video production and post-production. As well as creating the work he has project managed all the technical aspects of their delivery. These works have been installed in international galleries, media centres, festivals and museums. The work has been delivered in venues including Games Developers Conference San Francisco, AV Festival Newcastle, Siggrapph Multimedia Singapore and Dislocate Festival Tokyo. Matt is also currently a Lecturer at South Nottingham College where he lectures on Interactive Media and Games Design. He also regularly guest lectures at other Universities including Nottingham University and Huddersfield University. He has written/co-written and presented academic papers at conferences internationally and has contributed chapters to a number of publications. Matt is interested in the fine lines between game play/interaction and art. How the act of Interaction with a digital experience can produce meaning that goes beyond the constrained parameters of traditional computer game and beyond screen based activity and out into the physical world.

Orlagh Woods
Orlagh Woods is an artist whose work explores how diverse people and communities engage with each other and their environment – how they connect, communicate and are perceived both through digital and non-digital means. She has been working with Proboscis for the past five years, collaborating on projects such as Social Tapestries, Snout, Everyday Archaeology, Experiencing Democracy, Render and Lattice:Sydney. She recently led the project ‘Perception Peterborough’ and co-led ‘Being in Common’ as part of Art of the Common Space.

Orlagh also curates a professional development programme for British Asian theatre company, Tamasha, in London.

Rachel Jacobs is an artist, curator, lecturer and co-founder of the award winning artist-led company Active Ingredient. Rachel comes from a background of dance, performance and visual arts, she has been based in Nottingham, UK since 1991. She was awarded an MA in Electronic Arts from Middlesex University in 2006.Her role as Artistic Director of Active Ingredient has involved managing a large portfolio of interactive media projects and artworks; facilitating workshops and participatory projects; working with Hewlett Packard Research Labs; and managing touring artworks to national and international galleries, media centres, international festivals and conferences. Rachel has worked with key cultural organisations across the UK and overseas, both through Active Ingredient and independently as a Digital Art Curator.
Rachel has also worked as a regular Visiting Lecturer at Universities across the UK and has co-authored academic papers and presented at arts festivals and conferences all over the world, including Siggraph ACM Multimedia and the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco.Rachel's arts practice comes from an interest in connection and disconnection, fairy tales, mythology and universal experiences to find ways to bring people together in a moment of connection. She has specialist knowledge in merging science, art and technology using interactive streaming video, mobile technologies and locative media. Project with Dominic Price, Matt Watkins, Mobilefest and others:

The Dark Forest / BR163 Expedition
[http://www.thedarkforest.tv]
NewTV, Mobilefest and Active Ingredient
The Dark Forest and BR163 Expedition is an interactive documentary developed in two parts. The aim is to “sense” and document changes along the BR163 road that is being built through the heart of the Amazon, Brazil and to contrast and connect Brazilian’s tropical forests to Sherwood Forest, UK - through an artistic exchange.

The project brings together a team of film makers, artists and technologists utilising mobile, location and sensing technologies - to create a documentary film, website, and a new artwork. The interactive documentary explores the impact of man’s intervention both positive and negative on the Amazon Rainforest. Using the soon to be developed road through the forest - The BR163 - as a metaphor for Brazil’s emergence as a superpower and the effect of urbanisation on the natural world, as well as a physical location for the development of the project. The Dark Forest looks at myths and legends we associate with deep forests, both real and of our imaginations.
Forests are seen as the heart of the world, and they are slowly diminishing and changing. Learning the myths connected to forests can increase and create a new form of environmental consciousness. Bringing together “Saci Perere” and “Robin Hood” to join forces in helping protecting nature is now more urgent than ever. The Mobilefest Expedition BR 163 project is an original screenplay developed by Marcelo Godoy from newTV Production Company. After two years of research the project has joined with Mobilefest – International Festival of Mobile Art and Creativity, with the intent of creating an online documentary using the latest mobile technologies available.
In December 2007, the Active Ingredient group was invited to participate in the Project, in order to add resources for mapping, location, and augmented reality, as well as to support the artistic elements of the project and develop the cultural exchange, in partnership with the Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham.
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Rombout Frieling (UK; born the Netherlands, 1983) makes matter move man.
applying interaction design principles (BSc TU Eindhoven and d.school Stanford University) to a greater scale, he considers our integral habitat as an interface that needs to be optimised around the changing needs of who we ultimately are and through which we experience: our bodies. Reconciling the practical and functional with the aesthetic and experienced through the ‘Choreographical Potential of Design’(awarded a Distinction by Sir Christopher Frayling, rector of the Royal College of Art) his belief is that in order for mankind to grow we need to develop what we have so long neglected: our bodily capacities. His strive is to make this relevant also in stubborn industrial world he knows (designer, therefore design consultants, designafairs gmbh and design fellow, tanaka business school): ~to siddle (an RCA SelectedWork) provides a new way of sitting down while a flat sheet folds around one into a chair. And ~to flupper provides a sustainable, healthy and inclusive new way for man to move himself vertically in our increasingly vertical cities, as quick and fast as walking horizontally (awarded a commendation for outstanding quality work by Professor Tom Barker & awarded the Sir James Dyson Innovation Fellowship for commercialisation).
www.zomaar.info

Rombout holds a Masters of Art with distinction and commendation in Industrial Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art and a Master of Science (DIC) from Imperial College London. He runs his own design practice “zomaar” from London while appointed Innovation Fellow at the Royal College of Art and establishing a new Design Choreographies strand at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Susan Amor is Head of Knowledge Transfer (KT) at the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in Bristol, UK www.ahrc.ac.uk . The AHRC has a unique remit to encourage and support engagements between its academic communities and wider society in order to deliver mutual benefits and has developed a portfolio of flexible knowledge transfer schemes and activities to promote these engagements. During the past two years Susan’s work has focused on developing collaborative research and development models for the arts and humanities working in partnership with the BBC Future Media and Technology. She has been instrumental in developing strategic partnerships between AHRC and other non academic bodies including business, third sector and public policy organisations. Most notable Susan has recently developed and written a new KT strategy for the AHRC. She is keen to encourage knowledge exchange between research disciplines and user sectors that have not previously worked in partnership and to ensure that AHRC supports these engagements in a flexible way. Before joining the AHRC Susan worked in the Knowledge Transfer team with the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC).

FROM BRAZIL

bio Flavia Vivacqua
Flavia Vivacqua was born in São Paulo, in 1975. Artist, educator and Cultural Designer for Sustainability. Since 1998 has made exhibitions of their performances, interventions, installations in various Brazilian cities and other countries. She is the articulator of CORO Network – Collectives in Network and Organizations, since 2003. As a Cultural Designer produces since 2000 festivals, interchanges and curatorial works (Cultura e Pensamento 2006 Award for “Ritmos da Urgência” Seminary - Reverberações 2006) and integrates the council of “Interações Florestais” program (Conexões Artes Visuais 2007 Awards e Interações Estéticas 2008) creating an Artist Residence in Terra UNA’s ecovillage. She is Designer of Sustainability and development of human settlements by Gaia Education program of Global Ecovillage Network, sealed by United Nations. Director and founder of Nexo Cultural, an agency of Cultural Design and Sustainability for consultancy, strategy and development of projects and processes

[http://flaviavivacqua.wordpress.com]
[http://nexocultural.com.br]
Contact: moc.liamg|auqcavivaivalf#moc.liamg|auqcavivaivalf

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Cicero Silva - researcher and professor of new media art and digital communication. Cicero coordinates the Software Studies Group in Brazil. Currently he is an Associate Researcher at the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is author of The Explorers: Open Source and Free Software in Brazil book (along with Jane de Almeida, forthcoming from the MIT Press). / Cicero Silva é researcher and professor de mídia, arte and Communication digital and coordenador do Grupo de Software Studies no Brasil. Atualmente Cicero é Researcher Associado ao Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) na Universidade da Califórnia, San Diego (UCSD). É autor do livro The Explorers: Open Source and Free Software in Brazil (with Jane de Almeida, no prelo, MIT Press*Software Studies Initiative Brazil*
coordinated by Cicero Silva http://www.cicero.st

Software Studies is a new research field for intellectual inquiry that is now just beginning to emerge. The very first book that has this term in its title was published by The MIT Press in June 2008 (Matthew Fuller, ed., Software Studies: A Lexicon). In August 2008 The MIT Press approved Software Studies book series, with Matthew Fuller, Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Lev Manovich as editors.

The Software Studies Initiative intends to play the key role in establishing this new field. The competed projects will become the models of how to effectively study “software society.” Through workshops, publications, and lectures conducted at UCSD and disseminated via the web and in hard copy publications, we will disseminate the broad vision of software studies. That is, we think of software as a layer that permeates all areas of contemporary societies. Therefore, if we want to understand contemporary techniques of control, communication, representation, simulation, analysis, decision-making, memory, vision, writing, and interaction, our analysis can't be complete until we consider this software layer. By being the very first center of its kind, The UCSD Software Studies Initiative has the unique opportunity to shape how this software layer will be understood and studied by other universities, programs, and centers in years to come.
http://www.softwarestudies.com.br
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Gisela Domschke

Gisela is a Brazilian media artist, independent curator and designer with a MA degree from Central Saint Martins College of Arts. London. She lectured in the MA Interactive Media programme at Goldsmiths University, whilst collaborating with a few cultural organisations. Her artwork was exhibited in the Whitney Biennial (NY), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), ICA (London), Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca), Centre d' Art Contemporain (Geneve) e Bienal de São Paulo. Back in Brazil, she managed the media lab of the Museu da Imagem e do Som of São Paulo, where she was responsible for the programme of artistic residencies, workshops and partnerships with international institutions. She is currently the advisor of the Digital & Virtual programme in the Istituto Europeo di Design, São Paulo.
Her current focus of research is "experience/ ambient/ sensorial design".
She is part of the organising team of Paralelo as a convenor for the Brazilan Programme.

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Camila Sposati

Camila Sposati, visual artist. Lives and works in São Paulo.
2003 M.A. Fine Arts at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, supported by CAPES/apARTES and VIRTUOSE (Minsitry of Culture, Brazil) scholarships.
1998 Post-graduate Photography at the Centro di Ricerca de la Fotografia, Pordenone, Italy.
1996 B.A. History, Pontificial Catholic University, São Paulo.

Recently, in 2009, she developed exhibited research entitled Crescimento Urbano e Processo de Crescimento de Cristal (“Urban Growth and Crystal Processes”) at TWS – the Tokyo Wonder Site, in Tokyo. Through the British Council’s programme Artist Links, she developed Entropia: Fumaça e Cristal (“Entropy: Smoke and Crystals”), mediated by The Arts Catalyst, the science-art agency, at University College London in 2007. During this period she was also Resident Artist at Gasworks, in London.

In 2003, supported by an Aschenberg-UNESCO scholarship, she was Resident Artist at HIAP/Cable Factory in Helsinki, Finland. She created and coordinated the project Fluxo de Arte Belém Contemporâneo, in 2004.

Exhibitions in Brazil and abroad include Paço das Artes, São Paulo (2007); Tate Modern, London (2007); Instituto dos Arquitetos do Brasil-SP, São Paulo (2008) and Eleven Rivington Gallery, New York (2008).

In 2009 she will host an exhibition of her artwork at CPU:798 Gallery in Beijing, China.
She will take part in the 7th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, as well as developing a reseach project with Radar at Loughborough University.

She currently lectures in contemporary Visual Communication at the Instituto Europeo de Design, in São Paulo. [http://www.camilasposati.com.br]

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Alfonso Luz is an art critic, a Philosophy graduate from Sao Paulo University (USP), and a researcher in aesthetics and art history. He collaborated with magazines such as Novos Estudos/Cebrap, Concinnitas/UERJ, Cult, Bravo and edited others such as Rapsódia and Número, both connected to USP. Luz worked with the Centro Universitário Maria Antônia from 2003 to 2005, was a consultant at the program Monumenta- IPHAN/BID/UNESCO for “Economics of Culture, Visual Arts and Cultural Criticism” and aided the Ministry of Culture during Gilberto Gil’s administration in the years 2005/2008. Luz coordinated a number of programs and projects with the MinC, including the Program Culture and Thought, the edict Art and Patrimony, the Brazilian representation at the ARCO08 Fair in Madrid, the exportation project “Brazil Contemporary Art" in a partnership with Itamaraty, APEX and Fundação Bienal de São Paulo. He is currently Manager of the State Board of Cultural Policies and develops models for the regulation and induction of the “Economy of Visual Arts”.

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Alexandre Freire has an MS in Computer Science from IME/USP. His dissertation is about "Teaching Agile Methodologies at the Academy, Industry and Government.” He published articles on international conferences on the teaching of methodologies, how to organize work teams and on the development of software. Freire taught Summer Course at IME/USP and as teaching assistant for post-graduation classes. Working with the development of software systems for over one decade, his main commercial experiences were as leader of the web development team at the Italian multinational company AdMetam, as coordinator of the framework group at Americanas.with, and as project coordinator at Mandic Internet. He also works as producer, having organized a series of music, art and technology festivals, both nationally and internationally. Recently he has been investigating agile methodologies, having worked with Oi Paggo and also the Ministry of Culture. In the government he was one of the coordinators of the Digital Culture program, of the Secretariat of Programs and Projects of the Ministry of Culture, conceptualizing, planning and carrying out the implementation of multimedia technology and Internet access connections iat Culture Points around Brazil. As an artist, he develops works that investigate the creative tactics for co-habitation in sustainable and integrated environments.

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Analívia Cordeiro - Global pioneer of the “computer-dance”, and Brazilian pioneers of video-art (1973). Analivia has created videodances, multimedia shows and Nota-Anna: an electronic notation of the movements of the human body. Her work has been exhibited at festivals such as the “International Festival of Edinburgh”(1973), “12th Bienal de São Paulo”(1973), "The Bat-Sheva Seminar on Interaction of Art and Science"(1973), "LatinAmerica74" at the "Institute of Contemporary Arts"(London), "Espace Cardin"(Paris), "Galleria Civica D'Arte Moderna"(Ferrara), “International Cultureel Centrum"(Antwerp), "Latin-American Films and VideoTapes – Media Study of State University of New York" (1974), "International Conference Computer&Humanities/2 – University of Southern California"(1976), “WGBH – Public TV Channel”(1976), “20th American Dance Guild Conference”(1976), "Art of Space Era-Von Braun Civic Center of Huntsville Museum of Art"(1978), “Brazil 20th Century” (1984), “Arte Tecnologia” – Instituto Cultural Itaú(1996), “27th Annual Dance on Camera Festival”(1998), “Il Coreografo Elettronico”(1999); “Invenção”(1999); “Sawyers Seminar-University of Chicago”(1999), “L’Ombra dei Maestri: Rudolf Laban-Università di Bologna”(1999), “2001 JavaOne”, ”Made in Brazil” (2003/5), Siggraph (2008).
http://www.analivia.com.br
http://www.ducorpo.com

Daniela Bousso - has a PhD in Visual Arts, and Communication and Semiotics. She has been Executive Director of Paço das Artes since 1997, and of the Museum of Image and Sound of São Paulo since November 2007, when she started a conceptual repositioning project for the Museum.Daniela’s professional activity started at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, in 1977. She was professor of Aesthetics and Art History at FAAP from 1985 to 1989, and publishes texts in national and international periodicals and in exhibition books. She is also part of juries and symposiums.
Among the exhibitions she works at as curator are: rooms Denis Oppenheim and Tony Oursler, 24th Bienal de São Paulo (1998), Rede de Tensão (2001), Paço das Artes, São Paulo, the latter also within the Bienal 50 Anos, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo; hiPer > relações eletro / / digitais, Santader Cultural, Porto Alegre/RS (2004), Inter@conect, exhibition of 12 Brazilian artists at ZKM – Art and Media Center, Germany (2006), and Passagens, at the Reina Sofia Museum (2008).
She received the APCA award “Best cultural initiative for 2005” for the conception of the project “Ocupação”, at Paço das Artes.
Daniela is a specialist in creating cultural policy strategies and planning for contemporary art and new art media.
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Eduardo Verderame, born in 1971 in São Paulo, a visual artist graduated from São Paulo University in 1996. Verderame has been in over one hundred individual and collective exhibitions, both in Brazil and abroad. Since 2001, he has independently developed projects for festivals and curatorships, often using urban spaces as the stage for plastic interventions.Verderame has been resident artist at Casa das Caldeiras (SP,2008), Ecovila TerraUna (MG, 2008), Apexart (NY, 2007) and Museum Quartier (Austria, 2006).

Felipe Fonseca is a Brazilian media activist and researcher working in the fields of technological appropriation, low tech experimentation, free (livre) and open source multimedia software, open licensing and online collaboration. Felipe is an articulator of projects such as MetaReciclagem, an emergent Brazilian movement that gather people and projects related to the deconstruction of information technologies; DesCentro, a de-centralized research organization; and Bricolabs, an international network of experimental labs. Felipe has acted also as a consultant for the Brazilian Ministry of Culture in the Cultura Digital project, that brought critical ICT use for more than 600 cultural centers throughout Brazilian territory. Since early 2008, Felipe works with weblab, building collaborative online networks and developing projects such as Lixo Eletrônico, a weblog about e-waste, and Mutirão da Gambiarra, a series of publications about the MetaReciclagem network
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Flavia Vivacqua

Born in São Paulo in 1975, lives and works based in São Paulo, Brazil. An Artist, Educator and Cultural Designer for Sustainability, since 1998, Flavia has exhibited her performances, interventions, installations and photographs in a number of Brazilian cities, as well as abroad (http://flaviavivacqua.wordpress.with). She leads the network CORO – Coletivos em Rede and Organizações, active since 2003 (www.corocoletivo.org). As Cultural Designer since 2000, Flavia organizes festivals, exchanges and curatorships (PRÊMIO Cultura and Pensamento 2006 for the Seminar Ritmos da Urgência - Reverberações 2006 (www.reverberacoes.with.br)) and is in the Board of the program ‘Interações Florestais’ (PRÊMIOS Conexões Visual Arts 2007 and Interações Estéticas 2008) creating and coordinating the Artistic Residence at the ecovillage Terra UNA (www.terrauna.org.br). Sustainability and Development Designer for sustainable human settlements through Global Ecovillage Network’s program Gaia Education, fostered by the UN. Flavia is the founding director of Nexo Cultural, an agency for consulting, strategy and process facilitation, as well as projects in Art, Education, Technology and Ecology (www.nexocultural.with.br).

Giselle Beiguelman is the author of the awarded The Book after the Book, egoscópio, which featured in the New York Times, and Paisagem0 (with Marcus Bastos and Rafael Marchetti), among others. She has developed projects for the Internet since 1994, and devices for mobile communication since 2001, when she created Wop Art, praised by the national and international press, including The Guardian (England) and Neural (Italy). Her projects have been shown at exhibitions such as the 25th Bienal de São Paulo, el final del eclipse (Fundación Telefonica, Madrid and Latin America, Algorithmic Revolution (ZKM - Germany), Bienal de Sevilha and MEIAC (Museu da Estremadura, Spain). Giselle Beiguelman is a post-graduation professor for Communication and Semiotics at PUC-SP, an artistic director of the Sergio Motta Award of Art and Technology, and curator of Nokia Trends (2007 and 2008). [http://www.desvirtual.com]

Toxic Memories
Giselle Beiguelman

The programmed obsolescence of digital media imposes political challenges in the sphere of the environment but also for cultural preservation. With the tons of electronic trash produced daily, uncountable cultural productions disappear by the mere fact they are not adequate to newer devices. In this presentation we will focus the cultural dimensions of media ecology strategies.

Related Project:

**Desmemórias/ Un-memories** (2005)

desmemórias is an web-documentary on the non-traces of our recent past. A story made of gaps and old machinery of vision and communication that have shaped the present and disappeared. Amiga computers, Mac Classics, Ataris, 5 ¼ floppy disks, 486s, 386s, XTs, 500g cellulars, phosphorus monitors, VHS Tapes among others, are the characters of this quasi-documentary of broken memories. The images are at a fast rate and are purposely worked within the limits of their erasure, crossing themselves and superpondo itself with algorithmic scripts that confuse the boundaries between text and images. (Best viewed on IE, sound + pop ups)

Ivan Henriques (1978, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Is a multimedia artist working in the fields of Art, Science and Environment. Ivan was awarded in FURNAS for the exhibition [in] variables and with a project selected by the Culture State Secretariat of Rio de Janeiro in 2008. He was invited to be part of Funarte, 4 Territórios, in February 2008 in Pernambuco and invited to an artistic residence in Oslo, by Norway’s Ministry of International Relations in 2007. At the moment, he is part of two multimedia and interdisciplinary groups, GEMA (Experimental Multidisciplinary Autonomous Group, http://gemaproject.blogspot.com) and Kuarasy O Berab (http://www.myspace.com/kuarasyoberab). He is also doing MA in ArtScience at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, The Netherlands to be concluded in 2011.
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José Geraldo de Souza has a degree in Mathematics and is a professor of the National Institute of Telecommunications (Inatel), where he is currently Academic Planning and Institutional Assessment Advisor. He has an MA in Education by the Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Campinas, and a PhD. in Education by the Universidade Estadual de Campinas. In Education, his interest is focused on Educational Planning, working particularly on the following themes: professional capabilities, education is engineering, academic planning and teacher’s training.
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Karla Schuch Brunet has a PhD. in Audiovisual Communication (UPF, Spain – Capes grant), a Masters in Visual Arts - Photography (MFA, Academy of Art University, EUA – Capes grant) and is a specialist in Electronic Art Criticism (Mecad, Spain). She developed and participated in projects in Visual Arts and the internet, and, also lectured at Universities in São Paulo and Salvador. Between 2007 and 2009 Karla researched and did her Post Doctorate in the group of cyberresearch/cybercities of the Post-Com/UFBA (Fapesb grant). She was also part of a number of Photography and Electronic Art exhibitions, both in Brazil and abroad. Karla teaches at UFBA’s IHAC (Instituto de Humanidades, Artes and Ciências), where she researched projects on the interaction between art, science and technology.

Related Project:

** escape → natureza**

Laymert Garcia dos Santos

Born in Itápolis, Brazil in 1948, Prof. Laymert Garcia Dos Santos is an essayist and a lecturer in sociology of technology at the University of Campinas (São Paulo). Prof. Laymert lived in Paris in the 1970s, where he did his PhD in Information Science at the University of Paris 7. In 1992-93 he was Visiting Professor at St. Antony's College, Oxford University. Prof. Laymert has published on the topics of art, culture and technology, and has written, among others, the books Essay Time and Politicizing New Technologies – The Social and Technical Impact of Digital and Genetic Information. He organized the Drucksache N.F.6., a German-Portuguese volume on Heiner Müller and Brazil for the Internationalen Heiner Müller Gesellschaft and Richter Verlag, in 2001, and published essays on contemporary art in Parachute, Zehar, Via Regia, aut aut, as well as many catalogues.
The title of my intervention is: Nature as Design.
It is a brief reflection on the need of Brazilian art to ‘upgrade’ its understanding of the relationship between technology, the environment and traditional cultures, so the country can take on its political-aesthetic potential. One example is the upcoming production of a multimedia opera on the Amazon.

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Lucas Bambozzi is a multimedia artist and curator of new media. He works in media such as video, film, installations, site-specific works, audiovisual performances and interactive projects. His work has been shown in festivals in over 40 countries. Bambozzi conducted pioneering art-related activities on the Internet in Brazil between 1995 and 1999 at Casa das Rosas. He was the curator and coordinator for events such as Sónar SP (2004), Life Goes Mobile (Nokia Trends 2004 and 2005) and Motomix 2006. He created and coordinated arte.mov International Art Festival In Mobile Media. Bambozzi was resident artist at CAiiA-STAR Centre/i-DAT (Planetary Collegium) and concluded his MPhil at Plymouth University in England. Bambozzi teaches post graduation at SENAC-SP and, as artist, focuses on the critical exploration of new independent media formats.

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Marcelo Rezende is the author of the romance "Arno Schmidt" and the essay "Ciência do Sonho: A Imaginação Sem Fim do Diretor Michel Gondry" (A Science of Dream: The Endless Imagination of Director Michel Gondry). Co-curator of projects (Comunismo da Forma - Communism of Form São Paulo, 2007; À la Chinoise/ Hong Kong, 2007; Estado de Exceção – A State of Exception/ São Paulo, 2008). Marcelo was editor of the publication "28b", one of the platforms of the 28th Bienal de Arte de São Paulo, "Em Vivo Contato".

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Marcelo Bressanin has an MA in History from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). His dissertation focused on the analysis of the configuration and interpretations of the urban landscape, highlighting the connections between those processes and the concepts of urbanism and socially generated nature. Marcelo is currently Technical Manager at the Museum of Image and Sound of São Paulo (MIS) and professor for the graduate art history and culture management programs. In 2008, he did a technical internship at ZKM, Media and Art Center of Karlshure, focusing on topics about the technical configuration, the management and methodology of cultural production at institutions fostering and exhibiting the production of art and technology.

Marcelo was technical assistant of SESC SP’s Management of Cultural Action and coordinator of its free Internet program. He was curator for the institution's art and technology programs; for film, at several editions of international projects such as the Mostra SESC de Artes, and for the interactive exhibition Game_Cultura, dedicated to the investigation of the technological and conceptual universe of electronic games.

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Marcelo Godoy - 41 years old, director of the newTV audiovisual content company for the Internet, cellular and TV. Godoy has been a producer and screenwriter for over 20 years at audiovisual content producing companies and was awarded at the Cannes Festival with Cyber Gold in 2002. He produced over 200 videos for a number of clients, TV programs, commercials and documentaries in Brazil and abroad. He was executive producer of the documentary “Grassroots”, entirely shot at an NGO in Cambodia . He is one of the creators of the Mobilefest, being responsible for the executive direction of the Festival since its first edition in 2006. He was an active participant of the launch of the Internet and mobile telephony in Brazil. Godoy developed and hosts the weekly program TV IG, the first program on the convergence of new mobile technologies.

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Marcus Bastos has a PhD. in Communications and Semiotics and is a Professor at PUC-SP. Bastos directed the short feature films "Mais Radicais" (2008), "radicais livre(o)s" (2007) and the interactive video "Interface Disforme" (2006). He developed the online works "Kandiski by Perdizes" (2008), with Claudio Bueno, Denisse Agassi and Nacho Duran, "No plata dot us" (2005) and "cir_lular" (2004), with the group Preguiça Febril, and "Webpaisagem0 (2002), with Giselle Beiguelman and Rafael Marchetti. He published the mashups series "procedure director" (2007) and "samplertropofagia" (2002-4, in a partnership with Giselle Beiguelman), on the website "Mashup.etc.br", and a series of banners and videos for electronic boards at the "Calhau" media infiltration. Bastos is the editor of the online magazine arte.mov, developed in the context of the International Art Festival in Mobile Media - Vivo arte.mov, of which he was curator for the second and third editions. Bastos has been curator of audiovisual exhibitions such as "Ruído" (Instituto Itaú Cultural) and "Que situação, hein Debord?" (CCBB). He translated into Portuguese works by artists such as Bill Seaman, Jim Andrews and the duo Camilla Utterback and Romy Achituv. Bastos published articles in magazines such as Leonardo Electronic Almanac, DeSignis and Trópico, besides chapters for books such as "Cultura em Fluxo" (org. André Brasil, Eduardo de Jesus and Geane Alzamorra), "Territórios Recombinantes" (org. Daniela Castro) and "Mapa do Jogo" (org. Lucia Santaella and Mirna Feitoza).

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Martin Grossman cultural manager and director CCSP, creator and coordinator of the Permanent Forum).

Full Professor at São Paulo University. Director of the Centro Cultural São Paulo since August 2006. Creator and Coordinator of the "Permanent Forum: Art Museums, between the public and the private". Cultural manager since 1985 in important Art Institutions. These practices are supported by research and studies in Curatorship; Action, Mediation and Cultural Policy, Museology, Criticism, Theory and Art History and History of Architecture. The academic research developed since his MA investigates the transition from Material Culture to a Culture in virtuality, the relationship between Contemporary Art, its agents and its Institutions, the processes of cultural and artistic mediation, as well as the development and maintenance of Information Systems for Art and Culture.
http://buscatextual.cnpq.br/buscatextual/visualizacv.jsp?id=K4783953E4

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Potira Preiss is a biologist and educator. She works with Education for Sustainability, socio-environment and group facilitation. She has been part of the Organizing Committee of the course Educação Gaia em São Paulo since 2007, and belongs to the international educators consortium GEESE (Global Ecovillage Educators for a Sustainable Earth). Potira belonged to the team of educators of the Project Ambientes Verdes e Saudáveis for UNIFESP, in a partnership with the SP State Secretariats of the Environment and Health and PNUMA. She has taught at ecovillages and organizations working with Sustainability in Scotland, Germany and Portugal. She integrated the Organizing Committee for Intercontinental Youth Camping for the World Social Forum, as articulator of the environmental project for the Porto Alegre editions. She has been a member of the women’s circles Tendas and Clãs do Sul since 1998.

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Rejane Spitz – With an intense production in the interface between technology, art, design and society, Rejane Spitz has a PhD. in Education from PUC-Rio (1993), a Post-doctorate in Electronic Art from University of California – Berkeley (2002) and from CADRE Laboratory for New Media /San Jose State University, California (2003). She is Associate Professor in the Department of Arts and Design at PUC-Rio (since 1985), and coordinator of the Nucleus of Electronic Art (NAE) at PUC-Rio. Her artistic works have been shown in Electronic Art exhibitions in South Africa, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Spain, the United States, Finland, France, England and Uruguay. Rejane is a member of publishing, curating and educational boards in a number of international institutions such as ACM SIGGRAPH (since 1991), LEONARDO/ International Society for the Art, Science and Technology (since 1992), Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) since 1992, and the Digital Art Museum (DAM), since 2001.

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Ricardo Palmieri (vj palm) is an architect, a multimedia producer and a researcher of free tools for artistic production. Since 1998, he has researched the potentialities of computer use in the production processes of interactive environments. Ricardo Palmieri started his artistic work with professor Renato Cohen in the group Midia Ka, and worked as vj (video jockey) at parties and raves, as well as meetings such as the VJBR I at the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo, and at the event Hypersonica at the FILE-SP. Since 2003 he has been researching and producing multimedia with free software and hardware at a number of platforms (windows, mac osx and linux).
In 2008, he developed his free tool for the production of real-time multimedia content called MAEstream, presented at the MMKamp08 in Dubrovnik, Croatia, at the State Meeting of Free Software in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil, at the National Festival of Live Cinema, at Caixa’s Centro Cultural in Rio de Janeiro, and received approval to develop it at the AVLab1.0 programme of the MediaLab Prado, in Madrid.
He is currently consultant for customized interactive media at the center for new visual languages, Visual Farm, working with multimedia artists, events and advertising. Palmieri researches multimedia production in real time (livecoding and circuitbending), as well as intelligent systems for the generation of automated contents.

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Roberta Mahfuz is an artist, researcher and educator, and currently manages the Artist Links England Brazil residency programme, an Arts Council England and British Council venture.

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Silvia Leal (virtual participation)

Silvia Leal is an english-brazilian artist making works that occupy public spaces. Silvia uses multi-media to explore contemporary landscape and cross-cultural identity. She completed her BA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and began her site-specific activity in 1999 with Geraldine Pilgrim’s ‘Dreamworks 3’ and ‘Site/Parasite’ led by Bruce Gernand and Adam Chodzko in 2000. In 2003 Silvia began curating exhibitions which explore the aeshetic and dynamic relationship between art and architecture at a leading practice in London, 3D Reid. Since 2007 Silvia has co-directed the Experimental Multidisciplinary Autonomous Group (GEMA), a conceptual framework which acts as an open interdisciplinary interface to explore the city and its environs . [http://gemaproject.blogspot.com]

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Paulo Hartmann

Paulo Hartmann is a multimedia artist, musician and independent researcher and new media curator.
One of the organisers of MOBILEFEST - International Festival of Mobile Art and Creativity.
He also represents in Brazil Memefest - International Festival of Radical Communication since 2003.
As a musician, he is involved in researching prepared electric guitar and creation of soundscapes generating real time loops, as well as tele-performance presentations.

Since 2007 he is one of the organisers of Improfest - International Festival of Free Improvisation.

[http://www.mobilefest.org]
[http://www.memefest.org/brasil]
[http://www.improfest.org]
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VJ Spetto

Working as VJ/videowriter/videoperformer for over ten years, Spetto has been present at the leading Electronic Art festivals in Brazil and abroad. Skolbeats, Tim Festival, Claro q é Rock, Sonar Sound São Paulo, Nokia Trends, Motomix, Eletronika, Creamfields, Arte.Mov, among others, where he was present as VJ and technological consultant.
His unique, humorous style attempts to bring a touch of fable to the dance floor. His acute sense and his synchronicity of issues and images incite the audience to participate and have fun with his videoperformances.
His installations blend high and low tech, in a hybrid way, creating bio-technological metaphors.
A specialist in large scale/urban scale projections, Spetto was responsible for the commemorative videos for the re-opening of the Southbank Centre, projected on the outside walls of the Royal Festival Hall, on the banks of the Thames, an event for 100 thousand people for 2 days, where he enveloped the building in projections. Along with VJ Zaz, Spetto was the winner of the Cinetrip VJ Torna Budapeste of 2008.

FROM THE NETHERLANDS

Annette Wolfsberger
Annette Wolfsberger (NL/AT) studied political science and works as producer, project manager and researcher. Areas of interest include media arts, contemporary and popular culture. Annette has a track record of organizing and directing events and festivals across several European countries.

From 2005-07 she directed Enter_ Unknown Territories, an international conference and festival at the intersection of new technology art, business and research in Cambridge (UK). Before that she was production manager at Melkweg, a renown independent multidisciplinary arts venue in Amsterdam (NL).

Currently, she is programme manager at Virtueel Platform, the Dutch sector institute for e-culture, and freelances next to that.
She is producer of Sonic Acts, a bi-annual media arts festival in Amsterdam; project manages international staff exchanges for cultural operators for Trans Europe Halles, the European network of independent cultural centres; and is doing research into cultural blogging in Europe for LabforCulture.

[http://www.virtueelplatform.nl]
[http://www.sonicacts.com]
[http://www.teh.net]
[http://www.labforculture.org]

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Edo Paulus
Edo Paulus is a Dutch sound artist who studied Architecture at the Technical University of Delft, Audio Design at the Utrecht School of the Arts and since 2002 works and lives in Amsterdam. His specialization is the use of generative processes for the creation of sound-installations, automatic music-generating software, live music performances and
(interactive) music for imagery (website / computer game / film). He has made works for a.o. Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ Amsterdam (NL), Ultrasound Festival Huddersfield (UK), OKNO Brussels (BE), ECOS Conference Nantes (FR), Deaf Festival Rotterdam (NL), Netherlands Media Arts Institute Amsterdam (NL).
Edo uses algorithmic creation techniques to keep his music free from human dramatic expression and arbitrary decision-making. Working with visuals and (interactive) installations makes the process-based aspects of this music more transparent to the audience. Incorporating physical reality into these processes, especially nature (that which is not controlled by human beings), is an attempt to emphasize the absence of human dramatic expression in these works. Edo so far incorporated nature into the process by using acoustic feedback, solar energy and virtual wind power. He is currently trying to incorporate the natural dynamics of human behavior into a process in a meaningful way.
In 2008 Edo has joined with Luna Maurer, Roel Wouters and Jonathan Puckey to write a manifesto: the Conditional Design Manifesto. A manifesto that promotes the idea of designing conditions rather than end results.
www.eude.nl
www.conditionaldesign.org

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Esther Polak (1962)
Studied graphic art and mixed media and is interested in how technology determines (visual) perception. In this context she explores the visual and documentary possibilities of GPS.
Her AmsterdamREALTIME project (2002) was one of the first large-scale art explorations in GPS (Global Positioning System) mapping. Ten inhabitants of Amsterdam carried per week a GPS tracer with them. Their routes through town were made visible on a projection screen in the exhibition space. The traces on screen form an alternative, highly personal map of the city. This was a joint project of artists Esther Polak, Waag and Society Jeroen Kee
(http://realtime.waag.org).
In 2004-2005 she developed MILKproject. In this project a European dairy transportation was followed from the udder of the (Latvian) cow, to the mouth of the (Dutch) consumer. All people who played a role in this chain received, for a day, a GPS-device that registered their movements. The team developed a lucid visualization-software for these traces, and let the participants react upon them in their own kitchens or living rooms. MILKproject tells the personal life-stories of these very different Europeans, from the Latvian farmer to the Dutch open-air market salesman with his clients, who are all connected by one thing: the milk from a truck of one Latvian milk collector. The project was awarded with a Golden Nica at Ars Electronica in 2005 It was developed in collaboration with , Ieva Auzina and Rixc, Riga center of new media culture (http://milkproject.net). At this moment Polak works on a new GPS-project: NomadicMILK.

For this project the tracks of both nomadic herdsman and regular dairy transports in Nigeria will be recorded and visualized. The project will make
use of a newly developed GPS-visualization tool: a small robot will draw the tracks directly on the ground in lines of sand. This way the tracks can easily been shown to the Nigerian participants and discussed with them along the road. (www.nomadicmilk.net)
In her projects Polak manages to strip GPS of its nerdy riffraff, and instead uses the technology for making comprehensible visualizations and telling human stories.
www.estherpolak.nl

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Koert Van Mensvoort Started his career in the late eighties with the creation of videogames – belonging to the first generation of whizkids who are now no longer kids. In the nineties he moved on and studied computer science, philosophy and art. He received a M.Sc in computer sciences from Eindhoven University of Technology (1997) and a MFA from the Sandberg Institute, Masters of Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2000).

Currently Van Mensvoort is co-director of the All Media Foundation (2005-), an Amsterdam based non profit organization that conceives, researches and visualizes current cultural issues. Furthermore he is a part-time assistant Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology (Industrial Design Department) (2003-). Earlier Van Mensvoort worked an associate researcher at the Center for User-System Interaction (1998-2003), as a teacher at the Sandberg Institute (2002-2006) and as a Visionary in Residence at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena (2008).

Much of his work revolves around the relation between people and media. Among his works are the Datafountain (an internet enabled water fountain connected to money currency rates), the online interactive dancefilm ‘Drift’ (featuring a dancer without a body), the TV documentary ‘Daddy! The Woods smell of Shampoo’, the Fake for Real memory game (on the tensed relation between reality and simulation) and the ‘Biggest Visual Power Show’, an intellectual spectacle blending between a scientific conference and a pop concert, held in Amsterdam (NL), Zeche Zollverein (DE) and Los Angeles (USA).

Van Mensvoort is (co)author of numerous books and publications; among them Next Nature, Visual Power, Natuur 2.0, Masters of Rietveld, Entry Paradise – New Worlds of Design, Artvertising, States of Nature, Style First and Nieuwe Media Cultuur in Nederland.

Van Mensvoort does not work in one specific media or style, but rather uses all media to visualize his ideas. His most profound experience in life, so far, has been the discovery of next nature. Which revolves around the idea that our technological world is so complex, that it has become a nature of its own. Many of his current activities relate to the exploration of this nature caused by human culture.

Van Mensvoort is married and lives in Amsterdam. Websites: www.koert.com, www.nextnature.ne , www.all-media.eu , www.powercursor.com , www.visual-power.com , www.fakeforreal.com , www.naonsdemens.nl

NEXT NATURE
Koert van Mensvoort
The Nature caused by Human Culture

Do we still have genuine experiences of nature or are we living in a picture of it? Real nature is wild, unpredictable, inaccessible, overwhelming, terrifying, infinite and primitive. The average Western person is more concerned about the mortgage interest deduction than about hurricanes or floods.

The average child knows more logos and brands than bird or tree species. Is this our next nature? Do we control the world economy? Do you control the viruses and spyware on your computer? Hypoallergenic design cats are already on the market. Prehistoric woods are being laid out at locations designated by politicians; our image of Nature is being carefully constructed as a recreational simulation. It’s set-building for Sunday afternoon, Disneyland for grown-ups. In order to avoid spoiling of the landscape, mobile telephone antenna masts are disguised as a pine trees. This isn’t nature. At best, it is a picture of nature. It is an illustration, like a landscape painting hanging above the sofa. Greener grass: you get used to it.

A new image of Nature is arising. What does it look like, and how can we see it? Is it a picture of old-fashioned nature, or a practically functioning new form? Now that motorways, airports, websites and supermarkets have become natural environments for us, they are being more and more systematically produced and copied. Recognizability ensures an image that is true to nature. Bureaucratic structures, surveillance models, and strategies to promote a thriving economy are becoming visible.

More and more, trees, plants, animals, atoms and the climate are determined by human beings. At the same time, our systems are outgrowing us: we’re seeing genetic surprises, wild systems, autonomous machines and beautiful black flowers.

Ambient intelligence, tissue engineering, nanotechnology, augmented reality, and biotechnology are a few of the new disciplines with which we are entering our future. All these disciplines are radically encroaching on our concept of ‘what is natural’. They come together in the category of ‘Next Nature’. Next nature is the nature caused by human culture. Next nature is real nature. It is not a picture or a simulation of a long-lost phenomenon: nature changes along with us.

We are entering a mysterious magic garden which surprises us, amazes us, sometimes crushes us and is sometimes favorably disposed toward us. We must give things new meanings in order to define our place: we must resymbolize. We are wading around like newborn children in what we have created. We will have to fight our battle with ‘Nature’ anew. Natural disasters become cultural disasters. We will get the nature we deserve.

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Luna Maurer (1972)

Trained as a Graphic Designer, Luna Maurer works as an independent designer in the field of interaction and media design in Amsterdam. Her interests lie in technological developments that change our media into fluid digital environments and finding design solutions for it. As a designer she asks herself in what direction society is changing, what role she can play in it - what are the questions to be answered?

Central in the work of Luna Maurer is the theme 'control'. This leads to design methods in which designing the environments for visualization or creation of content is more important than designing the end product. The structure and the process become an important part of the message.

Luna Maurer frequently collaborates with Jonathan Puckey, Roel Wouters and Edo Paulus, developing and discussing their working methods under the term 'conditional design'. She transports these ideas into all kinds of media: dynamic media (web, tools, animation and video) but also into print, installations and performances. Her clients range from cultural institutions, commercial clients to governmental institutions but she also works on autonomous projects.

Her work has been exhibited a.o. at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Het Domein, Sittard, Museum de Paviljoens, Almere, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, London Design Museum. At the moment she teaches 'interaction design' at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. Luna gives workshops and lectures inside and outside The Netherlands.

Her work can be found on her website: www.poly-luna.com , www.poly-xelor.com and www.conditionaldesign.org

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Wapke Feenstra FORMER FARMLAND
Wapke Feenstra (myvillages)

“There you stand with your mobile in your hand, in connection with the whole world, but on former farmland.”

Wapke Feenstra will focus on Former Farmland a collection of stories and images about the ground beneath your feet. The collected knowledge can pop up in your mobile phone while walking in an suburban area.
`When farmland is used as a site for new building projects or urban leisure areas, the farmer gets a good price for the land. The farmer then moves on. He may buy new land or decide to quit farming altogether because there is no-one to take over from him or he sees no financial future in farming. But what the farmer takes away is not just the memory of a piece of land that is about to be re-developed – he takes a wealth of knowledge about the soil he has worked on for generations. This knowledge has no value anymore. The land is designated for other purposes and the personal stories about the influence of the water and soil on the harvest are no longer relevant. As farmland is a part of everyone’s cultural heritage, I decided to unearth some stories about Former Farmland.`
Former Farmland was launched in 2008 within the Overtures 3 programme of artcircolo DE and realised for Expo08 in Saragossa ES and the Ars Electronica Festival 08 in Linz AT. In 2009 a third version will be made for the Edith-Russ-Haus in Oldenburg DE.

Bios
Wapke Feenstra finished in 1991 a post-graduate at the Jan van Eyckacademy, Maastricht NL. She lives and works in Rotterdam NL. Her work explores the direct physical and mental environment by tapping into local knowledge. During Manifesta 1 she was one of the initiators of the platform NEsTWORK. In 1998 she started up the first digital story collection called Verhalen van Dordrecht, which is run by citizens and still active. With Antje Schiffers and Kathrin Böhm she founded myvillages.org (2002). In 2007 myvillages.org did a residency at Grizedale Arts UK and since 2008 they cooperate in International Village Shop, a rural trade network. Wapke Feenstra’s work can pop up as e.g. a travelbook (The Best Place 2007), a digital tree collection (www.webxylotheek.nl) or in a museum collection (SPOT 2001-2002, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam NL). In 2008 she developed Former Farmland; a new track in the intermingling of different cultural platforms.
Weblinks
MYVILLAGES
WAPKE

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Taco Stolk
Taconis Stolk (Netherlands, 1967) is a conceptualist. He gained his BA and MA degrees in media art and conceptual composition at the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, Netherlands. Since 1993, most of his artistic research is presented through WLFR, a media identity characterised by minimalist form and a wide range of —sometimes unusual— media. The emphasis in this research is on the crossroads of philosophical and aesthetical implications of media, and the phenomenology of the artistic process. WLFR projects were exhibited, performed and published in a large number of countries.
Examples of projects are PIA (interactive musical performance for magnetic cards, 1993), fZone (online composition programme for music based on weather conditions, 1994), 3dTt (animation series for teletext system, 2000), PARR (research on nano-aesthetics and the relation between form and number, in books and animations, 2001), BuBL Space (pocket device to block mobile phone signals, with Arthur Elsenaar, 2002), Gradually Zero (performance theatre on the beauty in numbers, 2003), Genetic Design (media campaign on virtual education in artistic DNA manipulation, 2004) and PWf-D (localised audio composition based on Planck-time and Planck-length, 2008).
Taconis Stolk is also co-founder of formalism, studio for concept & design in Amsterdam. His other activities include writing, lecturing and curating, as well as teaching at the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague, and at Leiden University. He lives and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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PROJECTS

PWf
WLFR research project, 2007—present
According to contemporary physics, our universe has a smallest unit of space (Planck-length) and a smallest unit of time (Planck-time). These units are, so to speak, the pixels of this universe. The PWf project is a long-term rescaling programme of our scientific and cultural measuring units on the basis of Planck-length and Planck-time. By calculating the harmonics of these incredibly small units within areas we are able to experience as human beings, it becomes possible to conceptually grasp something of the harmonic unity between our daily world and the extreme scales of physics. Parts of this research are presented in different projects, concentrating on conceptual rescaling (like presenting alternatives for the meter or the second) or sensory rescaling (like presenting harmonic scales in sound, light, tactile vibration and smell).

CORO – Collectivities, Networks and Organizations

CORO is a collaborative network community formed in 2003 by active professionals in the Brazilian cultural scene working in a variety of languages and experiences in collective work and creation processes.
The CORO network is geared to the independent cultural production, circulation and dissemination; the direct communication among the art agents and activists, and the articulation and mobilization for joint socio-cultural-environmental actions. It also works on the democratization of current artistic practices through the development of the CORO digital catalogue on the free access website of the community, and through a collection of independent publications featuring information, manifestos, testimonies and images on CD, DVD, VHS and paper, which may be accessed through appointment or public exhibition.
Today, the 330 representatives of over 150 initiatives communicate daily through the e-group (rb.moc.sopurgoohay|ovitelocoroc#rb.moc.sopurgoohay|ovitelocoroc). In BRAZIL, the group articulates representations in the state capitals of 18 states and in all 5 regions of the country. ABROAD, it is already setting up strategies in Europe and South America. Artists and groups, initiatives and independent spaces and ongoing actions, associations and co-ops, all are aware that every action has an echo, a reverberation!
National meetings, international exchange programs and the CORO Forum were held in 2004, 2006 and 2008 by Festival ReverberAções. It was awarded the PRIZE Culture and Thought/MinC for the seminar THE BEATS OF URGENCY, as it discusses Creative Economy in Brazil.
[http://www.corocoletivo.org]

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INTERAÇÕES FLORESTAIS - Terra UNA Artistic Residency

Cultural Design and General Coordination by the Interações Florestais Council:
Cristina Ribas, Domingos Guimaraens, Flavia Vivacqua and Nadam Guerra.

The Artistic Residency Terra UNA Ecovillage Program is a first in the Brazilian rural context. Surrounded by woods, fields, rivers and waterfalls, it welcomes researchers throughout the year offering them accommodation and a studio next to the forest of the Mantiqueira Mountains, in the town of Liberdade/Minas Gerais, Brazil. Interações Florestais is an edict of prize research scholarships on ‘Art and Community Life’ by the Terra UNA Residency program, for a period of 21 days, which features a pioneering self-selective methodology to promote the distribution of prize scholarships and experience at the ecovillage through a self-management process carried out by the enrolled participants themselves and the council. The initiative has received the Prizes ‘Conexão Artes Visuais FUNARTE/Petrobrás/MinC' – 2007/2008 and ‘Interações Estéticas’ FUNARTE/MinC – 2008/2009.
[http://www.terrauna.org.br]

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page revision: 71, last edited: 08 Mar 2010 21:41

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