ALFRED ROTERT

Alfred Rotert, director of the European Media Art Festival

Born 1957, studied in Frankfurt and Osnabrück. MA in media art. Head of the European Media Art Festival (EMAF), which presents annually over 300 productions in the area of film/ video, installation and internet as well as congresses about film- and media specific topics.

MIKE STUBBS

Mike Stubbs is Director and Chief Executive of FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Britains Centre for Media and Digital Art. Jointly appointed by Liverpool John Moores University, he is Professor of Art, Media and Curating. Encompassing a broad range of arts and media practice his arts management, curating and artwork has been internationally acknowledged.

LAURA BELOFF

With acclaimed international reputation as an artist, the Finnish-born Laura Beloff's artistic works can be described as peculiar wearable objects, programmed structures and participatory, networked installations. Beloff has exhibited widely in various museums, galleries and major media-art events in Europe and worldwide, She is frequently lecturing about her research and practice in universities and at various events/conferences. 2007-11 she was awarded a five-year grant by the Finnish state. Currently she is working towards PhD within Planetary Collegium, The Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Integrative Arts (MPHIL/PHD Computing, Communications & Electronics, University of Plymouth, Faculty of technology). More information on her works and cv can be found at: http://www.realitydisfunction.org

DOMENICO QUARANTA

Domenico Quaranta is a contemporary art critic and curator. He focused his research on the impact of the current techno-social developments on the arts, with a specific focus on art in networked spaces, from the Internet to virtual worlds.

As an art critic, he is a regular contributor to Flash Art and Artpulse; his essays, reviews and interviews appeared in many magazines, newspapers and web portals.

His first book titled, NET ART 1994-1998: La vicenda di Äda’web was published in 2004. His second book, titled Medium, New Media, Postmedia, will be published in October 2010. He lectures internationally and teaches “Net Art” at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan.

ERKKI HUHTAMO

Professor (UCLA) Erkki Huhtamo is a media archaeologist, writer and exhibition curator. He is a Professor at the Department of Design | Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Huhtamo holds a Ph. D. in Cultural History. He has written extensively on media archaeology and the media arts. As a curator Professor Huhtamo has created many media-art exhibitions, for example the major project Alien Intelligence (KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, 2000). He has served in many art exhibition and festival juries worldwide, including Siggraph, Ars Electronica and the Interactive Media Festival.

ANDY BEST

Andy Best was born in the South of England in 1963. He studied Fine Art (Sculpture) in Cardiff, Wales, before coming to Finland with a study scholarship in 1988. He studied sculpture at Kuvataideakatemia, Helsinki, for two years. His first one person exhibition in 1989 was also the first exhibition to be held at the now defunct Vapauden Aukio gallery in the centre of Helsinki, which was on the site of the new Music House. Andy has participated in numerous group and one person exhibitions in Finland and internationally. Andy has run the Digital Arts degree programme at Turku University of Applied Sciences since 2002 and gives lectures and workshops at other art academies and universities. He commenced PhD research at Goldsmiths College, University of London, in Arts & Computational Technologies. He is currently a researcher in Crucible Studio, Media Lab, Aalto University School of Art and Design, Helsinki.

DREW HEMMENT

Drew Hemment is Director and founder of FutureEverything festival of art, music and ideas and Associate Director of ImaginationLancaster, a major new creative research lab at Lancaster University. Winner of the Lever Prize 2010, shortlisted for Big Chip International Award for Innovation 2010, and an Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica 2008. Hemment's artistic and curatorial work has been covered prominently by New York Times, BBC and NBC. He has curated numerous exhibitions on art and social technologies, including the first major art exhibition on mobile and locative media (Mobile Connections, 2004) and the first major art exhibition on social networking (Social Networking Unplugged, 2008). Served on many international Art Juries including the International Jury of UNESCO DigiArts Award, and was the first international curator on the Programming Group of the Sonar festival in Barcelona. A recent art project Loca: Set To Discoverable premiered at ISEA2006 and ZeroOne in San Jose, California. He was a key figure in the emergence of the field of Locative Media, and was involved in early UK electronic dance culture in the late 1980s including seminal parties said to be dance culture's equivalent of Woodstock. Completed an MA (Distinction) at the University of Warwick, and a PhD at Lancaster University.

HONOR HARGER

Honor Harger is currently the the director of the Lighthouse in Brighton, UK.
Honor was the guest curator of transmediale.10: FUTURITY NOW! She was director of the AV Festival, the UK's largest biennial of electronic art. She commissioned new work by Anthony McCall, Ryoji Ikeda, Chris Watson, Michael Nyman, Marko Peljhan, Marcus Coates, Gina Czarnecki and many others, and programmed exhibitions, concerts, screenings and events involving over 300 artists.
She was the first curator of webcasting for Tate (2000-2003), where she also curated events and concerts on art and technology at Tate Modern.
Her artistic practice is produced under the name r a d i o q u a l i a together with collaborator, Adam Hyde. Their work has been exhibited at the ICC in Tokyo, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York; Gallery 9 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; Sonar in Barcelona; Ars Electronica in Linz; The Physics Room in Christchurch, New Zealand, and many other places. One of their main projects is Radio Astronomy, a radio station broadcasting sounds from space.

ANNE ROQUIGNY

Anne Roquigny, media arts curator, has specialised during the last 15 years in the production and curating of hybrid digital projects linked to networks and to the Internet.
After devising and organising for 3 years the cultural programs of the Web Bar, an internet café/art gallery in Paris , she joined in 1999 the CICV Pierre Schaeffer, one of the first french new media centers where she'worked as a curator of the international urban multimedia arts festivals and co-director of the place.
From 2002 to 2004, Anne Roquigny was in charge of the general co-ordination of the preliminary project for a future Digital Arts Center in Paris, dedicated to digital production and to electronic music, at la Gaité Lyrique. Anne Roquigny is now developping the web performances project WJ-S and is parallely co-coordinating Locus Sonus, a research lab specialized in audio art and it's relation to space and networked audio systems. In November 2009 Anne Roquigny launched WJ-SPOTS #1 "15 years of artistic creation on the internet" a special edition of MCD in which artists, critics, thinkers, inventors, researchers, curators, organizers and producers of cultural events look back on 15 years of Internet history.

JAMIE WILKINSON

Jamie Wilkinson is a hacker, internet culture researcher and cofounder of Know Your Meme and the Magma viral video tracking system. He is also a founding member of the copyleft Free Art & Technology Lab (FAT) where he publishes projects including 000000book/Graffiti Markup Language, FuckFlickr, the Rickroll Database, and more. Previously he taught the Internet Famous Class at Parsons, in which student grades depend solely on how much internet traffic they can generate. His work has been featured on NBC, TIME, CNN, CurrentTV, MAKE, ArtNews and more.

JARI JAANTO

The career of Jari Jaanto (born in 1978) is very colourful. Having learned programming at the age of eight, life carried him from the IT department of university to the digitalTV business during the IT bubble. Meanwhile, in the year 2000, Jari was one of the founders of Finlands most popular web community, IRC-Gallery. He has been active in the field of marketing and advertising.
Jari created the community marketing concepts in IRC-Gallery while working as the Business Development Manager of Sulake Dynamoid and as the marketing director of Alternative Party media-art festival. He has had the time to be the technological director of Relevant Point Oy and is currently working as a producer of IRC-Gallery.

TEEMU LEINONEN

Mr. Teemu Leinonen (b. 1969) holds over a decade of experience in the field of research, design and development of web-based learning. His areas of interest and expertise covers design for learning, computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL), online cooperation, learning software design, educational planning and educational politics. Currently Teemu Leinonen is a professor of New Media Design and Learning and the Head of Department of the Media Lab, School of Art and Design, Aalto University in Helsinki Finland.
Teemu´s research group is internationally recognized from its open source virtual learning environment for knowledge building, called Fle3 and, a web community and platform for finding, authoring and sharing open and free learning resources, called LeMill.
Teemu is an elected member of the University Senate, founding member and the first president of Vope Ry - the Finnish association of Libre and Open Source in Education, founding partner of Ionoff Ltd and Co-Learnit Ltd, member of the WikiMedia Foundation's Advisory Board, and program committee member of several international conferences.

TONY MANNINEN

PhD, CEO at LudoCraft Ltd. Tony is a computer games designer, researcher and consultant. His areas of expertise include design, analysis and production of collaborative multiplayer games and their diverse applications.

Tony leads LudoCraft in its pursuit of applying and commercialising games and game-like solutions. LudoCraft studies games and applies the theoretical knowledge into game design. The approach combines theoretical, technical and artistic expertise in serving both the academic and the practitioner communities.

The LudoCraft team has received many awards in several games development competitions, including the Make Something Unreal competition (2005) and the Independent Game Festival (2006 & 2007).

SONJA KANGAS

Sonja is specialised in digital games and youth media culture. She has studied computer science (from business perspective) and digital media (technology and design).

Currently she works as Head of GameLab at Paf, is an independent researcher at the Finnish Youth Research Network as well as independent game developer at Souplala. She is the Lead Chapter coordinator of IGDA Finland and in the advisory boards of Nordic Game Program and IGDA Women in Games Special Interest Group.

KOOPEE HILTUNEN

KooPee Hiltunen is the Director of Neogames, Finnish Center of Game Business, Research and Education. KooPee has been working in digital media industry since the beginning of 90´s and especially with games since 2004.

KooPee is specialized in games industry development, games business and games exports. KooPee Hiltunen is also the spokesperson of Finnish Game Developers Association and treasurer and board member in EGDF (European Games Developer Federation). As a director of Neogames KooPee is also a member in many strategic workgroups of many different ministries.