Mouna Andraos & Melissa Mongiat
Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat work at the intersection of participation, design and technology — researching new ways to interact and tell stories and empowering people to have a place in the stories that are told around them. In the summer of 2011, they created a set of 21 musical swings for the city of Montreal’s, a singing machine that will go on tour throughout Quebec and a Giant Sing Along for the Minnesota State Fair.
Mouna holds a Masters degree from New York University and is an alumni of Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology in New York City. She has shown work and lead workshops in various locations including at the 01SJ Biennale and Beirut’s Olympiades culturelles. Her web-based work has awards ranging from a Best of Show at the SXSW Festival to a CyberLion in Cannes. Melissa’s is an MA graduate from Central Saint Martins College. Her
series of public interactive installations created for London’s Southbank Centre led to her selection by Wallpaper* magazine as one of the world’s ten breakthrough designers. Her research work on participatory design with Kelsey Snook has been presented notably the Banff New Media Institute and the Instituto di Diseno Europeo in Barcelona, and led to the creation of GoodParticipation.com.
Mouna and Melissa we awarded the Phyllis Lambert Design prize in 2010.
Sarah Angliss
An award-winning sound artist and maker, Sarah Angliss (aka Spacedog) is known for her dreamlike performances, incorporating theremin and her uncanny musical robots which accompany her live on stage.
Trained in electroacoustics, music and robotics, Sarah is also an historian whose work often reflects her discoveries in the archives. The Ealing Feeder, for example, is a robotic carillon inspired by an electric lullaby she discovered in the archives of the Electrical Association for Women c1930. And her recent Spacedog show Televisor uses a robotic vent doll and flickering Nipkow disk projections to summon the spirit of John Logie Baird. Other work has explored Lancashire clog dancing as early noise music (with Caroline Radcliffe); musicians’ attitudes to the first drum machines and samplers (the subject of her recent TEDx talk); the uncanny valley; the history of dead air and the reputed psychological effects of infrasound.
Sarah’s world-renowned collaboration Infrasonic (May 2002) led to a new special effect, in collaboration with Punchdrunk, which debuted in It Felt Like a Kiss, Manchester International Festival 2009. In July 2011, BBC Radio 4 broadcast her documentary on the use of birds as primordial, feathered sound recorders.
Rain Ashford
I’ve been working in the digital field for 14 years, creating both screen based and physical interactive work. My interactive wearable and artworks include musical and gaming aspects in various media such as: Arduino, mbed, e-textiles, electroluminescent wire, C programming language, Flash, old skool Director and JavaScript.
I’m fascinated by Harajuku Japanese street fashion, especially Gothic Lolita and its variations, which has influenced me to create my own variant on this fashion: “Neon-Victoriana”, which includes the use of electroluminescent materials and electronic modules.
In 2011, I’ve so far exhibited at Maker Faire UK, Newcastle and Kinetica Art Fair, London, plus spoken about my work at Opentech. In previous years, I’ve exhibited at London’s ICA, Brighton Fringe Festival, Fabrica and New York SVA, I created the Digital Art galleries for BBC /Arts and also co-organised a digital arts exhibition at the UK’s legendary Lux gallery in Hoxton.
http://rainycatz.wordpress.com
Katrin Baumgarten
Katrin Baumgarten holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and an MSc from Imperial College London in Innovation Design Engineering. Her projects revolve around human-technology interaction and explore future possibilities within technology and art. She loves to see the magic that appears when an inanimate object suddenly starts to move and respond to external stimuli in ways normally attributed to humans.
Tine Bech
Tine Bech is a visual artist and researcher who works with interactive artwork and public art. Her work is concerned with audience engagement and aims to create experiences of immersion and play. The work is intentionally accessible through the use of location and materials such as interactive electronics and location tracking technology, urban spaces and environmental elements such as gravity, water, sound and light.
Bech’s work has been exhibited in Scandinavia, Europe, Russia and the USA, in venues including Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A Sackler Centre), SIGGRAPH 2010 Art Gallery, Aarhus Kunstbygning (Centre for Contemporary Art, DK), The Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), L Gallery (Moscow), Trøndelag Centre of Contemporary Arts (Norway) and The Royal British Sculptors Gallery (UK)
She was selected for the Cultural Leadership Programme Method, Artists Leading through their practice in 2009 and her work has been featured in the Leonardo Journal, BBC News (Technology), Furtherfield, NY Arts Magazine, AN Magazine and ARCHILight. After being awarded a PhD grant (2009) Bech is carrying out doctoral research at the Digital Cultures Research Centre at UWE.
Clare Bowman
Clare Bowman hacks playful interactive installations and designs digitally fabricated consumer products. She has exhibited projects at Maker Faire UK, FutureEverything and Curiosity Collective gallery shows. Recent work includes; “Sands Everything” an interactive hourglass installation interpreting Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man soliloquy through gravity-controlled animated grains; Tacticalendar, a laser-cut plywood perpetual-horizon erasable calendar; Makeastand, a creative-commons laptop stand design. Her career as a maker complements professional Occupational Therapy work, specialising everyday objects for disadvantaged clients. In her spare time, Clare is a paraglider pilot, reflexologist and coordinates a mobile massage cooperative. As a soon-to-be-mum, the nursery’s Arduinos are already on order.
Shu Lea Cheang
Cheang has engaged in large scale networked installation and performance since mid-90s. She was the first net artist commissioned by Guggenheim Museum New York for BRANDON (1998-1999), a one year web narrative project. She creates works, often with sci-fi scenario, that traverse between hard and soft, sex and polities, fiction and reality, fantasia and earth-bound, including Locker Baby Project (2001 – 2005, NTT[ICC], Tokyo, Palais de Tokyo, Paris), FLUID (2004, Detox, Norway), Agliomania (2007, PAN, Napoli), MobiOpera (2007, Sundance New Frontire), Moving Forest (2008, Transmediale, Berlin). She has co-founded and directed several cross-platform working collectives, including TAKE2030 (london based, since 2003), Mumbai Streaming Attack (Zurich based, since 2004) and Laptopsrus (Madrid-Paris based, since 2009). In 2011, she launches UKI live performance, live code live spam tour while further developing UKI viral game.
http://shulea.worldofprojects.info
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino was born in Montreal, Canada, but grew up in Paris and the Middle East. She returned to Canada to complete a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design at the Université de Montréal after which she moved to Italy to complete a Master’s degree in Interaction Design at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (IDII). She relocated to Amsterdam in 2006 and worked on web strategy & innovation as well as user experience design work. In 2007 she moved to London and co-founded Tinker London with Massimo Banzi co-founder of the Arduino platform. She ran the studio until it closed in December 2010. She now is an evangelist for Lirec, an EU-funded project about robots, freelancing and collaborating with RIG London. She works in the Silicon Roundabout and lives in Brixton. Find her on twitter or see her linkedin profile.
Anna Dumitriu
Anna Dumitriu’s work blurs the boundaries between art and science. Her installations, interventions and performances use a range of digital, biological and traditional media including live bacteria, interactive media and textiles. Her work has a strong international exhibition profile and is held in several major public collections, including the Science Museum in London. She was a member of the e-MobiLArt project (the EU funded European Mobile Lab for Interactive Art) and Artist in Residence at The Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at Sussex University. She is known for her work as director of “The Institute of Unnecessary Research”, a group of artists and scientists whose work crosses disciplinary boundaries and critiques contemporary research practice. She is currently working on a Wellcome Trust funded art project entitled “Communicating Bacteria”, collaborating with the Adaptive Systems Research Group at The University of Hertfordshire (focussing on social robotics) and is Leverhulme Trust artist in residence on the Modernising Medical Microbiology project at The University of Oxford.
http://www.unnecessaryresearch.org
Julie Freeman
Julie Freeman is an artist whose work spans visual, audio and digital art forms, and explores how we perceive the relationship between technology, science and nature. She is passionate about understanding the less obvious elements of our world, and about how art can incorporate science and technology to inform our perspective of these unseen layers. Often working collaboratively, she experiments in transforming complex processes and data sets into sound compositions, objects and animations.
Based in the UK, Julie is a TEDGlobal 2011 fellow, a NESTA fellow, a Wellcome Trust arts awardee. She is currently artist-not-often-in-residence at Cranfield University’s Microsystems and Nanotechnology Centre.
http://www.translatingnature.org
G. Hack
In February of 2011, G.Hack was formed as a response to the need for a supportive space for the women in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). The aim of G.Hack is to develop a space for hands-on experience, experimental production and a women friendly learning environment. Drawing on both internal and external teaching expertise, the goal of the G.Hack is to strengthen womens’ confidence and improve their abilities in the use of a range of technologies. G.Hack is a place for supporting its members research activities as well as public outreach to actively engage and support women of all ages and backgrounds interested in exploring science and technology. G.Hack is a 2011 awardee of QMUL’s Small Grants for the Development of Learning and Teaching.
Syuzi Pakhchyan
Syuzi Pakhchyan is fashion technologist and author with a passion for beautiful code and conductive cloth. After receiving her BFA from UC Berkeley in Literature and her MFA from the Art Center College of Design, she began a research-based design practice in 2006 focused on next generation wearable technologies.
Author of “Fashioning Technology” the first DIY book on interactive fashion, Syuzi has also penned numerous articles on the creative practices of interactive fashion. As a leading expert in her field, she chronicles the constantly evolving developments in wearable technology on her blog, fashioningtech.com, while continuing to develop products that are both fashionable and culturally motivated.
Her work has been exhibited at various conferences and events including Eyebeam, the Fashion Future Event, South by Southwest, Maker Faire and Emerging Technologies Conference.
Artemis Papageorgiou
After receiving her Masters in Computational Arts at Goldsmiths College, she stayed in London where she collaborated with Cinimod Studio, Jason Bruges Studio and led workshops on DIY electronics for MzTEK collective. Upon arrival in Athens she begun her collaboration with AFU where she currently designs industrial parametric furniture and helps market the brand. In her free time she designs games and runs workshops for grown-ups and children. Her work has been exhibited in shows such as the Locus Solus (Benaki Museum, Athens 2010), Passing Through, (James Taylor Gallery 2009), Kinetica Art Fair (P3 Exhibition Space 2009), Double Take (Eyebeam New York 2008). She is also a co-founder of Athens Plaython a marathon of big games and workshops launching in 2012 in Athens, Greece.
http://artemispapageorgiou.com
Mika Satomi
Mika Satomi is currently a researcher at The Smart Textile Design Lab at Textilehögskolan in Borås, Sweden. Only satisfied when things are working, Mika Satomi is always looking for new ways to use any kind of material, or bending existing techniques to her needs. She likes to find solutions for technical and artistic problems and to share this knowledge and experiences with others. As an artist Mika poses questions which are provoking peoples thoughts, opening their minds or twisting common views. Since 2006 Mika has collaborated with Hannah Perner-Wilson, forming the collective KOBAKANT. She holds BA in graphic design from Tokyo Zokei University, and MA in media creation from IAMAS, Japan.
Eunjoo Shin
Eunjoo Shin, an artist, explores interaction design, sound and public installation. Her art works have been featured in many venues, including FILE festival 2009 in Sao Paulo, Redhead gallery at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) in New York and Seoul Art Center in Seoul. Her work, Vocal Trio was selected as one of the best interaction designs by the Korean Federation of Design Associations, and published in the design yearbook, CREATIO 2009.