Speaker

Thomas Ballhausen is an Austrian author as well as literary and film scholar. Ballhausen writes prose and essays and also works as publisher and translator. He teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature and at the Department of Theater Studies in Vienna and is director of the library of the Austrian Filmarchiv. Ballhausen directs the literature department of the culture magazine skug and was also co-founder of the authors’ circle die flut.

Johannes Grenzfurthner is an artist, writer, curator, and director. He is the founder of monochrom, an internationally acting art and theory group. He teaches art theory and art practice at the University of Applied Sciences in Graz, Austria. He is head of the “Arse Elektronika” festival in San Francisco, host of “Roboexotica” (Festival for Cocktail-Robotics, Vienna and San Francisco), and co-curates the paraflows Symposium in Vienna.

Christian Heller lives in Berlin and experiments with the outsourcing of identity and thought processes in internet software under the pseudonym “plomlompom.”

Jana Herwig (Vienna), blogger and media studies scholar, web worker since 1998, PhD candidate and academic assistant in the intermediality section of the Department of Theater, Film and Media Studies, Universität Wien. Blog: digiom.wordpress.com CV and publication list at: https://tfm.univie.ac.at/personal/tfm-staff/jana-herwig/

Herbert Hrachovec, professor at the Department of Philosophy, Universität Wien. Studies in German, history, philosophy, and theology in Vienna and Tübingen. Longer teaching assignments and research visits in Oxford, Münster, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Berlin, Essen and Weimar. Work on analytic philosophy, metaphysics, and aesthetics. Current research interests: new media. Chair of the philosophy department, member of the senate and chairman of the curriculum commission of the Universität Wien. Further information at http://hrachovec.philo.at

Lin Hsin Hsin is an artist, poet and composer born in Singapore, deeply rooted in mathematics and information technology. She graduated in mathematics from the University of Singapore and received a postgraduate degree in computer science from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. She studied music and art in Singapore, printmaking at the University of Ulster, papermaking in Ogawamachi, Japan, and paper conservation at the University of Melbourne Conservation Services.

Heather Kelley lives and works in the USA and Canada //“Super HYPERCUBE”, FILE Electronic Language International Festival, Sao Paolo (BA), 2010 / “One button objects” (curator), Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco California (USA), 2010 / “Gamma4” (curator), Game Developers Conference, San Francisco California (USA), 2010.

Dmytri Kleiner is a software developer and cultural producer exploring the political economy of network topology. Dmytri is a founder of the Telekommunisten collective and is currently working on the Telekommunist Manifesto, which will be published by the Institute of Network Cultures.

Kyle Machulis is known as a tinkerer/hacker/pioneer/visionary/deity in the realm of sex technology (or at least, a ton of bloggers seem to think so). Through his Slashdong webpage, he uses the topic of teledildonics (remotely actuated sexual experience) to teach the basic concepts of electrical and mechanical engineering. He also tracks the convergence of sex and technological advances in toys and interaction. An (accidental) expert in the field of sex in video games, he is on the leadership council of the IGDA Sex In Games Special Interest Group, a gathering of game developers, academics, and players interested in discussing the role of sex in interactive entertainment. His MMOrgy Project keeps the community updated on the intimate happenings of the Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming world, where emergent sex (intimate encounters not originally planned as part of the game/world by developers) has become a hot topic and often-seen event.

Mela Mikes currently lives in Vienna. She dropped out of university after studying philosophy for a while and now works as a software test engineer. She is also a hobby DJ and creator of the melafesto podcasts.

Sarah Outhwaite is a director, choreographer, and digital muser from New York. Adam Flynn is a researcher-at-large and media theorist recently returned from Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Jane Tingley lives and works in Montreal. Exhibitions: 2010 Solar Branch Prosthetic – Permanent Installation, Marnay-Sur-Seine, Aube, France 2009 Ecology; Water, Air, Sound Artscape Whychwood Barns, Toronto, Ontario. Installation: Plant(iPod)Installation.

Nina Wenhart is an instructor for the “Prehysteries of New Media” class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an independent artist/researcher. She graduated from Prof. Oliver Grau’s Media Art Histories program at the Danube University in Krems with a Master Thesis on Descriptive Metadata for Media Arts. For many years, she worked in the field of archiving media art, most recently at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Media.Art.Research and before as the head of the Ars Electronica Futurelab’s videostudio, where she created their archives and primarily worked with the archival material.