SPEAKERS, MODERATORS, WORKSHOP LEADERS:
AKIM _ONE, IAIN BORDEN, JONAH BRUCKER-COHEN, RICK CHARNOSKI, USMAN HAQUE, SARA HODGES, INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED AUTONOMY (IAA), LARS JOHANSSON, KATHERINE MORIWAKI, LINDA MELIN, BUDDY NICHOLS, DIETMAR OFFENHUBER, MICHAEL RAKOWITZ, RUSKIG, NEW BEGININGS, DANIEL REHN, PEDRO SEPULVEDA, ADAM SOMLAI-FISHER, SPACE HIJACKERS, SWOON, TELE, JOCKO WEYLAND, ZEVS.

ORGANIZERS:
MARGOT JACOBS, RAMIA MAZE

Please note that this list is subject to change. More information about each indiviual is listed below.

AKIM _ONE
Born October 20th, 1977 in da nang /vietnam. In 1985 akim moved from Vietnam to Germany and in 1989 he moved from western Germany to Berlin. In 1990 akim got in touch with graffiti|writing "my first decision was to delete my old identity, my second decision was to look for a new identity, graffiti writing was just a form, a new language for me. with this new language i was able to reflect in my own way. from that day i first encountered graffiti, i consciously built up a mental world in which graffiti writing has been the source for my life. also i am conscious of the 'normal' system in which i am one among many others. through all the experiences i have had in the graffiti writing school, i know i am ready for life. i discovered that the source for my writing and the source of this other 'normal' system have the same meaning: to spend power and energy...life! to discover the lowest and the highest common denominator on different systems means to be ready for exchange, it takes more than only to believe in something, to gain knowledge i will get up and go on.... peace."

IAIN BORDEN
Iain Borden is Director of the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he is Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture. Professor Borden is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. An architectural historian and urban commentator, his wide-ranging historical and theoretical interests have lead to publications on, among other subjects: critical theory and architectural historical methodology; the history of skateboarding as an urban practice; boundaries and surveillance; Henri Lefebvre and Georg Simmel; Renaissance urban space; architectural modernism and modernity; film and architecture; gender and architecture; and body spaces and the experience of space. His photographs have been widely published both in his own publications and those by other historians and architects. He is currently working on a history of different kinds of movement and architectural space.

His books (authored and co-edited) include: Manual: the Architecture and Office of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (2003); City Cultures Reader (2000, revised 2003); Skateboarding Space and the City: Architecture and the Body (2001); The Unknown City (2001); New Babylonians (2001); The Dissertation (2000); InterSections (2000); Gender Space Architecture (1999); Strangely Familiar (1996); and Architecture and the Sites of History (1995).

JONAH BRUCKER-COHEN
Jonah Brucker-Cohen is a Research Fellow in the Human Connectedness Group at the MIT Media Lab Europe in Dublin and a PhD candidate in the Networks and Telecommunications Research Group (NTRG) at Trinity College Dublin. His focus is on subverting existing relationships to human/networked interfaces by building new real-world inputs to networks, redefining how information is used and disseminated, and shifting virtual processes into physical forms through networked devices and experiences. He is the co-founder of the Dublin Art and Technology Association (DATA Group), his writing has appeared in numerous magazines including WIRED, and his work has been shown internationally at festivals including Transmediale, Ars Electronica, ISEA, DEAF and more. { visit site }

RICK CHARNOSKI and BUDDY NICHOLS
Since their first collaboration, the cult classic 8 millimeter backyard pool riding documentary ‘Fruit of the Vine’ in 1999, Coan Nichols and Rick Charnoski have charted an unorthodox path. They make films that are about skateboarding, but they have consistently gone beyond the tropes of trick-after-trick skate videos and frenetic editing that are the norm to illuminate deeper truths in the lives of skateboarders. This is true of the concrete grand tour ‘Skateparks of Oregon,’ the high altitude exoticism in ‘Ecuador’ and the mix of European contests, revelry and almost experimental juxtapositions of ‘Tobaccoland.’ The films are always aesthetically unique showcases for great skateboarding in all its varieties, but they also include the perils and joys of the road, humor, irreverence and real people living life to its fullest. Maybe it’s because they work in the trenches shooting fashion shows or at Ground Zero in New York, where they are based. Or that their movies have been shown everywhere from hole-in-the-wall skate shops to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio and the MU Art Foundation in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. This unusually broad worldview informs their lives, and it influences their films--which are made by real skaters who get out there and do it while documenting it faithfully, and occasionally turn it into art. { visit site }

AMY FRANCESCHINI
Amy Franceschini is a new media artist working with notions of community, sustainable environments and the conflicting rituals of humans and nature. Her work manifests "on" and "offline" in the form of dynamic websites, installations and printed matter. Past projects include "Photosynthesis Robot" that featured a solar powered robot and 'offshoots' where the audience was invited to exchange plants and information in a portable potting shed. Franceschini studied photojournalism at San Francisco State University and received an MFA from Stanford University.

In 1995, she founded Futurefarmers, an artists/design collective. Since 1998, Futurefarmers has hosted over 14 international artists through their residency program. The AIR program has fostered relationships with interdisciplinary artist who continue to collaborate with Futurefarmers.
{ visit site }

USMAN HAQUE
Usman Haque designs interactive architecture systems and researches how people relate to each other and their spaces. He has created responsive projection environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices; he has also choreographed performances. He is a former partner in architecture practice Pletts Haque and teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture.
He has been a researcher at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy; artist-in-residence at the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Japan; and has also worked in the USA, Malaysia and the UK.
His work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Ars Electronica (Austria), the Hillside Gallery (Tokyo), the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Brighton’s Fabrica Gallery, and the Plymouth Arts Centre.
His interactive and telecommunications projects have appeared in several magazines and journals including Artifice, Art and Architecture, Archis, Wired Online, Webmaster Magazine, .net magazine, ZDnet, The Architect’s journal and the RIBA Journal.
{ visit site }

MAGNUS HAGLUND
{ more info coming soon }

SARA HODGES
Sara Hodges completed her Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from Colorado College in 1998. She then moved to New York City where she explored the city and discovered her passion for geography and mapmaking. She completed her Master of Arts in Geography at the City University of New York (CUNY) – Hunter College in January, 2004. She continues to make maps about public open space, working with Environmental Justice groups to ensure that disadvantaged groups have access to public space. She recently began a project, funded by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, mapping the water supply systems and wastewater treatment facilities in and around New York City in order to assess the impacts of global warming and sea level rise on the water supply and sewage treatment in the New York Metropolitan Area.

INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED AUTONOMY (IAA)
The Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA) is an anonymous collective of critically-engaged artists and engineers. Founded in 1998, the IAA has exhibited and lectured widely at such diverse venues as the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Hackers on Planet Earth, and the IEEE International Conference of Robotics and Automation. The Institute is best known for its work in Contestational Robotics, a research initiative to automate political protest. In 2000, the IAA produced GraffitiWriter, a teleoperated spraypainting machine that has been used in hundreds of actions throughout the United States and Europe and received an award of distinction at Ars Electronicas Prix Ars 2000 festival. The IAA has also received international recognition for its Inverse Surveillance program, which enables citizens to monitor state and corporate surveillance networks. Since 2000, the Institiute has collaborated with Cell Media, an educational media collective, to produce a series of videos on such topics as US drug policy, prison labor, and student’s rights.
{ visit site }

MARGOT JACOBS
Margot is an interaction design researcher focusing on playful, emotional incorporation of technology in everyday life. She holds a deep interest in developing innovative design methods and experimental prototypes for social interventions in public space. Her previous experience includes a year as research fellow at the interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy. Margot holds a bachelor's degree in Industrial Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a master's degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program in New York. Margot takes a great interest in reaching the public and other audiences. Her work has been shown at international venues including SIGRAPH, VIDA LIFE, ISWC, UBICOMP, NIFCA, ISEA etc. Outreach activities include organizing local creative new media collective [fringe], lecturing, tutoring postgraduate students, and co-founding BIG LOVE, a gallery space for community expression.

LARS JOHANSSON
Lars Johansson is city gardener of Gothenburg. He is a landscape architect and is very interested in how people use the public space. Previously, Lars worked for eight years as a landscape architect in Enkoping, a small town in Sweden. There he designed parks, squares, playgrounds and a lot of other urban green spaces. Lars also lectures at the Landscape Architecture Programme at SLU Ultuna.

RAMIA MAZE
Ramia is an interaction designer focusing on user-centred methods and strategies for prototyping new systems, products, and concepts. Currently director of the PLAY studio of the Interactive Institute in Sweden, she is involved in EU and interdisciplinary research collaborations and have tutored in the new postgraduate interaction design program at Chalmers University of Technology. Previously, she worked at MetaDesign San Francisco and Philips Research Lab in the UK. Ramia holds a master's degree from the Computer Related Design course at the Royal College of Art in London and a background in architecture.

KATHERINE MORIWAKI
Katherine Moriwaki is an artist and researcher investigating networks, wearables, and the experiential resonance of technologically mediated public space. Moriwaki is currently a PhD candidate in the Networks and Telecommunications Research Group (NTRG) at Trinity College Dublin. Katherine's dissertation is focused on creative and artistic applications of networked communications and emergent behavior in public space. In addition to her research, Katherine teaches in the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Trinity. Formerly a Design Fellow at Parsons School of Design, Katherine co-developed and taught "Fashionable Technology", an interdisciplinary collaboration studio exploring the interstices of wearable technology, art, and fashion. Her work has appeared in IEEE Spectrum Magazine and she has presented at numerous festivals and peer-reviewed conferences. { visit site }

NIM
nim (Alexander Berman, Gothenburg) has recently collaberated with sin theta (David McCallum, Toronto) in a series of environment remixing events, where live audio has been taken from the street and used as the sole sound source. Through processing and timebending the environment is transformed both conceptually and musically. After having remixed Järntorget and Kungsgatan, the turn has now come to Älvsborgsbron (the bridge over Röda sten).
{ visit site }

DIETMAR OFFENHUBER
Dietmar Offenhuber, born 1973, graduated with a degree in Architecture and has been working since 1994 in the fields of animation, virtual environments, and digital architecture. Currently Dietmar is a key researcher in the Interactive Space project at the Ars Electronica Futurelab. Strongly committed to an intersdisciplinary approach, the Ars Electronica Futurelab focuses on the tension and interplay at the nexus of art, technology, and society. In addition, Dietmar teaches animation at the Polytechnical University of Hagenberg in Austria.{ visit site }


MICHAEL RAKOWITZ
Michael Rakowitz is an artist who lives in New York. In 1998 he initiated paraSITE, an ongoing project in which Rakowitz custom builds inflatable shelters for homeless people which attach to the exterior outtake vents of a building’s heating, ventilation, or air conditioning system. The warm air leaving the building simultaneously inflates and heats the double membrane structure. Rakowitz’s work has appeared in exhibitions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the Queens Museum of Art, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, Fri-Art in Fribourg, Switzerland, the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius, Lithuania, and ACC Galerie in Weimar, Germany, among others. He is the recipient of the 2003 Dena Foundation award and in 2002 he was awarded the Design 21 Grand Prix by UNESCO. A book on his work, “Circumventions,” was recently published by the Dena Foundation of Contemporary Art and onestar press. Rakowitz is currently Professor of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

RUSKIG
I am a graffiti artist from Malmö, Europe. I like to perform very much and in a big way. I especially enjoy it when am able to paint in collaboration or cooperation with others and if it is done in the public space, communicating. Art has a task to visualize and to ask questions surrounding common thought. I use painting as a tool to reflect on different matters such as democracy, freedom of speech and opinions, prejudice, relations, moral issues and others. I put aesthetic and visuality in the first room. I love colours.
{ visit site }

DANIEL REHN
Daniel is a painter and public artist. His paintings combine elements of street art, grafitti and fine arts and are both narrative and surrealistic in nature. Recently, Daniel painted a wall in the Big Love gallery for a week as part of an exhibition. “I wanted to know what result you could get by confronting another painter in the same space, on the same canvas. To see if the dialogue got heated, or if there really could be an exchange of knowledge and experience.” The exhibition was entitled ‘Battlefield’ and was a follow up to an exhibition he had had at Valand, the Academy of Fine Arts here in Gothenburg in which he ‘battled’ several first year students in an attempt to open up discourse about painting as well as inspire both himself and thwarted first year students to create and break boundaries.

DANIEL REHN CONTINUED
He was given a studio-ship from Valand for one semester to carry out this project. Daniel holds several painting workshops, many of which are aimed toward younger generations. He has also held graffiti workshops in Borlange as well as at Gallery Big Love and Gallery Win Win in Gothenburg.

DANIEL SKOGLAND (8TUNNEL2)
{ more info coming soon }

PEDRO SEPULVEDA
Pedro Sepulveda recently formed with Ben Hooker the design practice dataclimates.com in which he combines commercial work with academic research. He is currently completing a PhD-by-project at the Royal College of Art London in the Interaction Design department, funded by the Mexican Council for Science and Technology. He trained and practiced as an architect in Mexico City, where he worked on projects such as the National School of Dance. His PhD, Digital Shelters, explores the potential of electronic objects to mediate between physical and digital spaces in the urban landscape.

PROSPEROUS
{ more info coming soon }

ADAM SOMLAI-FISHER
Born in Budapest {1976}, Adam is an architect and researcher, working on digital media and ineraction design projects interationally. Besides aether, currently he is a teacgiing assistant in the Architecture + Urban Planning Reserach Laboratory KTH, and a guest researcher at the Smart Studio, Interactive Institute.{ visit site }

SPACE HIJACKERS
The Space Hijackers is a group of Anarchitects that was launched at the beginning of 1999. The group is dedicated to battling the constant oppressive encroachment of institutions, corporations and urban planners onto and into public spaces. Through various actions the Space Hijackers attempt to raise awareness of
issues within spaces and change how these spaces are used and perceived in the future. The Space Hijackers’ intent is to destroy hierarchies within spaces and reclaim public ownership. Their projects act as an “other” voice within spaces, and become ingrained upon “hijacked” places. The Space Hijackers aim to change the way that ownership and usage of space is perceived.
{ visit site }

SWOON
Swoon is an artist who, for the last four years, has created work that reflects as well as directly impacts New York City. Understanding that observing any situation can influence it, Swoon’s work attempts to forge a two-way street between the effect that the urban environment has on its citizens and citizens’ roles in effecting change in their environments. Inspired by traditional graffiti and other artists who have used the city as raw material, she has been addressing city walls and subways as a space for creating publicly engaging work. Swoon has most recently been working with the collective Toyshop, creating interactive and performative work that focuses on this same question of how we can more actively live within our cities.{ visit site }

TELE
{ more info coming soon }

JOCKO WEYLAND
Jocko Weyland is the author of The Answer is Never—A Skateboarder’s History of the World, published by Grove Press in 2002. Weyland’s writings have appeared in Thrasher, The New York Times, Cabinet, and other publications and he is a contributing editor to Open City magazine. His photography has been exhibited at the Steffany Martz Gallery in New York, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and the MU Foundation in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

LINDA WORBIN
Linda is a textile designer exploring how the properties of information technology and traditional textiles are combined together in new interactive materials. Her focus is on aesthetic patterns as they are built up by dynamic and information properties. Her educational background comes from the Swedish School of Textiles, and she is right now completing her master’s thesis within the IT + Textiles project. Her ultimate goal is to change our understanding of textile and to influence the way industry handles the material. Therefore she has also put effort into creating several public exhibitions of different kinds, exploring and displaying textile materials and prototypes. Linda's work within PLAY is as a researcher and project manager in the IT + Textiles project.

ZEVS
Zevs is often dubbed ‚street artist‚. This label might not fully apply to his recent work, but his activity in public space has nevertheless determined his remarkably continuous artistic trajectory.One day, while tagging down on the track in the Metro, a thirteen-year-old kid escapes a train right before it hits him. But the image of the wagon headed towards him lingers. Having ‚bombed‚ up until then under various pseudonyms, he finally adopts the name of the train, Zeus. Replacing the ‚u‚ with a ‚V‚, he gets an archaic and graphically pointy tag, ZEVS. It lightens on Parisian citywalls. It resonates in the ‚Danger - Lightning‚ signs.
Through tagging Zevs has made his presence felt. But his work is not all about his mark; it is about his city. He beginns to intervene in different guises.As Flasheur d‚Ombres, The Shadow Flasher, he paints the shadows of lampposts etc: 'I am just prolonging what already exists.' The Shadow Flasher‚s masterpiece is a painting of the shadows cast from the four classical statues flanking Pont du Caroussel crossing the Seine. It is a celebration of old Paris. But it is also his last piece; poetry fades.

Zevs re-enters as Serial Pub Killer, bombing commercial billboards - leaving marks of blood red paint right between the eyes of beautiful models and the like. It is an attack on contemporary Paris: The commercials are everywhere - they no longer leave us the choice.'

In consumer society you can refuse all the many choices, except the choice of choosing between them. But does he, Zevs, leave us a choice? What do we want?

2. April, 2002, 5.37, Berlinerplatz: Zevs ˆ now as Oteur de Pub - climbs a contruction and cuts a 10 meter tall model out of a 12 X 12 meter commercial covering a hotel facade. Before descending with the hostage under his arm, he writes ‚VISUAL KIDNAPPING ˆ PAY NOW!‚ above the hole where she once was. Since, he has been ‚flashing‚ her in galleries in Germany, Sweeden and recently in France giving visitors the choice: Either vote for her execution... or pay 500.000 Euro, a ransom equivalent to a marketing campaign.

Now he gives you the choice in another public space of our era, the Net. Please, make up your mind.