Jean-Pierre Balpe (France), artist

Born in 1942 in Mende (Lozère), Jean-Pierre Balpe is the Director of the Hypermedia Department and of the Paragraphe Laboratory of the University of Paris VIII. He is also General Secretary of the journal Action Poétique. Researcher, theoretician of computer literature, author of various scientific and technological books, writer, he is interested in the possibilities that computer science provided to literature since 1975. In 1981, he co-founded ALAMO (Workshop for Computer and Mathematic Assisted Literature) and as such became advisor to the Pompidou Center for the exhibitions Les Immatériaux and Mémoires du Futur. Since 1989, he creates software for computer literature used mainly during exhibitions or public events among which Un roman inachevé for the booth of the Ministry of Culture (MILIA, Cannes, 1995 and MIM in Montreal) ; ROMANS (Roman) for the exhibition Artifices in 1996 ; Trois mythologies et un poète aveugle for the IRCAM in 1997 ; Barbe Bleue that will be the result of the combination of 3 generators : text, music (Alexandre Raskatov) and staging (Michel Jaffrennou) generators ; TRAJECTOIRES, interactive and generative novel for the Internet (www.trajectoires.com) ; he is involved in various shows among which Encuentras essentiales for the museum MARCO in Monterey (Mexico) together with Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi (music) and Miguel Chevalier (interactive stage design).

Stéphan Barron (France), artist

Born in 1961 in Caen, Normandy. Grant from Villa Médicis in 1996 for Ozone.

" My work is based on a perceptual and imaginary research on distance. In this research, I have realised since 1985 around twenty artworks using telecommunication technology. Ozone in 1995 was one of the first artwork using Internet. I have developped since 1995 the concepts of Technoromanticism and of Earth Art. "

My works and concepts are described at http://www.technoromanticism.com

Online artwork : http://www.com-post.org

Cdrom : Earth Art, Ed. Rien de Special, 2000

Book : Technoromantisme, Ed. L'Harmattan, 2002

Samuel Bianchini (France), artist
biank@dispotheque.org

Samuel Bianchini studied art through different approaches : Fine Arts, Applied Arts, Arts and Crafts (Arts et Métiers), Decorative Arts (Arts décoratifs) and plastic arts. At the age of 30, he mixed practice (exhibitions), theory (regular publications) and teaching (University of Paris I, Art school of Nancy). Membre of different research laboratories such as CRECA (Center for Research in the Aesthetics of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts, University Paris I) and CEDRIC (Center for Research in Computer Science of the Cnam), he is preparing a Ph.D on the reactualization of the issues of montage raised by interactive media.
http://www.dispotheque.org

Maurizio Bolognini (Italie), artist

Maurizio Bolognini has worked with digital technologies since the late 1980s. His most well-known art works are the 1992 Sealed Computers (over two hundred machines programmed to produce a flow of endlessly different images, and left to work indefinitely) and Museophagia (a 1999 world tour in which he took furniture and objects from several international galleries and put together a travelling collection to be consumed via digitization: <http://www.cavellini.org/performance/emtour.html>). He has also been involved with teledemocracy and on line communication techniques (his so-called Hyperdelphi method <http://www.hyperdelphi.net>) about which he has recently published the book Democrazia elettronica (Carocci, Rome 2001).

Andreas Broeckman (Allemagne), theoretician

Andreas Broeckmann (*1964) lives and works in Berlin. Since the autumn of 2000 he has been the Artistic Director of transmediale - international media art festival berlin. Broeckmann studied art history, sociology and media studies and worked as a project manager at V2_Organisation Rotterdam, Institute for the Unstable Media, from 1995-2000. He is a member of the Berlin-based media association mikro, and of the European Cultural Backbone, a network of media centres. In texts and lectures he deals with post-medial practices and the possibilities for a 'machinic' aesthetics of media art. [http://www.transmediale.de] et [http://www.v2.nl/abroeck]

Annick Bureaud (France), new media art critic, theoretician

Works in the field of art related to technosciences. Director of Leonardo/Olats (http://www.olats.org) ; founder and editor of the International directory of Electronic Arts, IDEA online (http://nunc.com). New media art critic (column in Art Press). Teacher at the art school of Aix-en-Provence, the Ensci, guest teacher at the School of the Art Intitute Chicago (SAIC, 1999) and at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM, 2001). Co-organizer of the Symposium Artmedia VIII. Co-editor with Nathalie Magnan of the reader Connexions : Art, Réseaux, Media published by the Ensba in May 2002.

Christophe Charles (Japan/France), artist

Christophe Charles (born Marseille 1964), currently Associate Professor at Musashino Art University, Tokyo), works with found sounds, and makes compositions using computer programs, insisting on the autonomy of each sound and the absence of hierarchical structure. These compositions have been released on the German label Mille Plateaux / Ritornell ("undirected" series), and on several compilations (Mille Plateaux, Ritornell, SubRosa, Code, Cirque, Cross, X-tract, CCI, ICC, etc.). Group exhibitions: ICC "Sound Art" (Tokyo, 2000), V&A "Radical Fashion" (London, 2001), etc. Permanent sound installations at Osaka Housing Information Center (1999), Tokyo-Narita International Airport Central Atrium (2000). Web site: http://kubric.musabi.ac.jp/~charles

Daniel Charles (France), philosopher

Musician (student of Olivier Messian at the Paris Conservatory : First Price, 1956) and philosopher (agrégation, 1959 ; Ph.D. under the direction of Mikel Dufrenne, 1977), Daniel Charles has founded and directed during 20 years (1969-1989) the Music Department at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes) ; head of the general aesthetics faculty during 10 years (1970-1980) at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne) and during 9 years (1989-1999) at the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis. He published numerous articles and books among which 6 have been translated into German and 2 in Japanese. His talks with John Cage (" Pour les Oiseaux ", 1976) have just been republished (Paris, 2002) on the occasion of the 10^th anniversary of the death of the composer.

Grégory Chatonsky (France), artist

Studied Fine Arts and philosophy, Master degree in Aesthetics at the University of Paris I on the ontology of virtual realities and the deconstruction of narratives in interactive structures. Hypermedia studies at the Fine Art School in Paris.

Co-founder in 1995 of Incident (http://www.incident.net).

Between 1995 and 1998, Chatonsky designed and achieved the cdrom Mémoires de la déportation which received the Mobius Award in 1999, he also designed various cultural sites such as the web sites of the Pompidou Center and of the Villa Medicis.

He created interactives installations and net installations such as : Incident of the Last Century, Disoriented Frontiers, Sous Terre, Revenances, La Vitesse du Silence, Nervures, .IO-N, etc.

In 2002, Chatonsky is artist-in-residence at the Abbaye de Fontevraud (France) for the project "Dislocat.io-n" and at the Inclassables (Canada) for the project "Translat.io-n".

He had works exhibited in many events in France and abroad.

He works on the issues of narratives, cinema, memory and language.

Luc Courchesne (Canada), artist

Luc Courchesne est né à Nicolet (Québec) en 1952. En 1974, il a reçu un baccalauréat en Communication Design du Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax) et en 1984, un Master of Science in Visual Studies, du MIT (Cambridge). En 1984 alors qu'il réalise, avec un collectif du MIT, Elastic Movies, une des premières oeuvres interactive utilisant la vidéo.

Il a créé depuis plusieurs installations dont Encyclopédie clair-obscure (1987), Portrait no.1 (1990), Portrait de famille (1993), Salon des ombres (1996), Paysage no. 1 (1997), Passages (1998), Rendez-vous (avec un collectif de la SAT, 1999) et The Visitor: Living by Number (2001).

Son travail a été présenté dans une douzaine de pays en Amérique du Nord, en Europe, en Asie et en Océanie. Il a notamment fait l'objet d'une exposition personnelle au Museum of Modern Art de New York. Ses installations font partie notamment des collections du Musée des beaux-arts du Canada (Ottawa), du Medienmuseum du ZKM (Karlsruhe, Allemagne), du NTT Intercommunication Center (Tokyo) et du Musée de la communication (Berne).

Luc Courchesne est président de la Société des arts technologiques et, depuis 1989, professeur à l'Ecole de design industriel de l'Université de Montréal.

Fred Forest (France), artist and theoretician

Artist, emeritus professor of the University of Nice, co-founder of the Group of Sociological Art (1974), co-founder with Mario Costa of the International Movement of the Aesthetics of Communication (1983), director of the programme in aesthetics of communication at the MAMAC, Communication award at the XII São Paulo Biennale in 1973, participated in the Venise Biennale in 1976, the Documenta 6 in 1977, Award of the City of Locarno, Festival des Arts Electroniques in 1995, founder of the www.webnetmuseum.org. Books : L'art sociologique, 10/18 UGE Paris 1977, "Pour un manifeste de l'esthétique de la communication", + - 0, Bruxelles 1985, Pour un art actuel : l'art à l'heure d'Internet, l'Harmattan, Paris 1998, Fonctionnement et dysfonctionnements de l'art contemporain, l'Harmattan, Paris 2000. Web site : http://www.fredforest.org

Ken Goldberg (USA), artist

Ken Goldberg is an artist and Associate Professor of Engineering at UC Berkeley, where he founded the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium. Goldberg led the team that developed the first robot on the Internet in 1994 and his net art installations have appeared in the Interactive Media Festival, Ars Electronica, the Walker Art Center, ICC Biennale in Tokyo, Berkeley Art Museum, and the Whitney Biennial 2000.

For more information: http://www.ken.goldberg.net

Eduardo Kac (Brazil/USA), artist and theoretician

Eduardo Kac is internationally recognized for his interactive net installations and his bio art. A pioneer of telecommunications art in the pre-Web '80s, Eduardo Kac (pronounced "Katz") emerged in the early '90s with his radical telepresence and biotelematic works. At the dawn of the twenty-first century Kac shocked the world with his "transgenic art"--first with a groundbreaking net installation entitled Genesis (1999), and then with his fluorescent rabbit called Alba (2000). Eduardo Kac is represented by Julia Friedman Gallery, Chicago. His work is documented at <http://www.ekac.org>.

Derrick de Kerckhove (Canada), theoretician

Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology and Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto. He co-edited with Charles Lumsden The Alphabet and the Brain (Springer Verlag, 1988), a book which scientifically assesses the impact of the Western alphabet on the physiology and the psychology of human cognition. Brainframes: Technology, Mind and Business (Bosch&Keuning, 1991) addresses the differences between the effects of television, computers and hypermedia on corporate culture, business practices and economic markets. Connected Intelligence (Somerville, 1997) introduced his research on new media and cognition. He has contributed to the architecture of Hypersession, a collaborative software now being developed by Emitting Media. This work inspired his latest book The architecture of intelligence (see http://www.architecture.openflows.org) first issued in Dutch in December 2000. He is presently a member of the Vivendi Institut de prospective where he is in charge of investigating the future technological and business development of the new technologies. He has been a member of the Club of Rome since 1995.

Sophie Lavaud (France), artist

Artist, conceptor of interactive installations. Ph.D student at Paris I University. Lives and works in Paris. Exhibited in France, abroad and in Cyberspace : Art-Jonction (Nice) ; Village ISEA 2000, Paris, " Art génératif ", online at http://www.webnetmuseum.org ; " Festival @rt-Outsiders " : Maison Européenne de la photographie, Paris. " Techno-Mariage " with Fred Forest at Issy-les-Moulineaux : http://www.fredforest.worldnet.net/technomariage, 1998 ; " Art virtuel", curator Franck Popper, Espace Landowski, Boulogne-Billancourt.

Pierre Lévy (Canada/France), theoretician

Philosopher of cyberculture and collective intelligence.

Born in 1956 in Tunis. Studies and beginning of his career in France. Lives in Canada. Professor at the University of Ottava. Author of many books about the cultural implications of new technologies and the emerging global civilization. His books have been translated into more than 15 languages and most of them have been republished in pocket book collections. Among his last books : Cyberdémocratie, Odile Jacob, 2002 ; World Philosophie, Odile Jacob, 2000 ; Le Feu libérateur, Arléa, Paris, 1999 ; Cyberculture, Odile Jacob, Paris, 1997 ; Qu'est-ce que le virtuel ?, La Découverte, Paris 1995 ; L'Intelligence collective, La Découverte, Paris, 1994

Roger Malina (France/USA), theoretician

Roger Malina is an astronomer and editor. He is the Director of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille and former Director of the NASA EUVE Observatory. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics. He is Chairman of the Board of Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technolgy and Executive Editor of the peer reviewed scholarly journal Leonardo published with MIT Press.

Mit Mitropoulos (Greece), artist and theoretician

Dr Mit Mitropoulos has been involved in communications with and without technology. His Ph.D. (Edinburgh University 1974) is on Space Networks--the concept of space as a network.

As an environmental artist, he has been active with Geopolitical Art projects and project-proposals, as well as with 2-way interactive video installations. He is a member of the WSEkistics, and IAPS.

Frank Popper (France), theoretician

Professor emeritus of aesthetics at the University of Paris VIII, he is the author of Naissance de l'art cinétique, 1967 ; Art - Action and Participation, 1975 ; L'artiste et la créativité aujourd'hui, 1980 ; Art of the Electronic Age, 1993 ; Réflexions sur l'exil, l'art et l'Europe, 1998 and is at present working on a study of Virtual Art. He was also organizer and author of the catalogue of the exhibitions Kunst-Licht-Kunst, 1966 ; Lumière et mouvement, 1967 ; Electra, 1983, and L'art virtuel, 1998.

Anolga Rodionoff (France), theoretician

Architect Anolga Rodionoff is an associate professor at the University of Paris with a Ph. D. in Political Science. Her research shows that the upheavel produced by the impact of communication on architecture pre-dates the use of communication techniques particulary this of the web by architects themselves. A University of Paris researcher on communication media and personnel, she is also commentator and curator for the architecture collection at Fred Forest's Web Net Museum. Her latest publications include Architecture : from production to communication, (MEI 14, l'Harmattan, Paris, 2001).