Speakers & artists

Sean Mulholland / USA

Sean is fascinated by human-computer interaction and how technology affects human to human interaction. He believes the internet is not just a conduit, but also a medium for stories, ideas, and culture. Despite hacking hardware and software since childhood he went to art school and has spent the past 17 years in the media+technology space in San Francisco, currently working as a Design & Team Lead at IDEO. His work has been published, presented, and exhibited on four continents.

At Art & Tech Conference, Sean will present an overview of how his professional and creative practice has combined technology, design, and storytelling into digital/physical experiences. You can go more in-depth during his workshop Language without Words. He will also bring ERNEST, an emotionally aware AI, with him.

Michael Spranger / DE

Michael is a roboticist by training, with extensive experience in research on, and construction of, autonomous systems, including research on robot perception, world modelling and behaviour control. He currently is a senior researcher at the Sony Computer Science Laboratories Inc. (Tokyo), a small think tank on future technologies that challenge traditional boundaries in science, technology, and society. His work focuses on artificial intelligence, machine learning, language learning, language evolution and developmental robotics. Michael Spranger has been involved in art projects at the border between science and technology for a long time. His artistic work spans from opera performances to video and robot installations.

At Art & Tech Conference, Michael will discuss creativity and artificial intelligence and how AI can contribute, model and replicate cultural development not only in visual art but also in language evolution. 

Lisa van Kleef / NL

João Martinho Moura / PT

João is an artist-researcher. His interests are focused on digital art, intelligent interfaces, digital music and computational aesthetics. It has special interest in real-time visualization and in the creation of digital artefacts driven by the body. In the last decade, he has been adopting new ways of representing the body in media arts, developing interactive artefacts, mainly represented by monochromatic visual abstractions and minimalist lines. João is a sought after artist – only this year he presented his works at the media art showcase ISEA 2019, NATO Headquarters, Pompidou Center/IRCAM, INL – International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, Nabi Art Center in Seoul.

#atdays will bring his performance CO:LATERAL and his talk at the Art & Tech Conference.

Né Barros / PT

Né Barros, choreographer and dancer, has been developing her artistic work in connection with her scientific studies and research. She began her training in classical dance and later in contemporary dance and choreographic composition at Smith College/USA. In 2004, she achieved her doctorate in Dance (FMH, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa). She also studied at Laban Centre at London’s City University and sciences at the University of Porto. She has presented most of her performances with company balleteatro since the beginning of the nineties. Sheis a researcher in the group “Aesthetic, Politics and Art” of the Philosophy Institute.

Né is a member of the Direction of balleteatro of which she was a founder. She created choreography for CO:LATERAL performance, which will be presented at Art & Tech Days.

Jiří Charvát / CZ

Jirka smoked a hallucinogenic frog, found out that the reality was just an amusement park where he could experience whatever he wanted. He’s not taking anything from here and is here only for a moment. In the past, he led a team of copywriters and now he writes about what does not load people but what relieves them: humour, stories, stand-up comedy, poetry, and tailor-made comedy talks (so-called mind-ups). He moderates talks, discusses self-development and teaches improvisation. His mission is to deliver catharsis through tears of laughter: “Oh, am I not alone in this?” and help to deal with life by embracing its biting melancholy.

In addition to his talk at Art & Tech Conference, he and his colleague Lukáš Venclík will take care of an unusual experience during the workshop Unbound Storytelling.

Lukáš Venclík / CZ

Lukáš spent six months of last year in a yellow Trabant car on his way back from India. He hosted many events ranging from a fashion show of homeless people to a TV show & to gala parties of Czech ministries and multinational corporations. Today he plays improvisational theatre, designs and leads workshops of applied improvisation for the public and for companies – his themes are cooperation, authenticity, storytelling, creativity and inner freedom. He writes and directs short films and AV for companies – specializing in recruitment videos. Lukáš worked on the screenplay for a series Päsťami and the documentary Wildlife Guards. In his free time, he enjoys discussing movies and series, listening to rap and jazz, and cycling.

His Unbound Storytelling will attract attention at the Art & Tech Conference and during a workshop that carries the same name, which he will lead with his colleague Jiří Charvát during Art & Tech Days.

Mária Friedmannová / SK

Maria has always been fascinated by how our brain interprets the world through our thoughts, feelings and behavior. She devoted herself to human behavior and speech during her studies and doctoral research at Oxford University. From exploring human interaction with texts on digital screens, it has been just a step towards exploring the interaction of man and technology in general, which she explores to this day. Maria spent 4 years at Google, researching user interaction with YouTube and transforming this knowledge into technology product design. She spent the last 8 months traveling Southeast Asia and practicing yoga, and now she wants to bring her experience of design thinking and UX research back home – to Slovakia.

On #atconf she will tell you how we create mental models of the world through speech, which aspects of written language create understanding and the sense of beauty, and what to think of when creating text so that we can make our communication as efficient as possible.

Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka / PL

A media art curator, manager of cultural events and academic teacher. In 1994 Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka joined the WRO team, the organizers of Poland’s first media art festivals. Since then she’s been working on programming and production of successive editions of the WRO Media Art Biennale and numerous other art projects.
 Since the opening of the WRO Art Center in 2008, she’s involved in shaping its art mediation program oriented at various audiences – families, children and people with cognitive disabilities. Since 2018 she serves as the Curatorial Director of Media Art for the SIAF – Sapporo International Art Festival 2020.

At Art & Tech Conference, she will share her experience in the field of artistic mediation and curatorial practice. By demonstrating examples, Agnieszka will present some of the possible applicable steps, that make the complex and incomprehensible media arts more accessible and readable to a wide audience. 

Silicium / DK

Silicium is a collaboration between Danish techno legend Bjørn Svin and computational visualist Carl Emil Carlsen. With their debut in 2015, the duo set out to experiment with novel concert formats and audiovisual improvisation techniques enabled by new technologies. Recently they have performed at Ars Electronica in Linz (2018), CPH:DOX and Cph Stage in Copenhagen (2019).

Primordial will explore the depths of synthetic sound and graphics in a live concert that is best described as a digital nature experience at Art & Tech Days. Primal forms of organic behaviours are generated by real-time simulations and conducted as improvisational material in synchrony with a dark, yet curious and playful live music set.

Marc Vilanova / ES

Sound and light artist working at the intersection of art, science and technology. Marc’s artistic production has always been led by innovation fueled by an interest in new media. Merging research and artistic practices onto experience-based projects in which concepts such as automation, machine self-expression, AI and superintelligence, the future of labour and the socio-political implications regarding society’s relationship with technology are explored. Currently, he creates audiovisual performances/installations while working with electroacoustic composition, improvisation, and interdisciplinary collaborations with dance, theatre, and moving images. His pieces have been presented at festivals around the world from Japan to the U.S. 

As an educator, Marc led workshops on transdisciplinary creation, live electronics, free improvisation and extended techniques. He has been invited as a guest professor at the Tokyo National University GEIDAI, Universidad de Los Andes, Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá, Moshen Gallery Teheran, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro “UNIRIO”, Sibelius Academy Helsinki, Hochschule für Musik Basel and many more.

Marc will conclude his three-month artistic residency in Košice, produced in cooperation with K.A.I.R, by presenting an audiovisual installation at Art & Tech Days.

Ziggurat Project /HU

The main focus of the Budapest based art collective, Ziggurat Project is interdisciplinary site-sensitive performances connecting contemporary dance and other forms of art. In the past couple of years, the company participated in international cooperations such as Picture Project of Placcc Festival (HU, NO), Performing Arts residency of Visegrad Fund, Art&Tech Days, White Night Festival, Spotter Trip or Let me in Performing Arts Festival, Tandem Europe Program and Visegrad Grant Project.

In cooperation with Tabačka Kulturfabrik and Art & Tech Days, they present their dance&tech piece, Urgent Need to Breathe, in which sensorial experience is supported by interactive technology: LED lights reacting on light sensors, wearable electronics and interactive sound and light design.

Mária Júdová / SK

Mária Júdová is an independent visual artist who has been investigating the creative potential of technology for over a decade. She is particularly interested in exploring the intersection of digital and performance arts. Her work spans from (interactive) installations and Virtual Reality experiences to audio-visual performances.

She received her BA in Digital Media at the Academy of Arts and M.A. at the Center for Audiovisual Studies. She has worked with renowned bodies such as Choreographic Coding Lab, Rambert Contemporary Dance Company in London and Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media.Her works have been presented worldwide – Sonar Hong Kong, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Japan Media Arts Festival,  Immersive Expressions of Siggraph, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Sensorium, Berlin Atonal amongst many others. Her work was awarded by Japan Media Arts Festival, B3 Biennale, Nexon Computer Museum and Zealous.

At Art & Tech Days, she’ll lead a workshop Physicality in Virtual Spaces.

Fero Király / SK

Musician and teacher. Fero’s primary instrument, which he studied and has long been devoted to, is the piano, but in his work, he is also largely concerned with digital technologies and their impact on music. He teaches piano lessons on a private basis and is also involved in other educational projects in the field of music and musical composition. He wrote the book Botanical Garden – a collection of experimental music and music-sound games for piano students and their teachers. He is best known to the public as a piano player who interprets the works of contemporary composers, mostly Philip Glass and Steve Reich in solo or with the music collective Cluster ensemble. In solo projects, he often uses new experimental positions and examines overlaps into performance, sound art, and sound installations.

During Art & Tech Days, Fero will lead a workshop for children called ZVUKODROM.

Karol Piekarski / PL

Karol is a founder and programme director at Medialab Katowice. He has carried out several interdisciplinary research and education projects involving data processing and visualisation. Recently he has published ‘Data Culture. Attention Enhancing Algorithms (in Polish) and Data-Driven Methods for City Research and Exploration’. He is a Linux fan and advocates for open data.

Petko Dourmana / BG

Petko Dourmana is a media artist working with technology and new media as well as in the area of art and technology since 1996. His artistic and curatorial projects have been shown at many locations as ZKM Karlsruhe, Chelsea Art Museum and Location One in New York, Transmediale Berlin, ICA London, and many others. He graduated in Art School for Industrial Design in Kazanlak and Sculpture at the Academy for Fine Art in Sofia and studies PhD. in Interface Design at Veliko Tarnovo University. He is the founder and chairman of the InterSpace Association and Cult.bg Foundation based in Sofia, Bulgaria.

At Art & Tech Days, he will present his multimedia installation Three Migrants in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Smuggler) created within the international project Borderline Offensive.

Martin Kolařík / CZ

Martin is working on his doctoral degree in machine learning at VUT in Brno, Czech Republic. His study focuses on medical image data processing, but Martin is also fascinated by other areas of AI, such as natural language processing and algorithmic trading.

Matúš Bafrnec / SK

Matúš is a student of electrical engineering at VUT in Brno, Czech Republic. He encountered machine learning for the first time in his Bachelor thesis when he used it for processing medical images. Matúš is currently working as a developer alongside his studies and continues to deepen his knowledge of artificial intelligence.

Healium Decoration / HU

Ever since the foundation of Healium Decoration the basic idea has been: the inspiring
relationship of the light-space-spectator trio.

The Budapest-based company was founded in 2012. While creating visual projects and installations, looping in the audience is considered as its primary job. Light is the primary raw material and organizing principle in Healium’s work.

Jakub Ra / CZ

Jakub Ra has long and intensively devoted himself to the body as the central phenomenon of his work. That is why he works with everything which is connected to a body. Fashion, performance, food, a community of people, commercial world and dance.

In the field of fashion, he runs a multidisciplinary project Sperm on the clothes (SOTC) already for four years. In the medium of photography, he depicts the theme of the body in very comprehensive and profound contexts, metaphysically elaborating all its overlaps and trying to work with the body as a real open environment of today’s existence.

His work is therefore crucial in terms of carnal aesthetics and the discovery of beauty. He is not afraid of internal structures, unknown contexts or extreme positions, so everyone who deals with bodyweight, physicality, and body survival in overcoming metaphysical being, spirituality, and transformation to the transcendence of bodily experience should pay attention to his work – Pxs.

Michal Machciník / SK

Michal Machciník graduated from the Faculty of Arts in Košice in the Studio of Free Creativity 3D under the direction of Juraj Bartusz. During his studies he completed an internship at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the sculpture studio of Jindřich Zeithamml.

For the exhibition NEOFYT/Absolute Reality, EQO (Spaces of Interactive Culture) in Spišský Hrhov, Michal got to the final selection of the award BIELA ​​KOCKA – Slovak Gallery Council Awards 2018.

He participates in many collective exhibitions in Slovakia and abroad such as: Wilderness, Slovak National Gallery, Schaubmarov Mill in Pezinok, SK, TECHNÉ, Gelerie NTK, Prague, CZ or Slovak Art Day in Vilnius, Academy of Arts Vilnius, Lithuania. Today he works at the Faculty of Arts as an external postgraduate student of prof. Petr Rónaia.

Agnieszka Mastalerz / PL

Young female artist based in Warsaw (PL) and Brunswick (DE) whose primary focus is on mechanisms of control and processes influencing as well as exploiting an individual. While working in a duo with Michał Szaranowicz they mainly analyse floating – movement and change of levels, regulated by structures.

Michal Mitro / SK

Michal Mitro aka ‘plankton vs flying animal’ is a visual artist, composer, and performer operating on the edge of visual and sonic art, utilizing space and time as main medium of expression. He strives to mediate “trans-sensory” experience translating and appropriating information from one sensual category into another. Dis-illusion, post-truth, and megalo-minimal are his favourite modes of operation.

Daniel Szalai / HU

Hungarian artist, working on large-scale, photography-based projects, dealing with global issues and personal subjects. In his latest projects, he is focusing on zoopolitics and human-animal relations, reflecting societal, political and economic anomalies. In his artistic practice, Szalai mixes different medium and also work with spatial installations.

Besides studying photography at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Szalai also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art and Design Theory. Daniel is a member of the Studio of Young Photographers, Hungary. He lives and works in Budapest.

Lukáš Likavčan / SK

Lukáš Likavčan is a researcher and theorist, writing on philosophy of technology and political ecology. He is a PhD candidate at Department of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Masaryk University, Brno. Likavčan teaches at Center for Audiovisual Studies FAMU, Prague, and Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design, where he also graduated from The New Normal education programme in 2018. He is a member of display – association for research and collective practice, Prague.

Lukáš presents his book Introduction to Comparative Planetology as part of the DAAVS festival.

Mika Haveri / FI

Head of Publishing at Housemarque. Likes indie games and did the 3rd humble bundle that became the first company-specific bundle (Frozenbyte Bundle).

Talk Name – Production Methodologies and how they excel on Trust
A deeper video look at Nex Machina and how a small core team over came tensions to focus on the most important. Shipping the best game they could.

Filip Fischer / SK

Filip is an entrepreneur, investor and mentor focused on the games industry. In his 15+ years of entrepreneurial and executive experience, he co-founded and led several game businesses. His mission is finding the secret sauce for game success and help to grow the game ecosystem.

Talk: How to win the lottery?

Accessible but maturing, saturated markets raise demands on game devs drawing a thin line between fail and success. How does game success occur? By chance or by design? Let’s talk about the latest trends in the process of game creation that help to win the lottery – based on 15+ years of lessons learned. PS: Including takeaways for PC and console games.

Helge Peglow / DE

Helge Peglow works as a producer at Assemble Entertainment GmbH, an independent publisher from Wiesbaden, Germany. Being in the industry since 2006 he worked at several companies like 10Tacle Studios, Related Designs, bitComposer and Kalypso Media before. While oppressing creative studios for almost 10 years as a producer (Panzer Tactis, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, Shadows: Awakening, Sudden Strike 4, Air Conflicts Series, Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don‘t Dry) he never completely left the field of business development. That‘s why he has received and evaluated an almost uncountable amount of pitches from freshly formed indie-studios to well-known triple-A developers.

Talk Summary: How to Pitch 4372 – The DEFINITE  guideline to successfully pitch to the publisher

No matter if you are a young indie studio fresh out of university, or you are an experienced studio with a remarkable track record you will always reach at least once the point, where you need external help to realize your project.

This talk will give you some initial recommendations on how to approach a publisher the right way and some warnings that you definitely should avoid. Helge Peglow will not talk about dusted standards that need to be in your pitching documents, he will focus on the level of common sense and communication and give you a brief insight of horribly failed pitches at the end of his talk

Michal Berlinger / CZ

Michal joined Amanita Design two years ago where he’s been working on their recently released game Pilgrims as lead programmer. Before that, he had worked on Blue Effect VR, Mimpi Dreams as well as his own projects Little Mouse’s Encyclopedia and Under Leaves. He will start teaching game design next year on Prague FAMU.

Talk: Making of Pilgrims 

Annotation: Michal will speak about all aspects of the development of Amanita Design’s latest game Pilgrims, including inspiration sources, game design process, and early prototypes.