Silvana Callegari is a Colombian media artist, lecturer, and XR specialist with an M.F.A. in Media Art and Design from Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Her work has been recognized with a Stiftung Kunstfonds grant (2022), the Latin American RealMix Award (2020), and a nomination for the Medienkunstpreis (2020). She has exhibited internationally at venues such as ADAF (Athens-2023), Festival ESTE (Bogotá-2023), and +CODE Festival (Argentina-2021). Callegari has lectured at institutions including Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá and Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, and she actively mentors in the XR field and works as a 3D concept designer for the metaverse. Her artistic practice explores the intersection of new media, the paranormal, and Posthumanism, focusing on the impact of occultism on tele-technologies and the phenomenology of the Posthuman body in virtual spaces. Recently, her work has addressed the existential challenges posed by AI, examining humanity’s evolving role and sense of agency amid technological advancement.

Merve Sahin is a Vienna-based, Turkish spatial designer and researcher using architectural and digital representation techniques as a medium for visual storytelling. Her work reveals tangible and intangible layers of the built environment through immersive drawings and animations, drawing attention to the socio-political power structures embedded in post-digital public spaces.

She holds a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Applied Arts Vienna. While being part of the research and design team at notable architectural offices where she combined experimentation with practical application. She has continued her personal research practice and co-founded space a.tonal, a post-digital architectural practice. Her project ‘All Watched Over’ was selected as a finalist in the EU-Mies Awards, Young Talent category and exhibited at the 18th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023, along with other events.

In 2023 she received the start-grant for her ongoing research “’Reimagining Historic Theatre Typologies for the Digital Age: Empowering Public Voice and Communal Spectacles Amidst Surveillance”’ from the Austrian Ministry of Art and Culture. Through the same research she was also accepted into the Art Mentoring Programme of the University of Fine Arts Vienna.

In a digital world, surveillance and privacy shape space-creation. Her visualisations speculate on urban conditions of anonymity, privacy, and spectacle, offering refuge from surveillance. She explores transitions, transparencies, reflections, and fragmentations that oppose constant visibility and commodification. This creates ‘spatial phantoms,’ where ephemeral spaces allow freedom and interpretation.

Lam Lai is a composer and music theatre maker based in The Hague. She studied composition and electronic music at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. Following a two-year residency Veenfabriek music theatre company, (Ontdekkingen 2017-18), she has since been expanding the meaning and properties of performance by employing various elements of theatre while working on the concept of music. This involves exploring a place where different concepts of the listening experience can coexist and advance towards a balance with other art forms. Drawing from her background in programming, in her music practice she encompasses multidisciplinary works predominantly featuring electronic sounds and performative elements, such as theatre performance and sound installation, as well as exploring the role of technology in shaping our society, culture, and planet. Collaborating with theatre directors, choreographers, actors, media and visual artists, she has created works that utilise a diverse range of performance spaces, including indoor, outdoor and virtual environments. She has participated in festivals such as the Munich Biennale, Stuttgart DIE IRRITIERTE STADT, Festival ATM Seoul, Iceland CYCLE Music and Art Festival, and Hong Kong New Vision Arts Festival.

Eirini Lampiri is a Greek interdisciplinary Creative Director, Producer and Practice-based Researcher based in Bristol, UK. Eirini has a background in films, performances, installations and immersive experiences (XR, MR, VR, AR). She is passionate about exploring different ways of how materiality and virtuality can co-exist, integrating physical elements and bodily interactions into virtual spaces, creating thought-provoking, multisensory experiences that bridge the two worlds.

Eirini’s creative practice is centered around co-design with fellow creatives and marginalised communities, while her scepticism on the design and use of new technologies drives her efforts to shape more inclusive, thought-provoking, and responsible digital futures. Long-term resident at the Pervasive Media Studio in Watershed, Bristol, and Advisory Board member of the MyWorld initiative.

She has been nominated for the “Best Use of XR” TechSPARKS award two consecutive years (2023 and 2022) with her projects “Is This My Body?” and “Cognition”. Her work has been showcased in various festivals and venues, including “Emerge:Immerse” showcase at Arnolfini, Bristol (2021), “Prevail Festival” at Bristol Beacon (2021), “Metalogues” at the Beyond Innovation Expo in Thessaloniki, Greece (2022).

Website: https://eirinilampiri.wixsite.com/portfolio
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eirini-lampiri/ 

Annika Boll is a German digital artist, working in game design, 3D software and animation. After having studied Cultural Anthropology in Germany and India, she moved to France and graduated in Fine Arts at the Villa Arson Nice.

She has developed methods of archiving real-life materials through meticulous 3D scanning, followed by their reanimation as ghostly representations within unreal nature scenes. Through 3D scanning, texture generation and walking, Annika sketches out exploratory walking simulators that explore the connections between material texture and walking as a method. Her interest lies in understanding the circulation of spectatorship, specifically how 3D technologies aid in the presentation of new perspectives in looking, navigating, and appreciating the nuances of reality and simulation. She uses playfulness as a resource through which topics can be approached.

Recently Annika has been artist-in-residency at Centre Culturel Prince Héréditaire Jacques de Monaco, Beausoleil, at Atelier Panormos, Palermo, and at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam. 

Mihai Gui is a Romanian-born artist and maker currently living in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is an alumni of AKV St. Joost in Breda with an MA in Photography, and a recipient of the Mondriaan Fonds Jong Talent stipend in 2017. In his practice Mihai focuses his experience working with both digital and analog media to explore what new communication and action possibilities emerge at the boundary of the art and creative fields that can be coopted to discuss and empower social issues. Asides from this, he is also an avid documentary photographer with a commercial practice, and is currently either working on a personal project, or on a commission, or learning how to do something new and exciting, or all of the above, or maybe just relaxing

http://www.mgui.xyz, hi@mgui.xyz

Gökay Atabek (TR) is an artist, and art-worker. After working as (un)skilled labor for artists in Istanbul for some years he relocated to the Netherlands, graduating from ArtScience Interfaculty in 2020. In 2018 he founded Volksamt! Kultur Manufaktur; a de facto collective for intermedia art and experimental music, specializing in genuine imitations.
Vølksamt! is a collective that aims to liberate art from its mono-media(l) shackles and the munificence of the superficial institution that monger it. In doing so, Vølksamt! advocates against certain repulsive atrocities still widely committed in contemporary society, such as painting.
Prior to his appointment as local representative, Atabek has been working with computer and new media art. After an adventure starting in his bedroom with a Big Muff Pi, he developed competence in electronics, which he nowadays uses to assist and advise Vølksamt! Currently, he is dwelling into practices such a publishing, blue-collar labor, and mixology. He works at de Besturing.

More: volksamt.org/