Catherine D'Amours is a multidisciplinary artist, graphic designer and artistic director. In 2014, she became co-founder and artistic director of the design studio Nouvelle Administration. In 2017, she participated in the interactive project Bias presented at IDFA with Nicolas S. Roy.
Charlène Boutin is a game designer for interactive virtual reality experiences at CASA RARA. She has obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Game Design, with which she has cultivated a passion for developing enticing stories capable of reaching a player’s emotions.
An organized leader by nature, Charlène specializes in linear storytelling in VR using dialogue, level and environment design, interactivity, and linear scripting. She has sharp prototyping skills for VR in Unity as well as traditional games in Unreal Engine 4. She also gives Unity workshops designed to introduce complete beginners to VR and game development.
After her beginnings in documentary and short film production, Claire became passionate about new audiovisual and interactive formats. In 2008, Claire joined Turbulent as a producer and became a partner in 2013. She produced the NFB co-production The Unknown Photographer, a World War I virtual reality experience on the cusp of gaming and documentary, which was presented at Sundance 2016 (US), IDFA 2015 (Netherlands), The Webby Awards People’s Voice and others. She has also developed and produced numerous transmedia concepts.
Samara is the curator of VR:RV. She is a documentary filmmaker, programmer, and scholar who has spent over 15 years working in the field of non-fiction, in Germany, Denmark, Vanuatu, Brazil, Italy, the US and Canada. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies, and has programmed films and conferences for HotDocs in Toronto, the 2ANNAS Film Festival in Rīga, the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM), and the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art / 7th Berlin Biennale in Berlin. In 2015-2016 she curated the Market, Conference, Talent Lab and Kino VR programmes of the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM). Since 2017, she is a Senior Programmer for the Points North Institute and the Camden International Film Festival, and has just completed her first feature documentary with Parabola Films (Canada), Beauvoir Films (Switzerland) and the National Film Board of Canada.
Paul Feigelfeld is a media theorist and currently the Data & Research Architect of TBA-21 Academy, an international exploratory project of climate change, the ocean, art, and technology.
He studied Cultural Studies and Computer Science in Berlin and has been teaching, researching and writing about media technologies, their history and future implications for knowledge, society, art and politics with a variety of international institutions, universities and publications.
Brett Gaylor is a documentary filmmaker and the Commissioning Editor for Advocacy Media at the Mozilla Foundation. His pioneering web documentary Do Not Track was the recipient of the International Documentary Association award for best nonfiction series, the Prix Gémaux for Best Interactive Series, the International Association of Broadcasters Online Factual Prize, the Deutscher Prize for online communications, and the 2016 Peabody award.
A Virtual Reality pioneer, Tali Goldstein has over 11 years of experience as a film and games producer. Having developed and published for VR since 2013, she has worked in more than 10 VR titles for all major platforms such as Oculus Rift, HTC VIVE, PSVR, Gear VR and Daydream. Tali produced and launched Minority Media’s Time Machine VR, Montreal’s biggest VR project to date. Today, Co-Founder and CEO of CASA RARA Studio, Tali is one of the top Canadian producers in the games and VR industry.
Johannes Helberger, born 1980 in Frankfurt, Germany, creates music and spatial sound experiences for installations, stage performances, movies and interactive environments. Throughout the past years, transforming acoustic spaces and playing with perception of spectators became his signature as a spatial sound artist.
In 2015 he and his colleagues founded the sound art studio KLING KLANG KLONG in Berlin. They develop intelligent acoustic scenographies in the area between science, art and communication. Whether in real spaces or virtual environments - the studio puts the visitor as an active participant in interplay with an organic sound environment.
His work as spatial sound artist has been presented at Steirischer Herbst (Graz), Biennale di Architectura (Venice), Rencontres Chorégraphiques (Paris), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Hellenic Festival (Athens), Espacios Revelados (Buenos Aires) and many others.
Vladimir Ilic (VRHUMAN) has been exploring VR/AR for the past years as a medium for storytelling, design and art with companies like Google, Mozilla and Microsoft. His work has been published by major websites and books outlining his vision for VR/AR as a new language. As part of the team at VR Nerds, the german Art Director strives to further develop the immersive media community.
Nyla Innuksuk is a producer of film and virtual reality content. She is the Founder of Mixtape VR, which produces VR and AR content. She was featured in the widely spread Vice Motherboard article,“ How an Inuit Filmmaker Is Using Virtual Reality to Tell Her Culture's Stories” for her use of VR as a tool to break free from stereotypes. She wrote and produced the short film Kajutaijuq: The Spirit That Comes, a retelling of an Inuit myth that deals with isolation in the Arctic Tundra. Kajutaijuq premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was included in TIFF Top 10. Innuksuk has worked with artists including Glenn Gould, Kent Monkman, as well as Tanya Tagaq and A Tribe Called Red. Her recent VR project with A Tribe Called Red, called DocX: A Tribe Called Red: Indian City 360°, is an immersive virtual reality that allows the audience to become a DJ, mix their own track to the experience. Nyla Innuksuk is the imagineNATIVE AR/VR Artist in Residence 2018, consults regularly for Marvel Comics, and is a member of the board of directors of the Glenn Gould Foundation. She was recently selected by Google to be included in their exclusive Google Jump program for new media storytellers.
Sönke Kirchhof is CEO and executive producer of award-winning VR Full Service Studio INVR.SPACE GmbH and in charge of all business-related operations as well as deciding on creative and technologic approaches. He works in the fields of VR, stereoscopic filmmaking, VFX and CGI Postproduction as well as Research and Development in arts and technology since more than 15 years. He is also founder of reallifefilm international GmbH, working as Producer and Stereographer in all kind of projects.
After a decade of forging his programming and design skills in traditional software and game development, Christian decided that it is time to leave the business and entertainment swamp and jump into the colorful pool that is interactive art.
He likes to meditate on the human condition, often using technology as a tool in an attempt to magnify subconscious layers within ourselves.
Christian is currently based in Berlin, looking for fertile soil and collaboration partners for putting thought into action.
http://christian.schoolofma.org
As a sound artist, sound designer and programmer, Felipe aims at understanding and explaining his
surroundings through audio as he creates generative and interactive systems, combining innovative
technology with natural laws of sound.
After his studies in Audiovisual Media (B.E.) he worked 5 years for an audio agency before moving
to Berlin and complete Sound Studies (M.A.) at the Art University. During this period he founded kling klang klong, a studio for immersive sound, music and technology for exhibition spaces, films,
videos, interactive installations and art.
Liam Maloney is an award-winning documentary photographer, artist and filmmaker based in Toronto. His work has been published in TIME, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Mother Jones, Le Monde, The Globe and Mail and many others.
Known for his innovative approach to storytelling, his installations and photographs examining the humanitarian impact of the war in Syria have been widely exhibited, from the Nobel Peace Center to the MoMA.
Christiane Miethge is a German filmmaker, journalist and creative producer. Her films, articles and interactive projects evolve around the big questions of life. Above all: How will Artificial Intelligence, robots or digital lovers change us as human beings? Where are the limits, where are the chances? Which brings us to her latest work as director: “Homo Digitalis – how long will we still be human?” – a web series and an interactive future-test by BR, ARTE, ORF and the renowned Fraunhofer IAO in collaboration with Ars Electronica Futurelab.
Before that Christiane has worked collaboratively on various award-winning web-projects such as “Do Not Track” or “Generation What”.
Allison Moore is an artist, educator and cultural operator based in Montreal. For the past 12 years she has crafted an independent practice participating in residencies, workshops, and exhibitions internationally. Her series of multi-screen animated video panoramas depict improbable landscapes referencing scenic dioramas. She is currently developing new work for the video-mosaic in Place-Des-Arts and this summer she will be a resident artist at Tokyo Art and Space, as part of the studio exchange with Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec. Moore works as freelance editor, compositor and animator as well as teaching workshops in New Media practices. www.allisonmoore.net
Sandra Rodriguez PhD, is a creative director and a sociologist of new media technology. Over 16 years, she directs and writes award winning documentary films, works as UX consultant on interactive projects and in public media. In 2015, she joins Brett Gaylor as episode director (05) on the acclaimed webseries Do Not Track (Brett Gaylor, Upian, ARTE, NFB, BR) and soon heads the Creative Reality Lab at EyeSteelFilm, where she explores virtual and extended reality experiences. In parallel, Sandra is Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Open Doc Lab, where she teaches MIT’s first course in VR and Immersive Media production (in collaboration with Oculus). Sandra is a regular speaker on digital storytelling, has written a book and articles on public engagement, new media and networked cultures.
Nicolas S. Roy is the founder and creative director at Dpt., a studio specializing in immersive experiences and interactive storytelling.
He has been designing, writing and directing award winning, multi-platform projects in the commercial and artistic sectors for over 15 years. His versatile practice, combining design and technology, has led him to work with institutions such as the National Film Board of Canada, the Montreal Science Centre, Ubisoft, France Télévisions, Autodesk, Samsung and ARTE.
Ana Serrano is the Chief Digital Officer of the CFC and Founder of CFC Media Lab, the world-renowned institute for interactive storytelling created in 1997. Serrano is driving the digital transformation of the CFC into a unique blend of talent, product and company accelerator and creative production house. Most recently, she launched Canada's first digital entertainment accelerator IDEABOOST and serves as its Managing Director. To date, Serrano has directed the development of over 130 digital media projects, mentored over 70 start-ups, and produced some of Canada’s seminal works in interactive media. She has received numerous awards from the digital media, film, and theatre industries in both Canada and the U.S., including a Digital Media Trailblazing Award in 2015 from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.
Mate's fascination with digital technology began at an early age and hasn't receded yet. Yet technology was always just a tool for creativity, the interest meeting at its crossroads. In his youth was engaged in the digital subculture of the so called demo-scene, a group of people welded together by the primordial hackers spirit of coaxing the then primitive machine to generate ever more peculiar images. His journey brought him through several countries, cities, and technological as well as artistic genres, ending up as the creative director of the multidisciplinary design studio SEHSUCHT Berlin where he deals with the visual manifestation of the ever latest technology trend.
Tess Takahashi is a Toronto-based scholar, writer, and programmer who focuses on experimental moving image arts. She is currently working on two books, Impure Film: Medium Specificity and the North American Avant-Garde (1968-2008), which examines artists' work with historically new media, and Magnitude, which considers artists' work against the backdrop of Big Data and data visualization. She is a member of the experimental media programming collective Ad Hoc and the editorial collective for Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media. Takahashi's writing has been published there as well as in Cinema Journal, the Millennium Film Journal, Animation, MIRAGE, and Cinema Scope.
Louis-Richard Tremblay is fascinated by the power of interactive experiences and curious about media explorations of all kinds. He works with creators who subvert technology to produce works that capture the imagination and appeal to the intellect.
After studying political science his interests shifted to architecture and radio, leading ultimately to the world of interactivity with Radio-Canada and the NFB. His productions have won numerous awards in Canada and around the world (Gémeaux, Webby and Peabody awards). Mr. Tremblay’s most recent work involves mobile platforms, and immersive VR environments.
Samuel began his studies in Fine Arts at York University in Toronto, and later obtained a bachelors in Psychology. In 2014, he began incorporating Virtual Reality technology and real time 3D development tools into his practice — which has had a significant influence on his work. Since then, he has worked with artists and clients on projects exhibited internationally, in London, Berlin, Montréal, Boston, and Los Angeles.
His work explores the intersection between art, culture, and technology. Subjects that inform his work: simulation theory, posthumanism, virtual identity & archetypes, the machine body, gender & sexuality, contemporary myths & forum space, theoretical armchair physics, and the collective unconscious.
Egbert van Wyngaarden is screenwriter and media innovator based in Germany. He heads the FIRST MOVIE PLUS program at the Bavarian Film Centre and is PROFESSOR OF SCREENWRITING at Macromedia University in Munich. His creative work includes films, TV features, interactive apps, AR games and educational VR. His forthcoming book on digital storytelling presents a human centered approach to emerging media at the crossroads of creativity, technology and business. Egbert is co-founder and chairman of the EU-funded network of media professionals Transmedia Bayern. His working languages are English, German, French, Italian and Dutch.
Since 2014 Annina Zwettler is a program-manager and editor at ARTE Deutschland. In her role she works on the French-German broadcaster’s content and digital properties strategy and latest developments such as VR and AR. Before she was a curator / project manager and Assistant to the board of directors at the Center of Art and Media – ZKM l Karlsruhe and Technisches Museum Wien. Her experiences include the realisation of contemporary art and historical exhibitions, the development of digital content and VR to architecture projects and sponsor acquisition.
