Ingrid Bachmann

Ingrid Bachmann is an interdisciplinary installation artist and an occasional writer and curator, whose interests span obsolete technologies and new digital media. She is currently the Associate Dean of Research and International Relations, Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University.

Topics: pictoral values (0:43 min), environmental values (0:34 min), playfulness (00:53 min), constructed landscapes (1:44 min), living things & chance (1:11 min), possessing a tree (1:27 min), possessing & caring (2:34 min)

Abaris Brautigan

In Second Life Abaris Brautigan is a Cyberdruid. Grammatologist. Mnemologist. Autocartographer. and Energonomician. In First Life Richard Smyth is a media specialist at private high school. Poet, activist, father, scholar. Bewildered + fascinated.

Topics: appearance (4:21 min), trees & realism (3:54 min), art & space (2:45 min), physicality (0:55 min), end of world quest (2:04 min), striated space (1:09 min), seeing your own self (0:27 min)

Shawn Decker

Shawn Decker is a composer, educator and artist. He is a Professor in the Art and Technology and Sound departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Topics: working at a distance (3:10 min), underwhelmed (2:42 min), techno-gardening (0:33 min), no reason for SL (1:59 min), techo-fetishism (1:01 min), non-competitive (1:41 min), reality based fantasy (1:52 min), call it technology (2:58 min), force sun (1:58 min)

Sara Diamond

Sara Diamond is internationally known as a new media software designer and; historian and researcher of new media, events curator and academic.  She is currently serving as President of the Ontario College of Art & Design.

Topics: SL as mass culture (3:44 min), virtual materialty (2:10 min), vr development (1:45 min), aesthetic dominance (3:38 min), specificity of RL (4:05 min), interface paradigms (4:05 min)

James Elkins

James Elkins is an author whose writing focuses on the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature. He is currently the E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Noe Kidder

Noe Kidder is a filmmaker who lives in New York City and Hawaii. She is interested in the secret life of materials, words and images.

Topics: is this virtual reality (2:12 min), practicalities (1:58 min), abandonment (3:24 min), gardening (1:06 min), plants and art (1:36 min), escapist technologies (1:34 min)

Peter Kingstone

Peter Kingstone is a single channel and installation video artist in toronto. His work has been shown in Canada and throughout the United States.  He teaches at York University and Ontario College of Art and Design.  He is the director of Red Head Gallery.

Topics: lure of the mundane (3:04 min), fueling discontent (1:53 min), lived experience (1:42 min), tech as an art filter (1:57 min), missing the body (2:24 min), malls and palms (1:32 min), real trees in galleries (1:56 min)

Yam Lau

Yam Lau is an artist and writer based in Toronto.  He teaches painting at York University.

Topics: introduction (0:41), chinese story (0:22 min), english translation (0:41min)

Patrick McGee

Patrick McGee is an artist who has been exhibited widely in Chicago, as well as New York, Berlin, and Vienna. McGee’s sculptural work investigates both art and science.

Topics: renting irresponsibility (2:12 min), rentokil (2:48 min), stock shorting (3:22 min)

Adelheid Mers

Adelheid Mers is a visual artist who has exhibited and lectured widely, curated and co-organized exhibitions. She is an Associate Professor in the Arts Administration and Policy program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Topics: getting attacked in SL (3:02 min), nothing happens (0:54 min), SL art galleries (2:06 min), dual avatarship (1:22 min), avatar as you (0:25 min), cos play (2:14 min), lonely planet (1:33 min), becoming things (3:35 min), commodification (2:26 min)

Margaret Rodgers

Margaret Rodgers is an artist, educator, author, art administrator and founder of the IRIS Group, a collective of women artists.  She is currently teaching art at Durham College, School of Design.

Topics: renting impermanace (1:01 min), impermanance (2:07 min), populism & globalism (3:17 min), anime influences (4:12 min), northern renaissance (2:06 min), digital cruelty (2:06 min)

Dana Samuel

Dana Samuel is a media artist, curator, writer and sometimes designer, interested in the role and structure of narrative as mediated through technology. She is also the director/curator of InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre in Toronto, ON.

Topics: other practices (2:57 min), embodied experience (4:23 min), making it real (3:47 min), chat versus voip (2:56 min), meeting in real life (1:16 min), looking good (2:37 min), looping and jaggies (1:06 min)

Charles Stuckey

Charles Stuckey is an independent scholar, writer and market consultant, specializing in 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, who teaches at the School of the Art Institute and previously served as curator at the National Gallery of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Kimball Art Museum. He a contributing editor for Art in America and a senior advisor for toutfait.com.

Topics: commuting (2:31 min), dropping out (1:54 min), utopian reality (2:33 min), unhappy accidents (2:23 min), wall on wall (1:40 min), ownership delusions (0:58 min), willing your avatar (2:15 min)

Marsha Wineman

Marsha Wineman produced numerous commissioned works and has been collected in both public and private collections. She had been the Producer and Editor of the now retired Surfacing Journal. At Seneca College in Toronto where she is employed, Wineman has done curatorial work and is an active member for Seneca's growing Canadian Art Collection. Elsewhere, she is active as a board member, curator, and advisor for the arts.

Topics: virtual actual plants (0:26 min), victorian vitrines (1:20 min), comic book attraction (0:57 min), replicating nature (1:37 min), controlling the piece (1:49 min), thought or object (1:48 min), art is always rented (1:11 min), dream states (0:46 min)