keynote biographies
Roy Ascott was born in Bath in 1934, and educated there. He studied Fine Art under Victor Pasmore, Richard Hamilton and Lawrence Gowing at Kings College, Durham University. In 1964, Ascott had his first one-man show at the Molton Gallery, London, and published "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision" in Cybernetica: journal of the International Association for Cybernetics. With Gordon Pask as his mentor, he was elected Associate Member of the Institution of Computer Science (1968). Pask also brought him onto the board of the Fun Palace project of Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood. Throughout the 60’s and much of the 70’s his work, though informed by cybernetics, was analogue, calling for the viewer’s physical interaction. His first telematic projects were the NEA-funded Terminal Art -USA/UK, in 1980; La Plissure du Texte: a planetary fairytale for Frank Popper’s Electra, at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris (1983); and Aspects of Gaia: Digital Pathways across the Whole Earth for Ars Electronica 1989. Many online and installation projects followed at, for example, V2 Institute for the Unstable Media, Holland; Milan Triennale; Biennale do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil; European Media Festival, Osnabrück; and Planetary Network for the XLII Venice Biennale of 1986, where he was also an International Commissioner for the Laboratorio Ubiqua.
Cybernetics informed his Groundcourse at the Ealing And Ipswich Schools of Art in the early 1960’s, and his radical restructuring of the Ontario College of Art in the early 1970s. Currently, Ascott is the founding president of the Planetary Collegium, and Professor of Technoetic Arts, University of Plymouth, England, and Visiting Professor in Design|Media Arts at the University of California Los Angeles. The Collegium evolved from CAiiA, at the University of Wales College, Newport, which was the first centre worldwide for doctoral research in the Interactive arts. He was formerly, University of Wales Professor of Interactive Art; Vice-President of San Francisco Art Institute, California; Professor of Communications Theory, University of Applied Arts, Vienna; Professor of Fine Art, Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He has served on the Art and Media Panel of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Arts Council 0f England. He is an Honorary Professor, Faculty of the Arts, Thames Valley University. He is the editor of Technoetic Arts and on editorial boards of Leonardo, LEA, and Digital Creativity. He has advised new media centres in Europe, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Korea and the USA, as well as the CEC and UNESCO. He convenes the annual international Consciousness Reframed conferences.
His books include: Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art Technology and Consciousness. Edited by Edward A. Shanken. University of California Press, 2003; Engineering Nature, Intellect, 2006; Technoetic Arts (Korean translation: YI, Won-Kon, Ed.), Yonsei University Press, 2002. Reframing Consciousness, Intellect, 1999.; Art & Telematics: toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. (Japanese translation: E. Fujihara, Ed.). NTT, Tokyo 1998. He has authored over 150 papers and articles, widely translated in many languages.
Independent curator, writer, and editor. Has taught in graduate programmes at the International Center of Photography, the School of Visual Arts, and the Center of Creative Imaging in NY. Presently the director of the Graduate Photo and Digital Imaging department at The Maryland Institute in Baltimore. Lectures internationally about the social impact of electronic media, the transformation of representation, and communication in interactive and networked environments. His books include: Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology, Iterations: The New Image, Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation (Aperture), collecting essays on the social impact of digital technology. He is Series editor for Electronic Culture: History, Theory, Practice published by MIT Press that includes Ars Electronica: Facing the Future, net_condition: art and global media, Dark Fiber (by Geert Lovink), Future Cinema: the Cinematic Imaginary after Film (edited by Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel) and The Un-archaeology of the Media (by Siegfreid Zielinski).
Kevin Hydes is an impassioned presenter, speaker, and advisor within the green community, with a wealth of knowledge based on practice as a principle formerly with Keen Engineering and now with Stantec. He is a highly dedicated voice of green design and finds enjoyment in sharing knowledge with the broader community. Currently, he is Chair of the World Green Building Council (WGBC) and previous term's chair of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). He is also a Co-founder of its Canadian counterpart, the CaGBC and serves as a Faculty Member to both councils. Kevin is also an Honorary Member of both the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the Architectural Institute of BC. He is an Adjunct Professor at McGill University School of Architecture and the Liaison Officer for the Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada and the CaGBC. Kevin is Vice President of Buildings Engineering and Sector Leader for Sustainable Design at Stantec. Kevin adopts an active approach to promoting and supporting the green building marketplace transition here and abroad. Understanding the importance of making buildings work with the environment, Kevin developed the Concepts Group—a team focusing exclusively on environmentally sensitive building designs. This team has been instrumental in the wide scale spread of sustainable design practices throughout the practice.