Mohammed Aziz Chafchaouni, Al Andalus Foundation, Morocco and Spain

Julien Knebusch,  Leonardo/OLATS, Paris, France

Roger Malina,  Leonardo/OLATS, Paris, France

Howayda Al-Harithy, associate professor department of architecture and design, chair faculty of engineering and architecture American University of Beirut

Biography: Howayda N. Al-Harithy graduated from the SMArchS program in 1987 with her thesis on "Architectural Form and Meaning of Light of Al-Jurjani's Literary Theories." From there she went on to pursue a Master of Arts and a PhD at Harvard, analyzing Mamluk architecture through both degrees. While engaged in her academic work at Harvard, Ms. Al-Harithy served as an architectural advisor to the Arriyadh Development Authority in Saudi Arabia. After receiving her doctorate in 1992, she returned to MIT as a visiting assistant professor while also lecturing at Harvard. In 1994, Ms. Al-Harithy moved to Lebanon where she took a teaching position in the Civilization Sequence Program at American University of Beirut. Though she took a hiatus as a visiting associate professor at MIT for the Spring 2000 semester, Howayda N. Al-Harithy continues to teach at AUB, where she is presently an Associate Professor and chair of the Department of Architecture and Design. She is very active at AUB, where she has organized design and fine art exhibits, conferences, lectures and panel discussions, coordinated a joint studio with Harvard Graduate School of Design, has lead student travel trips and advised in the development of the campusMaster Plan Project. She has also served on UNISCOs Scientific Committee for their 2000 seminar University and Heritage, and as a member of the editorial board for the Electronic International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. As well as attending numerous conferences, Ms. Al-Harithy has presented papers recently at MESA, YPO Cairo, the ACSA International Conference, the National Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments Conference, the Sixth International Seminar on Urban Form Meeting, and the Sackler Museum Lecture Series. She has published a monograph in the Bibliotheca Islamica entitled, "The Waqf Document of Sultan Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Qalawun." Two of her pieces also appear in The Cairo Heritage (Papers in Honor of Layla Ibrahim and Arabic Calligraphy in Architecture: Islamic Monument Inscriptions in the City of Tripoli during the Mamluk Period. Howayda N. Al-Harithy has furthermore had articles published in Oxford's Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Muqarnas, Mamluk Studies Review, Middle East Women's Studies Review, Journal of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments, Bahithat, and the Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review.

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Samirah Al-Khassim, Assistant Professor of Film Studies & Head of the Film Unit Department of Performing & Visual Arts American University in Cairo, Egypt

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Mohammed Aziz Chafchaouni, Rabat & Melilla

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Roy Ascott, Artist, Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, UK

Biography: Pioneering the place of cybernetics and telematics in art, Roy Ascott has been working with issues of art, technology and consciousness since the 1960s. Seminal projects include: Terminal Art, USA/UK, 1980; La Plissure du Texte, Electra, Paris 1983; Planetary Network, Venice Biennale, 1986; Aspects of Gaia, Ars Electronica Linz 1989; Art-ID/Cyb-ID, Biennal do Mercosul, Brazil,1999; Moist Manifesto, gr2000az, Graz. 2000. He is founding director of the Planetary Collegium and Professor of Technoetic Arts at the University of Plymouth. He is also Adjunct Professor in Design|Media Arts, University of California Los Angeles, and was formerly Dean of San Francisco Art Institute, California, Professor for Communications Theory, Applied Arts University, Vienna, and President, Ontario College of Art, Toronto. Roy Ascott convenes the annual Consciousness Reframed conferences, and is an Arts and Media advisor of the UK’s Art and Humanities Research Board. He is founding editor of Technoetic Arts, and serves on the editorial boards of Leonardo Convergence, and Digital Creativity. He advises new media centres in the UK, Japan, Korea, Brazil, North America and Europe, including the EEC and UNESCO. His theoretical work is published many languages, including the books: Art & Telematics: Toward the Construction of New Aesthetics. (Japanese trans. E. Fujihara). Tokyo: NTT, 1998; Technoetic Arts (trans. YI, Won-Kon), Yonsei University Press. 2002 ; Reframing Consciousness: art, mind and technology (1999) Intellect, UK. Telematic Embrace: visionary theories of art technology and consciousness, edited by Edward A Shanken. University of California Press, was published in February 2003.

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Hisham Bizri, Professor of Art and Head of Time-Based Arts, The Department of Art and Art History at the University of California at Davis.

Biography: Hisham is a filmmaker from Lebanon living in San Francisco. He came to the US and studied cinema and later worked as an assistant to Raul Ruiz and Miklós Jancscó. Hisham has made a number of short films as well as Polyvision films inspired by early cinema. He has also made a number of virtual reality installations. His work is a series of meditations on his exilic experience as a Lebanese-Muslim living in the West. His work has been shown in the Arab world and internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center, Siggraph, among others.

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Dimitrios Charitos, Lecturer, Department of Communication and Media Studies National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

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Carlos De Castro, Cordoba, Spain

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Jaco Du Toit, UNESCO DigiArts Team

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Claudia Giannetti, Director, MECAD, Spain

Biography: Specialist in Media Art, received her PhD degree from the University of Barcelona with a dissertation about Digital Aesthetic. Since 1998 Director of MECAD\Media Centre of Art and Design of the Superior School of Design ESDi, Barcelona, Spain. Director of the Master Degree on Creation and Design for Interactive Systems; Master Degree on Curatorial and Cultural Practices in Art and New Media; and of the Master Degree in Audio-Visual Communication for Interactive Media (MECAD/ESDi). Writer and curator of innumerable cultural events and media art exhibitions in different countries. She edited the books Media Culture (Barcelona, 1995), Art in the Electronic Age - Perspectives of a New Aesthetic (Barcelona, 1997), Ars Telematica - Telecommunication, Internet and Cyberspace (Barcelona and Lisbon, 1998), Arte Facto & Science (Madrid, 1999), Estética Digital Sintopía del arte, la ciencia y la tecnología (Aesthetic of the Digital - A intermedia contribution to the science and the systems of the art and media). (Barcelona, 2002; Vienna/New York/Karlsruhe, Springer/ZKM, 2004); and the CD-ROM ArteVision A History of Electronic Art in Spain (Sabadell, 2000). She is head of the editorial board of the online magazine about art, science and technology MECAD e-journal (http://www.mecad.org/e-journal).

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Julien Knebusch, OLATS, France

Biography: Julien Knebusch was born the 10/09/1975 in Munich (Germany) and lives now in Paris. He obtained a Master's degree in history and politics (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) and also in cultural management (University Paris-IX-Dauphine). He is currently project leader at Leonardo/OLATS (www.olats.org) for the editorial program "Fondements Culturels de la Mondialisation" (Cultural Roots of Globalization).

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Fatima Lasay, Media Artist, Philippines

Biography: Fatima Lasay is an artist, educator and independent curator of digital media art. She obtained her degree in Industrial Design (1991) and Master of Fine Arts (2002) at the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts. In 1995, she was invited to develop and implement digital media courses for the studio arts department at the College. She is currently assistant professor of digital media at the University of the Philippines. Her artistic and research concerns include the intersection of technology-based art with Asian mythologies, Spanish colonial religious art, electronic literature and sound.

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Teemu Leinonen, Project Manager / Research Group Leader , Learning Environments research group, Media Lab - University of Art and Design Helsinki

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Roger Malina, Astrophysician, Editor, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, France

Biography: Roger F. Malina is an astronomer and editor. He is the former director of the NASA EUVE Observatory at the University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Laboratoire d"Astrophysics de Marseille. He is a member of the SNAP consortium, a proposal to build a new satellite dedicated to Understanding the nature of dark energy and matter in the universe. He is the executive editor of The Leonardo publications and Chairman of the Board of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences And Technology. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics.

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Ahmad Mostafa, Artist

Biography: Ahmed Moustafa is an artist and scholar of international repute and a leading authority on Arabic art and design. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1943, he was initially trained as an artist in the neoclassical European tradition. Drawing his inspiration primarily from Renaissance masters, he subsequently rediscovered his lslamic roots, and his work is now almost exclusively devoted to abstract compositions inspired by texts from the Holy Qur'an.

Ahmed Moustafa is a consultant in Islamic art and design on many private projects throughout the Middle East. These have included tapestries for the Royal Pavilion, King Abdul Aziz Airport in Jeddah, and the Royal Reception at King Khald Airport in Riyadh. He has also designed several new Arabic typefaces as well as corporate identity programmes and logotypes for numerous organisations.

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Ahmad Nasri, Professor in Computer Graphics, Member of the BOD of the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research

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David Peat, Pari Center, Italy

Biography: Peat obtained his PhD at Liverpool University and carried out research in theoretical physics at Queen’s University, Canada and the National Research Council of Canada. Following a sabbatical spent with David Bohm he became a close associate until Bohm’s death. While in Canada Peat ran a series of circles with Western Scientists and Native American Elders. In London he organized round table discussions with artists and scientists.

In 1996 Peat moved to the medieval hilltop village of Pari, near to Siena, Italy. With his wife he operates the Pari Center for New Learning which runs courses, conferences and an active visitors program. Peat is author of some twenty books, the most recent being "From Certainty to Uncertainty: The story of science and ideas in the twentieth century". Further information can be found at www.fdavidpeat.com and www.paricenter.com.