Moor Mother or Moor Mother Goddess is an experimental music project by Camae Defstar, a musician and poet from the United States. Her work has been labelled “hardcore poetry,” “power electronics,” “slaveship punk,” and “protest music.” Ayewa herself resists categorization, preferring to self-identify through terms such as “time traveller” and “truth teller.” A self-described Afrofuturist, she uses spacetime-bending sound and lyricism to reformulate concepts of memory, history, and the future in an afrocentric or afrodiasporic tradition. Ayewa is one half of the Black Quantum Futurism collective, along with Rasheedah Phillips of the Afrofuturist Affair. She has performed in the punk band The Mighty Paradocs, and is also the co-founder of Rockers! Philly, an “event series and festival focused on marginalized artists”. In June 2016, Ayewa and Phillips opened the Community Futures Lab, an “afrofuturist community center” in North Philadelphia where they lead workshops and teach-ins, provide space for artistic practice, and fight gentrification in the area. Her debut album Fetish Bones was named one of the top experimental albums of the year by Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork as well as one of the best albums of the year by The Wire. The album is available on her Bandcamp page, along with several EPs, experiments, and collaborations from earlier in her career.

Joanie Lemercier is a French artist primarily focused on projections of light in space and its influence on our perception. Lemercier was introduced to creating art on a computer at age five by attending classes on pattern design for fabrics taught by his mother. The threads of his early education grounded his interest in physical structures: geometry, patterns, and minimalist forms. As Lemercier’s work evolved, he began to play with these concrete structures through the physics and philosophy of how light can be used to manipulate perceived reality. Since 2006 Lemercier has worked with projected light, and he co founded visual label AntiVJ in 2008, with artists Yannick Jacquet, Romain Tardy and Olivier Ratsi. He worked on stage design for festivals such as Mutek (Montreal, Mexico) and worked alongside artists such as Flying Lotus (special show at the Roundhouse London), and with Portishead’s Adrian Utley (as part of the cultural Olympiads, London 2012), and architectural projections all around the world. In 2010, Lemercier turned his focus on installations and gallery work, and exhibited at China Museum of Digital Art, (Beijing), Art Basel Miami and Sundance film festival 2013. In 2013, Lemercier founded a creative studio in NYC, focused on research and development of artworks and experiments that use projected light in space. He is represented by Muriel Guepin Gallery in New York City.

Angela Washko is an artist, writer and facilitator devoted to creating new forums for discussions of feminism in spaces frequently hostile toward it. Since 2012, Washko has operated The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, an ongoing intervention inside the most popular online role-playing game of all time. Her most recent project, The Game: The Game is a video game presenting the practices of several prominent seduction coaches (aka pick-up artists) through the format of a dating simulator. A recent recipient of a Franklin Furnace Performance Fund Grant, a Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art at the Frontier Grant from the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and a Rhizome Internet Art Microgrant, Washko’s practice has been highlighted in Art in America, Frieze Magazine, Time Magazine, The Guardian, ArtForum, ARTnews, The Hairpin, VICE, Hyperallergic, Rhizome, the New York Times, Cosmopolitan Magazine and more. Her projects have been presented nationally and internationally at venues including Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Milan Design Triennale, the Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennial and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Her writing has been published in Creative Time Reports, FIELD Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism, Copenhagen University Peer Reviewed Journal (NTIK), Neural Magazine, VASA Journal of Images and Culture, .dpi Feminist Magazine of Art and Digital Culture, Hyperallergic, ANIMAL NY and more. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University and a fellow at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.

Memo Akten is an artist from Istanbul, based in London, UK. His work explores the harmonies and tensions between nature, science, technology, culture and tradition. Studying and working with complex systems, behaviour and algorithms, he creates data dramatizations of natural and anthropogenic processes, and combines conceptual work with investigations into form, movement and sound. Akten’s work spans many disciplines including video, sound, light, dance, software, online works, installations and performances. Alongside his practice, he is currently working towards a PhD at Goldsmiths University of London in artificial intelligence and artistic, expressive human-machine interaction. Fascinated by trying to understand the world and human nature, he investigates technology’s role in learning more about ourselves and how we connect with each other. He draws inspiration from fields such as quantum mechanics, astrophysics, molecular & evolutionary biology, abiogenesis, neuroscience, anthropology and philosophy.

Nora Al-Badri (b. 1984, Germany) is a multi-disciplinary artist with a German-Iraqi background. Her practice incorporates interventions and different mediums such as sculpture and installation, photography and film. She graduated in political sciences at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main and studied visual communications at Offenbach University of Art and Design. Since 2009 Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles have been working together as a collective, based in Berlin. Their works interfere in social infrastructures through controversial performances and interventions as institutional critique. The collective pursues a critical re-evaluation of actual cultural commons, the power of representation through material objects of other cultures, their digital image as well as the concepts of heritage and identity politics in times of technoheritage. Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles work have been on display in various exhibitions and institutions such as the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2013; the Victoria & Albert Museum, Applied Arts Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, 2016; and the 3rd Design Biennial, curated by Anselm Franke, Istanbul, 2016. Their works got granted by several institutions like Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Goethe-Institut, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IfA), the German Federal Foreign Office and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF).

Jan Nikolai Nelles (b. 1980, Germany) is a multi-disciplinary artist. His artistic practice oscillates between different fields such as visual and media art, documentary film-making and cultural activism. He graduated from Offenbach University of Art and Design in 2011. In the past, he founded an independent project space in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and co-founded a photography magazine.

Aguilar y Wedge is a Mexican-American engineer, artist and researcher. In 2014, she co-founded Hyphen-Labs, an international team of women with backgrounds in engineering, science, architecture turned designers & artists synthesizing art and technology to create meaningful experiences. Emphasizing experimentation and alternative education, the team finds creative solutions and applications to complex problems using new media, emerging technology, robotics, and computation.

Ashley Baccus-Clark (b. Pasadena, CA) is a Molecular and Cellular Biologist and multidisciplinary artist who uses new media and storytelling to explore themes of deep learning, cognition, memory, trauma, and systems of belief. She is a member of the artists collective Hyphen-Labs, an international team of engineers, scientists, architects, and artists creating at the intersection of art and emerging technology.

Can Buyukberber is a visual artist working on immersive audiovisual experiences that’s embodied both in physical and digital spaces. His practice consists of experiments with different mediums and display technologies, such as projection mapping, virtual reality, geodesic domes and digital fabrication methods. Driven by an interdisciplinary thinking which extends to art, design and science, Buyukberber’s work often focuses on human perception, exploring new methods for non-linear narratives, geometrical order, synergetics and emergent forms. He has exhibited in international media art festivals, conferences and galleries in Europe, Canada and United States, including collaborations with Grammy-Award winning rock band Tool and Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. He is currently studying at San Francisco Art Institute’s Art and Technology MFA program as a Fulbright Grantee and is a resident artist at Autodesk’s Pier 9 AiR Program.

As the preeminent Virtual institution devoted to Digital/New Media Art, the Digital Museum of Digital Art presents the full range of contemporary Digital art, with a special focus on works by living New Media artists. DiMoDA is dedicated to collecting, preserving, interpreting and exhibiting Digital art and its collection while expanding the conscious experience of viewing Digital art in a Virtual space. DiMoDA is arguably the finest holding of twenty first-century Digital art in the world.