Michael is one of the world’s leading authorities on media arts and research and development. He was on the original design team for the MIT Media Laboratory, and was a founding member of the Atari Research Lab, the Apple Multimedia Lab, and Lucasfilm Interactive (now LucasArts).

Michael Naimark is a Visiting Associate Professor at the MIT Media Lab and Research Associate Professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts' Interactive Media Division, and was a Fall 2009 Adjunct Professor in the NYU Tisch School of the Arts' Interactive Tele-communications Program. He has recently served on the Board of Directors of ZERO1 San Jose, the Scientific Council of the Boltzmann Institute for Media Arts Research in Linz, and has been a member of the Society for Visual Anthropology since 1984.



A longtime media artist and researcher, Naimark is expert in "place representation” and has made interactive "moviemaps" of Aspen from the street, Paris from the sidewalk, San Francisco from the air, Karlsruhe from the rail, Banff from hiking trails, and stereo-panoramic movies in Jerusalem, Dubrovnik, Angkor, and Timbuktu. His work is an unusual combination of optimism and activism, for example, it currently ranks #1 on Google searches for both VR webcams and camera zapper. Naimark was instrumental in the founding of several world-renown research labs and his art projects exhibit internationally.



Naimark was on the original design team for the MIT Media Laboratory in 1980 and was a founding member of the Atari Research Lab (1982), the Apple Multimedia Lab (1987), and Lucasfilm Interactive (now LucasArts, 1989). He joined Interval Research Corporation, a long-term lab funded by Paul Allen, as it opened in 1992, and worked an additional year after it closed in 2000 on Kundi.com, a web video spinoff venture. Patents for his work have been granted from 1989 on, with several more currently pending.



Naimark's art projects are in the permanent collections of the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and the ZKM | Center for Arts and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. His 3D interactive installation "Be Now Here," produced by Interval with the cooperation of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, toured in the ZKM's "Future Cinema" exhibition in 2002 and 2003.



Naimark was the 2002 recipient of the World Technology Award for the Arts and the 2003 recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation grant to direct a feasibility study for a unique, financially sustainable Arts Lab. In 2004, he taught the first “History of New Media” class at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, taught the first graduate thesis seminar at USC’s Interactive Media Division, and helped Columbia University write its strategic plan for art and technology. He also guest curated the Ars Electronica 25th Anniversary Symposium in Linz, Austria, themed “The World in 25 Years.” In 2005, the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena organized a 20 year survey of Michael Naimark's work.



In 2006, Naimark initiated a USC research project to explore ways of democratizing Earth mapping and modeling. In 2007, the project received a Google research award, and in 2008, the results were published online. The project, called Viewfinder, was well-received by the press, on blogs, at USC, and at Google. Along the way, he also coined the phrases "Google Jockey" and "Google Feeling Lucky List."



In 2009, Naimark was Project Director of "80+1: A Journey Around the World" for Linz09, the European Union Culture Capital. For it, Naimark initiated a unique open competition called "Live Bits: Art Exploring Real-time Connectedness" which received 295 proposals from 42 countries, from which 15 were selected for exhibition. In Fall 2009, he taught a new class at NYU ITP called "Representing Earth".

Suresh Seetharaman is the co founder and President of Virgin Animation and Virgin Comics.

Virgin Comics is a character entertainment company creating original IP for worldwide audiences. It creates content for the entertainment industry for the production of Movies, Animations, Games and Merchandise.

In 2005, Sharad Devarajan and Suresh Seetharaman teamed with Gotham Chopra to invent new mythologies and spark a creative renaissance in Indian character entertainment. Joined with the visionaries Deepak Chopra and Shekhar Kapur, they formed Virgin Comics under Sir Richard Branson's Virgin group of companies. The objective of Virgin Comics/Virgin Animation was to create a platform to showcase the enormous creative talent that has been dormant in the Southeast Asian countries. Virgin Comics believes in the vision that East has the potential to culturally revolutionise the entertainment industry.

Suresh is also the co founder and Chief Operating Officer of Gotham Entertainment Group, South Asia's largest comic book publisher. He oversees the company's international operations, including production, distribution, promotions and sales.

Suresh Seetharaman's experience also includes positions as Senior Vice President and Executive Director of Clarion McCann and National Creative Director of J Walter Thompson India. Suresh is also the Founder Director of Creative Works, a creative hot-shop that has developed and built many of today's leading brands in the Asia-Pacific region.

Isaac Kerlow is a visual creator who continues to pioneer the use of digital and computer technology to produce creative content.

Prof. Kerlow was recently Artist-in-Residence at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, China, and is the Festival Director for SIGGRAPH 2010’s Computer Animation Festival in Los Angeles.

Prof. Kerlow just completed People–Coral–Mentawai, a documentary short about earthquakes and tsunamis in West Sumatra’s Mentawai Islands. He is currently in production with Mayon: The Volcano Princess, a documentary produced by the Earth Observatory of Singapore about the people living around the Mayon Volcano in the Philippines. Recently he completed the Creative Direction of Draconika (祥龙腾飞系南洋), a large-scale animatronic Dragon Float that won the Audience Award at Singapore’s 2009 Chingay Parade, and also completed the development and preproduction for Holy Night! a Spanish computer-animated feature film.

Prof. Kerlow is also the author of several best-selling books, including the successful 4th edition of The Art of 3D Computer Animation and Effects published by Wiley and translated to Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, and Korean.

Between 1995 and 2004 Prof. Kerlow led the group of digital artists and animators at Disney Interactive and multiple initiatives related to producing entertainment with new media at The Walt Disney Company, including 3D computer animation and 24P High-Definition digital moviemaking. While at Disney Interactive Prof. Kerlow oversaw creative and production aspects of over 20 computer games including the successful Animated Storybooks (Hercules, Mulan, Toy Story, 101 Dalmatians, etc.) and action games such as Escape from DeVil Manor, Hades Challenge, and Hercules Action Game.

Prof. Kerlow’s academic career includes being the Founding Dean of the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) from 2005-08. ADM is the first professional art school in Singapore offering six BFA degree programs, including animation and film. Prof. Kerlow was also the Founding Chairman of the Department of Computer Graphics and Interactive Media at Pratt Institute in New York, and the youngest full professor ever tenured at the institution.

Dean of Continuing Education, Arts - Tsinghua University (Beijing)

Author “The Language of New Media” (San Diego)

Interactive designer, writer, producer (San Francisco)

Deborah Todd is a veteran award-winning designer, writer, producer, and director in the interactive arena, with 14 published games and 20 published titles to her credit.

She has worked with some of the industry’s top publishers and Hollywood studios, including Disney Interactive, Disneyland, Fox, DreamWorks, Discovery Channel, MGM/UA, Columbia, Warner Bros., Nickelodeon, The Learning Company, Humongous Entertainment, Broderbund, Mindscape, Houghton-Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, Random House, and Steven Spielberg’s Starbright Foundation.

Her projects have garnered such awards as the ABA Book Sellers Choice New Media Award, the ComputEd Best Interactive Story Award, Child Magazine’s Best Software of the Year Award, Parenting Magazine’s Software Magic Award, and U.S. News and World Report’s Top 12 Titles of the Year.

Ms. Todd’s 20 published titles include interactive games and media, books, and television. In addition to her published work, she has consulted on nearly two-dozen projects, has sold a family feature screenplay, and is a graduate “with honors” of the Hanna Barbera Animation Writing Program.

She is a member of the WGA and IGDA, and was listed in the premier edition of Who’s Who in Media and Communications. Her new book, Game Design: From Blue Sky to Green Light was launched at GDC 2007.

Anita Fontaine and Geoff Lillemon are artists and art directors specializing in expanding the interactive, new media and motion terrain in both the advertising and the art world. Their work and creative direction has led them to work with clients, companies and art institutions from all over the world where their vision has been highly desired.

Originating from Australia, Anita collaborated with videogame giant EA on a number of Playstation and Nintendo titles before relocating to Canada where she met acclaimed artist and designer Geoff Lillemon. Geoff's website Oculart.com had by then received cult status in the online and design worlds, and they were brought together to work on a project at the prestigious Banff New Media Institute. Within a research environment, they had the opportunity to develop and creatively direct a series of location based experiences for mobile devices and technologies that were yet to be released onto the market.

During this time both Anita and Geoff were actively exhibiting and presenting their individual Fine Art projects. Geoff had his first solo exhibition at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City and was the invité d'honneur at the Centre Pompidou, Paris while Anita exhibited her videogame installationCuteXdoom in multiple galleries and museum spaces internationally. Individually they had also built an impressive client roster, developing unique online experiences for brands such as Nike, Nickelodeon, and fashion giant Jean Paul Gaultier.

As the commercial demand for Anita and Geoff's creative sensibilities increased, they decided to form the boutique design studio Champagne Valentine. As a studio they immediately gained a reputation as innovators in the motion graphics, online, gaming and illustration communities. Their first client was VH1, where they developed an awarding winning online game in collaboration with The Barbarian Group, which remains in the VH1 top 10. Since launching the company, Champagne Valentine they have compiled an impressive selection of clients includingDiesel, T-mobile and Scion XB. They have also managed to form strong partnerships with the best interactive and motion graphics companies worldwide including Hi-res, Vacuum and theBarbarian Group . Currently Anita and Geoff work the Champagne Valentine allure at the award winning advertising agency Modernista! as interactive Art Directors. During their time here they have created online and broadcast pieces for clients including (RED), Cadillac,Napster, Motorola and U2 under the sparkle of creative visionary Gary Keopke.

The fame of Geoff and Anita and the knowledge of their creative partnership as Champagne Valentine is only expanding. Geoff recently went on tour throughout Asia with ADOBE, where he presented and unveiled his unsurpassed creative techniques. Anita meanwhile traveled to Finland earlier this year where she presented her lastest personal artwork, Ghostgarden, a cinema experience that uses devices and GPS technology to take the viewer on a cinematic journey within famous garden environments. She will also present the work later this year in Sydney, Australia, while Geoff visits Vienna to collaborate on an online game with companyAvaloop.

Anina is an international model with a passion for technology. Her most recent work is visible in DEdiCate magazine, shot by Andrea Giacobbe, and Russian Harper's Bazaar, shot by Iris Brosch. She is about to travel to new york city for the fashion week in order to launch her new mobile game, ANINA DRESS UP. She will be followed during the fashion week by a team from PBS TELEVISION, who are making a documentary about her and the 360Fashion Network.

She is the one of the first MOBILE artists, producing multimedia art content with cutting edge cellular technology. She has been the first woman ever to be interviewed by Robert Cringley on NERDTV.net where she spoke about cellular technology. She has been featured in WIRED magazine and spoken at the LES BLOGS conference in Paris last December.

Upon landing in Paris in November 2004, she has completed 6 art exhibitions two of which were titled, A NEW KIND OF SUPERMODEL and EVERYHUMAN IS A WORK OF ART.

Her most prominent project is in motion since 2005, called 360Fashion (http://360fashion.net), a 360 degree, personal point of view on fashion website created with industry professionals mobile blogging. Anina is currently seeking students to train in real time reporting and mobile content creation. She is offering training and practical experience through the fashion industry, in exchange for a team of dedicated students to support her project.

Anina wishes to use her image and voice to encourage women of the world to embrace technology so they will have the possibility to compete in the new digital markets that are emerging globally. She developed anina.fr to promote women and technology through an female lifestyle site dedicated to technology.

Anina is currently focusing on the upcoming launch of 360FashionTV, an online web and mobile fashion-tech television station with video content collected by high level fashion professionals. it features interviews with famous models, designers, and personalities talking about technology, design, fashion, and mobile lifestyle.

Curator, Art Centre Nabi (Seoul)

Suhjung Hur is one of Korea’s most influential “digital media arts” power-brokers.

As one of the art directors at the world-famous Art Center Nabi, Hur has been curating and organizing exhibitions, workshops and live events since 2002.

Hur’s interests in the inter-relationships between media technologies and urban environment led her to organize the international workshop ‘Urban Play and Locative Media’ and the guest-curated exhibition in Triad Gallery, Urban Sensorium, which explores the multi-sensory experience in urban environment enhanced and intervened via new media technologies.

Suhjung is also the artistic director for P.Art.y 2007 (www.party2007.net), a festival for media arts and digital culture organized by Art Center Nabi.

Hur was a co-founder and editor for art quarterly Stray Dog in Los Angeles, and has is well-known for her opinion pieces in leading art and architecture magazines in Korea. She founded the experimental sound-visual performance series, ‘alt sound’, and was also the founder of “Upgrade! Seoul”.

Suhjung was a juror and speaker for many media arts events including Rhizome Commission and the Nam-June Paik Museum workshop.

Soh-Yeong Roh founded Art Centre Nabi in 2000, transforming a contemporary art centre into a new media art centre, where art, technology, humanities, and industry come together to create new art and cultural artefacts.

As the main centre for new media arts in Korea, Art Centre Nabi promotes creative talents from diverse backgrounds, turning ideas into practices. Apart from directing Nabi, she gives lectures around the world and is a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in China.

Art Centre Nabi works in the field of media art and culture with a special interest in locative media. The Centre provides galleries, a media lounge, study rooms, and archive/library facilities.

In addition, it organises seminars, conferences, and awards such as “Upgrade! Seoul”, the pre-eminent gathering of new media artists in Korea; “Urban Play and Locative Media”, an international workshop to initiate cultural and artistic projects for the area of Myung Dong; the Nabi-Unesco Digital Arts Award on 'Urban Creative Media'; the Resfest Mobile Art Competition; and Project I, a project which enables disadvantaged children to engage in interactive media conversations.

Gokul is a founding faculty member and currently heads the ‘Art & Technique of Animation’ course at Whistling Woods International, India’s premier film, animation and new media training facility.

First entering the CG industry as a computer programmer, Gokul has spent 12 years working the length of the animation pipeline and establishing himself as a leading Technical artist, supervisor and as a business, R&D, and technical consultant for various ventures. 

As the “Quality In Charge” for Jadooworks, Gokul oversaw a wide variety of television and advertising productions including Higglytown Heroes for Disney. In developing the studio’s high-end production capabilities, he spearheaded the setup of India’s first multi-OS render farm. Gokul founded and managed the studio’s in-house training facility. 

Having had the privilege of working alongside and learning his craft from some of the world’s greatest CG artists through online forums, he now extends his “never stop learning” mantra to his training and inspiration workshops and newly founded online community, CGTantra.

As a graphic designer, Ou Ning is perhaps best known for his seminal bookNew Sound of Beijing (1999) which helped define the capital's emerging rock scene, and the experimental magazine Bie Ce(2000-2006) he edited and designed for Modern Media Group. As a curator, he co-founded the large-scale touring biennale Get It Louder(2005,2007) and organized a sound project at Battersea Power Station, London in 2006 for Serpentine Gallery. As an artist, he has organized such urban research and documentation projects as San Yuan Li, showed at 50th Biennale di Venezia(2003); MoMA, New York (2004); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City(2005); Mori Museum, Tokyo(2005); House of World Culture, Berlin(2006) and more recently Da Zha Lan, sponsored by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, showed at NAi, Rotterdam(2006); ZKM, Karlsruhe(2006); University of Toronto(2006); MoMA, New York (2006);San Francisco Art Institute(2007) ; 10th Istanbul Biennial(2007).

He is a writer, blogger and lecturer. He is also the founder of U-thèque, an independent film and video organization; and Alternative Archive, a platform for alternative cultural activities. He was born in 1969, lived and worked in Guangzhou until September 2006, when he moved to Beijing.

Amit Anand is the Founder and Chief Executive of VentureGurus, a Singapore-India based private equity investment partnership that is focused on converting "talented entrepreneurs to successful enterprises".

In its initial avatar, the firm specializes in match making services between entrepreneurs and investors. It provides funding services alongside experienced entrepreneurial management through partnering in the strategic development of the company. On the other hand it partners with larger fund operators and venture capitalists and links them with exciting opportunities across Asia.

Prior to this Amit has had extensive experience in building and developing global brands and alliances whilst holding multitude of roles such as operations, business development, market development and consulting for many multinationals. In his last engagement as Director- Asia Pacific for Fiorano Software Inc, he was responsible for jumpstarting their regional operations, spanning territories such as India, China and Japan. In his earlier days, he has worked for Progress Software Corp as a Market Development Manager, Elipva Pte Ltd and Tata Infotech Ltd.

With such varied experience in helping global brands extend their presence in Asia, Amit is now focused on helping Asia born entrepreneurs and brands achieve global scale through VentureGurus.

Several successful ventures have been launched including, ettaminA Studios (a Singapore-Mumbai based animation and gaming content developer/studio), WhatsOnYourMobile.com (a niche mobile content player) and Blue Print Global Services (a Singapore based technology enabler).

In words of an entrepreneur "Without these 'VentureGurus' we were only a bunch of dreamers, with them on board we have quickly turned into achievers. We were dreaming of building our own IP by the fourth of fifth year of operation, now we are studio co-producing movies with brands such as Virgin Comics in the first year!" said Nikhil Nagda, co-founder of ettaminA Studios.

VentureGurus has just finished raising a US $15 Million investment for development of the first CGI movie slate from the ettaminA stable.

Amit has been on various panels in Asia including the recently concluded India's premier Animation & Gaming convention titled NASSCOM Animation & Gaming 2007.

The founder and CEO of Shanghai’s Radiance Digital Entertainment, Montgomery Singman is one of China’s most preeminent digital media professionals.

Monte founded Radiance Digital Entertainment in 2005, and it has since become synonymous with high quality online games.

In 2000 Monte founded Zona Inc, which was acquired by Shanda Entertainment in 2003 prior to Shanda’s IPO. Following this Monte was the Director of Shanda’s R&D Department, overseeing 300 – 400 staff.

A passionate advocate of the digital media industries, Monte is the Director of the Games Committee for the Shanghai Creative Industry Association – the organisation charged with developing Shanghai’s creative and digital media industries and professionals. He is the Main Co-ordinator of the Shanghai IGDA Chapter; and the Shanghai Chapter of the Global Entrepreneur Association.

Monte is the Chief Professor of the School of Creativity at the prestigious Shanghai Theatre Academy, which is renowned for its cross-disciplinary approach to training and practice. Monte’s books on Game Theory, Game Design, and Project Management are the standard texts for the Academy’s Digital Media Masterclass Program.

A veteran with over 20 years experience in both the US and China game industries, Monte has also worked Atari, Accolade, Capcom, Electronic Arts, Sony and others. The fruits of his work include Shanda’s The World of Legend, Magical Land and Three Kingdoms; Atari’s Looney Tunes Racing; EA’s John Madden Football, and many other titles.

Monte is a columnist for “Game Creativity” one of China’s leading games industry publications.

Michael Yap is Deputy CEO at Media Development Authority (MDA), and Executive Director of the Interactive Digital Media (IDM) Programme Office responsible for driving the national IDM R&D agenda.

Prior to that, he was MD for Oracle Corporation Singapore, and VP Business Development for Oracle Asia Pacific. Before Oracle, Michael was the Founder and CEO of Commerce Exchange (Comex), a software product company, with a strong regional presence in more than 30 countries across Asia.

Michael was the CEO of National Computer Board (NCB), where he spearheaded the Singapore IT2000 Masterplan, the Singapore ONE roll out, and the Electronic Commerce Masterplan, establishing Singapore as a regional icon for info-communications and innovation.

Michael has been a board member of the Singapore Broadcasting Authority, the NLB and the Singapore Science Centre. In 2000, Michael was named one of the “Top 100 FutureGlobal Leaders” by the WEF. In 1999, BusinessWeek named him one of "50 Stars of Asia".

A journalist all his working life, Felix specializes in security and defence and newspaper/web design. He is the author of a book on Singapore’s security history, Phoenix: The Story of the Home Team.

Felix has won several awards for newspaper design, including IFRA Publish Asia Awards and Society of Publishers Asia Awards. In 2003, he was invited to be in the panel of international judges at the Society of News Design’s Best of Design Awards, the first design expert from Asia to be given the accolade. He led the team that redesigned The Sunday Times and The Straits Times. He also redesigned The Jakarta Post.

In 2006 Felix conceptualized and launched the groundbreaking and successful social networking and citizen journalism website, STOMP, which received many international accolades.

After so many decades, his passion for journalism has not waned one iota. Felix makes it a point to get out of the “glass cage” in the newsroom regularly to undertake reporting and writing assignments – and, hence, keep in close touch with what’s happening on the ground.

Johnson Paul is the Deputy Director for Publishing and Research Services of the National Library Board of Singapore, and is an Associate of the Creative Industries Strategy Group (CISG), Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts.

Johnson was the champion for Library 2010, and is the driving force behind the NLB’s pioneering work in the digital domain. He spearheaded the value innovation framework for the Ministry of Information and the Arts, which has since been adopted by the Singapore government as a strategic planning tool.

Johnson is widely published and has presented at many regional forums across Southeast Asia, Russia and the United States. He was instrumental in designing and executing the Consal website, launching the inaugural Asian Children’s Festival (2000) and the World Library Summit (2002), which examined the role of the library in a renaissance city.

Johnson’s research focus spans from the application of technology in libraries, creative industry development, to conflict studies. Currently Johnson is working with the Asia Dialogue Society and UNESCO to deploy libraries in conflict zones (eg. Southern Thailand, Aceh, Bali). He has recently been appointed to the Advisory Committee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Learning Award 2007/2008.

Dooeun is interested in new ways of mediated communication between humans, machine, and other lives.

In 2002, Dooeun produced a wireless art project called Watch Out!, with Maurice Benayoun using mobile SMS and public screens. Dooeun organized the Wireless Art Competition in 2003 with Resfest Digital Film Festival, Korea. Since 2003 Dooeun has run a mobile gallery called ⓜgallery on the SK Telecom's mobile service, June. She also launched an art blog-zine project called love virus at http://paper.cyworld.com/love in 2004. Currently, Dooeun is working on a locative media project called open map to change Seoul city to a playground of storytelling. She is also curating public art programs on COMO which is a networked urban screen launched in Dec. 2004.

Dooeun was invited as art director for 2003 Uijeongbu International Digital Art Festival in Uijeongbu, Korea and also as co-curator of Intermediae_Minbak, one of special events by the invited country of ARCO 2007 in Madrid, Spain.