Collaborations
The project “Embodied Agents in Contemporary Visual Art” is supported by a large network of international institutions and individuals who are committed to the enrichment of the project by addressing relevant themes in the fields of robotics, computer science, and computer engineering, as well as the arts, theory, and market strategy.
Giacomo Indiveri is a Professor of Neuromorphic Cognitive Systems at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Engineer by training, he has always been interested in physics, computer science, and neuroscience. He has been combining these disciplines by studying real and artificial neural processing systems, and by building electronic neuromorphic cognitive circuits and systems.
Indiveri carried out research on neuromorphic vision sensors as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, and on neuromorphic selective attention systems as a postdoc at the Institute of Neuroinformatics of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
His latest research interests lie in the study of spike-based learning and spike-based recurrent neural network dynamics. His research and development activities focus on the full custom hardware implementation of real-time sensory-motor systems using analog/digital neuromorphic circuits and emerging memory technologies.
Constanze is the Lead of Art & Culture at Ipai – Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence in Heilbronn. It’s a growing ecosystem of companies, startups, universities, and the public sector with the common goal of building AI solutions together. Ipai is building a 23-acre big campus with architects MVRDV that will house a public building dedicated to arts, education, and event programs focused on AI.
Before joining Ipai, Constanze worked for two and a half years at Sotheby’s, where she drove cross-category sales. Prior to that, she worked at various museums where she curated and managed large-scale exhibitions. At Kunstmuseen Krefeld, she was the director’s right hand.
She implemented the director’s new strategic vision, developed new events and exhibition series, and created a Corporate Identity with Dutch graphic designers Mevis & Van Deursen. This led to the museum being awarded the AICA Museum of the Year Award in 2022. Constanze has a background in Art History, International Arts Management, Spanish Literature, and Business Studies.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/constanzezawadzky?originalSubdomain=de
Dr. Katerina Krtilova is a researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts, FSP Ästhetik (Research Center for Aesthetics). In autumn 2023, she is a visiting professor at the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna. She has been a visiting professor at the Department of Philosophy in Vienna and Media Studies in Bonn, as well as a researcher and lecturer in media theory, media anthropology, and aesthetics in Weimar, Zurich, and Prague.
She defended her PhD in Weimar in 2017 and realized a number of international projects focusing on media philosophy. Since 2021, she has been working on a project connecting media philosophy and religious practices.
Dr. Sven Sappelt is a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies with around two decades of experience as a curator and cultural manager. He currently heads CLB Berlin, an exhibition space in Berlin Kreuzberg.
In 2012, he founded C60/Collaboratorium for Cultural Practice at Ruhr-University Bochum, and in 2015, he initiated CLB Berlin at Aufbau Haus. Collaborating with artists, curators, and various institutions, CLB has organized over 80 exhibitions and 160 events. Sven’s academic journey includes studies in Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice at the University of Hildesheim, where he also earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy. He has worked with international cultural institutions such as Künstlerhaus Wien, Wiener Festwochen, and Humboldt Forum Berlin, among others. His research and teaching interests led him to be part of excellence clusters at the University of Konstanz and Humboldt University in Berlin. He also represented the Chair of Cultural and Creative Entrepreneurship at TH OWL.
He co-founded the Institute for Cultural Governance (iCG), which currently researches working conditions in the performing arts in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Federal Association of Performing Arts (BFDK).
Dr. Rafi Gidron is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor with a profound interest in the emergence of creativity, technology, and consciousness. Holding a Ph.D. in Engineering from Columbia University, he has had an accomplished academic career as an associate director of a National Science Foundation excellence center in telecommunications.
Rafi’s entrepreneurial journey is marked by the creation of multiple successful startups, including Chromatis Networks, a top-five venture-backed exit. As an angel investor, he actively supports innovative ventures through Precede Technologies.
Beyond his professional pursuits, Rafi enjoys playing the saxophone in a London based Jazz band, and has written and published a novel titled “Ignite.”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafi-gidron-a3855825/
Dr Sylvain Calinon is a Senior Research Scientist at the Idiap Research Institute and a Lecturer at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He heads the Robot Learning & Interaction group at Idiap, with expertise in human-robot collaboration, robot learning from demonstration, and model-based optimization. The approaches developed in his group are applied to a wide range of applications requiring manipulation skills, with robots that are either close to us (assistive and industrial robots), parts of us (prosthetics and exoskeletons), or far away from us (shared control and teleoperation). It also includes the development of portraitist robots, including Salvador DaBot (https://calinon.ch/portraitist.htm) and drozBot (https://calinon.ch/drozbot.htm=, which was part of an AI exhibition at the UNIL-CHUV Museum of the Hand in Lausanne, running from April 2022 to September 2023 (https://www.museedelamain.ch/fr/1591/Intelligence-Artificielle).
Website: https://calinon.ch
Daniela Mitterberger is an architect and researcher with a strong interest in new media and the relationship between humans, digital fabrication, and emerging technologies. She received her doctoral degree at ETH Zurich (Dr. sc.) in 2023 on “adaptive digital fabrication and human-machine collaboration for architecture”.
Currently, Daniela is a postdoctoral researcher at Gramazio Kohler Research (ETH Zurich) and works within the Design++ initiative (Centre for Augmented Computational Design in AEC). Daniela is the Co-lead of the Immersive Design Lab, a lab for collaborative research and teaching in the field of extended reality and machine learning in architecture and construction.
There, she develops innovative computational methods that enable human-machine collaborative processes through adaptive digital fabrication and extended reality. Daniela is co-founder and director of «MAEID [Büro für Architektur und Transmediale Kunst] », a multidisciplinary architecture practice based in Innsbruck. Daniela was a researcher at the University of Applied Arts and co-led the FWF PEEK project titled “Co-corporeality”.
Weblink:
https://designplusplus.ethz.ch/
https://gramaziokohler.arch.ethz.ch/web/e/forschung/372.html
William Latham is well known for his pioneering Organic Art created in the late eighties and early nineties whilst a Research Fellow at IBM in Winchester. His book from that period, “Evolutionary Art and Computers”, on interactive evolutionary design, is still cited as a leading publication in this domain. William’s solo exhibition “The Conquest of Form” (originating at the Arnolfini) toured the UK and Germany for two years, and “The Empire Form” toured Japan and Australia in the early 90s. At IBM, he formed his long-term collaboration with the mathematician and programmer Stephen Todd.
In 1993, he moved into Rave Music, creating album covers and videos for bands such as The Shamen and Robert Miles. He then moved into computer games development for ten years as a creative director, creating console and PC games published by Vivendi Universal, Microsoft, and Warner Bros.
In 2007 he became a Professor in Computing at Goldsmiths University of London with research projects in VR and Art and in modeling and visualising DNA / RNA Structures and Virus structures. His Mutator VR Art Experience, developed since 2015 with long-term collaborators Stephen Todd, Peter Todd, and Lance Putnam, has been exhibited to much acclaim in exhibitions around the globe. To date, Mutator VR Art experience has been shown in China, Russia, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK in major exhibitions.
He is an Honorary Professor at The Bartlett School of Architecture and is a Research Fellow at The Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. His art is in the permanent collections of The Pompidou Centre, Paris, The V&A Museum, The Gulbenkian Art Collection, and many other collections.
William was an undergraduate student at Ruskin School of Drawing (Christchurch College at Oxford University and a postgraduate student at The Royal College of Art, where he was The Henry Moore Scholar.
Adrian Notz – Adrian Notz (*1977 in Zurich) is the curator of the AI + Art Initiative at the ETH AI Center. In 2023, he was curator of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara. From 2020 – 2022, he was curator at the Tichy Ocean Foundation in Zürich and from 2012-2019, artistic director of Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich. He worked there first as a curatorial assistant (2004-2006) and as co-director (2006 -2012). From 2010 to 2015, he was head of the Department for Fine Arts at the School of Design in St. Gallen.
Notz has organized and curated numerous exhibitions, events, conferences, actions, and interventions with international artists, activists, and thinkers in Cabaret Voltaire as well as internationally around the globe.
