Digital Publics @ Media Architecture Biennale 2016

Bruce Duyshart is a building technology and innovation strategist who has been delivering award-winning technological solutions to the property industry for more than two decades. 

As the founder and director of specialist Sydney-based consultancy Meld Strategies, he has an appetite to make a difference – and to help his clients dream big. He works with early adopters to push the frontiers of possibilities in areas such as Smart Building technologies, Fibre to the Premise technology, Energy Monitoring, Wayfinding, and Software and Building Automation solutions.

Bruce is a pioneer in his field. He draws on a uniquely powerful blend of skills gleaned from years of experience at leading global property and infrastructure company Lend Lease. These area capabilities include architecture, planning, design, property development, IT and building technologies. 

Put simply, Bruce understands the language of design, user experience and aesthetics as well as the complex world of technology and IT. With this big-picture approach, he continually contributes to the creation of ground-breaking property projects that retain long-term market value and offer a point of difference. 

Widely regarded for his personable style and engaging insights, Bruce is a strategic thinker who has turned his passion for helping people to “connect the dots between people, places and technology” into an all-encompassing service. 

He works effortlessly with a huge range of stakeholders (from project development managers to design professionals) to influence, motivate and inspire breakthrough concepts.

Bruce is also a published author and experienced speaker on a range of technology subjects.

Susa Pop is managing director of Public Art Lab which she founded together with Hans J. Wiegner in 2003.

As curator and cultural operator she is very much interested in creative community building through networking art projects that take advantage of the situatedness in the public space and catalyse artistic processes and public awareness in temporarily possessed urban settings – while utilising the new possibilities of digital media tools and their virtual public sphere.

Susa Pop initiated most of the PAL projects like the Media Facades Festivals, Mobile Studios and Mobile Museums. She holds worldwide conferences and workshops in the field of urban media and is lecturer at the University of Potsdam / European Media Science and at the FH Potsdam / Arts Management and Cultural Work.

I was born in Canada and have lived and worked around the world for the past 35 years. I began my career in the live music industry when I was nineteen and have been working as a light artist ever since. I have designed and directed countless international live shows and events including rock bands; U2, R.E.M., David Bowie, Bryan Adams, David Byrne, Guy Sebastian, James Brown and television shows including; the Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, MTV Awards, ARIA awards and Super Bowl Halftime Shows.

In 2006, I moved to Melbourne and formed Ramus Illumination, a design studio with a focus on interactive lighting installations, architectural facades, precinct activation and lighting and video design.

Ramus Illumination’s work is about connection - creating works that are innovative, interactive and sustainable. They are designed to engage communities in shaping their own environment. Our collaborative process results in a unique approach to urban space that aligns public art, community engagement and commercial vitality.

Ron Gauci is a recent appointment to Fed Square Pty Ltd as Interim CEO. Most recently Ron was the Interim CEO at Melbourne Polytechnic (formerly NMIT) and, prior to that, the CEO & Managing Director of Melbourne Storm Rugby League Club and Vice President Australia/New Zealand for Verizon Business.

Ron has also held senior management and executive positions in some of the world’s largest multinational and domestic organisations including Microsoft, Telstra and IBM. 

He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management and an ambassador for SportsConnect. He also sits on a number of Boards and provides advisory services.

Ron is the Chairman of the Sanctuary Lakes Golf Club and former Chairman of the Board of the Melbourne Aces Baseball Club.

He is a former Director on the Board of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), a former member and alumni of the International CEO Forum and has held a position on the Board of Governors for the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM).

Ava Fatah is an Architect, Educator and Researcher. She is a Associate Professor (Reader) in Media Architecture and Urban Digital Interaction on the MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation programme at the Bartlett, UCL.

Her research work has developed over the last 10 years through her post-graduate studies and the teaching and research positions she held at UCL.  Ava joined the Bartlett School of Graduate studies in Oct 2001, as a member of the Space Research Group, which has held a number of EPSRC funded awards, and was noted as the highest performer of the UCL Faculty of the Built Environment in the last RAE. 

Ava was the UCL recognised researcher on the research project 'Urban Design and Pervasive Systems' funded through the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's WINES programm and the lead academic of the ‘SCREAM’ project funded by 'UrbanBuzz: Building sustainable Communities' programme.

She is the Principle Investigator of the Research in the  Wild funded project 'Screens in the Wild’, which aims to explore the potential of networked urban screens for communities and culture. One of her main contributions to the field was published in the Urban Screens Reader; the first book to offer an anthology of extracts from key texts that provides a rich resource and focuses entirely on the topic of urban screens and media facades and  has served on the programme committees of more than five conferences or symposia in her field.

Born 1965. Master in political science at University of Vienna. Doctor thesis, supervised by Helga Nowotny and Ulrike Felt, about the impact of digital media on the production and communication of knowledge.

Since 1991 media and interaction designer. Projects for Austrian Academy of Sciences, University of Applied Arts, EDVG, Sysis, Museumsquarter Vienna, ZKM Karlsruhe.

Since 1997 researcher and research-manager for ICT projects: web4groups, parq.at, mediafacade.net, mememapper.com.

Main research focus on: collaborative Media, Web 2.0, interaction design, network visualisations, responsive media, media facades, media architectures, media in urban space.

CURRENT ACTIVITIES:

• mememapper.com – a web service for tracking information diffusion in electronic media. (under development).
• Mediaarchitecture.org – web magazine.
• Co – organizer of Media Architecture Conference 2007 in London.
• Co – organizer of Media Facades Festival 2008 in Berlin.
• Lead partner of mediafacade.net, a research consortium of Austrian companies and research institutions that aims at the development of standardized building integrated media facades.
• Co- founder of planhaus.at, office for architecture and design.
• Co- founder of parq.at, platform for user participation in co-housing projects.
• Developer and project partner of wohnportal-berlin.de, an archive of co-housing projects in Berlin.

Stephen commenced his career in television in the early 1980s with network TEN, initially working in the fast paced TV news production environment of live links, breaking stories and news deadlines. Resourcefulness, innovation and urgency was the name of the game and this is where Stephen developed a passion for doing things better and faster. The demands of news enabled Stephen to work on news gathering projects all over the world.

Moving into technical production and operations management, Stephen was able to deliver business change with a pragmatic & commercial view of TV operations this was epitomised with the start-up of Sky News Australia, at the time a world leading news production facility.

Stephen returned to TEN in the late 90s, taking a leading role in the television transmission digitisation project then underway. He worked on projects as diverse as network planning, the transition to widescreen production and the introduction of interactive television.

In 2003 Stephen moved to TEN’s newly acquired OOH business EYE Corp, where he was responsible for product development and innovating the traditional OOH inventory. The subsequent development and deployment of a digital signage network in Australia and New Zealand fundamentally changed the nature of the sector and the system architecture that was developed in-house became the subject of an EYE innovation patent.

Stephen used his skills and commercial acumen across various areas of the EYE OOH business in airports, retail and university environments, undertaking major long term contract renewals and extending the portfolio internationally into new audience groups and formats.

Since leaving EYE after the business was divested in late 2012 Stephen has been working on business development projects in digital media. Now in partnership with Gerry through Digital Place Solutions we plan to continue driving digitally based innovation for audience engagement.

Writer and arts advocate Esther Anatolitis is a curator of ideas. Across twenty years she has facilitated salons, workshops and collaboratives with a strong interest in strategic frameworks and constructive disruption. Esther’s practice is both critical and experimental, published and translated widely in Australia and overseas.

Esther’s past leadership roles span craft and design, literature, festivals, publishing and broadcasting. She has been a juror of the Docklands 72hr Design Challenge, Streetworks Sydney, and the Cinecity experimental film program for the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2015 conference, Risk. For the International Urban Screens Association’s conference in Melbourne, Esther facilitated professional development workshops for the world’s leading screen practitioners.

On Twitter she has been curated onto dozens of arts, architecture and media lists worldwide. Esther is Director of Regional Arts Victoria, Co-curator of Architecture+Philosophy, a regular columnist for Meanjin and ArtsHub, and a member of the Melbourne Writers Festival Programming Advisory. 

estheranatolitis.net