Vanessa Hannesschläger (AT)

Vanessa Hannesschläger is head of European Collaboration of Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. She holds a PhD in literature from the University of Vienna, where she teaches digital humanities and copyright in arts & humanities contexts. Her research focuses on new narratives and forms in theatre, a topic she explores in her work at Ars Electronica in projects around digital theatre and new approaches to XR. In the European policy context, Vanessa advocates for digital infrastructure for the arts and humanities, data literacy and Open Science.

Jesús Jara López (ES)

Jesús Jara López graduated in Pedagogy and Computer Science in Madrid (Spain), as well as in Computer Music and Musicology at the HfM in Karlsruhe (Germany). He was coordinator of the fourth International Conference on Live Coding, and he publishes regularly in music education journals. His professional experience includes periods of cultural research (between 2015 and 2018 at Medialab-Prado cultural center), periods of pedagogical and academic organization and management (direction of the Public School of Music and Dance “María Dolores Pradera” between 2018 and 2023) and periods of cultural management and production of Extended Realities activities in collaboration with the LEV Matadero festival (since 2019).

Croatian gaming incubator – PISMO (HR)

PISMO, the business incubator of Sisak-Moslavina County specializes in the gaming industry and is a unique place where the love of video games becomes a serious business. On 2,000 m2, the PISMO incubator, located in the city of Novska, enables its users to do business at reduced costs, creating a business environment in which entrepreneurs and craftsmen can achieve joint business cooperation, exchange experiences and develop business ideas. More than 70 startups are currently operating in PISMO. The incubator was built with EU funds and is worth around 3.2 million euros. It was opened in 2019, and already the following year it was declared the best Croatian EU project. The incubator is managed by the Development Agency SIMORA. Learning and earning go together and that is why PISMO conducts work training in the programs Blender, Unity and Unreal Engine 5. So far, more than 280 people have been trained to work in the gaming industry. Thanks to the now successfully rounded ecosystem, developers find work in existing companies of the Incubator or open their own companies, the start-up of which can receive support in the amount of 17 thousand Euro.

inkubator-pismo.eu

Gjino Šutić (HR)

Gjino Šutić is a biotechnologist, medicinal chemist, postmodern new media artist, biohacker, innovator, and educator. He is the founder and director of the Universal Research Institute (UR Institute, HR) since 2013, and the founder and director of the company Gen0 Industries d.o.o. – for the development and production of innovative technologies since 2014. He is also the president of the Association of Innovators of Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Croatia since 2020. Šutić works as a multidisciplinary researcher and producer of projects in the fields of experimental biotechnology, hybrid and biological art, electronics, biological and chemical engineering, often promoting DIY innovative practices. Recent achievements include the production of the EU projects Dubrovnik Postmodern (VR culture and art), STARTS4Water (art and new technologies in water conservation), and a gold medal at the ARCA 2022 innovation fair for a synthetic molecule with potential pharmaceutical use developed in silico using chemoinformatic and VR tools.

ur-institute.org

Sara Tirelli (IT)

Sara Tirelli is an artist and filmmaker with a focus on technology, the politics of media and immersivity. Her works explore how the “cinematic experience” shapes and redefines the concept of Reality. Sara Tirelli is currently the Artistic Director and Co-Founder of CSC Immersive Arts – a Centre for The Expanded Moving Image, a new department of the National Film School of Italy of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC) dedicated to XR media and soon to be opened in Venice. As an artist and filmmaker, Tirelli’s videos and artworks have been featured in several exhibitions such as Q16. Quadriennale d’Arte of Rome, Sonje Art Centre of Seoul and Gothenburg Film Festival amongst others. In 2017 she won 3rd Prize of Deutsche Bank Video Award and in the same year she was selected as Artist in Production in Residency in Sweden where she developed her first VR artwork Medusa. She has held various panels about her research within immersive storytelling such as Bodies, Movement and AI in VR at Goldsmiths University of London, Future Narrative with Laurie Anderson at Film Festival Gothenburg, In 2019 she co-founded the VR Pavilion, an independent curatorial project launched in conjunction with the 58th Venice Art Biennale’s preview days. She is currently artist in residence at ERC Research Group An-ICON, University Statale of Milan.