Toby Coffey

Toby Coffey is Head of Digital Development at the National Theatre where in 2016 he established the Immersive Storytelling Studio. The Studio examines how Virtual, Mixed and Augmented Reality along with other emerging technologies can widen and enhance the NT’s remit to be a pioneer of dramatic storytelling and to enable an audience to stand in the shoes of another. The Studio has had its portfolio of projects shown at the Venice, Sundance, Tribeca and London Film Festivals, IDFA, National Theatre, The Young Vic, MoMA and TATE Modern. Toby has over 20 years expertise in the digital arena from creative, technical, production and social perspectives.

Mads Damsbo

Mads Damsbo is the founder and creative producer at Makropol, an innovative production studio based in Copenhagen. Mads focuses on developing unheard narratives, utilizing emerging technology, provoking unexpected emotions and experiences in diverse audiences. Schooled as a Producer from the progressive filmschool Super16 and with a bachelor in Media Directing from the Danish School of Media and Journalism, Mads has since become an expert on the production of immersive media narratives, giving lectures, organizing workshops and teaching masterclasses all around the world. His latest production END OF NIGHT won the Venice Lion for “Best Immersive Narrative”. See all Mads' projects at www.makropol.dk

Ana Brzezinska

Ana is the Immersive Curator at Tribeca Festival. In 2020-22 she was Head of Studio at Kaleidoscope, an American-French immersive production company specialising in virtual and hybrid event production, and fostering up-and-coming projects and talent. Partnering with the Museum of Other Realities, Kaleidoscope has been on the bleeding edge of virtual event production, co-creating a number of immersive gatherings including the biggest VR exhibition in virtual reality at Cannes XR/Marché du Film, a first virtual fashion show with RYOT/Verizon Media, and a first national collection of immersive art with Digital Catapult/UKRI. Kaleidoscope co-produced a number of acclaimed VR experiences, including 'Spheres', starring Jessica Chastain and Patti Smith and executive produced by Darren Aronofsky, 'Battlescar', starring Rosario Dawson, and ‘Evolver’ executive produced by Terrence Malick. Ana collaborates with public funds (Creative Europe MEDIA), NGO, universities and business. Former Discovery Group Producer and Director, and Multimedia Lead at the Grand Theatre–National Opera in Warsaw, she has over 15 years of experience in audiovisual content and event production working across TV, film, digital media and theatre. She is also the author of awarded documentary and virtual reality projects.

www.linkedin.com/in/anabrzezinska/

Liz Rosenthal

Curator, executive producer and pioneer of immersive and interactive creative media.

Liz is Curator of Venice Biennale’s International Film Festival's Official Selection and Competition programme Venice Immersive, Executive Producer of immersive content accelerator programme, CreativeXR, led by Arts Council England and Digital Catapult and the CEO & Founder of trail-blazing innovation company Power to the Pixel. She has an extensive network and knowledge of international talent, financiers and distributors across the immersive entertainment and arts space.

Throughout her career, Liz has helped international media businesses and artists to innovate and adapt their practice to evolving platforms, tools and audiences. She has advised countless leading international festivals, media organisations and national and regional funds.

She is invited regularly to speak at leading events and institutions around the world including the Cannes International Film Festival, Berlinale, Unity for Humanity Summit, Screen International Conferences, TEDx Transmedia, BAFTA and many more around the world. She has served as a jury member for numerous international festivals and funding programmes.

Liz is a board director of The Space commissioning fund for digital arts projects), a founding board member of Immerse UK whose content subgroup she chairs and Latin American new media organisation Mediamorfosis. She is a member of BAFTA, the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, The Guild of Future Architects and a fellow of the RSA.

Alexander Herrmann

Alex has worked in Film and Media since over 20 years. After studies of MultiMediaArt and International Co-Production he worked at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg for the curation of interdisciplinary content developmet labs where he implemented Hackathons into the curriculum as early as 2013. His work as a producer and thinker brought him together with partners like RedBull, Universal London, Cern, LMU Munich, Goethe Institute and many others. 6 years ago he founded expanding focus GmbH, a XR and Games studio situated in Leipzig.

Katayoun Dibamehr

XR industry veteran, seasoned producer with a demonstrated history of working with festivals, public and cultural organizations. She is an Iranian, French Canadian producer based between Paris and Montreal. Since 2014, Katayoun Dibamehr she has collaborated with Montreal’s Festival nouveau cinema as the head of the new media program “FNC EXPLORE”. In 2018, she joined Floréal Films, production company dedicated to producing feature films, short films and immersive experiences based in Paris and she has dedicated her time fully to support artists. Member of the Venice Biennale College Alumni, mentor for Rotterdam International Film Festival’s CineMart Immersive cohort, she is behind The Hangman at Home - VR, the 2020 Grand Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival, nominated and shortlisted for Cesar and Oscars for the short animation film in 2022, the ‘’beautifully-crafted’’ VR film, Minimum Mass by Raqi Syed and Areito Echevarria, recipient of Crystal for Best VR at Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2021 and more recently the ground breaking and the acclaimed Goliath: Playing with Reality by Barry Gene Murphy and May Abdalla, recipient of the Grand Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival in 2022.

Elisabeth Mayer

Elisabeth works in the field of virtual reality (VR) and is particularly concerned with the application areas of 3D, game engines, virtual reality and animation. Since 2017, she has been working at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Garching at the Centre for Virtual Reality and Visualisation (V2C). The V2C uses state-of-the-art technologies to offer researchers support in the field of VR software and hardware as well as data visualisation. Elisabeth specialises in game engines and 3D and uses these tools for various projects from art history to visualisation. Her own research focuses on virtual reality interfaces and visualisations of large data sets. She also teaches on the topics of virtual reality and the use of game engines in research. She has also gained experience with VR in exhibition contexts: at the Campus Exhibition of Ars Electronica 2017, in collaboration with Kunsthalle München and as part of the Science and Fiction Festival 2021 at the Deutsches Museum.

Santeri Suominen

Santeri Suominen is an operator of the immersive tech field specializing in hands-on early-stage incubation of XR/metaverse startups, cross-disciplinary innovation and arts. He’s the incubation program manager at Helsinki XR Center, metaverse activist and an advocate of critical education of immersive technology applications across societies. Santeri engages many parallel and interconnected XR networks through Helsinki XR Center, Finnish XR Association FIVR, XR4Europe and VRT Game Hub. Virtual reality doesn’t exist, it is created.

Nathalie Mathe

Nathalie Mathe is a pioneer Virtual Reality creator and a globally recognized consultant, educator, and public speaker. A former NASA AI scientist and visual effects artist, she combines her artistic passion with a solid scientific and technical background to explore new frontiers in VR interactive storytelling and embodiment. She is the founder of NativeVR, an independent VR studio in California, where she focuses on creating immersive experiences with a transformative and social impact, generating a more diverse and equitable future. Her interactive 360 film UTURN, a comedy raising awareness on the gender gap in the tech industry, was nominated for best interactive experience at the Raindance and FIVARS festivals and screened at a dozen international film festivals. She received a writing grant from the French Film Board (CNC) for her VR project in development, Wallada, which explores themes of trauma and healing through poetry, calligraphy, and volumetric video. She recently produced The Friend VR with video artist John Sanborn and director David Lawrence (Inside Covid19), which will be exhibited at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Germany during July-Oct 2022. She has contributed to dozens of VR projects as director, producer or post-prod supervisor for JauntVR, Condition One, Google, Facebook, World Vision, and created visual effects for feature films like Fast & Furious 6, Skyfall and Dark Knight Rises. She is also a public speaker and has taught Immersive Media and VR at UC Berkeley, Drexel University, University of the Arts and BVAC Media.

Clarence Dadson

Clarence is working with immersive Media for over 10 years. As one of the pioneers in this field he is working with AR, VR, 360° video and animation design. Besides doing client projects with his XR Agency Design4real in Munich, he is the organizer of one of Germany’s oldest XR meetup groups with over 1000 members. Looking back on 50 meetups already Clarence organizes his monthly XR Bavaria Meetups each time covering a different topic about immersive media. On a mission to teach and inform the public about XR and forge a stronger community the XR Bavaria association was founded with Clarence Dadson as one of the chairmen. Clarence is known for always trying out new technologies and having a broad range of experience in software and hardware technologies.

Tamiko Thiel

Tamiko Thiel was awarded the 2018 SAT Montreal Visionary Pioneer Award for (now) over 35 years of media artworks exploring place, space, the body and cultural identity in political and socially critical artworks. She was lead product designer on the Connection Machine CM-1/CM-2 (1986/1987), the first commercial artificial intelligence supercomputer and in 1989 fastest computer in the world. These machines influenced Google’s AI technology, inspired Steve Jobs‘ designs, and are in the collections of MoMA NY and the Smithsonian Institution. Her AI artworks include Lend Me Your Face! (2020) deepfake video installation, and Lend Me Your Face: Go Fake Yourself! (2021), The Photographer’s Gallery London commission for an online net art version. Her first VR was as producer/creative director of Starbright World (1994-1997) with Steven Spielberg. Her own VR artwork Beyond Manzanar (2000) was the first VR artwork collected by a US art museum (San Jose Museum of Art, 2002). She created Land of Cloud (2017) as GoogleVR Tilt Brush Artist in Residence, and Atmos Sphaerae (2021) for DiMoDA 4.0 VR platform curated by Whitney curator Christiane Paul. Her first augmented reality artwork was ARt Critic Face Matrix (2010), in a path-breaking intervention into MoMA NY, followed by Shades of Absence in an intervention into the 2011 Venice Biennale. Many invitational AR shows and commissions followed: Biomer Skelters (2013) from FACT Liverpool, Brush the Sky (2015) from Wing Luke Museum of the Asian-Pacific Experience, Gardens of the Anthropocene (2016) from Seattle Art Museum, Unexpected Growth (2018) from Whitney Museum (first edition in the collection, second edition auctioned as a NFT at Christie's NY), and most recently ReWildAR (2021) for the 175th anniversary of the Smithsonian Institution.

Paulina Wieczorek

Paulina is an experienced product specialist from Rokoko, a motion capture company based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Throughout her experience gained through her education and career path by working and studying in four different countries, she developed her passion for animation and game design. Working for tech companies opened the doors to independent thinking that challenges her to go beyond the mundane ideas from “inside the box.” She is a staunch believer in the power of democratizing expensive and inaccessible tools of traditional filmmaking to all creators. Her previous experience has become a manifestation of bridging technology and innovation to make professional motion capture more accessible, easy and creative.

Matthias Leitner

Matthias is a digital storyteller, certified ux designer and scrum master. I develop content and impact strategies for companies, NGOs, foundations and the public sector. For Bayerischer Rundfunk, I have been heading the storytelling lab audience: first since 2015 and in the Digital Developments & Social Media department I develop program innovations such as the messenger project #icheisner or the XR installation “Die Rettung”. In 2017 I was appointed a fellow of the Federal Cultural and Creative Industries. I have received numerous awards for my journalistic and artistic work, most recently for #icheisner the Parliament Media Prize of the German Bundestag 2020 and for “Die Rettung” with the New Realities Award 2020. Currently I am working on a Social VR-Experience I am currently working on a social VR experience called "Munich 72". The project deals with the 1972 Olympic Games and the Munich Massacre.

Sylvia Rothe

Sylvia is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence in Media Production at the University of Television and Film (HFF) in Munich. She studied mathematics and worked as a software developer and filmmaker before realizing her first VR projects. Her research at the field of Cinematic VR has been presented at numerous conferences and journals. Sylvias doctoral thesis was awarded the ARD/ZDF media prize. In May 2022 she started the professorship „Artificial Intelligence in Media Production“ at HFF Munich. She wants to encourage young people to realize AI-based media projects.