M-A-D is a 20 year old multidisciplinary design studio that explores contemporary societal phenomena through communication design and artistic experiments. M-A-D brings together a wide array of complementary talents to undertake assignments ranging from design campaigns for Wired and IBM software to large exhibits for cultural institutions. Since its early days, M-A-D has received on-going attention for its innovative creations.
> www.madxs.com > contact

Adigard + Salter have two decades of experience in exploring the convergence of culture and technology. The team’s strength lies in cross media, transdisciplinary, international projects for public spaces, museums and festivals. Adigard and Salter not only bring with them considerable conceptual, design and technological knowledge but also project coordination and management experience in large-scale media installations. The team works with an international network of architectural, engineering, construction, fabrication and programming talent.
recent projects: chronopolis.org + dualterm.com

Erik Adigard is, with Patricia McShane a founder of the design studio M.A.D., which is positioned at the intersection of communication design and multimedia arts. Adigard's body of work includes numerous visual essays for Wired magazine, experimental websites such as LiveWired and Madscroll, the short documentary "Webdreamer", branding campaigns for IBM and many exhibit commissions. More recently Adigard conceived a 500-piece exhibit for Experimentadesign, the Lisbon Biennale and he worked on The4thScreen festival, an event that focused on the culture of mobile media. Other art projects include commissions from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Saint-Etienne International Design Biennale, the Villette Numérique Biennale in Paris, Muffathalle in Munich and the Toronto Pearson International Airport. Adigard's creations have been shown in galleries, museums, biennales, film festivals and in publications world-wide. Among his many awards, he received the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. Adigard regularly teaches, juries, advises and/or writes on design. He is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale.
More information can be found in the monograph "Design & Designer: M.A.D." published by Pyramyd.
> www.adigard.com > contact

Christopher Salter studied economics and philosophy and received his PhD in the areas of theater and computer-generated sound at Stanford University. His theoretical interests and artistic practice investigate the role of real time sound, image and technologies of interaction within the context of responsive environments and new forms of technologically mediated live performance. He was awarded the Fulbright and Alexander von Humboldt Chancellor grants for research/work in Germany between 1993 -1995. After collaborating with Peter Sellars and William Forsythe/Ballett Frankfurt, he co-founded the art and research organization Sponge. Salter’s work has been shown internationally at exhibition and performance venues such as Ars Electronica, Transmediale, Festival EXIT - Maison des Arts-Creteil, Elektra-Montreal, Place des Arts-Montreal, Shanghai International Dance Festival, Villette Numerique, V2, Dance Theater Workshop/New York and SIGGRAPH, among others. It has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, Responsive Environments: Architecture, Art and Design, ID and Leonardo and has received funding from the Daniel Langlois Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Creative Work Fund, the Goethe Institut and the LEF Foundation, among others.
He is currently completing Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance to be published by MIT Press in 2009. He has been visiting professor in music, grad studies and digital media at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada where he also is a researcher in Interactive Performance and Sound at Hexagram.
> www.chrissalter.com > contact

Harry Smoak received his Masters of Science in Human Computer Interaction at the Georgia Institute of Technology and GVU Center, and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre (with a focus on design, semiotics of the arts, and media arts) from the University of South Carolina in the United States. Since 2005, he has worked as researcher, designer and graduate student at the Topological Media Lab in Montréal (Quebec) Canada. Following 10 years of work in the Internet and Communications industries, in 2005 Harry changed the focus of his work to pursue research and creative projects combining theoretical and practical interests in performance, media and technology. He is currently working towards a PhD in an individualized program at Concordia University in Montréal, combining research and practice in computational media systems for interactive performance, live events, and architectural applications. His creative work has been shown in Canada, Europe, and the United States.
> harrysmoak.com

Hugues Bruyere is a hybrid designer, programmer and creative technologist, Hugues Bruyère studied Electronics and Computing in France, and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Computation Arts at Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada.
 Methodical and playful, Hugues’ explorations into art and technology are pushing him to create media art projects about human-computer-human interactions.  He has worked as a research assistant for various research labs at Hexagram Institute for Research/Creation  in Media Arts and Technologies. Also, his project/research, Performative Surface: double sided interaction,  has been seen at ACM 2007 and Dorkot-Montreal.
 Hugues currently works independently in Montreal.
> smallfly.com

Elie Zananiri holds a Bachelor of Computer Science from Concordia University (Montreal), where he majored in Computation Arts and minored in Mathematics and Statistics. He is also trained in Media Arts and traditional animation. Elie links all these fields in his works through interactive video installations and unorthodox data visualizations. His films have been screened in North America at various festivals such as Fantasia, Spasm, and TromaDance. His new media projects have been presented at SoukMachines and Dorkbot in Montreal, as well as Medialab-Prado in Madrid. Elie will begin his Master's in Interactive Telecommunications at NYU in September 2008.
> silentlycrashing.net