James Bradburne is a British-Canadian architect, designer and museum specialist (born in 1955), who has designed World's Fair pavilions, science centres, and international art exhibitions. Educated in Canada and England, he developed numerous exhibitions, research projects and symposia for UNESCO, national governments, private foundations, and museums worldwide during the course of the past fifteen years. He currently sits on several international advisory committees and science centre boards, and recently curated and designed exhibitions including Rudolph II (Prague 1997) and Theatre of Reason/Theatre of Desire (Villa Favorita, Lugano, 1998). He lectures internationally about new approaches to informal learning, and has published extensively. His books and papers have been translated into seven languages, and his PhD research is about creating effective educational strategies in informal learning environments. In 1994 he was invited to join newMetropolis Science and Technology Center in Amsterdam as Head of Design. In 1995 he was given responsibility for Programming and Education, and remained with newMetropolis until December 1998 as head of the Research and Development department, which is responsible for the planning of new exhibits, exhibitions, programmes, and products for newMetropolis. As of January 1st, 1999, he began work as Director of the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main.

R. Luke DuBois is a composer, programmer, and performer living in New York City. He is currently finishing his DMA degree at Columbia University, and teaches interactive computer music at the Columbia's Computer Music Center and at New York University. His music with his band, the Freight Elevator Quartet, is available on Caipirinha/Sire, Liquid Sky, and Cycling'74 Music.

William Forsythe was born in New York City in 1949. He studied dance at Jacksonville University, Florida and later at the Joffrey Ballet School. In 1973 Forsythe joined Germany’s Stuttgart Ballet as a dancer, and later began choreographing works for the company. It was here that he made his first piece, Urlicht, a duet to the music of Gustav Mahler.

Over the next seven years Forsythe made over 20 ballets for the Stuttgart Ballet and for other leading companies, including the Basel Ballet, Munich Ballet, the Deutsche Opera Ballet in Berlin, the Joffrey Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater. One of his earliest works, Flore Subsimplici, was part of the Stuttgart Balletís season at the London Coliseum in 1978. One of Forsytheís best known works from this period is Side 2-Love Songs, which was later filmed for television.

In 1984 Forsythe became the Director of Ballett Frankfurt, a year after creating his full-length work for the company, Gunge. With his new company, he set out to create challenging original work which were removed from conventional ballet and to build a new audience. Since this time, Forsythe has developed a unique ballet aesthetic which does not deny traditional ballet technique but which both deconstructs/constructs, broadening and challenging the lexicon.

Forsythe's key works over the past 15 years include Artifact (1984), Impressing the Czar (1988), Limb's Theorem (1991), The Loss of Small Detail (1991), ALIE/NA(C)TION (1992) and Eidos: Tellos (1995).

Forsythe continues to stage pieces for companies around the globe, and his work is in the repertoire of the New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada, The Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, the Royal Swedish Ballet, among others. These works tend to focus primarily upon ballet dancing, whereas with his own Ballett Frankfurt ensemble he tends to use more complex movement and theatrical environments. Ballett Frankfurt performs at the Oper and Schauspiel in Frankfurt and tours internationally. In October 1999 the company also performed at the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt, a performance space housed in a converted tramway depot, where Forsythe will develop new site-specific work. In January 1999 Forsythe became Director of both Ballett Frankfurt and TAT.

Brad Garton has been involved in computer music since the early 1980s. He attended Purdue University (BS Pharmacology, 1979), originally intending to pursue a career in scientific research. While working towards a graduate degree in the Speech and Hearing Science program at Purdue, he became involved in a successful recording/production studio and left school to work full-time in music. His studio activities received international attention, particularly in the area of sound design for live theater [Garton and his studio partner, Richard Thomas, were invited to give several lecture/ demonstrations for the American Theatrical Association Annual Conference (1980) and the United States Institute of Theatrical Technicians Annual Conference (1979-1981), as well as a lecture tour of various European theaters (1981)].

Deciding to "get serious" about his musical career, Garton was accepted into the Princeton University Graduate Program in Music Composition in 1983. His technical grounding held him in good stead, as Princeton was aggressively engaged in the newly-unfolding digital music revolution. While studying with Paul Lansky and Jim Randall, Garton assisted in authoring the powerful CMIX computer music language. His graduate dissertation (PhD., 1989) focussed upon aspects of computer music interface design, especially as it related to the parsing and learning-by-machine of natural language.

Garton was appointed to the Music Composition faculty of Columbia University in 1987, where he was responsible for building the first computer music studio at the Electronic Music Center. In 1995, Garton was named Director of the EMC, and the name was changed to the Computer Music Center to reflect the changed technological focus of the Center. His work at Columbia has ranged from very low-level programming challenges (he wrote the first widely-available CD quality audio device driver for Sun Microsystems workstations) to more abstract, conceptual applications (his present research revolves around the modeling of human musical performance capabilities by software agents, and the subsequent development of a unique musical "style" through the simulated evolution of those agents). He has written music production software for a wide variety of computer platforms, most recently the RTcmix programming language for real-time computer music applications.

As Director of the Computer Music Center, he has initiated a major upgrade of the CMC facilities, building the CMC into one of the premiere contemporary centers for music technology in the world. His work at the CMC has primarily centered around the construction of supporting technologies for computer music production and pedagogy. As a result of this focus, Garton has consulted on the design and construction of a large number of computer music research facilities throughout the world (including studios in Greece, South America, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Finland, France, England, as well as a large number of US institutions).

Always informed by a distinctly musical perspective, his computer development bridges the border between music composition and music programming. Garton is an internationally-known composer, having had his music performed on six continents during the past ten years. His desire is that his computer music work be used to facilitate

educational creativity along with a broad interpenetration of music into a multiplicity of human endeavors.

Paul Kaiser is a digital artist whose work in multimedia grew out of his earlier work in experimental filmmaking. In addition to his own works and exhibits, Kaiser has collaborated both with learning disabled children - for which he won a Computerworld/ Smithsonian Award in 1991 - and with prominent performing artists, including Robert Wilson, Merce Cunningham, and Bill T. Jones.

Kaiser’s work has been partially supported by Autodesk and by Compaq Computer, as well as by numerous foundations. In 1996, he became the first interactive artist to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship; in 1998 he received an award for the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art; in January 2000 he was awarded the first Brooklyn Academy of Music / Lucent fellowship in digital media; and in July 2000 he will begin an Osher Fellowship at the Exploratorium Science Museum in San Francisco.

Kaiser has been an artist-in-residence at the Cooper Union School of Art and at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; has lectured at the American Film Institute, Harvard University, Stanford University, the SIGGRAPH conference, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Guggenheim Museum, and others; and has had his work presented at the State Theater of Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Pompidou Center, the Cultural Center of Lisbon, and many other venues.

Prominent coverage of Kaiser's work has appeared on ABC-TV (Nightline) as well as in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, the Village Voice, Newsweek, and Time.

In addition to ten years of teaching learning disabled students, he has been a visiting lecturer in multimedia at San Francisco State University and is presently a visiting artist in Film Studies at Wesleyan University.

Kaiser lives with his wife and two daughters in New York City.

Douglas Repetto is an artist, performer and educator. When not building electronic sculptures or writing realtime music performance software he spends lots of time talking to plants. Douglas works at the Columbia University Computer Music Center, where he maintains the computer networks, builds human/machine interfaces and teaches a variety of topics.

visit his website.

Thanassis Rikakis is the Associate Director of the Computer Music Center of Columbia University. He is head of Research and Development at the Center. He has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia University since 1994.

Rikakis has written works for orchestra, chamber ensembles and for computer. He has also composed music for the television, the theater and cinema. He has studied with some of the most prominent European and American composers including Ianis Xenakis, Pierre Boulez, Olivier Messiaen, Roger Reynolds, Chou Wen Chung, Bernard Rands and Mario Davidonsky.

Rikakis was the Director of the 1997 International Computer Music Conference, the curator of "Masterpieces of Electronic Music; a Multimedia Perspective" for Lincoln Center Festival 200 and the Director of the Columbia University Interactive Arts Festival.

His research concentrates on music perception and psychoacoustics with special emphasis on the use of microtones in western compositions and medical applications of music

visit his website.

Ana Catalina Roman was born in Madrid, Spain, trained at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Espana with Ana Lazaro and danced in the "Joven Ballett Concierto" under her direction. She finished her training in the John Cranko School in Stuttgart with Heinz Clauss and Jean Wallis. She danced with Gelsenkirchen Ballett under the direction of Bernd Schindowsky. She joined the Ballett Frankfurt in 1980 at first under the direction of Egon Madsen and since 1984 under the direction of William Forsythe. She danced as a soloist in most of the Ballett Frankfurt Productions and collaborated on many. In the last years she has also assisted William Forsythe on various pieces. She has choreographed six short pieces herself and is a Ballett Teacher. At present she is studying Film Drawing Animation.

Dan Trueman composes and plays various violins, including the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle and the 6-string electric violin. He currently works at the Columbia Computer Music Center, performs internationally with his electronic improvisation duo interface and his duo Trollstilt, and is composing a suite of pieces for Hardanger fiddle and orchestra, commissioned by the American Composers Forum.

visit his website.

Karl Ward is a Columbia College senior studying English and working at the Computer Music Center. Karl spends most of his time dabbling in literature, physics, computer science, civil libertarian politics, and music.

Ballett Frankfurt. With the appointment of William Forsythe as artistic director in 1984, the former Frankfurt Ballett received a new name: Ballett Frankfurt. Forsythe developed a new structure and his own repertory with a unique style, which enabled the company to establish itself not only in Frankfurt but far beyond the borders of the city with performances all over the world. Ballett Frankfurt currently employs 34 dancers, 3 ballet masters and 28 people in the technical and administrative area.

In 1989, Ballett Frankfurt became an independent branch of the StŠdtische BŸhnen, run by two directors: William Forsythe (artistic director) and Martin Steinhoff (managing director). In 1999 William Forsythe became general director.

Das TAT. In 1996 William Forsythe was named artistic director of TAT (Theatre am Turm), a theater housed in a converted tramway in Frankfurt. In January 1999 Forsythe became general director of TAT in addition to Ballett Frankfurt.

Frankfurt am Main. Main residency of Ballett Frankfurt is the city Frankfurt am Main, with 650,000 inhabitants, center of the highly industrialized Rhein-Main area. In Frankfurt, the ballet gives about 50 performances a year.

The Theaters. The former theater buildings, opera house, playhouse and chamber theater were destroyed during World War II. They were rebuilt in the decades after the war and combined into one theater complex which now comprises an opera house (1369 seats), a playhouse (712 seats) and a chamber theater (192).

In the night of November 11 to 12, 1987, the opera house burnt down and the ballet could only perform on the playhouse stage. The reopening of the opera house took place on April 6, 1991 with an opera premiere, followed by a ballet premiere on April 7, 1991.

The ballet currently performs on the opera stage as well as on the stage of the playhouse. From October 1999, the company will be performing at TAT, where Forsythe will develop new site-specific work.

mak.frankfurt. The Kunstgewerbe Museum, later called the Museum fŸr Kunsthandwerk, was founded in 1877 by the Mitteldeutscher Kunstgewerbeverein (Middle German Handicrafts Society) as part of a broad concern for the education of craftworkers and improving the quality of industrial production. The Society's collection was taken over by the City of Frankfurt in 1921, and, after the destruction of its premises during the war, was kept in storage until finally being installed in Villa Metzler (1803) in 1966. The present museum building was designed by the American architect Richard Meier to incorporate the Villa Metzler, and was completed in 1985. The museum is home to internationally-renowned collections of European, East Asian, and Middle Eastern applied arts, as well as a special collection of the arts of the book. The Museum's prime goal is to celebrate the fundamental importance of the applied arts in human culture, and to allow visitors to explore the countless ways in which our world has been influenced - and continues to be influenced - by artistic fashions, changing technologies, and different cultures.

In May 2000, the museum was renamed the Museum fŸr Angewandte Kunst -- mak.frankfurt -- and relaunched with new facilities, newly-installed collections, a permanent design exhibition, and a new emphasis on the applied arts of the 21st century -- the so-called 'Digital Craft'. This extension of the museum's collections into the future means a collection of websites, computer games, and electronic pets on the one hand, and wireless Internet access, multi-lingual WAP-accessible object texts, and Palm Pilot navigation aids for the whole museum on the other. The broadening of the museum's mission serves to make the museum a family-oriented 'piazza' in the centre of Frankfurt's prestigious 'Museumsufer' (museum embankment).

The Computer Music Center at Columbia University is a state-of-the-art computer music facility. The Center is housed in two separate facilities: one in the Music Department building on the main Columbia campus, and another, larger facility on 125th Street. Originally the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, the CMC is the oldest center for Electroacoustic music in the United States. Founded by Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1958, the CPEMC featured four well-equipped tape studios for electronic composition, as well as the famed RCA Mark II Synthesizer, which is still housed at the CMC.

The Computer Music Center has been directly involved in most of the significant developments in electronic music during the last four decades. Technology pioneered at the Center has had a tremendous impact on the evolution of music -- both popular and esoteric -- in contemporary society. The electronic music synthesizer, digital control of music synthesis, multiple-channel mixing of audio, and the integration of traditional instruments with electronically-realized audio all have roots in original work done at Columbia.

Recently the CMC was given a large influx of support primarily to develop new pedagogical and creative tools for music. As a result of a major upgrade to the hardware/software and sizeable increase in the Center staff, the Center is now well-equipped to serve as a composition and research facility for composers, researchers, and students with interests ranging from MIDI and hard-disk recording to psychoacoustics, algorithmic composition, and style-modeling, just to name a few. The CMC's primary function is to serve the interests of individuals desiring to apply music technology in a broad range of applications, especially those that can foster an enhanced musical pedagogy (and therefore a heightened awareness of how music can function in the world). CMC classes now draw students from almost every unit in the University, including Computer Science, Psychology, Engineering, Architecture, Biology, Chemistry, Physics Medicine in addition to the "standard" humanist disciplines (including Music, of course!).

One of the most exciting areas of possibility being pursued by CMC workers is the tight integration of audio and visual research, an investigation that has led to a number of recent collaborative projects. The CMC is leading the way in the development and realization of interdisciplinary, interdepartmental courses at Columbia University (Multimedia Production, Movement-Sound Interaction). The CMC also leads the way in the creation of interdisciplinary public events (The Columbia University Interactive Arts Festival, Interactive Multimedia Installations -Lincoln Center Festival 2000). Because of the success of these initiatives, the CMC was chosen by the office of the Provost to head one of the major pilot educational technology projects of the University. The aim is to reconstruct all delivery strategies of the Music Department curriculum so as to take advantage of new distance learning approaches and new media. Our distance learning projects range from local virtual classes (delivery of interactive audio visual material to every dorm room on campus) to long distance educational and creative projects though Internet 2 Technology.

The role of the CMC as a leader in the applications of new technologies is being repeatedly recognized by the international research and artistic communities. For the past three years, works produced at the CMC have had the highest acceptance rate at the annual International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) and have won numerous international awards and distinctions.