Marcel is a founder and lead designer at Polymorf, an interdisciplinary Dutch art and experience design collective. He also works as an independent artist, writer, librettist, and film and theatre director. His critical projects and artistic research on immersive storytelling and embodiment often incorporate emerging technologies, multisensory design, and performativity. His body of work reflects on the now, the (post)human condition, and the shifting relationships between the (human) body, technology and ecology, and ranges from interactive performances, musictheatre, operas, VR experiences, speculative designs, brain-hacking projects, multisensory art installations, and interactive art installations. Marcel is fellow of the Sundance Institute, New frontiers story LAB, and a senior lecturer of immersive storytelling, transmedia storytelling, speculative design, and performativity at the Avans University for Applied Sciences in Breda. He was the lead designer of the award-winning multisensory installation Famous Deaths and co-author of the Sense of Smell publication. Famous Deaths won the 2015 Art & Olfaction Award for experimental scent and was selected for the MIT Canon Moments of Innovation and the IDFA Doclab Interactive Documentary Canon. Symbiosis won the IDFA Doclab 2021 Special jury award for best creative technology in the immersive non-fiction category, was nominated for the S+T+ARTS prize 2022 and for the Silbersaltz science and media award 2023. Marcel was writer director at theatre company Het Witte Vuur and founding member of film art collective FlimFilm. His work was shown on international festivals and exhibitions such as Hong Kong Arts Centre, IDFA DocLab, FILE, Tech Open Air, SXSW, Tribeca Film Festival, FOST Gallery, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum,the Van Gogh Museum, Playgrounds, and the STRP Festival. PAMCUT and more. 

Boris studied fine arts at art academies in Mainz, Prague and Hyderabad and philosophy at the universities of Cologne and Mainz. His background as a university lecturer, photo artist and digital media freelancer makes him one of the AI experts in the German photo scene.

He is "Head of Digital" of the DFA and a member of the DGPh.
In April 2023, he turned down the Sony World Photography Awards (Open Category /Creative) and admitted that he had applied with an AI-generated image to initiate a debate about the relationship between AI-generated images and photography. The stunt became worldwide news and his image THE ELECTRICIAN one of the most famous of the year.

Fotocredit: Jan Sobottka 

Mads is a multi-disciplinary sound designer, composer and musician specialising in immersive experiences of all kinds. He has a varied background in music performance, sound design and film composition and a deep passion for spatial storytelling. He has worked extensively with XR, employing methods and tools from theatre, film, games and interaction design while occasionally teaching 3D audio in storytelling at various institutions around Scandinavia. Several of his XR projects have been showcased worldwide, taking home awards from Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca and Venice among others. Mads loves the iterative nature of working with XR, is fascinated by the challenges and possibilities of non-linear storytelling and is especially focused on the interactivity and “liveness” of any project. He is currently exploring how to combine XR tech and aesthetics with live music performance. He is based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Mike Robbins is co-founder of High Road Stories, a Berlin-based creative studio for immersive experiences. Founded in 2018, the studio focuses on innovative forms of storytelling, such as the VR experiences Monk by the Sea and Fantaventura (with German rap legends Die Fantastischen Vier). Exhibition venues worldwide include the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Stadtpalais in Stuttgart, and the Munch Centre in Norway, and international film festivals such as CPH:DOX, IDFA, and the BFI London Film Festival.

Aaron Santiago is an XR new media artist based in NYC. Aaron has years of experience in XR including live VR installations, performances, and experiential VR work. Aaron’s work has been shown internationally, including the Venice International Film Festival, New York Live Arts, Boston Cyberarts, and The Shed. Aaron works across a wide range of technology with a cross-disciplinary practice of combining software engineering across a range of artistic mediums. Aaron’s work is collaborative and hybrid, including websites, VR, AR, and computer sculpture.

Nikolaj Stausbøl (Staus) is a future experience designer with a focus on anchoring playful interactive stories into reality. His projects has a tendency to lean towards emulating photorealism w. volumetric capturing and shader work pipelines and anything that allows for a near realtime dialogue with code and digital creativity; Node based tools, generative AI storytelling, algorave live-coding, etc.
As a Creative Technology Director and Partner at Manyone, he’s build numerous large scale XR and spatial projects for both large corporate clients and cultural institutions. His work has been exhibited at Venice Film Festival, SXSW, Copenhagen Contemporary, Las Vegas and United Nations Climate Assembly in Kenya to name a few.

Creator, R00TS CLUB

In love with the idea of new worlds, Sara explores the diverse potentials of immersive virtual realities for a shared future. As Founder of R00TS CLUB, an emerging Metaverse Community Space, she champions diversity, inclusion and authentic expression for underrepresented groups. She is a VR Creator since 2013 and Cofounder of the NGO Women In Immersive Technologies Europe as well as a member of the World Economic Forums Global Future Council on the Future of Metaverse.