Nora M. Alter is Professor of German, Film and Media Studies at the University of Florida. She is affiliate faculty in the Programs in European Studies, Jewish Studies, and Woman and Gender Studies. Her teaching and research have been focused on twentieth century cultural and visual studies from a comparative perspective. She is author of Vietnam Protest Theatre: The Television War on Stage (1996), Projecting History: Non-Fiction German Film (2002), Chris Marker (2006) and co-editor with Lutz Koepnick of Sound Matters:Essays on the Acoustics of Modern German Culture (2004). She has published numerous essays on German and European Studies, Film and Media Studies, Cultural and Visual studies and Contemporary Art. She has been awarded year long research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Howard Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2005 she was awarded the DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies and the Florida Blue Key Distinguished Faculty Award. She is currently completing a new book on the international essay film.

Michel Chion was born in 1947 in Creil (France). After literary and musical studies, he began in 1970 to work for the ORTF (French Radio and Television Organization) Service de la recherche, where he was assistant to Pierre Schaeffer at the Paris' Conservatoire national de musique, producer of broadcasts for the GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales), and publications director for the Ina-GRM, of which he was a member from 1971 to 1976. It was there that he met Robert Cahen, composer and video artist, and with whom he entered into a long-lasting friendship and collaboration. Parallel to these activities, he composed musique concrète works in the studios of the GRM including "Requiem" (Grand prix du disque 1978) and several concrète melodramas, a dramatic form which he inaugurated in 1972 with "Le prisonnier du son" ("The Prisoner of Sound") and continued with "Tu", 1977-85, "La tentation de saint Antoine, 1984, and Nuit noire, 1985. Also worthy of mention are "La Roue, cycle du quotidien", 1972-85, "24 préludes à la vie" ("24 Preludes to Life"), "Variations", and "Sonate", 1989-1991, "Crayonnés ferroviaires", 1992, "Credo mambo", 1992 - realized at Musiques & Recherches (Ohain, Belgium) -, "Gloria", 1994... all works for which he developed original compositional techniques. He also works as a theoretician in a new area: the systematic study of audio-visual relationships, which he teaches at several centres (notably at Université de Paris where he is an Associate Professor), and film schools (ESEC, Paris; DAVI, Lausanne).

Christoph Cox is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College. He is the author of Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation (University of California Press, 1999) and co-editor, with Daniel Warner, of Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum, 2004). Editor-at-large at Cabinet, Cox co-curated Cabinet’s CD series from 2002–2004. He has taught at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and has curated several exhibitions: “Group Loop” at G Fine Art Gallery in Washington D.C. (2005) and “Invisible Geographies: New Sound Art from Germany” at The Kitchen in New York City (2006). Cox has written catalog essays on the work of Steve Roden, Carsten Nicolai, and Heike Baranowsky and for group exhibitions at MassMoCA, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Seattle Center, the South London Gallery, and Berlin’s Akademie der Kûnste. He is currently writing a book about ontology and temporality in experimental music and sound art.

Diedrich Diederichsen was an editorial journalist of the music journal Sounds from 1979 to 1983, from 1985 to 2000 he was an journalist and editor of the popculture magazine Spex. In the 1980s he continuously wrote for Spiegel and konkret. Since 1990 he predominantly writes for various daily and weekly papers, such as taz, Frankfurter Rundschau, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Tagesspiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Jungle World, furthermore for the learned journals Texte zur Kunst, Artforum and Theater heute. Since 1992 he is a professor at the Merz Academy in Stuttgart and amongst others in Passadena, Weimar, Bremen and Munich. At Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts he is working as professor of the Institute for Contemporary Art since 2006. Current focus of interest are theory of pop music, sound art, structural change of counter public, Pychedelia and Minimalism, Gesamtkunstwerk, moving picture installation and Neoformalism.

Caryl Flinn is the author of Brass Diva: the Life and Legends of Ethel Merman (2007), The New German Cinema: Music, History and the Matter of Style (2003), Strains of Utopia: Nostalgia, Gender, and Hollywood Film Music (1992), and co-editor of the anthology Music and Cinema (2000). Most of her other publications are in the area of gender/sexuality and film music, and she also explores considers as well camp and kitsch aesthetics. Her current work is in musicals. Flinn is a Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Arizona; she has also taught at University of Toronto, University of Iowa, and University of Florida.

Before her studies of German Studies, Film Studies and Journalism in Zürich and Berlin Barbara Flückiger had worked as a film sound engineer in Europe, Canada and the USA. She was a visiting teacher at several universities and film schools in Germany and Switzerland and is currently a visiting professor at the Institute of Film Studies at the Universiy of Zürich. Within the project Digitales Kino at Zürich's Hochschule für Kunst und Gestaltung she explored the interaction of technical innovation and aesthetics. In 2007 she qualified as a professor with her work on technical, aesthetic and narrative aspects of computer-generated visual effects in film at the FU Berlin. Currently she is working on a research project on digital archiving of Switzerland's audiovisual cultural assets. Her most important publiications: Sound Design. Die virtuelle Klangwelt des Films (Marburg: Schüren, 2001), which became a benchmark in German-speaking areas, Visual Effects. Filmbilder aus dem Computer (Marburg: Schüren, 2008).

Florian Hecker's works emphasize the connection of most recent as well as historic developments in computer music. His recent productions incorporate psycho-acoustic effects disorientating the listeners spatial perception in live presentations and studio works.

His work has been presented in exhibitions at Secession, Vienna, TN Probe Gallery, Tokyo, Schindler House, Los Angeles, MUMOK, Vienna, Galerie Neu, Berlin and Kunsthaus Graz amongst other spaces. Most recently, Hecker has presented large-scale, computerized Soundpieces at Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris and in the Lenbachhaus in Munich. He has given numerous international audio presentations, including La Biennale di Venecia, 49th International Exhibition of Art, Venice 2001, Royal Festival Hall, London 2002, Centre Pompidou, Paris 2002, Ars Electronica, Linz 2003, Casa Da Musica, Porto 2005, Kunsthaus, Graz 2007, WDR Cologne 2007.

Together with Russell Haswellhe began a research project together centering around the use of Iannis Xenakis’ UPIC ‘graphic input’ computer music composing system, and a residency at CCMIX Paris, where the UPIC is located. The results are currently being presented to the public as live multi channel electroacoustic diffusion concerts. These events use surround sound and laser lighting to create an immersive multi-sensory environment.

Hecker’s latest full length solo compact disc 'Recordings for Rephlex' has been released by Rephlex in december 2006 and 'Blackest Ever Black' a collaboration with Russell Haswell, using Xenakis’ unique UPIC system during their research at the Centre for Composition of Music Iannis Xenakis (CCMIX) in Paris, has been released on CD and Vinyl by Warner Classics in 2007.

NEU CD and NEU LP, a collaboration with Peter Saville has been presented at the Frieze Art Fair London with Galerie Neu and "Hecker, Höller Tracks" a double gatefold Vinyl has been released bySemishigure. "UPIC WARP TRACKS" in collaboration with Russell Haswell has just been released on Warp Records.

Tom Holert (born in 1962) is a Berlin-based art historian and critic who occasionally slips into the role of cultural producer. Having studied in Hamburg and Paris, he received his Ph.D. in art history at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University at Frankfurt/Main. A former editor of Texte zur Kunst and Spex, he currently teaches at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. Among his books are Künstlerwissen (Munich 1998), Imagineering. Visuelle Kultur und Politik der Sichtbarkeit (Cologne 2000, Ed.), Entsichert. Krieg als Massenkultur im 21. Jahrhundert (Cologne 2002, co-authored with Mark Terkessidis), Fliehkraft. Gesellschaft in Bewegung - von Migranten und Touristen (Cologne 2006, co-authored with Mark Terkessidis), Marc Camille Chaimowicz. Celebration? Realife (London/Cambridge, MA, 2007). A collection of re-worked essays and lectures on visual culture, media theory and politics (Regieren im Bildraum) is scheduled for 2008; a book-length study on the visual history of experimental psychology and pedagogy (Diagnostic Modernism) is in preparation. Sporadically participating in exhibitions and art events, Holert contributed the video essay Stumbling Block. The Spectacle of Aptitude (2006) to the group show Mimétisme (Extra City, Antwerp, 2008). He is commissioned to produce a new work for Manifesta 7 in 2008.

Brandon LaBelle is an artist and writer working with sounds, places, bodies, and cultural narratives. He presented a solo exhibition at Singuhr galerie in Berlin (2004), and an experimental composition for pirate drummers as part of Virtual Territories, Nantes (2005). His ongoing project to build a library of radio memories, "Phantom Radio", was presented fall 2006 as part of Radio Revolten, Halle Germany. He is the author of Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (Continuum 2006).

Constanze Ruhm is an artist and curator, she lives in Vienna and Berlin. International gallery and institutional exhibitions, commissions and projects in public space; workshops and presentations in the framework of international art/educational institutions. Since 1999 curatorial projects and publications (Vienna Secession, haus.0 program at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Neue Galerie Graz, Center for Art and Media Technology ZKM Karlsruhe). 2005-2006 Professor for Film and Video at the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart. Since 2006 Professor for Art and Media at the Akademy of Fine Arts in Vienna. From 2008 on Adjunct Professor at the Art Institute Boston / Lesley University. The work focuses on contemporary forms of an art practice established around the relation of cinema and New Media with an emphasis on notions of identity, representation and (feminist) film theory. Productions including and intersecting the fields of installation, film / video, text / publications, curatorial projects and websites.

Christian Scheib, born in 1961, lives in Vienna, studied Music and Music Studies in Vienna and Berlin. Music editor at ORF / Österreich 1, producer of the Ö1 serial program Zeit-Ton and head of programming of the musikprotokoll festival at steirischen herbst; 1993-96 music curator by order of Austria's Federal Minister for Art, 1998 visiting teacher at the Critical Studies Department at California Institute of the Arts. Several publications and teaching positions at Vienna's Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst with topics of music aesthetics, intermedia, experiment. Selected publications: (with Sabine Sanio) antologies' editor of das rauschen (Wolke 1995), Form – Luxus, Kalkül und Abstinenz (Pfau 1999), Bilder – Verbot und Verlangen in Kunst und Musik (Pfau 2000) and Übertragung - Transfer - Metapher. Kulturtechniken, ihre Visionen und Obsessionen (Kerber Verlag, 2004); (with Susanna Niedermayr) author of European Meridians / In The East – New Music Territories. Reports from Changing Countries. (PFAU 2002/2004).

Terre Thaemlitz is an award winning multi-media producer, writer, public speaker, educator, audio remixer, DJ and owner of the Comatonse Recordings record label. Her work critically combines themes of identity politics - including gender, sexuality, class, linguistics, ethnicity and race - with an ongoing critique of the socio-economics of commercial media production. He has released 14 solo albums, as well as numerous 12-inch singles and video works. Her writings on music and culture have been published internationally in a number of books, academic journals and magazines. As a speaker and educator on issues of non-essentialist Transgenderism and Queerness, Thaemlitz has participated in panel discussions throughout Europe and Japan. He currently resides in Kawasaki, Japan.

Hildegard Westerkamp was born in Osnabrück, Germany in 1946 and emigrated to Canada in 1968. Her work’s focus—as composer, educator, editor or radio artist—is on listening, environmental sound and acoustic ecology. She was a member of the original World Soundscape Project, working with R. Murray Schafer; has taught courses in Acoustic Communication at Simon Fraser University with Barry Truax; has worked with writers Norbert Ruebsaat and Sharon Thesen, with photographer Florence Debeugny and is conducting soundscape workshops and giving concerts and lectures internationally. Some of her compositional work appears in US filmmaker Gus van Sants newest films Elephant and Last Days. She is a founding member and is currently active on the boards of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE). She is a co-editor of Soundscape—The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, a publication of the WFAE (see: http://www.wfae.net). An extensive exploration into her compositional work can be found in Andra McCartney’s Sounding Places: Situated Conversations through the Soundscape Work of Hildegard Westerkamp York University, Toronto, 1999, and in the internet at: http://www.emf.org/artists/mccartney00/text.html. Her own website offers more detailed information about her various activities in the areas of soundscape composition, acoustic ecology and soundscape studies: http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka