Alain J.-J. Cohen is professor of Comparative Literature and Film Studies at University of California, San Diego, where he has spent a career dedicated to the dissemination of psychoanalysis (theoretical and clinical), film analysis/film theory, and semiotics, about which he has single-authored 100-odd research articles in professional journals and scholarly volumes. He is a member of SDPSI (San Diego Psychoanalytic Society and Institute).
Roberto Diodato teaches aesthetics in Milan and Filosofia applicata in Lugano. A preeminent Italian specialist in the relationship between aesthetics and cyber-technologies, he has recently published Aesthetics of the Virtual (2012), Logos estetico (2012) L’invisibile sensibile (2012), and Estetica dei media e della comunicazione (2011, with A. Somaini).
Ysamur M. Flores-Peña (PhD, Folklore and Mythology) is associate professor of Cultural Studies/Folklore at Otis College of Art and Design. He has extensive publications on African-based religions in the New World, including Santeria Garments and Altars: Speaking Without a Voice (1994) and Fit for a Queen: Analysis of a Consecration Outfit in the Cult of Yemaya. He has been teaching fulltime at Otis since Fall 2005.
Teresa Iaria is an artist with a Laurea in Philosophy. She is based in Rome and teaches visual art at the “Brera” Academy of Fine Art in Milan, Italy. Her work explores the potential of the visual language in dialogue with the languages of science, poetry, and music. This interaction produces thought-experiments in which each artwork is the tip of a submerged model. Her works have been published in journals such as Nature Physics and Plastik Art & Science, by the University of Paris Sorbonne. Among her recent exhibitions are Biennale Italia-Cina, Reggia Reale di Monza, 2012; “Strange Attractors” Pio Monti Gallery, Rome 2011; “Cose mai viste,” curated by Achille Bonito Oliva, Diocletian’s Baths Rome, 2008; INFN, National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Frascati, 2006; 42°Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo cinema, Film Festival, Pesaro; and 1998 Traumwelten, Literaturhaus, Salzburg, curated by Tomas Friedmann.
Erith Jaffe-Berg is associate professor of theater at the University of California at Riverside where she researches multilingualism in theater, theories of translation, and commedia dell’arte. She is author of The Multilingual Art of Commedia dell’Arte (2009) and several articles in national and international journals. She has contributed chapters to La terra di Babele: Saggi sul plurilinguismo nella cultura italiana, eds. Dario Brancato and Marisa Ruccolo (2011); Performance, Exile and “America,” eds. Silvija Jestrovic and Yana Meerzon (2009); and International Dramaturgy: Translation and Transformation in the Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker, eds. Maya E. Roth and Sara Freeman (2008). She is also an active member in the Ovation award–winning Los Angeles–based theater ensemble The Son of Semele Ensemble. For her work, Jaffe-Berg has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of California, and the Canadian government.
Alessandro Lanni is a journalist and writer based in Rome. His latest book is Avanti Popoli! Democrazia, populismo e militanza 2.0 (2011).
Peter Lunenfeld (PhD from UCLA in Film, Television, and New Media) is professor in the Design and Media Arts department at UCLA. He is one of the steering committee members of the campus-wide, interdisciplinary Digital Humanities undergraduate minor and graduate concentration. Lunenfeld’s books include The Digital Dialectic (1999), Snap to Grid (2000), USER (2005), and The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine (2011), from which this essay has been excerpted and modified. He is coauthor of Digital_Humanities. As creator and editorial director of the Mediawork project, he produced a pamphlet series for the MIT Press that redefined the relationship between serious academic discourse and graphic design, and between book publishing and the World Wide Web.
Miltos Manetas is a multimedia artist, born in Athens, based between Los Angeles and Rome. He earned his degrees in Milan from the Accademia di Brera. He works with oil painting, computer, Internet, and videogame art. His main exhibitions have taken place at international galleries and museums, such as Yvon Lambert and Centre Pompidou, Paris; Gagosian, Los Angeles; PS1 and Guggenheim, New York; Museum of Chicago; and various Biennale in Prague, Valencia, Venice.
Domenico Parisi is a pre-eminent linguist, experimental scientist, philosopher, and author of many international publications. He is a member of the Laboratory of Artificial Life and Robotics at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council in Rome. Parisi works at constructing robots that can illuminate how humans behave and their societies and has recently published the articles “Robots that have emotions” and “Male and female robots” in the journal Adaptive Behaviour.
Rob Spruijt is associate professor at Otis College of Art and Design and also teaches at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. An internationally exhibiting painter, he has a PhD in Mathematical Psychology, a PhD in Epidemiology, an MS from the University of Amsterdam, and a BFA. In addition to his extensive academic articles and publications on human neuropsychology and perception, Spruijt is a technical expert on Dutch still life painting and produces contemporary still life paintings in oil on panel.