Speakers



Robert Alice Robert Alice is an artist, curator and writer in the crypto art and NFT space. They are the first artist to sell an NFT at a major auction house, a project widely credited as being one of the early catalysts in the rapid growth in NFTs. Robert Alice has curated major NFT shows in London, Venice, New York, Hong Kong and the Metaverse. His work has been reviewed by leading curators such as Hans Ulrich Obrist and published in the New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, Forbes and Fortune, among others. They have had exhibitions in New York (Christie's), London and Hong Kong (Sotheby’s), Venice (Palazzo Lolin), Hamburg (Kunstverein Hamburg), Beijing (Ullens Center of Contemporary Art), Shanghai (JinArt Center) and Singapore.
Joanne Rush Chrysalis is a collaborative project by three artists who are working together to create a sequence of media-rich NFT artworks. They are charting their process in order to help other artists enter the space. Nigel Fryatt is a web developer and a creative technologist. Saffron Murray-Browne specialises in painting and drawing – working with vibrant colours and bold lines, she looks to literature and art history for inspiration. Joanne Rush is a novelist, an NFT art critic and a poet, with a PhD in the historic connections between literature and visual art.
Nigel Fryatt Chrysalis is a collaborative project by three artists who are working together to create a sequence of media-rich NFT artworks. They are charting their process in order to help other artists enter the space. Nigel Fryatt is a web developer and a creative technologist. Saffron Murray-Browne specialises in painting and drawing – working with vibrant colours and bold lines, she looks to literature and art history for inspiration. Joanne Rush is a novelist, an NFT art critic and a poet, with a PhD in the historic connections between literature and visual art.
Saffron Murray-Browne Chrysalis is a collaborative project by three artists who are working together to create a sequence of media-rich NFT artworks. They are charting their process in order to help other artists enter the space. Nigel Fryatt is a web developer and a creative technologist. Saffron Murray-Browne specialises in painting and drawing – working with vibrant colours and bold lines, she looks to literature and art history for inspiration. Joanne Rush is a novelist, an NFT art critic and a poet, with a PhD in the historic connections between literature and visual art.
Martin Zeilinger Martin Zeilinger is an Austrian media theorist and curator based in Dundee, Scotland, where he serves as Senior Lecturer in Computational Arts & Technology at Abertay University. His research focuses on art experiments with emerging blockchain and AI technologies, on intellectual property issues in contemporary art, and on aspects of experimental videogame culture. Martin’s critical work on the blockchain and digital art appears in books such as DATA Browser Vol. 10 (forthcoming), MoneyLab Reader Vol. 2 (2018), and Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain (2017), and academic journals including Afterimage and Philosophy & Technology. His first monograph Tactical Entanglements: AI Art, Creative Agency, and the Limits of Intellectual Property (meson press 2021) is freely available under an Open Access license. https://marjz.net/
Patrick McCurdy Patrick McCurdy (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, University of Ottawa, Canada. His current research interests include the consequences of living in a highly mediatized society as well as the media practices of social movements and their subsequent representation across a fragmented and polarized media landscape with a specific focus on the environment. His academic research has been published across books, edited collections as well numerous peer-reviewed journals. In January 2023, he will teach a 4th-year special topics seminar at the University of Ottawa on “Cryptocurrency & Communication”. You can reach him on Twitter @pmmcc or via email pmccurdy@uottawa.ca
Myriam Brouard Myriam Brouard is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Telfer School of Management of the University of Ottawa. She is a Consumer Culture Theorist working at the intersection of marketing and anthropology to understand what drives the adoption of disruptive technologies. Her research interests revolve around diversity, equity, and inclusion in technological spaces, like Web3 and the Metaverse. She is particularly interested in how Black and Indigenous creators navigate these new spaces. Outside of research, she has been a strategic advisor for NFT projects launched by diversity actors and sits on the board of 3 NPOs in the cultural sector.
Eva Gentner With a background in art, architecture, and philology, Eva is particularly interested in universal concepts, mutual influences, and the intersections between art, culture, and also technology. She pursues an interdisciplinary approach, researching blockchain art, its vision of a democratic system, and potential impact on the future. Her main interest is to explore ways how art lets us imagine desireable futures and, eventually, how art can obtain agency to enact change. Passion, curiosity, and humanity are the core values that lead her thinking and acting.
Kieran Nolan Kieran Nolan is an artist and researcher exploring the aesthetic and connective properties of game interfaces through digital art, design critique and platform histories. He completed his PhD ‘The Art, Aesthetics, and Materiality of the Arcade Videogame Interface’ through Trinity College Dublin’s School of Computer Science and Statistics in 2019, and also holds an MA in Interactive Media from UL, and a BDes (Hons) in Digital Media from LYIT / ATU Donegal. Kieran’s work has been featured at conferences and exhibitions worldwide including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, A MAZE, DiGRA, the Japan Media Arts Festival, History of Games, the Tokyo Games Show and Transmediale, and has picked up awards from Imirt, the Institute of Designers in Ireland, and Leonardo / the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. He is a lecturer in Creative Media at Dundalk Institute of Technology, and Co-Director of DkIT’s Creative Arts Research Centre. kierannolan.com
Johannes Bennke Johannes Bennke is a Post-Doc Fellow of the Minerva Foundation of the Max Planck Society at
The Smart Family Institute for Communications at the Dept. of Communication and Journalism
at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 
His post-doc project is entitled: Genealogy of Media of Verification. From Seals and Scribes to
Blockchain. He works on the media cultural history of the blockchain by way of a broader
perspective on media of verification with a media philosophical focus on trust and time, and an
aesthetic focus on digital commemoration in NFTs and crypto-art.
He is “Associate PNB Fellow” at the Postdoc Network Brandenburg and an associate at the
Selma-Stern-Center for Jewish Studies Berlin Brandenburg. 
In 2021 he submitted his dissertation at Bauhaus-University Weimar. His
dissertation Obliterations. For a Particular Media Philosophy will be published in 2023 and
deals with the aesthetic, image and media philosophical thinking in the work of Emmanuel
Levinas.
Stephan Holzer Dr. Stephan Holzer is co-founder and CEO of VERITIC, an award winning NFT infrastructure provider based in Switzerland. Stephan also founded Patron of Art, a high-end NFT platform for cultural institutions. Previously he was Blockchain Expert for Europe at McKinsey, Lecturer and Researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University, and Head of Ecosystem at Private Bank Vontobel.
Stephan has more than 12 years of experience in Blockchain technology and holds a Ph.D. in Distributed Computing from ETH Zurich. He is a frequent key-note speaker across the globe including at the Blockchain Hub Davos during World Economic Forum (WEF) 2022. For his scientific contributions he received international awards and in 2016 was elected to the Academy of Science and Literature Mainz, Germany as junior member - only 3 German Computer Scientists received this honor so far.
Jeff Davis Jeff Davis creates abstract artwork using algorithmic processes. He has exhibited throughout the U.S. including Torrance Art Museum, Arizona State University, Lawrence University, the University of Minnesota, the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, the Center for Contemporary Art in Sacramento, and the Tucson Museum of Art. His work was recently featured at Art Dubai, and in the shows Ex Machina at Phillips, Natively Digital at Sotheby's, and The Digital for Miami Art Week.

In addition to his creative endeavors, Jeff serves as Chief Creative Officer at Art Blocks and is the founder of Davis Editions. He acts as the Chair of the Arts and Culture Commission for the city of Tempe and is also the author of two textbooks, Foundations of Design and Foundations of Color.
Ruth Catlow Ruth Catlow is a recovering web utopian. As co-founding co-director of Furtherfield London’s longest-running (de)centre for art, technology and eco-social change she curates and creates collaborative, playful and emancipatory artworks to engage people across silos around emerging technologies and the wicked problems they give rise to or intensify. She is co-editor of Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain (2017), and Radical Friends - Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Arts (2022), and leads artistic research at Furtherfield's Decentralised Arts Lab DECAL experimenting with blockchain and web 3.0 technologies for fairer, more dynamic and connected cultural ecologies and economies. Catlow is also PI at the Blockchain Lab at the Serpentine Galleries R&D Platform.
Devang Thakkar Devang is a multi-disciplinary product, technology, and business leader.
In his current role, Devang serves the Global Head of Christie’s Ventures, leading a new enterprise through which Christie’s engages with earlier stage companies through direct investment and both brand support and market access. New venture opportunities focus on early-stage technology and FinTech companies, built by proven-track record founders, which can apply solutions to opportunities or challenges in our market.
From 2015-2019, Devang Thakkar was VP of Consumer Marketplace at Artsy, the world’s leading and largest online platform for collecting and discovering art.
Before joining Artsy in 2015, Devang spent 11 years at Microsoft in Seattle where he contributed to the development of major operating systems from Windows XP to Windows 10 and product lines such as Bing apps, MSN. His last product at Microsoft was Microsoft Teams.
He is also an artist – he paints and maintains a studio practice.
Kelani Nichole Kelani Nichole is a technologist and founder of TRANSFER, an experimental media art gallery exhibiting decentralized networks and virtual worlds in contemporary art since 2013. Her inventions range from software-enabled immersive exhibition formats to new forms of cultural infrastructure. In 2018 she prototyped a virtual collection and conservation model with The Current Museum, a non-profit rethinking patronage and access for Time-based Media Art. Currently she is building a new cultural organization as Head of Experience at e.a.t.}works, advising artists and institutions on Web 3 strategies, and speaking about her work with decentralized creative economies.
Aleksandra Smilek  
Lou de Kerhuelvez  
Patrick Rivenbark Patrick Rivenbark believes the intersection of Art and Technology is where we will find the most impactful tools for positive societal change.
Patrick is a fellow member of Team Human; he’s a father and husband. He created programmable.art to explore, research, and create blockchain art. programmable.art created the non-fungible visualization (NFV). NFV establish a framework for dynamic digital art leveraging blockchain. NFVs encourage artists to tell a unique story from a single, common data source; it is the conversation between each Artist’s interpretation of common data that will help us find common ground with each other.
Patrick's received a BA in Art History from Duke University; while his art appreciation remains, he's worked in enterprise software ever since (¯\_(ツ)_/¯). Blockchain art meets in the middle of Patrick's interests; he's excited about the future of Art, Artists, and its impact on Team Human.
William Etheridge Will is the founder of Origin Thread. Origin Thread was created in 2021 to explore how clothing brands can use NFTs to bring transparency to their supply chains and to discover what an "on-chain" brand might be. Will graduated from the Royal Academy of Music where he performed for conductors including Sir Simon Rattle and Sir Mark Elder in concert venues across Europe. After graduating Will worked in India where his interest in textiles and the importance of business in shaping our world blossomed. Having worked in sales, marketing and business development roles in diverse industries from pharma supply chain and financial data management to influencer marketing, Will feels fortunate to explore the blockchains ability to build a better world.
Regina Harsanyi  
Brendan Gage Brendan Gage is a blockchain ecosystem developer and renewable energy theorist. He is currently completing a Ph.D in renewable energy, focusing on blockchain integration and poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa. He holds a J.D. and M.B.A., as well as several distinctions and awards for his applied work in web3 and is a member of creative web3 communities such as Friends of Benefits
Daniel C. Park Daniel C. Park helps DeFi companies navigate blockchain-related regulatory developments and works. His latest research at Starling Lab explores leveraging blockchain-based image authentication solutions for verifying evidence of war crimes in Syria and thwarting disinformation campaigns. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and a Master’s in Public Policy and Global Affairs.
Izzat-Begum B. Rajan Izzat-Begum is a senior advisor and board member. She combines almost 25 years of experience in tax-efficient legal structuring and large tax dispute management. More broadly, she offers a unique blend of skills to handle Legal, Tax, and Financial matters as she built her career in multinationals in Europe (Cap Gemini, Loyens, Maersk at Group Tax Department for a number of years) and in Africa (Ernst & Young as Equity Partner for Francophone Africa). She also developed a strong knowledge of impact projects and social enterprises mainly gained at the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN, IPS) when based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Izzat-Begum holds a Master’s Degree in Taxation (Paris, France) and an LL.M. in Law of International Finance from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in International Tax Law at the University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté (Dijon, France) where she is researching the Tax Framework(s) of Crypto Currencies and Assets. Izzat-Begum advises a number of companies operating in the Web3 and blockchain space through her strategic advisory firm (www.imanipartners.com) and its associated venture (https://lawtax4blockchain.io).
Pekko Koskinen Pekko Koskinen designs reality through playful structures, modifying the various forms of everyday life. His sketched realities have resulted in fictional religions, social forms, conceptual tools, hypo-entities and self-designs.

Most of his experiments have taken place within life at large, outside of credited recognition. Some of them have been conventionalized into art, however, and ended in institutions such as Athens and Mercosul Biennials, Volksbühne, NY MoMA. Pekko has also been a member of YKON, co-directed the Reality Research Center and co-founded SoSA (Social Space Agency) and ECSA (Economic Space Agency).
Tanja Sihvonen Tanja Sihvonen is professor of Communication Studies at the University of Vaasa, Finland. She is specialised in digital media, games, and internet cultures. Her most recent research considers role-playing games, the uses and misuses of social media, and interaction with robots and social bots. In the past years, she has been affiliated with a number of research projects, such as Talking Machines (Kone Foundation, 2018-22), Short-form Videos and Journalism (Helsingin Sanomat Foundation, 2022-24), and the multidisciplinary Conceptualizing Blockchains (CoBlo, 2018-) that has been financed by Aktia Vaasa Foundation, Foundation for the Advancement of Finnish Securities Markets, Foundation for Economic Education, OP Group Research Foundation, and the Finnish Foundation for Share Promotion.
Fattori McKenna Fattori McKenna is a PhD student in the Oxford Internet Institute’s Social Science of the Internet program. Her work focuses on the materialism of the blockchain and the lived experience of decentralised technologies, specifically through the theoretical lens of social reproduction and autonomism. Fattori holds an MA degree from The New School, and a BA in History of Art from Oxford. She has previously worked in industry as a semiotician, brand strategist and curator, in New York, London and Helsinki. Fattori’s MSc and PhD research is funded by the ESRC Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership 2021-25, and she is the St. Catherine's College Humanities Scholar.
Matteo Messina Matteo Messina (b. Genova, 1994) is an artist living and working between Milan and his studio in Volpedo.
His research focuses on the relationship between gamification, surveillance and their impact on social structures and future citizenship's models.
His works has been shown nationally and internationally, among them: XVI Venice Achitecture Biennale, WRO Biennale in Wroclaw and Roppongi Art Nights in Tokyo.
Eva Jovanova Eva Jovanova is a Skopje native holding an MA in Eastern European & Russian Studies from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service ('20) in Washington, DC. Her niche focus has been the politics, economy & security of post-conflict countries in the region, and Russia's internet infrastructure, which is how Eva got acquainted with blockchain technology's possible intersection with politics. She is now using the skillset she acquired in politics to help ACCOINTING.com - a Swiss crypto tax startup, increase its user base and market share. As someone who has been refused banking based on her passport color and who has been overcharged when sending remittances to her family, Eva is using every opportunity outside of work to advocate, educate, or simply raise awareness for the possible benefits of blockchain adoption in developing countries.
Alexia Maddox Dr Alexia Maddox is a Research Fellow at the Blockchain Innovation Hub at RMIT. She is collaborating on the Digital CBD project and exploring how Melbourne residents engage with the city and imagine its future. More broadly, her research investigates digital frontiers and how communities build and use emerging technologies to experiment in alternative futures. Alexia has published on topics as wide ranging as the communities using cryptographic and Web3 technologies to digital drugs. Given the challenges of studying digital communities and human-technology encounters, she is interested in, and publishes on, the wide range of research methods that can be used to investigate such socio-technical configurations.
Naomi Smith Dr Naomi Smith is a digital sociologist at Federation University Australia (Gippsland). She has a broad range of scholarly interests, including emerging technology, place and bodies. Primarily, her digital work has focused on the intersection of the internet and bodies (including anti-vaccination), how online communities influence the way we make sense of our bodies, and how we manage them.
Jennifer Kristen While still studying her Master in Media and Communication studies at Lund University, Jennifer Kristen joined the NFT space in October 2021 as Community Manager of an NFT gaming project. Building up an NFT community from scratch and spending time within it on the different Social Media platforms has shifted also her academic interest to the NFT space. She devoted her topic for the Master thesis to this newly formed and growing online community that revolves around NFTs. With the title Coming for the Money, staying for the Community: An Analysis of the NFT community, she analyzed the NFT community at large by using qualitative research methods. She continues to still be an active member of the NFT community and now works as Social Media & Campaign Manager of the Polygon NFT Project Potent Potions.
Joshua S. Bamford Joshua is an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Oxford, having previously completed degrees in the psychology of music at the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Western Australia. His interests mostly focus on human social bonding mechanisms, both in person and online. Aside from his research, he also works as a freelance statistician, juggler and opera singer, and is an active member of numerous DAOs.
Wout Fierens  
Lior Zalmanson  
Matt DesLauriers Matt DesLauriers is a Canadian-born artist and creative coder now living in London, UK. His interactive installations have been displayed in special events at the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. His work was part of Reykjavik’s 2019 Winter Lights Festival in Iceland and Ontario Place Park’s 2018 Winter Light Exhibition in Toronto. Matt is active in the open source community and has given numerous talks, classes and workshops on creative coding, including at UCL Bartlett School of Architecture in London, FITC in Toronto and Amsterdam, Frontend Masters in Minneapolis, and GROW in Paris.
Amy Goodchild Amy Goodchild is an artist using code and other technology to explore generativity, group experience, and interaction. She has an MArch in Design for Performance and Interaction from The Bartlett, UCL and a background in user experience design. She considers her audience in all her work - creating art that people want to engage with.
Michael Connolly Michael Connolly is an artist and creative director based in the UK.
Since graduating in 2007 he has used code and software to produce work across a broad range of disciplines, from design and motion, to live visuals and installation.
His generative art practice is essentially a machine based approach to concrete art - an objective exploration of line, form and colour using randomness within defined parameters.
His first on chain generative project ‘Elementals’ was longlisted for the 2021 Lumen Digital Art Prize.
Benyamin Ahmed Benyamin is a thirteen-year-old programmer from London, UK. He began learning to code at the age of five. During the 2021 school summer holidays he got pulled into the emerging NFT space and decided to code his own collection. The project went viral featuring in the international press. He was the world’s youngest generative art NFT creator at the time. Benyamin has worked on NFT collections that have traded more than $10M, spoken at conferences in NYC, Lisbon, and London, and worked on crypto documentaries for the BBC and CNBC.
Gareth Fletcher Gareth Fletcher is Programme Director for the MA in Art Logistics, and lectures on a range of subjects across Art Logistics and Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He also lectures on the application and adoption of blockchain systems within the art market for the Art & Tech: Data, Market Analysis and Blockchain online intensive programme. His current research explores the interface between the contextual information of cultural objects and technology, and the integration of traditional art market processes within Web3 applications.

He sits on the Advisory Board for the Responsible Art Market (RAM) London Committee.
Marlène Corbun Marlene is based in Switzerland and has been navigating the contemporary art market since 10 years. She worked for White Cube Gallery and Christie’s in London before launching her own art advisory boutique in the fields of Post-War and Contemporary Art & Web3 Art. Since one year, she is also Head Curator for the French NFT platform LaCollection, leading institutional and contemporary art projects such as the online show “Web 3 Aesthetics” with Annka Kultys Gallery.

Educated at The Courtauld Institute in London (Post-Graduate Diploma in Art History) and at EM Lyon Business School in France (Thesis on the Art Market).
Evan Morgan Dr Evan Morgan is a Research Software Engineer in Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. He supports innovation through design and application of data driven technologies across multiple research projects. Evan has the best part of a decade’s experience in multidisciplinary technical, research, and development work; spanning both industry and academia. He completed his PhD in Media and Arts Technology at Queen Mary University of London in 2016, where he investigated the use of sensor technologies (e.g. motion, physiology, eye-tracking) for understanding and enhancing non-verbal interactions between collaborating musicians. He joined Design Informatics in October 2018 after working as a Research Associate on the ENHANCE and IDEAL projects within the School of Informatics, where he helped design interventions for behaviour-based energy reduction.
Martin Disley Martin Disley is an artist, researcher and creative technologist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Martin is supporting the UKRI funded DECaDE: Centre for the Decentralised Economy project using design to explore how Distributed Ledger Technology and Artificial Intelligence could transform our digital economy through decentralised platforms. Martin maintains a complimentary independent visual practice which centres around critical investigations into emerging data technologies. This work has focussed on the machine learning model and the map-territory relation, feedback loops in inference, behavioural conditioning and training, and machine learning in states of incoherence. His work has been presented at institutions across Europe including Unsound Festival, Kraków, Arebyte Gallery, London and the V&A Museum, Dundee.