Betty Bigas is an Art Advisor and Curator from Barcelona whose work explores the dynamic connections between culture and art across a broad range of media, including design, digital art, photography, video art, and installations. Her current focus is on fostering artistic collaborations that transcend cultural and geographical boundaries.

She has curated exhibitions and events at iconic venues such as the California Academy of Sciences, Napa Valley Museum, Stanford University, Reial Cercle Artístic Barcelona, Serrería Belga Madrid, Midway Gallery SF, Seminci Festival, Fousion Gallery, and Lastcrit Gallery, among others. Betty also collaborates with brands and cultural organizations including Nestlé, Kreoz for Apple TV, Drap Art, and NFT Barcelona.

• Art Advisor at creatiBEty

• Co-Curator at Fousion Gallery Barcelona

• Art Curator of the Digital ArtLane at Nestle España.

• Founder of Roll Up Gallery SF, at Public Works SF, San Francisco, CA (US).

She is also the organizer of the Bigas Luna Tributes, together with Professor Santiago Fouz Hernández (School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University), celebrating the work of the late Spanish filmmaker Bigas Luna through screenings, talks, exhibitions, and cultural events around the world.

Through her curatorial work, Betty continues to support a vibrant cultural landscape while connecting artists with new audiences.

🔗 bettybigas.com

Betty Bigas is a Mentor at the CODAME ART+TECH Festival [2026]

Gary R. Boodhoo is a San Francisco–based interaction designer who builds rigorous systems that produce poetic outcomes. Over the last two decades, he’s designed and shipped UX/UI for videogames and digital products, including The Sims 3, The Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and Madden NFL. His creative work focuses on interactive systems in social space, including installations, workshops, and volumetric storytelling. Projects include DeepDream Vision Quest, Image Garden, and XOHOLO, all built to help people internalize complex ideas through direct experience rather than abstract explanation.

🔗 garyb.design

Gary R. Boodhoo is a Mentor at the CODAME ART+TECH Festival [2026]

Keisuke’s signature style is true synesthesia — a fusion of sight and sound that gives audiences an experience they can’t get from either medium alone.

What makes his work distinct is where it comes from. With over 25 years shaping human-technology interaction across companies like Native Instruments, Pioneer DJ, and Denon & Marantz. Keisuke doesn’t just perform visuals — he designs experiences. His career leading UX for music technology products (including a USPTO patent for music interface innovation) gave him a deep, structural understanding of how humans process rhythm, feedback, and flow. At its core, the same discipline he brings to a stage: reading an audience, responding in real time, and creating moments that feel inevitable.

Today, as a UX Director and AI-native design consultant working on enterprise intelligence systems, Keisuke sees the same principles at play. The interaction between a human operator and an AI agent isn’t so different from the dialogue between a VJ and a crowd — both demand real-time responsiveness, trust in the system, and the ability to amplify human intent through technology. His “AI-native” design philosophy is rooted in this lived experience: that the best interfaces, like the best performances, disappear — leaving only the feeling of being perfectly in sync.

🔗 Portfolio

Keisuke is a Mentor at the CODAME ART+TECH Festival [2026]

Ray’s work centers on discovering core interactions that give rise to larger experiences. These moments surface new ways of seeing and sensing. He is currently exploring how AI and cognitive behavioral tools intersect with immersive technology to support self-discovery.

Previously, he was part of the team that became Twitter and later an Interactive Engineer at TikTok, where I created viral tools and effects for content creation. He also spent more than a decade running Dreamboat, an interactive studio producing installations and experiments that blend art, sound, and technology.

He has recently relocated to the UK and am looking to connect with others working in creative technology, mental health, or where the two intersect.

🔗 throbbingpixel.com

in rayreadyray

Ray McClure is a Mentor at the CODAME ART+TECH Festival [2026]

Eugenio aka Katsukokoiso.ai was born from a lifelong journey as a professional photographer, coupled with a deep fascination for Artificial Intelligence as a new medium of artistic and professional expression. With 15 years of experience in photography and hailing from the beautiful island of Sardinia, he made Milan his base, where art and technology converge.

The project, katsukokoiso.ai, is not just an exploration of AI-generated images and videos; it’s an extension of his photography and the field of photography as a whole. This venture represents a personal evolution, moving in harmony with cutting-edge technological innovations.

This synergy of human creativity with algorithms drives his art. Each creation is a dialogue between his photographic knowledge and the limitless possibilities of AI, embodying a unique symbiosis.

As he continues to grow and develop katsukokoiso.ai, his commitment remains firm: to push the boundaries of AI in art and photography, constantly exploring new ways to fuse these dual worlds into impactful and cohesive artworks.

🔗 katsukokoiso.ai 🅾 katsukokoiso.ai

Eugenio Marongiu is a Mentor at the CODAME ART+TECH Festival [2026]

Art critic, journalist, and independent curator based in Milan. Her work explores emerging directions in contemporary art, spanning new media, digital culture, and street art through exhibitions, publications, and cultural initiatives.

🔗 chiaracanali.com

Chiara Canali is a Mentor at the CODAME ART+TECH Festival [2026]

『 The New Human 』 Proposal:

Kris is a Mentor at the CODAME ART+TECH Festival (2026)

Creative technologist and researcher working at the edge of machine imagination, performance, and sensory design. Based in Barcelona as Director of Espronceda Institute of Art, his practice blends experimental AI architectures with embodied interfaces to interrogate how synthetic systems can dream, feel, and evolve new ontologies. He is a Research Affiliate at MIT’s Spatial Sound Lab and Artist-in-Residence at Georgia State University’s Creative Media Industries Institute. Recent projects include PIP: Purposefully Induced Psychosis, presented at CHI 2025 and the Tools for Thought Workshop, AI JOE, an emergent digital mind with a viseme-driven avatar, and Aletheia, a recursive self-modeling AI that visualizes its shifting semantics and affect. His immersive work has featured at CCCB Barcelona, Ars Electronica, VRHAM, and Cannes XR, with commissions and showcases across museums and festivals. Pilcher is a winner of MIT StageHack, a three-time MIT Reality Hack awardee, and an Oculus Start and Launchpad developer. He lectures widely on XR, AI art, and posthuman design, and has collaborated with Berkeley SETI, Roscosmos partners, and academic labs focused on virtual humans.

🔗 KrisPilcher.com

Dario (Milan, born in Sicily) is a visual artist and designer with a background in service design, innovation, and creative technologies. He works across creative direction, experience design, and artificial intelligence research, adopting a human-centered approach that bridges visual culture and business perspective. For him, design means building pathways for users, audiences, and communities—translating technical and conceptual complexity into clear, accessible, high-impact narratives.

Growing up with the first personal computers, he developed an early artistic practice rooted in digital collage and computer graphics. His work embraces a surrealist and speculative aesthetic, exploring collective memory, pop culture, and contemporary imaginaries.

His education combines science and design: after scientific studies and an initial path in Medicine and Surgery, he earned three degrees at Abadir Academy and Politecnico di Milano, spanning Art Direction for Business, Product–Service System Design, and Management Engineering. This interdisciplinary background shaped a vision that connects human needs and desires, market dynamics, and the potential of emerging technologies.

He currently works as a venture builder for a global company, developing new startups and innovating business models, while supporting organizations and teams in applying digital technologies and AI to products and services. In parallel, he operates as a freelance art director and creative director, producing identities, campaigns, and visual artifacts across sectors ranging from fashion to music. A musician with over twenty years of experience and certified in sound design, he brings a strong experiential sensibility to visual language and narrative atmospheres.

In 2025, he co-founded Dolly, a vertical startup focused on generative AI for creative content production and AI-based operational support. His research—also carried out in an academic context at Politecnico di Milano within the Digital Innovation Observatories—investigates AI as a collaborator in creative and co-design processes, with particular attention to team interaction dynamics and the design of tools that enhance collective creativity.

Among his key artistic projects, AI<3Poetry (presented at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa during Internet Festival 2023) explores authorship and the understanding of poetic language in the age of AI through “impossible” collaborations between visual artists and literary authors from different eras. The project uses aesthetics as a critical device to raise questions around ownership, copyright, cultural memory, and meaning-making, transforming a contemporary debate into an immediate and provocative visual experience.

Dario (Milano, nato in Sicilia) è un artista visivo e designer con background in service design, innovazione e tecnologie creative. Lavora tra direzione creativa, experience design e ricerca sull’intelligenza artificiale, con un approccio human-centered che integra cultura visiva e visione di business. Per lui progettare significa costruire percorsi per utenti, pubblici e comunità, traducendo la complessità tecnica e concettuale in narrazioni chiare, accessibili e ad alto impatto.

Cresciuto con i primi computer, sviluppa fin da giovanissimo una pratica artistica basata su collage digitale e computer grafica. La sua estetica, di matrice surrealista e speculativa, indaga memoria collettiva, cultura pop e immaginari contemporanei.

La sua formazione unisce scienza e progettazione: dopo studi scientifici e un primo percorso in Medicina e Chirurgia, consegue tre lauree tra Abadir Academy e Politecnico di Milano, in Direzione Artistica per le Imprese, Product–Service System Design e Management Engineering. Questo percorso consolida una visione capace di tenere insieme bisogni delle persone, dinamiche di mercato e potenzialità delle tecnologie emergenti.

Attualmente lavora come venture builder per un’azienda globale, occupandosi di sviluppo di nuove startup e innovazione dei modelli di business, affiancando aziende e team nell’applicazione di tecnologie digitali e AI a prodotti e servizi. In parallelo opera come freelance come art director e creative director, realizzando identità, campagne e artefatti visivi per diversi settori, dalla moda alla musica. Musicista con oltre vent’anni di esperienza e certificato in sound design, integra una forte sensibilità esperienziale nella costruzione del linguaggio visivo e delle atmosfere narrative.

Nel 2025 co-fonda Dolly, startup verticale sull’uso della generative AI per la produzione di contenuti creativi e il supporto operativo AI-based. La sua ricerca, sviluppata anche in ambito accademico presso il Politecnico di Milano all’interno degli Osservatori Digital Innovation, esplora il ruolo dell’AI come collaboratore nei processi creativi e di co-design, con particolare attenzione alle dinamiche di interazione nei team e alla progettazione di strumenti che amplificano la creatività collettiva.

Tra i principali progetti artistici, AI<3Poetry (presentato alla Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa durante Internet Festival 2023) indaga il tema dell’autorialità e della comprensione del linguaggio poetico nell’era dell’AI, attraverso collaborazioni “impossibili” tra artisti visivi e autori letterari di epoche diverse. Il progetto utilizza l’estetica come dispositivo critico per attivare riflessioni su ownership, copyright, memoria culturale e costruzione del significato, trasformando un dibattito contemporaneo in un’esperienza visiva immediata e provocatoria.

Apply to be a Mentor

💫 Share your expertise and creative insight

🔧 Help teams refine concepts and realize their ideas

🌱 Inspire collaboration and learning across disciplines

How: Join in person or online, we’re global by design.

What:

🍸 30 mins — Aperitivo intro & AMA before the hackathon

⚙️ 30 mins — Judges, Q&A or check-in during the hackathon (6-7 March 2026)

🏆 1–2 hrs — Mentor the selected teams preparing for Milano Design Week

🎨 (Optional) — Join us during Milano Art & Design Week

Apply to be a Mentor

What does fashion lack? "Microcontrollers" according to Dutch based Hi-Tech Fashion Designer and Innovator Anouk Wipprecht. As she is working in the emerging field of "FashionTech"; a rare combination of fashion design combined with engineering, science and interaction/user experience design. Producing an impressive body of tech-enhanced designs bringing together fashion and technology in an unusual way: she creates technological couture; with systems around the body that tend towards artificial intelligence; projected as 'host' systems on the human body, her designs move, breath, and react to the environment around them.

Strangely ahead of her time; Anouk combines the latest in science and technology to make fashion an experience that transcends mere appearances. Sensors embedded in the design monitor the space around the wearer, and body-sensors check in on stress levels as comfort or anxiety. Her Intel-Edison based 'Spider Dress' is an perfect example of this aesthetic, where sensors and moveable arms on the dress help to create an more defined boundary of personal space while employing a fierce style. "This robotic dress attacks when you come to close" she mentions. Facilitating and augmenting the interactions we have with ourselves and our surroundings in an bespoke manner. Other than handheld devices, Wipprecht researches how we can interface in new ways with the world around us through our wardrobe.

Partnering up with companies such as multinational technology company INTEL, software producer Autodesk, internet giants Google and Microsoft, car brand AUDI, crystal creator Swarovski, and leading 3D printing innovators amongst others - she researches and develops how our future wardrobe would look as we continue to embed technology into what we wear.

You can learn more about Anouk on her website anoukwipprecht.nl

Visionary award-winning technical founder with a penchant for turning emerging tech into award-winning software that creates new markets. Currently building AI AR software that lets you create 3D at the speed of thought at AIMagical.

Previously + On-going: AReality3D maintains an augmented reality platform underlying technology and its subsidiary permute…

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Kesson is a mentor of the CODAME ART+TECH Festival (2026)

Kesson, the artistic identity of Giovanni Muzio, is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of artistic practice, computational systems, and real-time technologies. His research explores the relationship between void, chaos, and generation as living processes capable of producing continuously evolving forms, meanings, and experiences.

His work takes form through generative environments, interactive installations, and audiovisual systems that challenge the idea of the artwork as a fixed object. Instead, he centers process, time, and interaction as essential elements. In this context, the algorithm becomes not only a tool but a conceptual space—one where control and unpredictability coexist, opening new perceptual and narrative possibilities.

Alongside his artistic practice, he works as a Lead Creative Technologist and New Media Researcher, collaborating with cultural institutions and industry to develop interactive systems, immersive experiences, and projects grounded in emerging technologies. He also contributes to education as a Computer Graphics instructor at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli.

Within this trajectory, he has developed collaborative projects that approach artificial intelligence as a critical and relational medium. Among these is Sileno, created with Anecoica Studio, a system that reinterprets the figure of the oracle through a digital and philosophical lens, using AI not to provide answers, but to provoke reflection on identity and cognition.

In A.I. Collective Portraits, developed with Claudia Rafael, he explores AI as a space for co-creation through a real-time installation in which the audience actively participates in building a shared visual archive, transforming interaction into a central component of the work.

His practice investigates how humans and intelligent systems can coexist and collaborate, reframing creativity as a relational, evolving, and open-ended process rather than a fixed outcome.

Vanessa Chang is a writer, scholar, curator, and educator who builds communities and conversations about our virtual and physical encounters with media and technology.

Vanessa Chang builds communities and conversations about art, technology, people, and planet. She writes, curates, and teaches about new and old media, the history and philosophy of technology, design, disability and creative access, cities, comics, animation, circuses, and more.

She is Director of Programs at Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology. She earned a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, where she was a Geballe Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center and also ran the Graphic Narrative Project. She’s also taught in Visual & Critical Studies at California College of the Arts and was lead curator with CODAME Art & Tech. She grew up in Singapore and Australia and is now based in San Francisco.

Her first book, The Body Digital: A Brief History of Humans and Machines, from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT, is forthcoming 4 November 2025.

​​​Vanessa Chang, has been the art curator at CODAME.

She joined us in 2017 curating the 3D Web Fest [2017] in San Francisco. In no time, she fit the CODAME culture and became one of the most critical team members to build such a successful ART+TECH event.

She also brought the CODAME 3D Web Fest to the international stage, curating a similar San Francisco experience, with a great respect for the local ART+TECH scene in Germany.

After her extraordinary job in 2017, Vanessa is continuing to curate our biggest event of the year CODAME ART+TECH Festival [2018] codenamed #ARTOBOTS

In Vanessa’s own words:

Automation has a long and curious history. For hundreds of years, inventors of clockwork automata and philosophers of artificial life have explored the horizons of human understanding through the lens of these mechanical others.

The industrial revolution saw the introduction of automated processes into our factories, our homes, our art, and our lives. Even as automation has entered the digital spheres of human activity, the cultural legacies of these early developments remain visible.

As automated processes permeate our existences, from shopping algorithms to self-driving cars, I see our cultural conversations about them often moving between celebratory and apocalyptic poles. In my doctoral research, I saw new media art as a space to examine the complexities of our relationships with technology.

Through this festival, I want to explore the imaginative possibilities of our collaborations with automata, whether algorithms, robots or AI. As curator, I want to showcase how automation might expand our repertoires of moving, seeing, and feeling, or challenge long-held perspectives about the parameters of human perception.