Margarita Benitez 
Margarita Benitez is an art + technology and fiber artist based in Chicago + Miami. She is interested in the explorations of art within the making and DIY culture. Her work is rooted in exploring underlying social issues in technology – exploring how today’s society copes with the overwhelming presence of technology, surveillance, data mining and media bombardment. Her work has been exhibited nationally, internationally, and featured in Leonardo and Surface Design magazine. http://www.margaritabenitez.com/
DIYLILCNC
DIYLILCNC Machine
Chris Reilly is a Chicago-based artist, writer and teacher. He received his BFA with a focus on New Media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. Chris is currently employed as manager of SAIC’s Advanced Outptut Center, and a part-time faculty member teaching between SAIC’s Design and Film/Video/New Media departments. Since 2003, Chris has shown work in several solo and group art exhibitions in the US and Europe; he works with modded video games, virtual/augmented reality, scripting/programming and kinetic sculpture. http://www.chris-reilly.org http://www.rainbowlazer.com
( f)utility projects
Proposed Pavilion for ATNS @ Version Fest
Begun in summer 2009 as an offshoot of the “Drawing Studio:Articulating Space” course at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, (ƒ)utility consists of Paola Cabal, faculty in painting and drawing, Michael Genge, an architecture student, and Christopher Grieshaber, a designed objects student. The group forged its working paradigm over the course of two major installations in the pedway open studio, a Department of Cultural Affairs Public Art Program space below the Chicago Cultural Center, and is thrilled to have been invited to discuss their integration of electronic visualization and digital production methods at this year’s “Version” festival, along with designing the pavilion/installation for the “Approaching the Nanofax Singularity” exhibition. (f)utility projects currently has work up at SubCity, a project space in Chicago’s Fine Arts Building (www.subcityprojects.com), and upcoming projects include a solo exhibition at “2nd Floor Gallery Space”, an alternative space on the second floor at 903 W 19th in Chicago.
Claudia Hart
Mortifications, Rapid Prototype printed sculpture
Claudia Hart is currently an Assistant Professor in the department of Art and Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is represented by bitforms gallery, NY. Presently, she is working on a personal exhibition for the Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh, featuring “Empire,” a four-channel installation at architectural scale. It will open on April 23, 2010. Her contemporary art consists of designs for sublime landscape gardens often containing expressive and sensual female bodies meant to interject emotional subjectivity into what is typically the overly-determined Cartesian world of digital design. Her work has been seen at various public institutions including PS 1 and PS 122, and most recently at the second biennial Zero1 in San Jose. http://www.claudiahart.com/
Mik Kastner
Domestic Vegetative BioPrinter – hacking 2D inket printers and using rapid prototyping machines to accomadate cellular medium bioink. Currently developing physical protocols for workshop process. Focus is on domestic use and generation of food-based, nutrient-rich, hybrids.
http://www.bioartresearchnetwork.com
Patrick Lichty
Pixelbox, Laser-Cut Wood, Color Changing LED's
Patrick Lichty (b.1962) is a technologically-based conceptual artist, writer, independent curator, animator for the activist group, The Yes Men, and Executive Editor of Intelligent Agent Magazine. He began showing technological media art in 1989, and deals with works and writing that explore the social relations between us and media. Venues in which Lichty has been involved with solo and collaborative works include the Whitney & Turin Biennials, Maribor Triennial, Performa Performance Biennial, Ars Electronica, and the International Symposium on the Electronic Arts (ISEA).
He also works extensively with virtual worlds, including Second Life, and his work, both solo and with his performance art group, Second Front, has been featured in Flash Art, Eikon Milan, and ArtNews.
He is also an Assistant Professor of Interactive Arts & Media at Columbia College Chicago.
Brian Matthew
Living Stained Glass – site-specific microbial colonies on agar growth medium in aesthetically ornamental configuration.
Brian Matthew is interested in how biotechnology and larger bioresearch
developments can be used in art making and functional applications. He
has a long history working on projects with doctors and
surgeons who use new robotics and biotechnology developments in their
practice. Taking this as inspiration, he has developed a research
practice with these new biotechnologies as a core trajectory. He
investigates new ways to bridge the gap between science and a
research-based art studio practice.
http://www.bioartresearchnetwork.com/
Dan Price
Tentacle Shelter, Lasercut model
Dan Price lives and works in Chicago, IL where he is Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He holds a B.A. in Fine Art from the Colorado College and a M.F.A. in Sculpture with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Price has exhibited his videos and sculpture at the Kennedy Museum in Athens, Ohio, Triple Candie Gallery, New York; White Columns Gallery, New York; Angstrom Gallery in Los Angeles and at the Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum in Providence.
Price has served as artist-in-residence at Art Omi in New York, Can Serrat in Spain, Elsewhere Elsewhere in Greensboro, NC and the Banff Centre in Canada. He has taught Art and English in a Xhosa high school in South Africa, and completed a two-year course of study as a Core Student at the Penland School of Art and Crafts in North Carolina. While there, he studied with John T. Scott, Hoss Haley, Pinky Bass, Deborah Luster and other distinguished artists. He has worked for several design firms including nodesign in New Orleans and The Glass Project in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
Ben Stagl
Born in 1980, Ben Stagl is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Chicago, IL, USA.
Stagl received his BFA from Oregon State University in 2003, and is presently finishing his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He investigates urban space through a variety of mediums including sculpture, performance, video, and installation. Stagl is largely concerned with how human beings continue to address and experience shared spaces. Many of his projects explore ideas of inclusion through object, often involving collaboration and elements of participation.
Stagl’s projects have been reviewed by the Oregonian, the Willamette Weekly, Portland Monthly, and on UltraPDX.com. He was awarded a Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission in 2008. In 2007 he was awarded an honorarium by the NW Regional Arts and Cultures Council, and his work is featured in their Annual Catalogue. Stagl has instructed casting and patina workshops for colleges and museums around Portland, and has recently been a guest lecturer at Oregon State University.
Approaching the Nanofax Singularity 