Switzerland DELEGATION

Nathalie Pichard represents the Next Gen ArtTech Initiative, which builds on nearly a decade of work by the ArtTech Foundation. Her career has consistently brought together culture, innovation and entrepreneurship, from leading a museum to holding senior management roles at EPFL and developing initiatives at the intersection of culture and technology. Today, through the Next Gen ArtTech Initiative, she is helping to build a global, cross-sector platform connecting cultural institutions, artists, researchers, entrepreneurs, technology companies and investors — with the ambition of turning new ideas and meaningful connections into concrete collaborations and opportunities for the cultural sector.

Alain Renaud specialises in interactive sound design and distributed musical performance. He began his career in music production in the United States before moving to London in 2001. In 2009, he completed a PhD in sound design at SARC. That same year, he was appointed Assistant Professor at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom, where he developed a research and teaching programme in music technology. He is a member of the London-based Analema Group (Tate Modern, National Gallery) and works on artistic and commercial projects spanning spatial sonification, augmented and virtual reality, and immersive audio. Alain teaches and contributes to research at the Valais School of Art (EDHEA). His academic work has appeared in publications and proceedings including Leonardo, the Computer Arts Society, and NIME. He was recently appointed to lead the design of a new academic program in Sound Design at EDHEA.

Melanie Bossert is a creative technologist based in Zurich, specializing in multimodal interfaces that define core interaction models for intelligent consumer devices and services. Previously worked at research institutions and agencies in New York and Berlin, focusing on product design and interactive experiences. Holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons, New York, and a BFA in Visual Communication with New Media Interaction emphasis from University of Art, Berlin. Currently serves as Design Lead at Google DeepMind Gemini.

Stella Speziali is a multidisciplinary interaction designer based in Zurich. She holds a Bachelor's in Visual Communication & Interaction Design from ECAL in Lausanne and a Master's in Interaction Design from ZHdK in Zurich. Since 2015, her work has explored immersive experiences: how movement, sound, light and space shape what we perceive. She works with motion capture, spatial augmented reality projection and other real-time technologies. Since 2019, she has been a Research Associate and Lecturer at the Immersive Arts Space (IAS), a university-wide art/tech lab of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Her research there looks at digital embodied representations, such as digital humans and avatars, and how they can be used in live, interactive performance. She also creates visual content for spatial augmented projections, coordinates the Immersive Arts minors, and works as a researcher on the SNSF-funded Probing XR's Futures project, which uses design fiction to build XR experiences.

Teresa Retzer is Artistic Director of Mesh Festival Basel and a curator, writer, and critic working at the intersection of art, technology, and socio-political discourse. Her practice focuses on live art, computational systems, performance, and time-based media, with particular attention to digital infrastructures, AI, and (post-)democratic cultures. She has worked at ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Haus der Kunst Munich and organized the performance program of Manifesta 11 in Zurich. Since 2017, her research has examined right-wing extremist subcultures in Europe and the United States, with a focus on their digital networks. She has also worked with the NGO Artists at Risk, particularly supporting artists from Afghanistan and Ukraine.