"Ryoko Akama was born in 1976 in Japan, and currently lives in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. She is a member of The Lappetites, Rolex2$, Syth;s. She is a sound artist/composer/performer, who approaches listening situations that magnify silence, time and space and offer quiet temporal/spatial experiences. Her sound works are connected to literature, fine art and technology, and employ small and fragile objects such as paper balloons and glass bottles, creating tiny occurrences that embody 'almost nothing' aesthetics. She composes text events and performs a diversity of alternative scores in collaboration with international artists. Her works and projects have been funded by Arts Council England, Japan Society, Daiwa-Anglo Foundation, University of Huddersfield, Kirklees Council, Pro Helvetia and more.

She is also active as a curator: collaborates with festivals, runs melange edition label and co-edits reductive journal/mumei publishing."

"Heather Frasch, is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic concert music, performer/composer (flute, laptop/electronics & sonic objects), and creator of interactive sound installations and digital instruments. Through the creation of complex timbres, the usage of unstable notation systems, and electronics her work explores notions of fragility and stillness within an intermedia sonic arts practice. Influenced by the dis-embodiment of acousmatic music practices, she investigates the re-embodiment of sound and the intimacy between humans and their technological objects.

She is interested in asking questions and finding the unexpected through a creative practice. By using different mediums, she is able to look at her investigations through various lenses. She is excited when previous notions are challenged and broken, making room for new ideas to emerge.

She co-edits mumei publishing which publishes online journals and monographs that concern text-sound perceptions. She is co-director of vibrant matter, who curate events, investigating the blurred boundaries between text/object and sound. Both projects champion experimental interdisciplinary programming, commissioning new works to support underrepresented voices.

She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley and further degrees from IRCAM, CNR de Lyon, and Temple University. Frasch was composer-in-residence at the IEM (Institüt für Musik und Akustik) in Graz, Austria (2015) and at the Villa Ruffieux, in Sierre, Switzerland (2017). Other honors include: artist residency at the EMS in Stockholm (2014), the George Ladd Prix de Paris in Composition (2008), International Sergei Slonimsky Composition Competition Prize (2012), and the Nicol DeLorernzo Prize in Composition (2010 and 2008). She has performed and had her work performed at: the Kilkenny Arts Festival, CTM Festival, UdK de Reihe Series, Unfinished Descritpions Exhibition, Moscow Autumn Festival, San Francisco Tape Festival, NYCEMF, Mixtur Festival, hcmf//, Akademie Schloss Solitude; and by the Ensemble SurPlus, A.pe.ri.od.ic Ensemble, Ossia New Music Ensemble, Quiet Music Ensemble, sfSound, Vertixe Sonora, Adapter Ensemble, BCMP, DNK Ensemble among others. Her work has been supported by: Musikfonds e. V., Initiative Neue Musik Berlin and Kulturförderung des Goethe-Instituts. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor at The University of Virginia in the department of Composition and Computer Technologies (2018-2020). Born in Philadelphia, she was a music tutor of electronic music at the Catalyst Institute for Creative Arts & Technology in Berlin (2021) and will be Associate Professor of Music Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU (Fall 2021 )"

"Brice Catherin (born 16 October 1981 in Brussels, Belgium) is a French composer and cellist.

Brice Catherin studied the cello at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne (Switzerland) with professor Marc Jaermann (cellist of the sine nomine quartet) where he successfully completed his diploma in 2004. At the same time, he was studying composition at the Haute École de Musique of Geneva (Switzerland) with professors Michael Jarrell, Luis Naón and Éric Daubresse. He received his diploma in 2005. The following year he studied at the Basel Musikhochschule with professor Roland Moser.

During this period, Brice Catherin gave a few hundred concerts and performances as a cellist, a composer, an improviser, and a performance artist in Europe, Japan, Russia, Iceland and Canada as an independent artist. He composed about 80 works for soloists to big ensembles, from 10 minutes to 10 hours. He premièred a few works he commissioned for solo cello or chamber ensembles to composers such as Dror Feiler, Christian Rosset, Evis Sammoutis, Patricia Bosshard, Baudoin de Jaer, Abby Swidler, Jacques Demierre, Arash Yazdani and Ludovic Thirvaudey.

He worked with artists from various backgrounds: dancers (Foofwa d'Imobilité, Corina Pia, Judith Desse...), writers (Karelle Ménine, Cléa Chopard...), actors (Delphine Rosay...), and after works of movie directors (David Bestue and Marc Vives, David OReilly (artist)...) and illustrators (Yuichi Yokoyama...)

As a composer, Brice Catherin wrote more than 80 instrumental works with or without electronic.

As an improviser, he is known for engineering the concept of "improvisation laboratories", which refers to performances of constrained improvisations. The constraints can be as different as "playing an instrument you don't know", "playing a building", "improvise music for a cartoon", "improvisation of characters", or "mixing baroque music and free improvisation". "

"I make works with images, extracts of melodies, texts and imagined sounds. I like to work on a whim; embracing connections and ideas that come from misheard sentences, descriptions on the radio, singing unclear and troubled words. I embed these encounters into pieces, titles or notes about a work. I live in Huddersfield and teach in a few schools across Kirklees, driving around the countryside in between."