Key note speakers' profiles

Prof. Dr. Mauri Ylä-Kotola

Rector of University of Lapland

Ph.D. Mauri Ylä-Kotola is Rector of University of Lapland starting August 2006. He is also President of Finnish Academy of Fine Arts until November 2006. Mauri Ylä-Kotola's areas of academic expertise include the thematics of information society, media technologies, content production, computer-mediated communication and electronic aesthetics. He has undertaken research in the new forms and methods of interactive media, especially synthetic multi-user environments, and is currently working on a project on philosophical questions of virtual reality technologies and spatial interfaces.

Ylä-Kotola has published widely on the cultural history and aesthetic forms of computer media, and textual theory with special reference to audiovisual communication. He has led several research projects which has combined positivism and hermeneutics on a methodological level. Ylä-Kotola lectures regularly in various European universities. Professor Ylä-Kotola has worked in several scientific committees, including Committee of Media Culture Program of Academy of Finland, EMMABA Scientific Committee and the Board of the European Institute for a Sustainable Information Society.

Mauri Ylä-Kotola has written, edited and co-edited dozens of books. He is the editor of, among others, the four-volume anthology The Integrated Media Machine (I A Theoretical Framework, II Aspects of Internet Culture, Hypertechnologies and Informal Learning, III&IV: Aspects of Future Interfaces and Cross-Media Culture). The Integrated Media Machine is a critical, multi-disciplinary anthology that discusses the theories, problems and possibilities of multimedia communication, computer interaction, and hypertextual representation of knowledge. Instead of technological determinism or techno-optimistic rhetoric, this publication focuses on an analytical approach to contemporary media, future technologies and electronic texts.

Dr. Ylä-Kotola has co-edited Mediatieteen kysymyksiä I-IV (1999-2002) and the knowledge books Uusmediatieteen perusteet (Edita 2001) and Mediakasvatus simulaatiokulttuurissa (WSOY 2000). Ylä-Kotola's publications also include his doctoral dissertation Jean-Luc Godard mediafilosofina. Rekonstruktio simulaatiokulttuurin lähtökohdista (Jean-Luc Godard as a Media Philosopher. A Reconstruction Based on the Culture of Simulations, University of Helsinki 1998).

Photograph: Arto Liiti

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