Harwood

Harwood was a street culture-cum-activist/artist during the 1980s. During his ten years unemployed he was involved with publishing initives such as the Working Press (books by and about working class culture), The Festival of Plagiarism ( in London, Glasgow, San Francisco and Tokyo intended to explore and exploit the values and inherent contradictions involved in the notion of plagiarism), Underground newspaper ( a London-based free newspaper aimed at promoting and exploiting the uses of new media in culture and activism) and books such as Unnatural - techno theory for a contaminated culture (theoretical positionings on new media). During this time, he produced the first computer-generated comic If Comics Mental and was widely published in graphic journals in the USA, Canada, Italy and France. After Harwood trained in new media and learned programming at the end of the 1980s, he was invited to make a piece of work for VideoPositive 95 (international video art festival in Liverpool). He worked at Ashworth maximum security hospital in Liverpool where he produced Rehearsal of Memory the installation. Harwood's reputation as an educationalist led to setting up new media courses at Guildhall University, and advising on numerous other academic new media initaitives. Disappointed with the state of academic education, Harwood was invited to work at Artec (London Arts Technology Centre) where he continues to provide innovative training for the long-term unemployed. It was here that he received his first Arts Council grant to develop Rehearsal of Memory with Artec and ex-trainees to produce, re-author and publish the CD-ROM version of the installation. Since, Harwood has exhibited and spoken at numerous events, nationally and internationally, in England, France, Austria, Australia, Germany, Canada, Portugal, Finland, Holland and Norway.

Matsuko Yokokoji

Matsuko Yokokoji began freelancing in 1981, two years before she graduated from Kuwazawa design college, Tokyo, specialising in magazine design for an enormous range of clients including publishers, Fujin Gaho and Palco, on fashion and arts magazines. This she followed in 1985 by package design at Honshu Seishi, a leading paper Japanese supplier. She went on to become art director at IEI (Imperial Enterprise Inc). She and her team of five assistants designed cosmetics and luxury goods, bringing products to the market from planning stage to campaign advertising. In 1987 she left Tokyo for London to concentrate for the next three years on printmaking, computer graphics, music scene publicity and publication design, including organising the art direction and illustration for Meet Regional Osaka listings magazine. During this time she became IEI's London buyer of antiques and commercials props, researching new designs for reproduction ware. In 1993, she followed a commission to research London's museums with a position as researcher first for Nippon TV and later for Fuji TV's Naruhodo the World light entertainment series, for whose hectic UK location shoots, she coordinated all aspects of production.

Richard Pierre-Davis

Richard Pierre-Davis was expelled from school in the last year before taking his exams in 1981. After a series of odd jobs, he took a course in Video Production at Lambeth Video, Brixton, London. From here he went to Cable London, where he worked for two years on the open access Community Channel. During this time, he made tv documentaries on the London Film Festival and on Chow Yung Fat, star of Hong Kong gangster movies, adapting to the methods of guerilla tv and video production. After this he teamed up with DJ Elyane to produce a pilot music programme and, for two years, tour managed R'n'B group Johvan. Over the last six years, Richard has also developed a video archive of London's Notting Hill Carnival. More recently, he took a course in multimedia production at Artec in London. The course included work at approximately eight multimedia exhibitions and work with Flabbergasted, a company that supplies sound for such multimedia productions as Microsoft's encyclopedia Encarta, Dorling Kindersley's information titles, the Multimedia 96 show CD-rom and others. This was followed by three month's placement spent as producer on Harwood's Rehearsal of Memory.