Andreas Hirsch is an expert in conceiving and engineering cultural systems based in Vienna, Austria. For more than two decades his work for leading cultural organizations in the arts, theatre, music, film, literature and the media includes conceptualizing and curating as well as developing and managing projects. He is interested in the cultural implications of technology and globalization and their effects on cultural memory and diversity, as well as in the creation of common public goods and the development of sustainable solutions for a more just and peaceful world.

For mica - music austria in 2007 he coordinated the launch of the fair music initiative, the first global initiative for fairness and justice in the music business. The initiative is supported by the International Music Council (IMC) and the Austrian Commission for UNESCO. > www.fairmusic.net

Since 2003, when he helped Ars Electronica conceptualize Digital Communities, a new category for Prix Ars Electronica, he has been involved with Prix Ars Electronica, where he also has been a member of the Jury from 2004-2007. Juries of "Digital Communities" included Oliviero Toscani, Howard Rheingold, Joichi Ito, Jane Metcalfe, Steve Rogers, Steven Clift, Anita Gurumurthy and Lara Srivastava. Digital Communities is about the collective creation of common public goods and about putting ICTs into the hands of the people to help bridge the digital divide. > www.aec.at

By invitation of the Austrian initiative 25PEACES he helped conceptualize and realize the project Europe in 50 years’ time - a series of 25 articles from experts on the burning issues of the future. Contributors included Václav Havel, Dennis Meadows, Christian Mikunda, Saskia Sassen, Norbert Bolz, Howard Rheingold, Aleida Assmann, Vandana Shiva, Simon Winchester and Chérif Khaznadar. The articles appeared in the first half of 2006 over 25 weeks in the Austrian daily "Die Presse" – both in print and online – and were put under discussion on an information sculpture in the center of Vienna.

As a contribution of the WCFA and Ars Electronica to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in November 2005 he assembled and hosted a panel of experts to discuss the cultural implications of ICTs on cultural memory and diversity in the dawning knowledge-based societies. Ismael Serageldin, Director of the Library of Alexandria, Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia, Derrick de Kerckhove, Director of the Marshall McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto and Gerfried Stocker, Director of Ars Electronica were on this panel. He was involved in the WSIS-Process as a Civil Society Delegate from the Geneva Summit in 2003, through PrepComs 2 and 3 to the Tunis Summit in 2005.

Since 2001 he has been conceptualizing and hosting forums and panels for Ars Electronica Festival on topics like the "The Undertakings of Art - Who will survive?" (2001), "Artistic Aggression" (2002) or "From Information Societies to Knowledge-based Societies: Sustainable Development or the Deepening of the Digital Divide?" (2005) and "Digital Communities and the new public" at net.culture.space (2007). From 2003-2005 he also hosted the electrolobby Kitchen at the Festival. His talk guests included Bruce Sterling, Howard Rheingold, Sherry Turkle, Stewart Brand, Esther Dyson, Jimmy Wales and Lev Manovich.

For the World Culture Forum Alliance (WCFA) he conceptualized and helped realize a series of panels at the first Word Culture Forum / Forum Cultural Mundial in Sao Paulo, Brazil in June 2004. Their topics went under the matrix Culture=Action, Culture=Survival and Culture=Memory and included speakers like Bernard Cassen, a founder of ATTAC and Le Monde Diplomatique, Cheik Omar Sissoko, filmmaker and Minister of Culture of Mali or Manuela Soeiro, Director of the "Teatro del Avenida" in Maputo, Mocambique.

For more than 12 years he has been consulting regarding online strategy and conceptualization of online communication in the cultural field: For Jazz Fest Wien, one of the leading jazz festivals in the world, for Live Performance Service, a key promoter in the world of music, and for the International Jazz Festivals Organization (IJFO) he has – partly since 1998 – been taking care of online strategy.

eMail: ah (at) electrolyte.net