Kei Wakabayashi

Chief judge
Editor

Kei Wakabayashi was born in 1971 and spent his early childhood in London and New York. After graduating from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences in French Studies at Waseda University, he joined Heibonsha, and became part of the editorial department for "Gekkan Taiyo." In 2000, became an independent editor. Afterward, he edited a wide range of publications, including magazines, books, and exhibition records, and became active as a music journalist. He was assigned as the Chief Editor for the Japanese edition of "WIRED" in 2012, and left the post in 2017. In 2018, he launched blkswn publishers, Inc. and authored the book, "Sayonara Mirai" (Goodbye, Future), published by Iwanami Shoten (April​ 2018).

https://blkswn.tokyo/#blkswn

Kampire Bahana

DJ / Nyege Nyege collective

Among East Africa's most exciting DJs and a core member of Kampala's Nyege Nyege collective, Kampire’s vibrant bass-heavy sets have transported her to clubs & festivals across the world.One of Mixmag's picks for Top Ten Breakthrough DJs of 2018, Kampire's set on Boiler Room broadcast from Nyege Nyege festival was a legitimate ‘internet moment’, with thousands of shares on Facebook leading to serious FOMO from electronic music fans watching online.
Kampire’s DJ mixes have been featured on Resident Advisor, Dekmantel and Fact Magazine, which saw her chosen amongst the best mixes of 2019 on Pitchfork & Fact’s end of year lists. Her Rinse FM radio residency has seen her shine a light on other East African DJs & artists, including Hibotep, Faizal Mostrixx & Catu Diosis.


Judge's Message：
As someone who works across several media (music, writing, installation art and more!) I'm looking forward to seeing work that challenges traditional boundaries of genre and discipline. I also would love for participants to expand their definitions of technology beyond the hegemony of modern, Western science. I'm very excited to see what participants come up with.

https://www.instagram.com/kkaybie/

Steve Tidball

Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Vollebak

Steve Tidball is an adventure athlete, designer and CEO of Vollebak, which he founded in 2016 with his twin brother Nick. Over the last four years their clothing has won innovation awards from TIME, Fast Company and WIRED, and the brand has been compared to Tesla and elBulli for its radical commitment to the future. Prior to Vollebak the brothers spent 15 years in advertising. Working as Creative Directors at TBWA\London they designed the multi-award winning Floating House for Airbnb and the D Rose Jump Store for Adidas.


Judge's Message：
Every day the average person scrolls through enough social media posts that if you stacked them on top of each other they would be the same height as the Statue of Liberty. At the same time, over the last few decades, the amount of time a new piece of information has to grab your attention has decreased from minutes to fractions of a second. So the new role of creative work is to stop someone’s thumb, or to fight for space in their brain. This means it has to be something that you’ve simply never seen before. So that’s what I love to see in a great idea, no matter what field it’s from.

https://www.vollebak.com/

Sayaka Ogawa

Cultural anthropologist
Proffessor at Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences

Sayaka Ogawa was born in 1978 in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. She withdrew from the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, at Kyoto University with the approval of the doctoral program D. in Area Studies and continues to study the business practices of street traders in Tanzania and the underground economy of Hong Kong. She is the author of “Cunning for Urban Survival” (Sekai Shiso Sha, 2011), which won the 33rd Suntory Prize for Arts and Letters.” Another book of hers – “The Boss of Chonkin Mansions Knows” (Shunjusha, 2019) won the 8th Kawai Hayao Prize in Arts and Letters and the 51st Oya Soichi Nonfiction Prize. Her other works include The Anthropology of “That Day Living” (Kobunsha, 2016).