Ákos Maróy

Ákos is notoriously interested in emerging technologies. He wrote his BSc thesis in 1995-96 about dynamic web server scripting, at the same time early web server scripting languages were being created worldwide, while his MSc thesis was an online shopping engine for the Drosophila Stock Center of the Deparmetn of Genetics and Molecular Biology, Szeged, Hungary. He implemented the first Java Servlet based commercial web site in his native Hungary in 1997 for the weekly cultural magazine Pesti Est, using Servlet specification 0.93 and Sun Microsystems' Jeeves Java Web Server 1.0.  During his PhD studies, Ákos did research on co-evolutionary algorithms and genetic computing at the Theoretical Computer Science Research Group of the Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

His dedication to open technologies & online media led him to start an open source live streaming encoder project in the year 2000, called darkice, which has become part of all major Linux distributions for quite some time now. The project is still active, after having been taken over from Ákos by other enthusiasts.

Ákos is active in the media art scene, being a member of Tokyo, Japan-based doubleNegatives Architecture team, their Corpora project being exhibited internationally, from Yamaguchi & Tokyo, Japan at the YCAM & NTT ICC, through the Prix Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Transmediale, Berlin & the Venice Architecture Biennale in Europe, to the Festival de México in Mexico City, or the Lexus Hybrid Art event in Moscow, Russia. Ákos is also involved in the field of bio-art, having created a work called bio.display at The Arts & Genomics Center in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Ákos maintains a private pilot license, and is an enthusiastic airplane pilot, flying both in Europe and the US.