The contributions to the ISEA2010 RUHR Conference programme have been selected from a total of 1052 proposals. About a fourth of them were paper submissions and proposals for conference panels, and in addition to these, many authors from other categories (exhibition, performance, film and internet projects), whose projects could not be realised in the festival programme, have been selected on the Reviewing Committee's recommendation to be invited for artist presentations in the conference framework. Submissions to the Call for Proposals came from 58 countries, the largest proportion being German contributions, followed by large numbers of projects from the U.S. and Great Britain, Canada and France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Austria, Italy, Brazil and Japan. The submission and peer reviewing process as well as the final paper submission for publication was carried out via a custom-made online platform. On this platform each of the proposals has been reviewed by at least two members of the International Reviewing Committee, which included 88 experts from various media art related fields, of 29 different nationalities. The evaluation of the committee's ratings and comments resulted in the selection of 156 proposals, which were then grouped into the thematic conference panels constituting the ISEA2010 Conference, complemented by a keynote programme and several panels, roundtables and workshops realised with cooperating institutions. All confirmed conference speakers – academic researchers as well as the invited artists – have been offered the possibility to contribute texts on their presentations, and as a result this volume assembles papers by an impressive number of 236 authors and co-authors from over 40 countries. While the length of the individual contributions had to be limited due to the large number of papers, we believe that the resulting compilation does justice to the abundant diversity of topics and interests covered in the conference. The two "research themes" that were originally proposed as a rough guideline for submissions to the Call for Proposals have been richly responded to, so that both "Sounds" and "Ecologies" remain two important focal points of the conference. However, the conference covers a range of topics that goes far beyond those themes. The following pages include contributions on recent research in the fields of media art theory and history, discussions of the relation of body and media and of preservation strategies for media art, presentations on new developments in visual art and code art, reflections on social media and the role of the digital user, on public spaces and geographies, and much more.