The foundation's artistic and technical departments supports an international community of performers and musicians, and a growing group of visual artists, to develop unique instruments for their work. STEIM invites these people for residencies and provides them with an artistic and technical environment in which concepts can be given concrete form. It catalyzes their ideas by providing critical feedback grounded in professional experience. These new creations are then exposed to a receptive responsive niche public at STEIM before being groomed for a larger audience.
STEIM promotes the idea that Touch is crucial in communicating with the new electronic performance art technologies. To much the computer has been used, and designed, as an exclusive extension of the formalistic capabilities of humans. At STEIM the intelligence of the body, for example: the knowledge of the fingers or lips is considered musically as important as the 'brain-knowledge'. STEIM has stimulated the design of extremely physical interfaces and is widely considered the as the pioneering place for the new live electronic concepts.
In 2007 there are three artistic advisers active at STEIM, Atau Tanaka, Takuro Mizuta Lippit and Mazen Kerbaj.
