[-empyre-] Eliza Fernbach: "Resolutions for Digital Futures"

[eliza fernbach]

Hello empyre,

First I would like to express a tardy but heartfelt THANK YOU to Christina McPhee for inviting me onto the list as  a guest. 

I was a participant some years ago and fell off the digital ledge for a time. Therein lies my resolution. 

When I finally surrendered to new media after becoming too ill to paint (by my own foolish misuse of GREAT substancs like aerosol aluminium) I had the priviliege of interning at Rhizome.org as part of my Graduate work. 

Mark Tribe generously included me in his preparation for an exhibit called Net.Ephemera. As a reluctant techie I was enchanted by the things we collected for the show. There were all kinds of drawings, scribbles on napkins, and trinkets that were reminders of an idea. 

>From these very concrete things came wonderful projects like Yael Kanarek's World of Awe. Seeing these physical traces of the intangible blinking works on screens helped me surrender to the mystery of the digital realm. The mighty poet Anne Carson has written that her religion infuriates her and that is why she still pursues it. I have begun to  allow my fury with the digital to become an expanding mystery. 

My resolution then is to offer everyone a stack of sharpened pencils, some lovely, crisp, white drawing paper and the TIME needed to nurture the mystery between the page and the screen. For anyone passing through my little patch of paradise in Hoboken, New Jersey, there will be pencils and paper waiting in my studio...
Happy New Year everyone
and in honor of the digital mystery here is an electronic "drawing" in the spirit of pencil made with a mouse. http://www.hecticred.net/come_hither_digital_mystery.jpg

-eliza

Tell me what you forget, I will tell you who you are.
                                                                                              - Marc Augé


--- On Mon, 1/5/09, Cathy Davidson <Cathy.Davidson at Duke.edu> wrote:

> From: Cathy Davidson <Cathy.Davidson at Duke.edu>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Cathy N. Davidson: "Resolutions for Digital Futures"
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Cc: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Monday, January 5, 2009, 10:11 PM
> My empyre resolution is awfully utilitarian compared to the
> poetry of so 
> many of the others so I'll also add that I would like
> to cloak our 
> soft-skinned world in velvet in 2009.  Our poor earth needs
> all the gentle 
> protection we can afford.  Happy new year everyone!
> Cathy N. Davidson (on leave)
> Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English and 
>  John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of
> Interdisciplinary 
> Studies
> 129 Franklin Center, Duke University
> Durham, NC  27708-0403
> Co-Founder, HASTAC (www.hastac.org)
> Co-Director, HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media
>      and Learning Competition (www.dmlcompetition.net)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Timothy Murray <tcm1 at cornell.edu>; renate ferro
> <rtf9 at cornell.edu> 
> Sent by: empyre-bounces at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> 01/05/09 10:06 PM
> Please respond to
> soft_skinned_space <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> 
> 
> To
> soft_skinned_space <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> cc
> 
> Subject
> Re: [-empyre-] Cathy N. Davidson: "Resolutions for
> Digital Futures"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> My empyre resolution is that, together, we build a
> wikipedia/Craig's 
> list of all interdisciplinary courses at all colleges and 
> universities and start making connections across and among
> our 
> different offerings.  The SyllaList would include a place
> for 
> uploading syllabi and would require folksonomy tags and
> would help us 
> all to understand the changes we are making at our
> institutions and 
> would help support us as we try to expand the vision of
> what learning 
> is and what learning does.
> 
> bio:
> --Cathy N. Davidson (US) is the Ruth F. DeVarney Professor
> of English 
> and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Professor of 
> Interdisciplinary Studies, Duke University.  She is the
> co-founder of 
> HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced
> 
> Collaboratory, or "haystack":  www.hastac.org). 
> She co-administers 
> the HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning 
> Competition and is the author, with HASTAC co-founder David
> Theo 
> Goldberg, The Future of Learning (MIT Press, forthcoming
> 2009).  She 
> is also finishing a book tentatively titled The Rewired
> Brain:  The 
> Deep Structure of Thinking for the Information Age
> (forthcoming, 
> Viking Press).
> -- 
> Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
> Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
> Department of Art and Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
> Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
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