[-empyre-] May on -empyre-: Critical Motion Practice

[Timothy Murray]

May on -empyre- soft-skinned space: "Critical Motion Practice"

Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray (US) with Johannes 
Birringer (Germany/UK), Laura Cull (UK), Sarah Drury (US),
Ashley Ferro-Murray (US), Erin Manning (Canada), Stamatia Portanova
(Italy/UK), Nora Zuniga Shaw (US), Stelarc (Australia/UK)

http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Welcome to our May empyre discussion, Critical Motion Practice. 
Bouncing off from our discussion in September, 2007, on Critical 
Spatial Practice, we thought it might be interesting to forge a 
discussion that entails motion--both self-reflective and 
interactive--at the intersections of art, choreography, geography, 
architecture, theory, and activism. How might technological and 
critical approaches to movement and interactivity empower creativity, 
enhance artistic activism, and encourage artistic/performance 
practice and collaboration? The alignment of criticality with 
movement and cyber configurations of embodiment and space permits 
especially creative skins of networks, resources, and discussions 
whose resulting configurations range from texts and performances to 
sculptures and installations. The work of our guests reflects a broad 
range of performativity as it relates to the broader social paradigms 
of technology, culture, and art.

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Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) artist-conceptual/new media, 
Department of Art, Cornell University, and Tim Murray (US), Curator 
of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell University

With Special Guests
Johannes Birringer (Germany/UK)
Chair/professor of Drama and Performance Technologies at Brunel 
University in London. There he directs the DAP-Lab, and links 
performance and media projects with AlienNation Co.'s studio based in 
Houston (www.aliennationcompany.com).  He is founder of 
Interaktionslabor Goettelborn, an annual international workshop 
dedicated to research, performance and software application 
development in interactive and networked media technologies.
Laura Cull (UK)
Performance artist-researcher with interests in the potential 
relationships between the theory and practice of performance, between 
Live Art and theatre, and between performance processes and ethical 
investigation. She was Project Officer for the PARIP project (Bristol 
University) before becoming an Arts & Humanities Research Council 
Research Student on the Performing Presence Project (Exeter 
University).
Sarah Drury (US)
Professor in New Media at Temple University's Film & Media Arts 
Program. Drury is a Video and new media artist working with 
Interactive Video Song and lyrical narrative in a variety of forms 
from installation/performance to linear video to artist's book. She 
has led experimental workshops in Online Distance Performance using 
Internet2, exploring themes of presence and absence in networked 
video.
Ashley Ferro-Murray (US)
A choreographer who uses interactive performance technologies as a 
means for exploring dance and new media in our contemporary culture. 
Ashley is a PhD student in the Performance Studies Program at UC 
Berkeley. http://ferromurray.net
Erin Manning  (Canada)
Research Chair and Professor of fine arts at Concordia University 
(Montreal, Canada). She directs the Sense Lab (www.senselab.ca), a 
laboratory that explores the intersections between art practice and 
philosophy through the matrix of the sensing body in movement.
Stamatia Portanova (Italy/Canada)
A post-doctoral fellow at the Concordia University of Montreal, she 
received her PhD from the University of East London, School of Social 
Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies.
Nora Zuniga Shaw (US)
Choreographer and arts researcher in The Ohio State University 
Department of Dance where she is an Assistant Professor and the 
Director for Dance and Technology. As the co-creative director for 
Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced, her recent 
research has been focused on interdisciplinary engagements with 
embodied knowledge and the translation of choreographic structures 
from dance, to data, to interactive visualizations.
Stelarc (Australia/UK)
Chair in Performance Art, School of Arts, Brunel University West 
London, UK and Senior Research Fellow and Visiting Artist in the 
MARCS Labs at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.  Stelarc 
is an Australian artist who has performed extensively in Japan, 
Europe and the USA with medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, 
Virtual Reality systems and the Internet to explore alternate, 
intimate and involuntary interfaces with the body.
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-- 
Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Cornell University