[-empyre-] networked_art

Anna Munster a.munster at unsw.edu.au
Fri Oct 2 18:37:38 EST 2009


Thanks for that insight into your own motivations Helen, I look forward to also hearing from Jo about where she was coming from in terms of initiating the project.
But I wanted to pick up on a couple of things in your post:

You said:
<But, as Mizuko Ito says in her excellent introduction to “Networked Publics”, the problem, for those of us struggling to understand the transformations taking place, is that they -- the transformations -- are impossible to understand at the time they take place.>

and then:

< the need for “other” histories. The ones familiar to us were written yesterday....Today there are more media theorists; they understand more; we need their perspectives; we need new histories, multiple interpretations. And we need them – not a year from now when today’s views might appear in hard cover already well worn, but online, where every interested person can see and respond to them today.> 

This is very interesting because it suggests that networked scholarly or perhaps theoretical writing about contemporary media and media arts has the potential to perform a transformative role in media history *canons*. You also referred later in your post to Stein's idea about the shifting role of the 'prof' from traditional transmitter of knowledge to a facilitator - almost like a networked platform itself, which disperses, aggregates, queries and distributes ideas. 

In keeping with some of those ideas, would you think of a project like Networked as a new kind of *text_book*, one which doesn't distill, summarise and codify the cannon but rather one aimed at generating a critical thinking with (rather than about) networks?

best
Anna










A/Prof. Anna Munster
Director of Postgraduate Research (Acting)
Deputy Director Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics
School of Art History and Art Education
College of Fine Arts
UNSW
P.O. Box 259
Paddington
NSW 2021
612 9385 0741 (tel)
612 9385 0615(fax)
a.munster at unsw.edu.au
________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Renate Ferro [rtf9 at cornell.edu]
Sent: Thursday, 1 October 2009 4:04 AM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] Thanks to Menotti/Welcoming Anna Munster on _empyre

Dear _empyre subscribers,

We join in thanking Gabriel Menotti for guest moderating this past month's
discussion of "Denied Distances." We appreciate his generous offer to
moderate this past month's discussion and enjoyed the varied posts that
related.
We will be turning  the month October over to Anna Munster who will be
moderating a conversation, "Networked_Art." Based on a collaborative
Turbulence project, Anna will be
introducing her roster of guests who will join our over 1250 subscribers to
discuss the convergence between networked aesthetics and texts.  While Anna
will be introducing the guests for the month and posting the first
discussion post, I will take this opportunity to introduce Anna's biography.
We thank her for taking over from Gabriel. Anna is from Australia where it
is already October 1st so we will say good=bye to Gabriel for now and
welcome Anna to _empyre soft-skinned space.

Biography
Anna Munster is a writer, artist and educator in the area of new media
arts and theory. In 2006 she published the book Materializing New Media:
Embodiment in Information Aesthetics (Dartmouth College Press) and writes
for the journals CTheory, Fibreculture, Culture Machine among others on
networked culture and art, biomedia and bioart and contemporary art and
politics. She helped to found the journal Fibreculture and is actively
involved in online list cultures and their on and offline projects and
events. She works collaboratively with Michele Barker in the area of
immersive and multi-channel audio-visual installation, exploring the
relations between visuality, perception and neuroscience. Munster works as
an associate professor at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South
Wales, Sydney Australia. Her current research investigates dynamic media,
particularly the relations between the technical aspects of networks and
network visualisations on the one hand, and emergent forms of cultural and
aesthetic experience on the other.
Renate Ferro
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Art
Cornell University, Tjaden Hall
Ithaca, NY  14853

Email:   <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
Website:  http://www.renateferro.net


Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre

Art Editor, diacritics
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/



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