[-empyre-] Tim Murray

[Timothy Conway Murray]

Hi, everyone,

We're looking forward to moving forwared into the second decade of -empyre= by learning more about the individual activities and profiles of our -empyreans- throughout the month of June.  Please join us in positng a brief bio and statement about your current projects.  From these postings, which are permanently recorded in the -empyre- archive, we hope to glean ideas for future discussion projects and participants. So thanks for taking a moment to say something about your current activities.

As Renate mentioned, we joined the -empyre- moderating team in 2007 and began managing -empyre- out of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell University a couple of years later (I seem to have lost count).  I am  Founding Curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art (http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu) and Director of the Society for the Humanities (www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum), while also a Professor of Comparative Literature and English at Cornell University.  I tend to split my time between curating and writing on the screen and new media arts, activating internationally for innovative pedagogical programs in the humanities and arts, and running the daily operations of the Goldsen Archive and the Society for the Humanities.  In the latter roles, I am very pleased to be involved in the international efforts of the Executive Committee of the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) (http://hastac.org) and the International Advisory Board of the Consortium of the Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) from where we raise foundation funding for innovative programming in the humanities and computing (such as the HASTAC Digital Media Learning Competition), interdisciplinary programming in the humanities, and collaborative approaches to the arts and humanities.

I am currently finishing up two book projects, one on contemporary art in China and another on digital art and archives, as well as editing very different projects on the Chinese multimedia artist, Xu Bing, and the French philosopher, Jean-Luc Nancy.  As you can see, my attention swings between the arts and philosophy.  In terms of the Goldsen Archive, while I continue to build the collection in collaboration with numerous international collaborators, I'm also heading a grant to investigate innovative means of accessing and preserving dated digital platforms and artworks, such as CD-Roms and internet art (we have an exciting collaborative project with Turbulence.org in the area of net.art).  While the scale of this work recently has been keeping me from launching large scale exhibitions, you can access a couple of my previous projects at: CTHEORY Multimedia (http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu) and Contact Zones: The Art of CD-Rom (https://contactzones.cit.cornell.edu).  

For those of you in more in a reading mood, I point you to some of my prior books:  Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds (Minnesota 2008); Zonas de Contacto: el arte en CD-ROM (Centro de la imagen, 1999); Mimesis, Masochism & Mime: The Politics of Theatricality in Contemporary French Thought (Michigan, 1997); Drama Trauma: Specters of Race and Sexuality in Performance, Video, Art (Routledge, 1997); Like a Film: Ideological Fantasy on Screen, Camera, and Canvas (Routledge, 1993).

I'm very much looking forward to hearing more about the projects of our broad cross-disciplinary subscribers of -empyre-.

Best,

Tim Murray