[-empyre-] Streaming lurkers ….

[© Robbins]

Hi all -

Yes, this is a testing as to those whose personalities  best respond to impending deadlines - many thanks, Renate!

I am a long time friend of empyre - a sometimes participant and, most unfortunately of late, a most appreciative lurker. 

By way of a bio it goes something like this - its difficult to compress its meandering spirit - a reflection of cross disciplinary approach to ones' path thru life - in essence, I've always been curious  ...

Many thanks for everything - you've all been a source of inspiration!

Warm best,

Chris



___________

Short Version:

Christiane Robbins is a respected director, media artist,  cultural producer and creative catalyst.  Prior to  co-founding Motion Enabled, M.E,  Robbins was a Professor and Director of the Matrix Program for Digital Media at the University of Southern California. She had been a faculty member at USC since 1998, and was the founding Executive Creative Producer and Programmer for the annual digital  cultural initiative AIM ( the Art in Motion ) exhibition/conference with MOCA, Los Angeles. She was also a contributing co-organizer of the bi-annual MIT/USC initiative "Race in Digital Space." with Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson and  Anna Everett (UCSB.)  She lead USC's prescient Digital Design Summit, 1999, including such visionary leaders such as Clement Mok/Sapient, Scott Ross/Digital Domain, Douglas Rushkoff/noted author, John Warnok/Adobe, and Richard Saul Wurman/TED.  During her academic career Professor Robbins simultaneously created a number of acclaimed and prescient digital media projects as well as having written and published original research articles.

She is a pioneer in Video, Digital Media and New Media, and Photography identifying relationships between data visualization, interactivity, spatial and locative-based practices and has more than 20 years of experience in developing image, narrative and social based practices as successful underpinnings for digital media ventures.  During the past ten years, her group has researched and developed techniques and devised innovative strategies for cross media production that led to the founding of M.E Inc. Professor Robbins's projects have been awarded major research grants from agencies such as the NEA, NEH, CAC, the Rockefeller and Andy Warhol Foundation, and others. She has also served on external juries and review committees for numerous film festivals and granting agencies.  Professor Robbins obtained her MFA from the School of Film and Video at the California Institute of the Arts and is one of their notable alumni.  She was engaged with two research fellowships at Stanford University for her cross media projects Blue_Screen Moto and I-5_Passing. 

____________________________________


Another Long Version bio which may easily be way TMI - but just in case any one might be interested  - :

Christiane Robbins is an American filmmaker, media artist, designer, curator/programmer, professor who studied at, and is a notable alumni of, the California Institute of the Arts, and the University of Wisconsin. She was born in New Jersey (1959), a genetic embodiment of  18th/19th/20th c migratory patterns to the east coast of the USA ( a distant descendant of the Lenape people (Munsee) tribe, as well as English, Irish, Austrian and Italian,) She was raised by a "Madman" (+ affiliated family members) who was associated with advertising firms such as BBD&O. She married during University where she majored in 20th C Art History and Photography, then migrated West and now lives and works in California.

Her practice has proved prescient in its pursuit of unifying trans-disciplinary research, aesthetic principles, social, and environmental analysis. It has been generative of incisive, bold, and innovative models that have contributed to a pioneering, collective conceptualization of hybrid 20c/21c media and art practices. Her work been widely recognized, screened and exhibited within both the private and public global realms, as well as in venues on the margins of conventional discursive systems. She emerged in the late 20thc/early 21stc as a respected figure in video art and new media practices, selected for inclusion in Moving the Moving Image at the Walker Art Center in 2008 .  Her works in found numerous international private and public collections.

__________________Project Descriptions____________________________

Media and Trans-Disciplinary Works include:


Area CA – The Promise of Utopia, 2012-15; ( working Title)  trans disciplinary media project, participatory documentary, .

______

Edendale, 2009- , a media project ( series)  created and produced for cable and webcasting.  Co-written with Andrew Avery ( writer for the HBO series Deadwood. ) 

______

The Bauhaus Ranch - No place like (e)utopia, This cross disciplinary project depicts the low-cost housing designed by architect, Gregory Ain during the 1930s -1950s in Los Angeles as an innovative, progressive and little known model of the modern American residence. From the single-family residence to cooperative housing, these community environments were intended as sites of interaction for not only members of individual families but as collective spaces of shared resources and well-being. With the advent of the Cold War, the 1950s notions of “progressive architecture” and “collective living” were largely discredited. While documenting their continued relevance as a model of affordable housing and development, this project offers an analysis of the surprisingly adept manner in which these relatively small, yet well-designed, and highly desirable houses remain relevant to the lifestyles of its various contemporary occupants. As a result of this work, I have conducted interviews with the late Julius Shulman, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, David Byrne, Thomas Hines, Dion Neutra, Wolf Prix, and Aaron Betsky amongst others. Future interviews include, Sylvia Lavin, Dana Cuff, Beatriz Colomina, Susan Morgan, Kazys Varnelis and Barry Bergdoll.
Early incarnations of this project were invited to the 2012 Gwangju Bienniel ( curated by AiWeiWei ) and the AIA Film in the City Festival.  The link is: http://vimeo.com/9360357.  Please feel free to contact me for the password.
______

1-5_Passing Project ( 52 Food Marts ), 2001- is a journey ... a journey of aesthetic inquiry across disciplines, across cultural discourses, across personal narratives, across regional perspectives and across the mythos of California itself. I-5_Passing combines the seduction of the road trip, documentary, fictional and remediated cinematic images/narratives, with a recombinant use of data, locative, surveillance and distributed media and technologies. I-5 presents us with an imaged, telematic and nomadic experience.  Initially exhibited in the Edge Conditions Exhibition curated by Steve Deitz at the San Jose Museum of Art and Technospheres at the Beall Center for Technology and is scheduled to be published in a forthcoming issue of Leonardo.
There have been many legacies invoked in the creation of I-5_Passing ranging from Ed Ruscha to Mike Davis to Reyner Banham. 52 Food Marts ( both the proprietary software and the digital images series ) invoke Ed Ruscha’s seminal series, 26 Gasoline Stations (1967.)We had mapped the route along the I-5 with a series of photographs documenting the “Food Marts” along the way, creating an alternative portrait of the highway –" 52 Food Marts." This title, which riffs and doubles back on Ruscha’s 26 Gas Stations, addresses the deteriorating 20thc myth of the great American road trip .... which has now been supplanted by the quotidian nature of the round trip, contemporary commute /commuter. 

______
__________________

Architecture + Design Projects include:

Twilight, 2011-13:  This project examines the relational aspects between economic shifts, the putative rise of post-industrial society, contemporary architectural/design practices, the work-place and notions of mobility. This research delves into a symbiotic analysis of the renewed global interest in the locative nature of non-place, mobile, social and technological networks, collaboration and relational aesthetics.  A re-conceptualization and re-framing is being realized – one that deviates from a singular trajectory of bricks and mortar to one that is substantively more varied and nuanced. It comprises a challenge to the prevailing depictions of 21stc (urban/(sub)urban/x-urban) life and redefines notions of space, psycho-geographies, locative technologies, mobilities, and “citiness” itself.  Collaborator: Professor Katherine Lambert, AIA;  Published in AIA Forward Journal as well as others.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20130629/681c0847/attachment.htm>