[-empyre-] Critical Making in International Networks: Week 1 Guests

[Timothy Conway Murray]

We are delighted to welcome to -empyre- the guests for the opening week of
April's discussion of Critical Making in International Networks.  Our
guests are leading international figures in networked media, performance,
and open hardware.  We are especially happy to welcome Marcus Bastos back
to -empyre-; longtime participants of -empyre- recall Marcus' tremendous
contributions to the listserv during his many years on the moderating
team. Denisa Kera from Singapore will be posting occasionally throughout
the month on the maker and hacker scenes in Shenzhen, China, Singapore,
and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. So keep your eyes peeled for her posts.  We're
also thankful that Diana Taylor is making time to join us.  A few years
ago, we were graciously hosted in Chiapas, Mexico, by Diana at the
Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, which Diana founded and
directs.  We look forward to benefiting from her vast experience in
critical making.  And to set the stage of this month's exciting
collaboration between -empyre- and HASTAC, we're joined by Kevin Franklin
and Daniel Herwitz of the HASTAC Executive Board.  Daniel hosted the 2012
annual meeting of HASTAC at the University of Michigan and Kevin has gone
an extra mile to organize this year's HASTAC meeting in Peru.

Welcome to you all; we're so looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Bios:

Marcus Bastos (Brazil), a former member of the -empyre- moderating team,
is an artist, curator and researcher on the areas of convergence between
audiovisual, design and new media. PhD in Communication and Semiotics at
the Pontificial Catholic University of São Paulo, he is author of
Recycling Culture (NOEMA Gallery, 2007) and one of the editors of
Appopriations of the (Un)common: public and private space in times of
mobility (Sergio Motta Institute, 2009). He edited, with Lucas Bambozzi
and Rodrigo Minelli, the book Mediation, Technology, Public Space ­ A
Critical Panorama of Art in Mobile Media (Conrad, 2010). He was curator of
Noise on Video (Itaú Cultural Institute, 2005), Cellular Geographies
(Telefonica Foundation, 2010), installation ­> video (SESC TV / SESC Arts
Show) and VIVO Arte.Mov ­ International Festival of Art in Mobile
Media,(2007-2011). Among his most recent projects are the multimedia opera
HO: city lights (ProAC, 2012), the audiovisual composition she, lonely,
thinks of that (SESC Arts Circuit, 2010) and Operation´s Field (video
essay on the homonymous DVD by Nelson Brissac, JoséResende and Heloísa
Maringoni, 2012). He was director of experimental documentaries such as
Giuseppe, etc (2011), Free Radicals (2006) and Shapeless Interface (2006).

Kevin Franklin (US) is Executive Director for the Institute for Computing
in Humanities, Arts and Social Science (I-CHASS); Senior Research
Scientist at the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA); Research Professor
Education Policy, Organization and Leadership and Adjunct Associate
Professor
in African American Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He
is a principal co-founder of the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology
Alliance
and Collaboratory (HASTAC) and founder of the HASSgrid, a distributed
Cyberinfrastructure to support humanities, arts and social sciences data
preservation and archives. Dr. Franklin is on the Advisory Boards for the
Centre for Innovation in Information Visualization and Data-Driven Design
(CIVDDD) and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment
(XSEDE). In addition to his United States HASS Cyberinfrastructure work,
Kevin leads a number of international research activities including the
Organization of American States - Advanced Research and Technology
Collaboratory for the Americas (OAS-ARTCA).
In 2010 HPCwire named him one of the top 12 people to watch in
Supercomputing. 

Daniel Herwitz (US) received the Ph.D. In Philosophy from University of
Chicago in 1984, and has been teaching at the University of Michigan since
2002. A member of the HASTAC Executive Board and former Director of the
Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan, Daniel is the author
of The Star as Icon, Key Concepts in Aesthetics, Race and Reconciliation,
Making Theory/Constructing Art: On the Authority of the Avant-Garde, and
Husain. He has also published Midnight¹s Diaspora: Critical Encounters
with Salman Rushdie, a book of essays co-edited with Ashutosh
VarshneyAction, Art, History: Critical Engagements with Arthur
Danto edited with Michael Kelly, and The Don Giovanni Moment edited with
Lydia Goehr. Additional publications include articles on a wide range of
topics in philosophy, film studies, visual studies, avant-garde music,
literature and architecture. Herwitz won a National Book Award in India
for Husain. He was Mellon Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center
(1991-2) also courtesy of the ACLS, and Andrew Mellon Visitor Scholar at
the University of Cape Town (2010). His forthcoming book, Heritage,
Culture and Politics in the Postcolony explores the role of heritage
formation in South Africa, India and the United States, treating that
particular rewriting of the past as a window into moral, artistic, social
and political urgencies (Columbia Press).

Denisa Kera (Singapore) http://nus.academia.edu/DenisaKera is a
philosopher and a designer, who uses prototypes to research open science
and citizen science issues. She writes on how open hardware supports
democratization of science, science diplomacy and infrastructure enabling
research in the Global South. In her recent projects, she is trying to
connect traditional crafts with open hardware and build radiation chimes
in the http://www.totematons.orgproject, design microfludic devices for
Indonesian wayang theatre, or explore the possibility of citizen science
driven open antibiotic research connecting bioprospecting with games
http://brmlab.cz/project/biolab/biostrike. She works as an Assistant
Professor at the National University of Singapore and Asia Research
Institute fellow, where she is bringing together Science Technology
Society (STS) studies, Science Communication and Interactive Media Design.
She uses design methodologies and prototypes based on open hardware as
tools for deliberation and public participation in R&D probing
experimental policy. Since 2010 she is following and engaging with
alternative R&D places (Hackerspaces, FabLabs) around the world, and
especially with the DIYbio movement and various citizen science projects,
which offer a model for
experimental approach to policy. She has extensive experience as a curator
of exhibitions and projects related to art, technology and science (2005 -
2008),
and previous career in internet start-ups and journalism (1998 - 2004).
This month she will be posting from the Dangerous prototypes workshop in
Shenzhen 
http://dangerousprototypes.com/2014/02/06/shenzhen-workshop-april-3-5-2014/
, the biggest Maker Fair in Shenzhen http://www.shenzhenmakerfaire.com
<http://www.shenzhenmakerfaire.com/> and HackteriaLab network for
openbiology symposium and workshop on open science of the Global south
http://www.hackteria.org/wiki/index.php/HackteriaLab_2014_-_Yogyakarta.
Denisa joins us for a conversation on open hardware, global and local
hacking, tinkering,
making, its genealogy, future and other perspectivesŠ.

Diana Taylor (US) is founding director of the Hemispheric Institute of
Performance and Politics, funded by the Ford, Mellon, Rockefeller,
Rockefeller Brothers and Henry Luce Foundations, and University Professor
and Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish at NYU. She is the author
of the award-winning Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin
America, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in
Argentina's 'Dirty War',
The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the
Americas, which won the Outstanding Book from the Association of
Theatre in Higher Education, and the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for
Best Book in Latin American and Hispanic Studies from the Modern Language
Association. She has also authored several books in Spanish, including
PERFORMANCE, in Editorial ASUNTOS IMPRESOS, (forthcoming in
English with Duke U.P.), and Acciones de memoria: Performance, historia, y
trauma. Peru: 2012. She has edited over a dozen print books and three
digital
Books.