[-empyre-] Welcome to our final week of discussion on -empyre

[Renate Terese Ferro]

I apologize for this late introduction and I am hoping that you all read
Tim¹s message that our -empyre soft-skinned space has been under
construction by our host site.  Please make a note that the email address
to use for any empyre post is ³-empyre- soft-skinned space²
<empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>

Many thanks to 
Ricardo Dominguez , Richard Grusin, and Rahul Mukherjee  for being our
special guests for Week 2 of ³Social Media/Social Justice.²  We appreciate
your open discussion and generosity especially at this very busy time of
the year. We will be hosting our discussion for about one week more and
then closing down until February 1st.  Shortly before the 1st we will be
introducing our February topic.

This week we would like to welcome five guests:  Claudia Pederson, Omar
Figueredo, Cherian George, Nick Knouf,
and Patrick Lichty.  We look forward to hearing from  each of them this
week.  Biographies are below.
 
Renate Ferro

Claudia Pederson¹s research interests
focus on the theories, histories and practices spanning art, technology,
and
social agency. Her writings on play, games, digital photography, and
techno-ecological art are published in Afterimage, Intelligent Agent,
Eludamos, as well as the ISEA, DAC, and CHI conference proceedings. Her
most recent essays on contemporary Latin American artists working with
robotics, interactive textiles and consumer electronics are forthcoming in
an
anthology on Latin American Modernism, Review: Literature and Arts of the
Americas, and Journal of Peer Production. Other recent curatorial
work includes Gün, with Turkish women working in the intersections of
media and feminism, Home/s, a curatorial event with Turkish, Greek, and
Bulgarian women at the Benaki museum, Athens, Greece, and Viral Dissonance,
an online exhibition for FLEFF 2014. Pederson holds a PhD from the History
of
Art and Visual Studies Department at Cornell University and is currently an
Assistant Professor at the department of Art, Design and Creative
Industries at
Wichita State University.

 
Omar Figueredo is current a PhD candidate in Hispanic
Literature at Cornell University. His dissertation "Tender Struggles:
Affect and Emotions in the Writings of Helena María Viramontes, H.G.
Carrillo,
and Manuel Muñoz" theorizes the ways in which these three contemporary
Latina/o writers model and engage in a struggle with and for vulnerability
through their writing. His writing engages with Latina/o studies, feminist
theory, and cultural studies in order to theorize multiple modes of
relation
and knowing. In March 2013, Omar and his partner Nancy Morales were
arrested by
police in Brownsville, Texas after they engaged in an act of civil
resistance
against the U.S. Border Patrol at the local airport. Their action and
arrest
were broadcast via Livestream to witnesses across the country who
immediately
mobilized to call the airport and the local jail to demand their release.
 
Cherian George (HK) is a journalism researcher,
practitioner, educator and advocate who writes on media freedom issues,
especially in Asia. Originally from Singapore, he now resides in Hong Kong,
where is an associate professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University. His
PhD
research at Stanford University looked at the use of the internet to
democratise journalism in Malaysia in Singapore. He is currently writing a
book
about religious offence/offendedness and censorship. He blogs at
www.mediaasia.info <http://www.mediaasia.info/>
and can also be found at www.cheriageorge.net
<http://www.cheriageorge.net/>.

 
Nicholas Knouf (US) is an Assistant
Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Wellesley College in Wellesley,
MA.
His research explores the interstitial spaces between information science,
critical theory, digital art, and science and technology studies.
Ongoing work includes the Journal of Journal Performance Studies
<http://turbulence.org/Works/JJPS/>, a series of three interrelated works
on academic
publishing; MAICgregator <http://maicgregator.org/>, a Firefox extension
that aggregates information about
the military-academic-industrial complex (MAIC); Fluid Nexus
<http://fluidnexus.net/>, a mobile phone
messaging application designed for activists and relief workers that
operates
independent of a centralized network; robotic puppetry projects that engage
with psycho-socio-political imaginaries; and sound works that encourage the
expression of the unspeakable.
Past and current work has been
recognized by a number awards, including an Honorary Mention
by Prix Ars Electronica in [the next idea] category (2005)
<http://90.146.8.18/en/archives/prix_archive/prixjuryStatement.asp?iProject
ID=13217>, the Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) for his master's
thesis (2008), a memefest Award of
Distinction (2008) 
<http://www.memefest.org/2008/en/index.php?meme=news&submeme=memefest_2008_
winners>, and a special transmediale
³Online Highlight" (2009)
<http://www.transmediale.de/en/online-highlights-selected-web-and-net-commu
nity-p>. Additionally, his work has been discussed in print and online
media, including ID Magazine,
the Boston Globe, CNN, Slashdot, and Afterimage.

 
Patrick LIchty (US) is a media ³reality² artist,
curator, and theorist of over two decades who explores how media and
mediation
affect our perception of reality. He is best known for his work as an
Artistic
Director of the virtual reality performance art group Second Front, and the
animator of the activist group, The Yes Men. He is a CalArts/Herb Alpert
Fellow
and Whitney Biennial exhibitor as part of the collective RTMark. He has
presented and exhibited internationally at numerous biennials and
triennials
(Yokohama, Venice, Performa, Maribor, Turin, Sundance), and conferences
(ISEA,
SIGGRAPH, Popular Culture Association, SLSA, SxSW). He is also
Editor-in-Chief
of Intelligent Agent Magazine, and a writer for the RealityAugmented blog.
His
recent book, ³Variant Analyses: Interrogations of New Media Culture² was
released by the Institute for Networked Culture, and is included in the
Oxford
Handbook of Virtuality. He is a Lecturer of Digital Studio Practice at the
Peck
School of the Arts in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
 
 
 


Renate Ferro
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,Cornell University
Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
Ithaca, NY  14853
Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <mailto:rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
URL:  http://www.renateferro.net <http://www.renateferro.net/>
      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
<http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net/>
Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net <http://www.tinkerfactory.net/>

Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/







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