[-empyre-] Thank you Margaret Rhee

[Renate Terese Ferro]

<snip>
From Mark Marino
These machine dreams, not quite nightmares, but haunting impressions.

It is not a raceless, egalitarian utopia.  Nor is it a Platonic ideal on
some frictionless, unblemished grid.

It is broken, glitchy, it is pimpled, it is lossy, it is partial.

<snip>

A huge thank you to Margaret Rhee for organizing, hosting and moderating the May topic Robot Poetics, Ephemera, and Other Concerns. We as an -empyre- community were thrilled that Margaret agreed to host a month inspired by her book of poetry RADIO HEART; OR, HOW ROBOTS FALL OUT OF LOVE and her zine MACHINE DREAMS.  It’s been a rich month with thanks to all of you who participated: Sun Yung, Ana, Margaretha, Keith, Saa, Chatter, Sunny, Susan, Murat, Sean, Sarah, Mark, Betsey, Tung Hui, Davin, Babak, Christopher, Lynne, Ben, Ann, Lawrence, William, Dimitry, Ruth, Neil and especially Margaret (hoping I did not forget anyone!).  So many of you were new contributors to -empyre- and we hope you will continue to stay involved.  

Last night I caught a bit of television and saw this commercial on TV sponsored by Hewlett Packard:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT2eRiAFjrg

The advertisement is one in a series of advertisements featuring the character Michael a hybrid robot/employee who symbolizes YES technology a hybrid platform. Thanks Margaret and all for providing the critical lens for thinking about affect and robotics, dreams and technology, writing and popular culture.  I pulled out Mark Marino’s post from a post he made on May 27th that catalyzes that lens. 

I’d like to remind all of our -empyre subscribers that The Machine Dreams Zine is up and running at: https://machinedreamszine.tumblr.com.
The zine is a compilation of creative work and critical theory on the machine, arts, and difference. Contributions are largely drawn from the conference, Machine Dreams: A Symposium on Arts, Robots, and Difference held at UCLA in 2015 which was co-organized by Lucy Burns, Neil Aitken, and Margaret Rhee.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Margaret with hopes that she will consider again guiding us through her work and interests again soon.  
Renate Ferro




Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Ar
Tjaden Hall 306
rferro at cornell.edu