[ISEA2011] Panel: Re­nate Ferro & Tim­o­thy Mur­ray – Un­cer­tain Aes­thet­ics: Net­works in the Age of Emerg­ing Tech­nol­ogy

Panel Statement

Panel: Unsitely Aesthetics: the Reconfiguring of Public Space in Electronic Art

We un­der­stand Un­cer­tain Aes­thet­ics to be a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in the per­for­ma­tive spaces be­tween con­tem­po­rary con­cep­tions of net­works. The surge of dig­i­tal ac­cu­mu­la­tion, the con­tin­ual sur­prise of in­for­ma­tional tex­ture and the lay­ers of ex­pres­sive mul­ti­plic­ity are what lend net­works their cre­ative power – as net­works in­ter­face both real and vir­tual spaces. We are at­tracted in our cu­ra­to­r­ial and artis­tic work to pro­jects that cap­i­tal­ize on the ex­pan­sive­ness of the dig­i­tal and that con­front the user with the re­al­i­ties of undis­ci­plined knowl­edge. Undis­ci­plined, that is, as we em­brace it from within the legacy of in­ter­ac­tiv­ity, a prac­tice that both so­lic­its the user to re­spond to a set of pre­de­ter­mined choices and gives it­self over to the users’ mo­men­tary stages, cre­at­ing works whose al­go­rithms leave them in­com­plete.

  • Re­nate Ferro is a media artist work­ing in emerg­ing tech­nol­ogy and cul­ture. Her artis­tic prac­tice re­flects crit­i­cal in­ter­ac­tiv­ity in­cor­po­rat­ing so­cial and the­o­ret­i­cal par­a­digms of the psy­cho­log­i­cal and so­ci­o­log­i­cal con­di­tion with net­works of tech­nol­ogy. Most re­cently her work has been fea­tured at The Dorksy Gallery (NY, US), The Hemi­spheric In­sti­tute and FOMMA (Mex­ico), and The Janus Pan­no­n­ius Muzeum (Hun­gary). Her work has been pub­lished in such jour­nals as Di­a­crit­ics, The­atre Jour­nal, and Epoch. She is a co-mod­er­a­tor for the on­line new media list serve -EMPYRE-soft-skinned space  and the art/imag­ing ed­i­tor of the jour­nal DI­A­CRIT­ICS pub­lished by the Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity Press. Re­nate Ferro is a Vis­it­ing As­sis­tant Pro­fes­sor in the De­part­ment of Art at Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity teach­ing dig­i­tal media and the­ory. She also di­rects the Tin­ker Fac­tory, a cre­ative re­search lab for Re­search De­sign, Cre­ativ­ity and In­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary Tech­nol­ogy. renateferro.net subtle.net/empyre goldsen.library.cornell.edu muse.jhu.edu/journals/diacritics tinkerfactory.net
  • Tim­o­thy Mur­ray is Di­rec­tor of the So­ci­ety for the Hu­man­i­ties, Pro­fes­sor of Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture and Eng­lish, and Cu­ra­tor of the Rose Gold­sen Archive of New Media Art, at Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity, US. He is co-mod­er­a­tor of the -empyre—soft-skinned space, new media list­serv and the au­thor of Dig­i­tal Baroque: New Media Art and Cin­e­matic Folds (Min­nesota 2008); Zonas de Con­tacto: el arte en CD-ROM (Cen­tro de la im­a­gen, 1999); 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); The­atri­cal Le­git­i­ma­tion: Al­le­gories of Ge­nius in XVI­Ith-Cen­tury Eng­land and France (Ox­ford, 1987). He is ed­i­tor of Mime­sis, Masochism & Mime: The Pol­i­tics of The­atri­cal­ity in Con­tem­po­rary French Thought (Michi­gan, 1997) and, with Alan Smith, Re­pos­ses­sions: Psy­cho­analy­sis and the Phan­tasms of Early-Mod­ern Cul­ture (Min­nesota, 1997). His cu­ra­to­r­ial pro­jects in­clude CTHE­ORY MUL­TI­ME­DIA  and Con­tact Zones: The Art of the CD-Rom. ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu contactzones.cit.cornell.edu

Full text (PDF) p. 813-816