[ISEA2011] Panel: Tom Corby – Ex­e­cut­ing ecolo­gies: sys­tems, code, in­scrip­tion

Panel Statement

Panel: Re-rooting Digital Culture: Media Art Ecologies

Corby ex­plores over­lap­ping themes around en­vi­ron­ment, ecol­ogy and in­for­ma­tion. In doing so it at­tempts to sketch a the­o­ret­i­cal back­ground for an elec­tronic arts prac­tice con­cerned with re­spond­ing to cli­mate change. Such an un­der­tak­ing is fraught with dif­fi­cul­ties. It in­volves syn­the­sis­ing be­tween cul­tural, eco­log­i­cal and sci­en­tific view­points that often ap­pear at odds, and ne­go­ti­at­ing loaded con­cepts such as ‘na­ture’ and ‘en­vi­ron­ment’. Draw­ing on his own prac­tice and the writ­ing of Kather­ine Hayles, Gre­gory Bate­son and Ur­sula Heise amongst oth­ers Corby will ex­plore re­cur­sive re­la­tion­ship be­tween ma­te­r­ial and in­for­ma­tional do­mains and in doing so sign­post an ex­panded ecol­ogy of so­cial and tech­no­log­i­cal con­fig­u­ra­tions that can help frame dis­cus­sion of dig­i­tal prac­tice in this area.

  • Tom Corby is an artist and writer work­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of West­min­ster, UK. His art­works pro­duced with Gavin Baily and Jonathan Macken­zie, ex­plore tech­no­log­i­cal and eco­log­i­cal re­la­tions and have been ex­hib­ited at nu­mer­ous venues in­clud­ing the Zen­trum fur Kunst und Me­di­en­tech­nolo­gie (ZKM); In­sti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Arts, Lon­don; the In­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cen­tre (ICC), Tokyo and the Vic­to­ria and Al­bert Mu­seum. Awards in­clude at the 10th Japan Media Arts Fes­ti­val in 2007 and at Prix Ars Elec­tron­ica 2006 and 2000 amongst many oth­ers. Re­viewed in Art Re­view, Art Monthly, The Guardian, La Re­pub­blica and Artist’s Newslet­ter.