Panel Statement

Panel: Site Specifics: Mobile Media Art and the Contexts of Place

Each of my works re­quire ex­ten­sive in­ter­ac­tion with sites through the sim­ple act of walk­ing. Both in pro­duc­tion and re­cep­tion, my work emerges through a process that I have come to think of as a form of “kines­thetic at­tune­ment.” Walk­ing is the ground from which my work evolves as a form of ex­pe­ri­en­tial knowl­edge. It is also the basis upon which I seek to chal­lenge and cri­tique ab­stract mod­els of spa­tial rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the the­o­ret­i­cal foun­da­tions of tech­nolo­gies as­so­ci­ated with loca­tive media. Draw­ing upon the phi­los­o­phy of em­bod­i­ment as well as an­thro­po­log­i­cal meth­ods and ethno­graphic prac­tices em­ployed in cur­rent pro­jects, I will dis­cuss in­sights from my over fif­teen years ex­pe­ri­ence mak­ing site-spe­cific sound and media in­stal­la­tions using GPS and other lo­ca­tion-sens­ing tech­nolo­gies.

• Teri Rueb works at the in­ter­sec­tion of in­ter­ac­tive media, sound, land, and en­vi­ron­men­tal art. She pi­o­neered the form of GPS-based in­ter­ac­tive in­stal­la­tion with her pro­ject “Trace,” which was de­vel­oped at the Banff Cen­tre for the arts from 1996-1999. She is the re­cip­i­ent of nu­mer­ous awards in­clud­ing a Prix Ars Elec­tron­ica Award of Dis­tinc­tion in 2008 for her pro­ject “Core Sam­ple” set on a land­fill in the Boston Har­bor. Her site-spe­cific works have been pre­sented in con­texts as var­ied as the Wad­den Sea (The Netherlands), the Heath­land and the Old­en­burg Botan­i­cal Gar­den in North­ern Ger­many, the Boston Com­mon and Pub­lic Gar­dens, the Viru Keskus shop­ping mall in post-So­viet Tallinn, Es­to­nia, the Berlin Tier­garten, and high­way sys­tems across the United States. She re­cently com­pleted her doc­tor­ate at the Har­vard Uni­ver­sity Grad­u­ate School of De­sign where her re­search fo­cused on con­struc­tions of wilder­ness and sub­jec­tiv­ity in mo­bile net­work so­ci­ety. Her work has been funded by the Banff Cen­ter for the Arts, Edith Russ Site, Klang­pol, LEF Foun­da­tion, Turbulence.org, and Art­slink and many state arts coun­cils. From 2004-2009 she served as found­ing fac­ulty and was later ap­pointed De­part­ment Head of the grad­u­ate Dig­i­tal + Media De­part­ment at the Rhode Is­land School of De­sign. Rueb is cur­rently Pro­fes­sor in the Media Study De­part­ment at the Uni­ver­sity at Buf­falo (SUNY) where she is Founder and Di­rec­tor of Open Air In­sti­tute, a plat­form for con­nect­ing field-based learn­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ships at the in­ter­sec­tion of land­scape, tech­nol­ogy, media art and de­sign.