Panel Statement

Chair Per­son: Cyn­thia Law­son Jaramillo
Pre­sen­ters: Una Chung, Eric For­man, Har­ald Krae­mer & An­nette Wein­traub

Im­mersed in a con­stant stream of in­for­ma­tion, los­ing our abil­ity to mean­ing­fully read any­thing longer than a page, and con­nected through a so­cial net­work that in users rep­re­sents the 3rd largest coun­try in the world, what hap­pens to how we make, view, and par­tic­i­pate in elec­tronic arts?  If our tools are also those which our ac­cel­er­at­ing our lives, how are we able to still make mean­ing­ful art?  Do artists dis­con­nect from the ex­pec­ta­tions of 24/7 and re­treat in their “stu­dios”? This panel fo­cuses on the topic of slow­ing down and elec­tronic arts.  Is slow­ness a use­ful con­cept for artists work­ing with tech­nol­ogy to con­sider?  Are elec­tronic artists using the same tools to com­ment on this ac­cel­er­a­tion?  Have we lost our abil­ity to slow down in the view­ing and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of art?  Fur­ther­more, do elec­tronic artists feel a re­spon­si­bil­ity to com­ment on and demon­strate al­ter­na­tive tech­nolo­gies that may pro­mote slow­ness and con­sid­ered thought? A panel of both artists and aca­d­e­mics will ad­dress these ques­tions, fo­cus­ing on both the­ory and prac­tice, and al­ways grounded in ex­am­ples of elec­tronic art­work. They will speak about aes­thet­ics and pol­i­tics in elec­tronic arts, the “hand wav­ing” phe­nomen in in­ter­ac­tive art, the chal­lenges and suc­cesses of teach­ing de­cel­er­a­tion to stu­dents, and the speed at which in­ter­net art is forced to change, and there­fore be­com­ing ephemeral at a rapid rate. Though di­verse in their ap­proaches and foci, no­tions of slow­ness and du­ra­tion will be the com­mon threads for the pre­sen­ta­tions and the dis­cus­sion to fol­low.

• Cyn­thia Law­son Jaramillo is an artist, technologist and educator. She works primarily with digital media and on themes of time and transience. Her artwork has been internationally exhibited and performed, including at Giacobetti Paul Gallery, Exit Art and HERE Arts (NYC), UCLA Hammer Museum (LA), Point Éphémère (Paris) and the Museums of Modern Art in Bogotá and Medellín (Colombia). She recently self-published “Of and In Cities,” an academically framed art book about five of her photographic projects, and “Cross Urban,” which documents the first two years of an ongoing collaboration with Klaus Fruchtnis. Since 2007 she has been an active participant in the university-wide project DEED: Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design, which she now directs. Cynthia has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá) and a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications (ITP) from New York University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Integrated Design in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons The New School for Design and an active member of Madarts, an arts collective in Brooklyn, NY, USA.  cynthialawson.com/site