Dear List,

September Theme of the Month: Categories and Taxonomies of Media Art

This year, the Transmediale Award Competition 
<http://www.transmediale.de> has decided to abolish its three 
categories of "Image, Interaction, Software", and is instead offering 
an open list of keywords which artists can choose from. The Prix Ars 
Electronica <http://prixars.aec.at/> currently uses the categories of: 
Digital Communities; Computeranimation/Visual Effects; Digital Musics; 
Interactive Art; Net Vision.  In another part of the forest, the 
Faculty of Taxonomy <http://twenteenthcentury.com/uo/> is gathering 
imaginative taxonomies of all kinds.

This seems a good time to revisit the naming and taxonomy debate which 
this list last tackled in a theme in May 2001.

Transmediale consider that, "It is impossible to define either the 
'core' or the 'borders' of what constitutes electronic or digital media 
art," and hopes that a new topology of current media art practice might 
emerge from the keywords which artists use to describe their works. 
What categories, taxonomies or vocabularies are currently most useful 
for what artists are doing with electronic and digital media?


Invited Respondents:

Saul Albert: Writes, codes, makes art and organises things with The 
People Speak
(http://theps.net),  and the University of Openess 
(http://uo.theps.net) including the Faculty of Taxonomy 
(http://uo.theps.net/FacultyTaxonomy).

Andreas Broeckmann: an art historian, media art curator, networker and 
writer, working as the Artistic Director of transmediale - 
international media art festival in Berlin since 2001. 
www.transmediale.de.

Geoff Cox: Geoff Cox is an occasional artist and curator, as well as a 
lecturer in
Computing at I-DAT, the University of Plymouth, UK. 
http://www.anti-thesis.net/

Gerhard Dirmoser: is working on mapping the database of the Ars 
Electronica archive.

Charlie Gere: is Lecturer in Digital Art History at Birkbeck College, 
and author of Digital Culture (Reaktion Books, 2002).

Susanne Jaschko: Dr Susanne Jaschko is a Berlin based independent 
curator and researcher in media art. Her work mainly focuses on 
interactive art and the digital moving image.

Anne Laforet: is a researcher at the Faculty Taxonomy (University of 
Openess).
http://twenteenthcentury.com/uo/index.php/FacultyTaxonomy

Gunalan Nadarajan is Dean of the Office of Research and Creative 
Industries at LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts, Singapore. 

Antoine Schmitt: International award-winning artist-programmer Antoine 
Schmitt is also active as a curator, theorician and editor of 
gratin.org, portal of programmed art.

Yukiko Shikata: Yukiko Shikata is an independent "mediator" based in 
Tokyo, seeking the new possibilities in media art by curating and 
researching old and new media.

Gloria Sutton: Researcher in Art History at UCLA focusing on the 
intersection of conceptual art and new media. She is also a research 
associate for the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles' exhibition, 
Ecstasy: recent experiments in altered perception to open in fall 2005.

Atau Tanaka: Atau Tanaka  bridges Japan/Europe, art/research, 
music/media art. Bioelectric musician with Sensorband, now with S.S.S. 
Mobile music as researcher at Sony CSL Paris. http://www.xmira.com/atau 
  http://www.csl.sony.fr/atau

Alena Williams: is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History 
and Archaeology at Columbia University; her research focuses on the 
history of technology and its relationship to modernism. In 2001–2003, 
she was the coordinator of the Rhizome ArtBase, an online archive of 
new media art.


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Beryl Graham, Senior Research Fellow, New Media Art
School of Arts, Design, Media and Culture, University of Sunderland
Tel: +44 191 515 2896    [log in to unmask]

CRUMB web resource for new media art curators
http://www.crumbweb.org