New Media Caucus Panels and Events at the CAA Conference, Chicago, 2010
[Source: NMC Media-N, June 17, 2010]
From PhD’s to the Poles to Live Cinema – at this year’s CAA
conference the New Media Caucus excelled
itself once again in representing both the diversity and depth of new
media research and practice.
Events occurred throughout
the week of the Conference at various Chicago locations, beginning
with an “NMC Artist Colloquium Meet & Greet” at
the Illinois State Museum, which featured presentations by New Media
Caucus artists and Chicago's OpenNode members. This
was followed by a “Live Cinema Summit”, showcasing ten national and
international artists/artist collectives
working in the emerging field of real-time audio-visual performance.
Alessandro Imperato provides a critique of the event
in his review, “Live Cinema Summit: A Review of Real-Time Audio-Visual
Performance” (see Reviews and Commentary
section.) After that came four outstanding panels, the first of which,
“New Media/New Terrain: Pioneering a PhD in
Creative Research”, chaired by Jessica Walker, was located at the
Conference Hotel (Hyatt), Chicago. This panel addressed
the growing interest in PhD level study in New Media – the panelists
discussing their experiences as either PhD candidates
or as professors in emerging PhD programs. The following three panels:
“Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change,
and the Poles” (co-chaired by Jane Marsching & Andrea Polli),
“Cybersex: What’s Art Got To Do With
It?” (chaired by Vagner Whitehead), and “Limited Set: Generative
Intersections of Theater and Artificial Life” (chaired
by Adam Trowbridge), were located at Columbia College, Chicago. In
“Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change, and
the Poles” the panelists talked about their experiences in researching
and creating environmentally conscious work
that addressed issues of climate change and its profound impact on the
arctic regions. In the panel “Cybersex: What’s
Art Got to Do with It?” the panelists discussed intersections of the
online sex industry and new media practice,
and in “Limited Set: Generative Intersections of Theater and
Artificial Life”, the panelists showed and discussed
their generative artworks within the framework of performance based,
interactive practice. There were two roundtables at
Columbia, the first of which was a discussion of “New Media & the
Tenure Track” and was moderated by Vagner
Whitehead (see the Reviews and Commentary section of the journal); the
second, moderated by Mike Salmond, focused on “New
Media Curriculum Development”.
The expansiveness of topics and diversity of offerings reflects upon the growth of the Caucus itself, and its emerging leadership role in representing the multi-faceted, complex and ever-changing character of the new media field in education, research and practice.
This edition of Media-N celebrates the successes of the New Media Caucus at the 2010 CAA Conference in Chicago, featuring image and video documentation of the events, papers from the panels, a review from the Live Cinema Summit, and an outline of the tenure track roundtable.
Read more at newmediacaucus.org.