Research Interests

My main research interest is in the cultural effects and meanings of technology and media, particularly in relation to art and philosophy.

Additional Information

Publications

Monographs

• Art after God (MIT Press, forthcoming, 2010)
• Non-Relational Aesthetics: Transmission, the Rules of Engagement 13 (Artwords, 2008), with Michael Corris
• Art, Time and Technology (Berg, 2006)
• Digital Culture (Reaktion, 2002, 2nd edition 2008). (One chapter translated and published in Russian journal; translation of whole book in Finnish and Korean published in 2006)

Edited Volumes

• Art Practice in a Digital Culture, co-edited with Hazel Gardiner (forthcoming, Ashgate, 2009)
• White Heat, Cold Logic: Early British Computer Art, co-edited with Paul Brown, Catherine Mason and Nicholas Lambert (MIT Press, 2009)
• Special issue on 'Brains in Vats', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, co-edited with Cathy Gere (2004)

Papers, chapters and extended reviews

• 'New Media Art and the Gallery in the Digital Age' in Curating New Media, edited by Christiane Paul (University of California Press, 2009)
• 'Slitting open the Kantian Eye' in Hazel Gardiner and Chris Bailey (eds), Revisualizing Visual Culture (forthcoming, Ashgate, 2009)
• 'Reading the Traces' in Reading CSI, edited by Michael Allen (I. B. Taurus, 2007)
• 'Breaking the Time Barrier with John Cage' in Multimedia Histories: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet, edited by James Lyons and John Plunkett (University of Exeter Press, 2007)
• 'The Gay-Science Museum', Dialogue (online, 2006)
• 'Digitality' in The Encyclopedia of Globalization, edited by Jan Aart Schlote and Roland Robertson (Routledge, 2006)
• 'Introduction' and 'Richard Colson - Image Recoder' in Sense Detectives (Watermans, 2006)
• 'Network Art and the Network Gallery', Tate Online/Whitney Museum of American Art Artport (2006)
• 'Genealogies of the Screen' in The Journal of Visual Communication (2006)
• 'Blindness, Mourning and the Archive on Planet Usher' in Sequences edited by Paul St George (Peterborough Arts, 2006)
• 'Short Films about Flying' in Digitale Forbindelser - en antologi, edited by Yvette Brackman (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, 2006)
• 'A History of Network Art' in Network Art edited by Tom Corby (Routledge, 2006)
• Online interview with artist Warren Neidich, Interviewstream: Conversations with Cultural Producers working with or linked to ZKM (2005)
• 'Jack Burnham and the Work of Art in the Age of Real-Time Systems' in Real Time + Art + Theory + Practice + History, edited by Morten Sondergaard, (Informations Forlag/George Braziller, 2005), pp 149 - 164
• 'Interview with Rod Dickinson' in Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation, edited by Claire Docherty (Black Dog, 2004)
• 'Art is not Terrorism' in Journal of Visual Communication (2005)
• 'New Media Art and the Gallery in the Digital Age' in Tate Papers (on-line, 2004)
• 'When New Media was New' in New Media Art: Practice and Context 1994-2004, edited by Lucy Kimbell and Helen Cadwallader (ACE/Cornerhouse, 2004)
• 'The technologies and politics of delusion: an interview with artist Rod Dickinson', , Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2004)
• 'World Brains, Giant Brains and Brains in Vats', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2004)
• 'Armagideon Time', London from Punk to Blair, edited by Joe Kerr and Andrew Gibson (Reaktion, 2003)
• 'Breaking the Time Barrier', Culture and Organization, vol. 10, no 1 (2004)
• 'Can Art History Go On Without A Body' Culture Machine, 5 (2003)
• Extended review of The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture by Mark C. Taylor, Journal of Visual Culture, vol 1, no 3 (2002)
• 'Probing the Beginnings of Digital Art Practice', everything, 4.2 (2002)
• 'The Book at the end of the Book', The Art Book, vol 9 no 2 (2002)
• 'Punk and the Digital Aesthetic', Proceedings of the CHArt Conference 2000, edited by Anna Bentkowska (2001)
• 'Nothing, Apocalypse and Utopia', Nothing, edited by Graham Gussin and Ele Carpenter (2001)
• 'The Canon and the Network Society', Engage, no. 8 (2001)
• 'Angels and Demons', Pandaemonium 2001, Festival of the Moving Image (London, LEA, 2001)
• 'The Work of Art in the Age of the General Intellect', Intelligence: New British Art 2000 (London, Tate Gallery, 2000)
• 'John Cage's Early Warning System', Coil, double issue nos 9/10 (2000)
• 'Hypermedia and Emblematics', Computing and Visual Culture, edited by Tanya Szraijber (1999)
• 'Writing Cyberculture', Oxford Art Journal, Vol 22, no. 1 (1999)
• 'Museums, Contact Zones and the Internet', Museum Interactive Multimedia 1997: Cultural Heritage Systems Design and Interface edited by David Bearman and Jennifer Trant (1997)
• 'The Digital Museum: a critical point of view', Corto Circuito 1997: Festival Europea della Communicazione Audiovisive Breve, edited by Franz Cerami (1997)

Exhbitions

• Co- curator of FEEDBACK exhibition, Asturias, Spain, 2007

Consultancy work with external bodies, panels and associations etc.

• Member of review panel, FutureSonic, 2009
• Advisor to the British Council Collections Commission, 2009
• Member of the Advisory Board for the joint Doctoral Programme in Digital Culture as a joint initiative by Universities of Jyvaskyla, Tampere and Turku in Finland, 2008-
• Member of the International Advisory Board for the Anglia Ruskin Centre for Digital Culture, (Arc Digital), Anglia Ruskin University, 2008-
• Member of team for AHRC-funded CRUMB project at Sunderland University, looking at digital curation, 2006-.
• Member of team for AHRC-funded Computational Intelligence, Creativity and Cognition project, in collaboration with the University of Sussex, and with responsibility for overseeing MPhil/PhD research into the history and theory of computational creativity, 2006-8
• Member AHRC Network on Curating Media Art with Tate Modern, 2008 -
• Member of paper review panel, Re-Place Conference, 2007
• Member of review panel, FutureSonic, 2007
• Member AHRC ICT Methods Network Academic Advisory Committee, 2006 - now
• Treasurer and Member of Board of Grizedale Arts, 2006 - now
• Member of Media Arts Network, 2006 - now
• Consultant for the Science Museum, London on curating new media art in the museum, 2006
• Member of the Arts and Humanities Database Service Visual Arts Advisory Board, 2005 - 2008
• Member, AHRB/EPSRC-funded 'Designing for the 21st Century' research cluster Digital Design, Representation, Communication and Interaction: Screens and the Social Landscape, 2005
• Member of the Advisory Committee, AHRB REWIND project looking at artists' film and video in the '70s and '80s, Duncan of Jordanstone College, University of Dundee, 2004 - now
• Member, selection committee for National Centres for Excellence in Research, Swiss National Science Foundation, 2004

External events and courses organised

• Organise and chair the annual CHArt conference, 2002 - now
• Co-organised (with Warren Niedich) Neuroaesthetics Conference, Goldsmiths College, 2005
• Organised and chaired talk by Bernard Stiegler at Tate Modern, 2004
• Organised and chaired talk by Harold Cohen at Tate Modern, 2004
• Organised and chaired ten week course at Tate Modern, The Role of the Gallery in the Digital Age, 2004
• Organised and chaired talk and seminar series at Tate Modern, When New Media was New, 2003
• Organised session, Historicising Digital Art, Association of Art Historians Conference, Birkbeck College, UCL, 2003
• Organised one-day workshop in collaboration with the Centre for Social Theory and Technology, Keele University, Cultures of Information, Birkbeck College, 2001

Presentations

• Keynote Speaker, Literature, Art and Culture in an Age of Global Risk conference, Cardiff University, 2009

• Invited speaker, University of Basel, Switzerland, 2009

• Invited speaker at the Radiator Festival, Derby-Nottingham, 2009

• Invited Speaker, Memory, Media and the Archive, Argos Arts Centre, Brussels, 2007

• Keynote Speaker, AVPhD Workshop, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2007

• Invited Speaker, Closeness vs Dislocation - Contextualising Net-Based Art, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 2007

• Guest lecturer, University of Turku, Finland, 2007

• Invited speaker, Digital Aesthetics II, University of Central Lancashire, 2007

• Guest lecturer, Goldsmiths College, 2007

• Invited speaker, Visual Knowledge Lecture and Graduate Masterclass Series, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, Manchester University, 2006

• Invited speaker/participant, Seminar on Architecture and Situated Technology, Architectural League, New York, 2006

• Invited speaker, talk on Art at the Edge of Time, ICA, 2006

• Invited speaker, seminar on the work of artist Stephen Willats, Tate Modern, 2006

• Invited speaker, AHRC Methods Network Expert Seminar, Chelsea School of Art, 2006

• Discussion chair, Early British Computer-Generated Art Film, National Film Theatre, 2006

• Keynote Speaker, Art - Place - Technology: International Conference on New Media Art Curating, FACT and Liverpool School of Art, Liverpool, 2006

• Session Chair, Cybersalon on Creative Software, Dana Centre, 2006

• Session chair, Systems Art Conference, Tate Modern, 2005

• Session chair and speaker, REFRESH! Conference on Media Art Histories, Banff New Media Institute, Canada, 2005

• Session chair, Digital Resources for the Humanities Conference, Lancaster University, 2005

• Invited speaker, symposium on Take Away Cultures, Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona (CCCB), 2004

• Invited Speaker, The Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII), Glasgow University, 2004

• Invited Speaker, The Slade School of Art Contemporary Art Lectures, Slade School of Art, University College London, 2004

• Invited speaker, symposium on New Media and Public Art, York Science City, York, 2004

• Plenary speaker, Aesthetics and Organisation Conference, Paris, 2004

• Invited speaker, Breathing New Life into the Fine Rooms: Book Celebration, Courtauld Institute of Art, 2004

• Invited speaker, symposium on British New Media Art, Tate Britain, 2004

• Invited speaker, Gage, Technology, Art and the Individual, festival of new media and art, Hull Time-Based Arts, Hull, 2004

• Invited speaker, seminar on Digital Technologies in the Visual Arts, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen 2003

• Invited speaker at London: Hell or High Water, conference at the Museum of London, 2003

• Chaired panel on Curating New Media, the London College of Music and Media, Thames Valley University, 2003

• Paper given at Multimedia Histories Conference, Exeter University, 2003

• Invited speaker at Prosthetics: Technology and the Human with Stelarc, ICA, 2003

• Invited speaker at the London College of Music and Media, Thames Valley University, 2003

• Invited speaker at the Bakhtin Centre, University of Sheffield, 2003

• Invited speaker at Nottingham Institute for Research in Visual Culture (NIRV), University of Nottingham, 2003

• Paper given at Standing Conference on Organisational Symbolism, Budapest, 2002

• Speaker, Matrix: Intersections of Art and Technology lecture series, Tate Modern, 2002

• Invited speaker, seminar with Richard Beardsworth, Centre for Social Theory and Technology, Keele University, 2000

• Invited speaker, ESRC-funded seminar on Complexity and the Social Sciences, Complexity and Subjectivity, Centre for Social Theory and Technology, Keele University in collaboration with the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, 2000

• Paper given at CHArt Conference, Courtauld Institute, 2000

• Invited seminar speaker, Cambridge University, 1999

• Paper given at Cybersociety Conference, University of Northumbria in Newcastle, 1999

• Paper given at CHArt Conference, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1998

• Paper given at Art and Technology Conference, Tate Liverpool, 1998

• Paper given at International Conference on Hypermedia and Museums (ICHIM), Louvre, Paris, 1997

Professional Memberships and Activities

• Chair, Computers and the History of Art (CHArt)
• Editor-in-Chief, CHArt Yearbook
• Member, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association (MCCSA)

Research Grants

• Principle investigator for AHRB Large Research Grant to study early British computer art, 2002 - 2005
• Principle investigator for AHRB-funded hosted visit to the Tate Gallery, under the Changing Places scheme, to study the Gallery in the Age of Digital Networks, 2002

Profile

Career details

Education

• Centre for Electronic Arts and Department of Visual Culture, Middlesex University, PhD, 1996
• Centre for the Advanced Study of Computer Aided Art and Design, Middlesex Polytechnic, MA, 1991
• City and Guilds of London Art School, Diploma in Fine Art (Painting), 1985

Previous teaching, research and postgraduate supervision and administrative responsibilities

• Course Director, admissions tutor, chair of exam board, with responsibility for curriculum planning and development and for the majority of teaching on the MA Digital Art History, School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck College, 1997 - 2004
• Director, Computer Arts, Contexts, Histories, etc… (CACHe), an AHRB-funded research project looking at the history of early British computer art, 2002 - 2005
• External examiner for the MA Exhibition Design Virtual and Real, North London University, 1999 - 2002, for the MA Digital Culture and Technology, Kings College London, 2005-8,
• External examiner on nine PhD vivas (Middlesex, Sunderland, Manchester, Plymouth, Keele, Goldsmiths, Courtauld Institute, University of the Arts, and Turku in Finland), and internal examiner for London University on one PhD and one Mphil viva (both UCL)

Current teaching, research and postgraduate supervision and administrative responsibilities

• Head of Department, Department of Media, Film and Cultural Studies, Lancaster University, 2007-2010
• Successfully supervised four PhD students
• Currently supervisor for five Lancaster PhD students, and three Birkbeck Mphil/PhD students and one Huddersfield PhD student.
• External examiner for the MFA, Computational Arts, Goldsmiths College, 2008 -, the MA Interactive Digital Media and the MA Virtual Communities and Participative Web, Ravensbourne College, 2007-, History of Art BA, Open University, 2009-

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in proposals from potential PhD students on the following topics: art and technology; new media art; computer art; digital culture; continental philosophy and technology; the effects of new media

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