UNSW Art & Design Research Forum and UNSW Galleries presents the panel, 'The Practice of New Media Art', unpacking perspectives on the art form. Media art practices, both individual and collective, frequently overlap with other aspects of art theory, curation, and exhibition. Innovation, accident and crisis frequently define the perceptible qualities of media art. Media artists regularly negotiate the limits of computer-processing power and data storage, causing works to be lost and overwritten, often leaving little archival information.
The panel includes leading practitioners Professor Paul Thomas, Professor Mari Velonaki, and Dr Alex Davies, with special guest speaker Professor Sean Cubitt. Together they will explore achievements, failures, expectations, demands and dreams for art practices under the title of New Media Art.
Biographies
Professor Sean Cubitt is Professor of Screen Studies at the University of Melbourne. His publications include The Cinema Effect (MIT 2004), EcoMedia (Rodopi, 2005), The Practice of Light (MIT 2014), Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies (Duke University Press, 2017) and Anecdotal Evidence: Ecocritique from Hollywood to the Mass Image (Oxford University Press, 2020). Co-editor of The Ecocinema Reader: Theory and Practice, Routledge/American Film Institute, 2012 and Ecomedia: Key Issues. London: Earthscan/Routledge, 2015 and series editor for Leonardo Books at MIT Press, his research focuses on the history and philosophy of media, political aesthetics, media art history, ecocritique, and practices of truth.
Professor Paul Thomas has worked at UNSW Art and Design since 2010 and currently the Director of the Studio for Transdisciplinary Art Research (STAR) as well as the chair of the Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference series 2010-2028. In 2000 he instigated and was the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth 2002, 2004 and 2007. As an artist he is a a pioneer of transdisciplinary art practice. His practice led research takes not only inspiration from nanoscience and quantum theory, but actually operates there currently exploring concepts of visualising the liminal space between the classical and quantum world. His current publication Quantum Art and Uncertainty (published October 2018) is based on the concept that are at the core of both art and science we find the twin forces of probability and uncertainty. Thomas’s current research projects have been based on working with scientists and asking specific questions. The ‘Quantum Chaos and Quantum Consciousness’ works were based on experiments done in collaboration with Professor Andrea Morello, Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, UNSW.
Professor Mari Velonaki's research is situated in the field of Social Robotics. Her multidisciplinary approach to Social Robotics’ research has been informed by aesthetics and design principles that stem from the theory and practice of Interactive Media Art. Velonaki began working as a media artist/researcher in the field of responsive environments and interactive interface design in 1997. She pioneered experimental interfaces that incorporate movement, speech, touch, breath, electrostatic charge, artificial vision and robotics, allowing for the development of haptic and immersive relationships between participants and interactive agents. In 2014 she was voted by Robohub – a large robotics community of researchers, educators and business- as one of the world’s 25 women in robotics you need to know about. She is the recipient of several competitive grants, including ARC Discovery, Linkage, LIEF an ARC Fellowship, an Australia Council of the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, NICTA, Australia-Japan Foundation, U.S. Airforce, Fuji Xerox Innovation, DST. Velonaki is a Professor of Social Robotics at Art & Design, UNSW. She is the founder and director of the Creative Robotics Lab (Art & Design UNSW) and the founder and director of the National Facility for Human Robot Interaction Research (UNSW, USYD, UTS, St Vincent’s Hospital). Mari is a Research Leader at the UNSW Ageing Futures Institute. Mari’s robots and interactive installations have been exhibited worldwide, including: Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Art Museum Beijing; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea; Aros Aarhus Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh; Millennium Museum - Beijing Biennale of Electronic Arts; Ars Electronica, Linz; European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck; ZENDAI Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Arts, Sydney; Conde Duque Museum, Madrid; Azkuna Zentroa, Bilbao.
Dr Alex Davies is an award-winning media artist whose practice spans a diverse range of media and experiments with interaction, technology, perception, mixed reality, and illusion. In 2013 he was awarded a PhD in Media Arts at the College of Fine Arts examining the relationship between the techniques of stage magic and the creation of illusion in media arts. He has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally and has received numerous grants from the Australia Council’s Inter-Arts, Music, Visual Arts, and New Media Boards. More information about research projects is available at http://schizophonia.com.