Panel Presentation at the Popular Culture Association (PCA) Annual Conference

Comparison: A Grunt's Life and Piss Christ

I love the PCA conference. The Communication and Digital Culture and Internet Culture divisions are full of smart and fun people. This year the conference is in Boston and I can’t wait to get back to that dirty water. I’ll be talking about Damon Winter’s series, A Grunt’s Life in the context of Sontag’s On Photography. Ultimately, I’ve developed a picture story to deliver via the holy medium, PowerPoint. Comparisons made between images from A Grunt’s Life and (old and new) celebrated photographs express Sontag’s text.

Let’s Go Crazy: Lenz v. Universal in the New Media Classroom

My article, co-authored with Dr. Emily Erickson, has recently been published in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy. I have been working with students on remixes and parodies of Stephanie Lenz’s original Let’s Go Crazy #1 video on YouTube since 2008. Our class created a website for the project, and other classes (on-campus and at other universities) have joined in the fun. This was a long process, but I am really excited to have this article in-hand (or online). Thank you to Dr. Erickson, who did a stellar job in sorting out the law, and to so many students for creating these goofy videos.

Article Abstract:

This article examines the Lenz v. Universal case, demonstrating how it can serve as a unique vehicle to teach students about fair use and the creative transformation of copyrighted content. The authors—a visual communications professor and a media law professor—discuss the ways the Lenz case highlights a gap between First Amendment rights found within fair use doctrine and current practices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They argue that what Lawrence Lessig calls today’s “remix culture” makes it imperative to provide students with a strong grounding in both copyright and fair use, as well as a savvy understanding of how copyright owners are approaching unauthorized uses of online content.

 

Speaking at USC and at Los Angeles Center for Digital Art for the New Media Caucus/CAA

This week and next I’ll be presenting some work in a couple of Los Angeles locations. This presentation is more or less what I’ll be clicking through and talking at during both sessions.

On Monday, February 13th I’m delighted to deliver a lecture on some works I’ve made since the early aughts in Jean Robison’s internet studio art class at USC’s Roski School of Fine Arts.

On February 22nd between 6 and 8pm I’ll be one of many artists to speak for about five or six minutes at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art in downtown LA. The event is hosted by the New Media Caucus during the College Art Association annual conference. It is not a formal conference event (meaning it’s free to attend). There will be a reception after the presentations where you can ask questions or get to know some of the new media artist presenters.  So add this one to your calendar: LACDA, 102 W. Fifth Street, Los Angeles @ 6pm

 

TERMINAL Commission

 

This year I am a recipient of a TERMINAL net art commission that I used to create a series of poem interpretations for the browser.

on the web

Three classic works of literature from the 20th Century (“O Captain, My Captain”, “On the Road”, and “Waiting for You at the Mystery Spot”) are remade for the browser using the language of the web (HTML5 and CSS) as the primary agent of transformation. In the translated poems, I am not interested in writing the foundational text for the poetic experience. Instead, I wanted to design a web user’s visual experience of the works. The works adhere to the confining graphic formatting rules of current web standards, and include text, hypertext, images, videos, and audio.

Visit: On the Web, O Browser, My Browser, and Mystery Spot.

Book Launch and Panel: Net Works at Eyebeam

Net Works book cover

On Thursday October 13 at 6pm Eyebeam Center for Art+Technology presents the launch of Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design edited by xtine burrough. xtine will be speaking alongside contributing artists Ethan Ham, Michael Mandiberg, and Robert Nideffer. Eyebeam is located at 540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011 (map). This is an open/free event with refreshments provided by Routledge. View this event on Facebook.