2009 Annual Report for the New Media Caucus
At the 2009 New Media Caucus Business Meeting, members confirmed the election of Paul Catanese, faculty of Interdisciplinary Arts at Columbia College Chicago to the position of President of the New Media Caucus for a three-year term, 2009 – 2012. We are grateful for all the hard work of Gwyan Rhabyt, President of the New Media Caucus from 2006 – 2009. Thanks, Gwyan for all your energy and enthusiasm over the past three years, nurturing and shaping the NMC into an ever stronger, robust and growing organization. Gwyan will remain involved through the Executive Board as President Emeritus. Founding President Doreen Maloney will step down from the Executive Board, but remains on the Editorial Board of Media-N, the Journal of the New Media Caucus, and is an active voice in the Caucus.Thank you Gwyan & Doreen for your many years of dedicated service building and fostering this organization; we look forward to working with you both for many years to come.
The College Art Association Conference in Los Angeles was a great success; The NMC sponsored three panels and also mounted an exhibition. Our CAA Affiliate panel, held at the Los Angeles Convention center, titled Mail Away: War Correspondence at Home and Online was chaired by Lindsay Kelley and featured presentations by Wafaa Bilal, Joseph DeLappe, Elizabeth Losh and Krista Genevieve Lynes. At the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), the New Media Caucus held two additional affiliate society panels: Space, The New Frontier chaired by Belinda Haikes with presentations by Robert Gero, Peter Baldes and Jenn Figg; and Video Games as medium, future paradigms and practices chaired by Mike Salmond with panelists Eddo Stern, Ben Chang and Jon Cates. Thank you, chairs and panelists for your dedication and hard work in developing intriguing presentations for your panels that were well attended throughout the conference.
Leslie Raymond, Vice President of Exhibitions reports that the NMC exhibition entitled @ was held at SCI-Arc in conjunction with CAA2009 was a great success and would not have been possible without the hard work of James Morgan, Marie Robertson, Vagner Whitehead, Paul Catanese and Xtine Burroughs. In addition, the New Media Caucus would like to thank Director Eric Owen Moss, Director of Public Programs Wendy Heldman as well as technical support from Cal Crawford, Katsumi Moroi and Vance Lanoy of SCI-Arc for their support. We are indebted to the hard-working, accommodating and top-notch team at SCI-Arc for assisting us in the arrangements for our exhibitions and panels; it was a great pleasure to work with these folks. Additionally, we would like to thank John Lapointe and Joey Stuckelman from Side Street Projects for their assistance and support with respect to equipment access that helped to make the exhibition possible. Congratulations, Leslie for your dedication to making the New Media Caucus Exhibition at CAA2009 a true success.
Rachel Clarke, Executive Editor of media-N, Journal of the New Media Caucus reports that in April 2008, the Journal officially received its ISSN Number. Over the course of 2008, three editions of the Journal were published. In addition to a CAA 2008 conference report edition; media-N published an edition entitled Intermedia in Spring 2008 featuring papers by Anna Brzyski, Jon Winet, Daria Tsoupikova, Paul Hertz and Jack Ox as well as a Conference Review by Rebecca Gallagher and an Interview with Kurt Hentschlager by Nevena Ivanova. In Fall 2008, media-N published Imaging in the Digital, guest edited by Joan Truckenbrod and Paul Coldwell with papers from Cathy Treadway, Paul Catanese, Ethan Ham, Dan Hays, Tim O’Riley, Penny Leong Browne and Melissa Plourde as well as an conversational interview between Susan Collins and Sean Cubitt. Congratulations Rachel and the editorial board of media-N for another productive and successful year.
The business meeting in Los Angeles addressed several items: updates regarding the website redesign project and formulation
of a taskforce to address NMC branding; streamlining NMC calls for proposals for CAA panels; assembling regional teams
to assist with future exhibitions; a discussion of fundraising opportunities; and a discussion of hosting a NMC Symposium
in addition to our offerings at CAA that will build on our successes developing programming. Additionally, there
was a valuable discussion regarding the building of additional mentorship programs for members that can assist faculty
as well as recent graduates working in new media dovetails with our ongoing efforts to support the practitioners who
advance the conceptual and artistic use of digital media. We plan to more thoroughly address mentorship programs both
on and offline starting with new programming at the 2010 CAA Conference with a series of roundtables. If you are interested
in participating in any of these programs, contact Paul Catanese
pcatanese
colum.edu for a list of projects, taskforces,
committees, calls for proposals and additional ways to get involved.
Over the past six years of sustained growth, the NMC now has 403 members, a 15% increase above membership the last year, representing over 16 different countries. The dedication of members to the NMC is astounding; I am proud to serve as its president and can assure all who are interested: it is an excellent time to join the New Media Caucus, the future is bright.
Paul Catanese
New Media Caucus, President