CAA Conference Edition, 2010

New Media Caucus Panels and Events at the CAA Conference, Chicago, 2010

Editorial Statement

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”.

Rachel Clarke, Editor-in-Chief, media-N
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June, 2010