Digital Arts and New Media: MFA: Collaboration, Innovation, Social Impact

You are here

DANM Director Candidate Presentation :: Marianne Weems

Monday, February 29, 2016 - 9:30pm to 10:30pm
DARC 108 (Dark Lab), UCSC

 

Candidates for the new Associate Professor and DANM Director position will give public presentations on their work as part of their on-campus interviews. The events are open to the public. There are three candidates presenting over three weeks:

February 25 Edward Shanken
February 29 Marianne Weems
March 10 Roderick Coover

 

Marianne Weems

Liveness in a Radically Interconnected Digital World

What part does ‘liveness” play in an increasingly digital world? We live along a spectrum of mixed realities in which our experience is mediated in many ways. What stories do we tell to frame this experience—how do technology and narrative intersect in the cultural sphere? Weems will consider these questions through the lense of her performance and media company The Builders Association, whose work has been widely acknowledged as leading the integration of media and live performance. Over the last 20 years Weems’ projects have tackled topics from dataveillance to jet lag to call centers, each creating a rich relationship between the liveness of the performers and the liveness of technology. The stage is one laboratory in which we can view the interactions between human presence and electronic presence, and its impact on larger social and political issues. The question of liveness engages authors, actors and technologists across practices. Social media networks, robotics, locative applications, and mobile systems all animate these questions in ways that push beyond our present understanding of liveness in new and culturally relevant ways. 

Marianne Weems is a multimedia performance director and teacher. She is the artistic director of the New York-based intermedia ensemble The Builders Association. Since 1994 her productions have toured domestically and internationally to over 90 theaters, galleries, and museums. Weems is also New York City lead faculty of a Carnegie Mellon University arts and technology initiative based in Brooklyn, NY– the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology Network (IDeATe). She is the co-author with Shannon Jackson of The Builders Association: Performance and Media in Contemporary Theater (MIT Press Fall 2015) and Art Matters: How The Culture Wars Changed America (NYU Press 2000).