[spectre] Anna Munster and Michele Barker at The Thing

[Trebor Scholz]

Join us for an evening with the Australian media theorist Anna Munster and
media artist Michele Barker discussing the relevance and irrelevance of
biology for new media art, theory and artists.

Sunday, June 6, 7pm

THE THING 
601 West 26th Street
New York, New York 10001
Tel: 212-937 0443 
Email: info at thing.net

In this short presentation artists and writers Michele Barker and Anna
Munster (Sydney, Australia), will look at the entanglement of new media art
and theory with the life sciences from the 1990s to the present. Barker¹s
work ŒPræternatural,' a CDROM, critically investigates the relationship of
interactivity to a culture of choice and consumption and to the positivist
neo-Darwinist tendencies of a life and genetics in 1990s new media art.
Munster, in her writing, has questioned recent collaborations between art
and bioscience on the basis of its utilitarian ethics. She is now working on
and with bioart to see if new ethico-political paradigms might emerge from
the critical confluence of life and information. Both will present examples
of their recent art work - interactive and PowerPoint art - in these areas.

(organized by Trebor Scholz in collaboration with The Thing)

Michele Barker 
Barker is a professor in Photomedia, College of Fine Arts, University of New
South Wales, Sydney Australia. She is currently an artist in residence at
Eyebeam, New York. Her recent exhibitions include: Science Fictions, Earl Lu
Gallery, Singapore June - July 2003, VIDARTE 2002 Postal Centre, Mexico
City, August - September 2002, Aller Anfang (The Very Beginning)
Oesterreichisches Museum für Volkskunde, Vienna Austria, April - October
2002, ConVerge: where art and science meet, Art Gallery of South Australia,
Adelaide Biennial of Visual Arts as part of the 2002 Adelaide Arts Festival,
February - March 2002, Contact Zones: The Art of CD-Rom, Nickle Arts Museum,
University of Calgary, Alberta Canada, October 26 - December 6, 2001

Anna Munster 
Munster is a professor in Art History and Theory, College of Fine Arts,
University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia. She is in New York
conducting research for an Australian Research Council Discovery grant. She
has published in the international journals ctheory, culture machine, M/C
and New Media and Society. Her art work was recently exhibited at
DIY_DNA_DAY at The Cube, Bristol, England, April 2004, Outside In, Ivan
Dougherty Gallery, Paddington Australia, June 18-July 15, 2003, Aller Anfang
(The Very Beginning) Oesterreichisches Museum für Volkskunde, Vienna
Austria, April - October 2002 and can be found online at
http://wundernet.cofa.unsw.edu.au. She is a facilitator of the online list
:fibreculture: (www.fibreculture.org), focused upon critical discussion of
new media in the Australasian region and a member of the Œfibrecultural
journal¹ editorial team (www.journal.fibreculture.org).