[spectre] Suzanne Anker featured on the Archive of Digital Art (ADA)

[Oliver Grau]

New Artist Feature on the Archive of Digital Art (ADA)

Suzanne Anker
calling attention to the beauty of life and the necessity for enlightened thinking about nature’s ‘tangled bank’

Read the full Feature article and interview here:

Suzanne Anker, Artist Feature, 2021
https://www.digitalartarchive.at/features/featured-artists/featured-artist-suzanne-anker.html

Check out Suzanne Anker´s profile on ADA 
<https://www.digitalartarchive.at/database/artists/general/artist/anker.html>

But even above Anker’s address to technology, what we come away with most from her work is a profound sense of biophilia: the innate impulse of living things to connect with all life. In a time when our estrangement from nature has made us agents of our own destruction, our recovery of that impulse may be a matter of our very survival.   (Taney Roniger)

The Archive of Digital Art features the Bio Art pioneer, visual artist and theorist Suzanne Anker (US) to honor her widely interdisciplinary work in the field of art, technology and biological sciences. In her artist profile on ADA a representative selection of 10 works of her oeuvre, which draw connections to Digital Art, are documented and presented.

Combining various activities besides creating art, such as teaching, public speaking, writing and research, Anker’s practice investigates the ways in which nature is being altered in the 21st century. Concerned with genetics, climate change, species extinction and toxic degradation, she frequently works with “pre-defined and found materials” such as botanical and geological specimens, sometimes combined, processed or enhanced with material and techniques such as medical museum artifacts, laboratory apparatuses, microscopic images and 3D printing. She works in a variety of mediums ranging from animation and large-scale photography to digital sculpture and large-scale installations.

Suzanne’s scientific, research driven and thoroughly designed work wants to show the spectators the beauty of life itself, but at the same time it is juxtaposed to the critical views on the historical and technological developments in the Anthropocene - and calls attention to the “necessity for enlightened thinking about nature’s ‘tangled bank’”.

Her work has been shown both nationally and internationally in museums and galleries, including the Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian Institute, the Phillips Collection, P.S.1 Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in Japan, the Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité in Berlin, the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena de Indias, and V Art Center in Shanghai, China.

Text and Interview (CC) by Carla Zamora
December 2021


We invite ARTISTS & SCHOLARS in the fields of digital / technological / media art to become a member of the ADA online community!

Since its foundation in 1999, the Archive of Digital Art (former Database of Virtual Art) has grown to be one of the most important online archives for digital art. In cooperation with established media artists, researchers and institutions it has been documenting the rapidly evolving world of digital art and its related fields for more than two decades and contains today a selection of thousands of artworks at the intersection of art, science and technology.

The Archive of Digital Art recently received a grant in partnership with Art University Linz and Die Angewandte Vienna to be further developed into a comprehensive research and - most importantly - teaching tool for art schools and information resource for galleries and museums.

All artists and scholars, who fulfill the criteria, are invited to create a profile, upload detailed information on all relevant works and exhibitions to allow the next generation of artists to learn with the best information, to give scholars the research resource they need and museums, if they want to start a collection, the essential information. 

To ensure a high academic standard, at least five larger/international exhibitions and/or scientific publications are required to become part of ADA.
Please apply here: www.digitalartarchive.at/support/account-request.html
<http://www.digitalartarchive.at/support/account-request.html>

EXPANDED DOCUMENTATION for the needs of digital art Due to the processual, ephemeral, interactive, technology-based, and fundamentally context-dependent nature of digital art, its perception in the art world and recognition as an important part of art history is threatened without adequate documentation. Therefore ADA is following an expanded concept of documentation, which takes account of the specific conditions of digital art. 

One of ADA's main goals is to preserve digital art from loss for future generations by documentation and to foster international transdisciplinary collaboration. Through the support by artists, we hope to reinforce not only the interest in your works, but the field in general; to support a wider dissemination and collection of this art of our time in museums and galleries, online and offline.

Share your research with the community and your peers Community members can upload publications, announce upcoming events, post comments, document exhibitions, conferences and other relevant news. 

ARTISTS represented, among many others:

SOMMERER & MIGNONNEAU, Bill SEAMAN, Suzanne ANKER, Cory ARCANGEL, Roy ASCOTT, Louis BEC, Maurice BENAYOUN, Paolo CIRIO, Charlotte DAVIES, FLEISCHMANN & STRAUSS, Masaki FUJIHATA, Ken GOLDBERG, Agnes HEGED‹S, Lynn HERSHMAN LEESON, Ryoji IKEDA, Eduardo KAC, Ken RINALDO, KNOWBOTIC RESEARCH, Lev MANOVICH, George LEGRADY, Golan LEVIN, Rafael LOZANO-HEMMER, Joseph NECHVATAL, Michael NAIMARK, David ROKEBY, Jeffrey SHAW, Julius v. BISMARCK, Paul SERMON, Karl SIMS, STANZA, Nicole STENGER, THOMSON & CRAIGHEAD, et al.

Advisory board: Christiane PAUL, Roy ASCOTT, Erkki HUHTAMO, José Ramón ALCALA MELLADO, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Martin ROTH  et. al.

ADA Archive of Digital Art
www.digitalartarchive.at<http://www.digitalartarchive.at/>

ADA Team
Oliver Grau (Head and Scientific Conception)
Carla Milena Zamora Campos (Research Associate, Editor) 
Alejandro Quinones Roa (Research Assistant, Editor) 
Carl Philipp Hoffmann (Project Manager)
 Wendy Coones (Coordination)

Please contact us at:
mailto:digitalart.editor at donau-uni.ac.at