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Hi all -
Yes, this is a testing as to those whose personalities best respond to
impending deadlines - many thanks, Renate!
I am a long time friend of empyre - a sometimes participant and, most
unfortunately of late, a most appreciative lurker.
By way of a bio it goes something like this - its difficult to compress its
meandering spirit - a reflection of cross disciplinary approach to ones' path
thru life - in essence, I've always been curious ...
Many thanks for everything - you've all been a source of inspiration!
Warm best,
Chris
___________
Short Version:
Christiane Robbins is a respected director, media artist, cultural producer
and creative catalyst. Prior to co-founding Motion Enabled, M.E, Robbins was
a Professor and Director of the Matrix Program for Digital Media at the
University of Southern California. She had been a faculty member at USC since
1998, and was the founding Executive Creative Producer and Programmer for the
annual digital cultural initiative AIM ( the Art in Motion )
exhibition/conference with MOCA, Los Angeles. She was also a contributing
co-organizer of the bi-annual MIT/USC initiative "Race in Digital Space." with
Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson and Anna Everett (UCSB.) She lead USC's
prescient Digital Design Summit, 1999, including such visionary leaders such as
Clement Mok/Sapient, Scott Ross/Digital Domain, Douglas Rushkoff/noted author,
John Warnok/Adobe, and Richard Saul Wurman/TED. During her academic career
Professor Robbins simultaneously created a number of acclaimed and prescient
digital media projects as well as having written and published original
research articles.
She is a pioneer in Video, Digital Media and New Media, and Photography
identifying relationships between data visualization, interactivity, spatial
and locative-based practices and has more than 20 years of experience in
developing image, narrative and social based practices as successful
underpinnings for digital media ventures. During the past ten years, her group
has researched and developed techniques and devised innovative strategies for
cross media production that led to the founding of M.E Inc. Professor Robbins's
projects have been awarded major research grants from agencies such as the NEA,
NEH, CAC, the Rockefeller and Andy Warhol Foundation, and others. She has also
served on external juries and review committees for numerous film festivals and
granting agencies. Professor Robbins obtained her MFA from the School of Film
and Video at the California Institute of the Arts and is one of their notable
alumni. She was engaged with two research fellowships at Stanford University
for her cross media projects Blue_Screen Moto and I-5_Passing.
____________________________________
Another Long Version bio which may easily be way TMI - but just in case any one
might be interested - :
Christiane Robbins is an American filmmaker, media artist, designer,
curator/programmer, professor who studied at, and is a notable alumni of, the
California Institute of the Arts, and the University of Wisconsin. She was born
in New Jersey (1959), a genetic embodiment of 18th/19th/20th c migratory
patterns to the east coast of the USA ( a distant descendant of the Lenape
people (Munsee) tribe, as well as English, Irish, Austrian and Italian,) She
was raised by a "Madman" (+ affiliated family members) who was associated with
advertising firms such as BBD&O. She married during University where she
majored in 20th C Art History and Photography, then migrated West and now lives
and works in California.
Her practice has proved prescient in its pursuit of unifying trans-disciplinary
research, aesthetic principles, social, and environmental analysis. It has been
generative of incisive, bold, and innovative models that have contributed to a
pioneering, collective conceptualization of hybrid 20c/21c media and art
practices. Her work been widely recognized, screened and exhibited within both
the private and public global realms, as well as in venues on the margins of
conventional discursive systems. She emerged in the late 20thc/early 21stc as a
respected figure in video art and new media practices, selected for inclusion
in Moving the Moving Image at the Walker Art Center in 2008 . Her works in
found numerous international private and public collections.
__________________Project Descriptions____________________________
Media and Trans-Disciplinary Works include:
Area CA – The Promise of Utopia, 2012-15; ( working Title) trans disciplinary
media project, participatory documentary, .
______
Edendale, 2009- , a media project ( series) created and produced for cable and
webcasting. Co-written with Andrew Avery ( writer for the HBO series Deadwood.
)
______
The Bauhaus Ranch - No place like (e)utopia, This cross disciplinary project
depicts the low-cost housing designed by architect, Gregory Ain during the
1930s -1950s in Los Angeles as an innovative, progressive and little known
model of the modern American residence. From the single-family residence to
cooperative housing, these community environments were intended as sites of
interaction for not only members of individual families but as collective
spaces of shared resources and well-being. With the advent of the Cold War, the
1950s notions of “progressive architecture” and “collective living” were
largely discredited. While documenting their continued relevance as a model of
affordable housing and development, this project offers an analysis of the
surprisingly adept manner in which these relatively small, yet well-designed,
and highly desirable houses remain relevant to the lifestyles of its various
contemporary occupants. As a result of this work, I have conducted interviews
with the late Julius Shulman, Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, David Byrne, Thomas
Hines, Dion Neutra, Wolf Prix, and Aaron Betsky amongst others. Future
interviews include, Sylvia Lavin, Dana Cuff, Beatriz Colomina, Susan Morgan,
Kazys Varnelis and Barry Bergdoll.
Early incarnations of this project were invited to the 2012 Gwangju Bienniel (
curated by AiWeiWei ) and the AIA Film in the City Festival. The link is:
http://vimeo.com/9360357. Please feel free to contact me for the password.
______
1-5_Passing Project ( 52 Food Marts ), 2001- is a journey ... a journey of
aesthetic inquiry across disciplines, across cultural discourses, across
personal narratives, across regional perspectives and across the mythos of
California itself. I-5_Passing combines the seduction of the road trip,
documentary, fictional and remediated cinematic images/narratives, with a
recombinant use of data, locative, surveillance and distributed media and
technologies. I-5 presents us with an imaged, telematic and nomadic experience.
Initially exhibited in the Edge Conditions Exhibition curated by Steve Deitz
at the San Jose Museum of Art and Technospheres at the Beall Center for
Technology and is scheduled to be published in a forthcoming issue of Leonardo.
There have been many legacies invoked in the creation of I-5_Passing ranging
from Ed Ruscha to Mike Davis to Reyner Banham. 52 Food Marts ( both the
proprietary software and the digital images series ) invoke Ed Ruscha’s seminal
series, 26 Gasoline Stations (1967.)We had mapped the route along the I-5 with
a series of photographs documenting the “Food Marts” along the way, creating an
alternative portrait of the highway –" 52 Food Marts." This title, which riffs
and doubles back on Ruscha’s 26 Gas Stations, addresses the deteriorating 20thc
myth of the great American road trip .... which has now been supplanted by the
quotidian nature of the round trip, contemporary commute /commuter.
______
__________________
Architecture + Design Projects include:
Twilight, 2011-13: This project examines the relational aspects between
economic shifts, the putative rise of post-industrial society, contemporary
architectural/design practices, the work-place and notions of mobility. This
research delves into a symbiotic analysis of the renewed global interest in the
locative nature of non-place, mobile, social and technological networks,
collaboration and relational aesthetics. A re-conceptualization and re-framing
is being realized – one that deviates from a singular trajectory of bricks and
mortar to one that is substantively more varied and nuanced. It comprises a
challenge to the prevailing depictions of 21stc (urban/(sub)urban/x-urban) life
and redefines notions of space, psycho-geographies, locative technologies,
mobilities, and “citiness” itself. Collaborator: Professor Katherine Lambert,
AIA; Published in AIA Forward Journal as well as others.
_______________________________________________
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