June on -empyre- soft-skinned space: Participatory Art: New Media and Archival Traces — Bouncing off the discussion from this May on “Critical Spatial Movement,” we were struck by how digital 0s and 1s allow for traces of movement, interaction, and networking to exist or live on through various vehicles such as the web or other virtual spaces such as Second Life. We were also thinking about current trends in the international art world that extend practice into the areas of social networks by engaging the participation of the viewer. Participatory Art converges with such areas as the social sciences, activism, politics, ecology and sustainability, genetics and science, and even food. How might digital traces of artistic corporeal and cyber configurations of embodiment empower participatory artistic practice and collaboration? And how might we understand the ‘after image” or “after life” of live participatory interventions when they live on morph into digital, spectral traces?

With invited guests Hana Iverson (US), Sarah Drury (US), Nicholas Knouf (US), Claudia Pederson (US) Miyawaki Atsuko (UK/Japan) and curated guests: Sean Cubitt (Australia), Jim Drobnick (Canada), Yiannis Colakides and Helene Black (Cyprus), Beatriz da Costa (US), Xiaowen Chen (China), Hung Keung (Hong Kong), Erin Manning (Canada), Philippe Codognet (Japan/France), Richard Rinehart (US), Ian Clothieri (New Zealand) and many others.

As a celebration of the summer season, in addition to our invited weekly featured discussants above we have also invited many special guests to send us their thoughts and encourage all of our 1200 subscribers to empyre to reflect on this topic and post freely at empyre-soft_skinned_space.

Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) artist-conceptual/new media, Department of Art, Cornell University, and Tim Murray (US), Curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell University.