Tanya Toft Ag (Ph.D., Copenhagen) is a curator, researcher, writer and lecturer examining urban media aesthetic phenomena and (media) art’s engagement with societal and urban change, in a global perspective. She was curator and led the artistic research program at the Screen City Biennial 2016-2018 (Stavanger), co-curated Nordic Outbreak (2013-2014) presented by the Streaming Museum in New York City and across the Nordic region, and the SP Urban Digital Festival 2013 and 2014 presented by Verve Cultural in São Paulo. Other exhibitions include Voyage to the Virtual (2015) at Scandinavia House, Here All Alone (2015) in a factory in Copenhagen, and Play! (2013 and 2014) at the SP Urban Digital Gallery in São Paulo. She is editor of Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art (Intellect, 2019) and co-editor of What Urban Media Art Can Do – Why, When, Where, and How? (av edition, 2016). In 2017 she co-initiated the globally networked Urban Media Art Academy. In 2018-2020 she is a research fellow at School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Ag’s chapter
Chapter authors
Jamie Allen was born in Canada and is an artist and scholar. He has been an electronics engineer, a polymer chemist and an exhibition designer with the American Museum of Natural History. Allen works, learns and teaches all over the world. Allen is Senior Researcher at the Critical Media Lab in Basel, Switzerland and Canada Research Chair in Infrastructure Media & Communications at NSCAD. His Ph.D. at the European Graduate School under the supervision of Siegfried Zielinski and Avital Ronell was awarded in 2015 (summa cum laude). He is occupied with the reconstitution of institutions such that they reflect the importance of generosity, friendship and love in knowledge practices like art and research. Allen and Garnicnig’s chapter
Laura Beloff (Ph.D.) is Associate Professor and Head of the Ph.D. School at IT University of Copenhagen. She is an internationally acclaimed artist who has been actively producing works and exhibiting worldwide in museums, galleries and art events since the 1990s. She has been a recipient of various grants, art residencies and awards. In 2014 she, along with partners, received the largest art grant within Nordic countries from the Nordic Cultural Fund. Her research interests include practice-based investigations into a combination of information, technology and organic matter, which is located in the cross section of art, technology and science. Her research engages with the field of art and science, biotechnologies, biosemiotics, biomedia and information technology in connection with art, humans and society. Beloff’s chapter
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay (Ph.D. in artistic research and sound studies from Leiden University, The Netherlands) is an Indian-born artist, researcher, writer and theorist. His work inquires about the materiality, site-specificity and objecthood of sound and addresses the aspects of subjectivity, contemplation, mindfulness and transcendence inherent in listening. He has received several fellowships, residencies and international awards, and his works have been widely exhibited, performed and presented. He graduated from the national film school of India specializing in sound and received a Master of Arts degree in new media from Aarhus University, Denmark, writing on sound art. Between 2018–2019, Chattopadhyay is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Arts and Humanities, American University of Beirut. Chattopadhyay’s chapter
Jonatan Habib Engqvist is an independent curator and theorist, with a background in philosophy and aesthetic theory. Previously, he has been project manager for visual art at Iaspis (2009–14) and curator at Moderna Museet (2008–09), and has worked with art, architecture and technology at The Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (2005–07). He has curated a number of large international exhibitions, including Survival Kit 9 in Riga, Latvia; Sinopale 6, Sinop, Turkey (2017); (I)ndependent People, the visual art focus of Reykjavík Arts Festival 2012; and Tunnel Vision, the 8th Momentum biennale in Moss, Norway 2015. He is the curator of Children of the Children of the Revolution at Färgfabriken in Stockholm (2018) and New Småland on commission by four art museums and a university (2016–19). His books include: Big Dig – Om passivitet och samtidskonst (CLP Works, 2018); Studio Talks: Thinking Through Painting (Arvinius+Orfeus Publishing, 2014); In Dependence – Collaboration and Artists’ Initiatives (Torpedo Press, 2013); Work, Work, Work – A Reader on Art and Labour (Steinberg Press, 2012); Dharavi: Documenting Informalities (KKH, 2008). Engqvist’s chapter
Bernhard Garnicnig founded the Palais des Beaux Arts Wien in 2013 and was its Very Artistic Director until 2018 and is now its Head Janitor. In 2014 he co-founded Supergood, a nomadic movement in the ambiguous space between product and performance. In 2012 he co-founded the Bregenz Biennale, a festival for ephemeral and impermanent forms of art in his lakeside hometown. In 2011 he co-founded continent, a paraacademic journal for thought in its many forms. He likes to work with friends and to make friends through work and has shared this process and its results in galleries, artist-run project spaces and research institutions all over the world, most recently at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Nikolaj Kunsthal Kopenhagen, MAAT Museum Lisbon and Kunsthalle Wien. Allen and Garnicnig’s chapter
Elizabeth Jochum (BA Wellesley College; MA, Ph.D., University of Colorado, USA) is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University (DK) and the co-founder of Robot Culture and Aesthetics (ROCA) research group at the University of Copenhagen (DK). Her research focuses on the intersection of art, robotics and performance. She is a member of Aalborg U Robotics and Erasmus Mundus Media Arts Cultures graduate faculty. Her research has appeared in Theatre Journal, Puppetry International and in the edited volumes Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance, Robots and Art: Exploring an Unlikely Symbiosis (Springer) and Controls and Art (Springer). She is the author of Inclining East: Kabuki and Interculturalism in Contemporary Theatre (VDM Verlag). Jochum and Lind’s chapter
Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor of art history at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on Nordic twentieth-century and contemporary art, feminist art history, post-colonialism, visual culture, globalization and technology and the arts. She has participated in interdisciplinary research projects on gender and aesthetics, Nordic art and globalization, and at present she manages the network and project ‘Gender and Diversity in Nordic Art Museums’. Her publications include the book Kropslig kunst (Museum Tusculanum, 2007), chapters in Globalizing Art (Aarhus University Press, 2011), ‘From Sign to Signal’ (Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 2012), and Kjønnsforhandlinger (PAX Forlag, 2013) and Sámi Art and Aesthetics (Aarhus University Press, 2017). In 2015, she was the co-curator of the exhibition Women Forward! at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark. Jørgensen’s chapter
Jens Tang Kristensen (Ph.D., Postdoc, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen) is working with topics related to the Danish Concrete art from 1940 to the present, and the relation between this movement and the spontaneous art, primarily focusing on Linien II and CoBrA. He has published articles about national identity, art, archaeology, modernism, avant-gardism, contemporary art and politics in general. In 2017 he worked together with the Danish artist Claus Carstensen in collaboration with Den Frie Udstillingsbygning in Copenhagen and The Museum of Religious Art in Lemvig on their international book-and-exhibition project: Becoming Animal. In 2011 he also worked with the artist Sarah Pierce on the exhibition project The Research Programme at Charlottenborg Kunsthal in Copenhagen. Kristensen’s chapter
Mads Deibjerg Lind (BA in art and technology from Aalborg University) is currently a graduate student in lighting design at Aalborg University Copenhagen. He was employed at BIBIANA Danmark and Utzon Center, where he developed activities and events to foster creativity between children, art and technology. His research focuses on experience design with emerging technologies, with an emphasis on virtual reality and light. He has designed public light installations in the region of Copenhagen. Jochum and Lind’s chapter
Björn Norberg is a curator based in Stockholm and Uppsala in Sweden and has been active in the field of art, science and technology for more than two decades. He has curated exhibitions at Kiasma in Helsinki, Museet for Samtidskunst in Roskilde, Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm, The National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm, Bildmuseet/ Umeå University in Umeå, Reykjavik Art Museum and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. He is curator and artistic leader at Dome of Visions at KTH – Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and has lectured at universities such as Stockholm University, KTH – Royal institute of Technology, Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Royal Institute of Art, Uniarts in Stockholm, KuvA in Helsinki, Valand Academy/University of Gothenburg, Blekinge Institute of Technology, University of Gävle and more. He is part author and co-editor of the anthology Get Real! published by George Braziller, and has published texts both in Sweden and abroad. Norberg’s chapter
Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir (Ph.D., University of Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paris) is Associate Professor at the University of Akureyri in Iceland. She has been active in the field of media art since 2002 when she co-founded Lorna, an association of electronic arts. In 2010 she cofounded Lorna Lab, an interdisciplinary platform for art, science and technology, and has been the organizer of the Pikslaverk Festival since 2008. She was the curator of the exhibition Video Art in Iceland from 1975 to 1990 at the Reykjavik Art Museum in 2013, and the Melting on Ice workshop and exhibition at Kling & Bang in 2015. She was a part-time teacher at the University of Iceland and the Iceland Academy of Arts from 2005 to 2015. She has been writing on art and culture since 1987. Ólafsdóttir’s chapter
Jøran Rudi had his first academic training in social sciences, followed by a few years as a rock musician in one of the influential bands that emerged in the end of the 1970s. After studying computer music at New York University, he founded and directed NOTAM from 1993 to 2010 when he stepped back to a researcher position. His research interests span across educational issues arising from the use of music technology via studies of artistic genres such as music, music animation, soundscape and sound art, to more conventional musicological work with a historical orientation. As a composer, he has developed a portfolio of works for electronic instruments and/or fixed media, as well as for dance, film, performance art, installation and multimedia. His most significant artistic contributions are the computer music animations made in the mid- to late 1990s. Rudi’s chapter
Lorella Scacco is a teacher, curator and journalist, with a background in the history of contemporary art and aesthetics. She is a Professor of phenomenology of contemporary art at the Italian Academy of Fine Arts and has realized lectures and seminars at several universities, academies and foundations in Italy and abroad. She has curated exhibitions and edited catalogues for contemporary art exhibitions in public and private spaces in Italy and abroad, including Artext, La Triennale, Milan (2006), Mobile Journey, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), The Hot Season – Italian Art Now, Stenersen Museum, Oslo (2008), Social Videoscapes from the North, Pro Artibus Foundation, Finland and Careof DOCVA, Milan (2013) and Laboratorio eterno, Museum H. C. Andersen in Rome (2015– 16). She has contributed to specialized art magazines and is the author of Estetica mediale. Da Jean Baudrillard a Derrick de Kerckhove (Guerini, 2004), Northwave: A Survey of Video Art in Nordic Countries (Silvana Editoriale, 2009) and Alberto Giacometti and Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Dialogue on the Perception – Phenomenology of Art Experience (Gangemi, 2017). Scacco’s chapter
Morten Søndergaard is Associate Professor and Curator of interactive media art at Aalborg University. He holds an MA in Modern Culture and a PhD in Performance Design. He is co-founder and member of the Consortium Board of the Erasmus Mundus Master in Media Arts Cultures. He was Curator/Deputy Director at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde (1999–2008). He was head of the Culture Denmark advisory board and member of the New Media Forum, both hosted by the Danish Ministry of Culture (2003–07). He was co-founder and board-member of the LARM audio research project 2010. Same year, he commissioned Stelarc’s Internet Ear Project for the exhibition Biotopia – Art in the Wet Zone. He was Senior Curator of the re-new festival of digital arts in Copenhagen (2010–12). He curated the ‘Unheard Avant-garde (in Scandinavia)’ section at the Sound Art – Sound as Medium for Fine Art at ZKM, 2012. Co-founder and chair of ISACS – the sound art curating conference series (with Peter Weibel). Co-founder and chair of POM – Politics of the Machines conference series (with Laura Beloff). Søndergaard’s chapter
Mette-Marie Zacher Sørensen (Ph.D.) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at Aarhus University in Denmark. She is an interdisciplinary scholar interrogating current relationships among computer science, art and communication. Her recent publications include ‘Quantified faces: On surveillance technologies, identification and statistics in three contemporary art projects’, Digital Culture and Society 2:2 (2016) and ‘Words with cybernetic senses: Questions of multimodality, programming and liveness in digital poetry’, in Beyond the Literary, eds. Sarah Paulsson, Anders Skare Malvik and Roger D. Sell (John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2016). Sørensen’s chapter
Stahl Stenslie (Ph.D., The School of Architecture and Design, Oslo) is an artist, curator and researcher specializing in experimental art, interactive experiences and disruptive technologies. His artworks challenge our ordinary ways of perceiving the world. Keywords are somaesthetics, unstable media, transgression and the numinous, and the technological focus in his works is on the art of the recently possible – such as (1) panhaptic communication on Smartphones, (2) somatic sound and holophonic soundspaces and (3) open-source, disruptive design for disruptive technologies such as low-cost 3D print of functional and lethal art-weaponry. Currently, he is teaching and researching as an Obel Professor in Art and Technology (opplevelsesteknologi) at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is also the director of PNEK – Production Network for Electronic Art, Norway, www.pnek.org. He has been exhibiting and lecturing at major international events (ISEA, DEAF, Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH). He represented Norway at the Ichihara Biennial (Japan 2014), 5th biennial in Istanbul, Turkey, co-organized 6cyberconf and won the Grand Prize of the Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs. Stenslie’s chapter