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Graduate Program in Communication & Culture

Faculty Profiles

Nell Tenhaaf

Technology in Practice

University   York University
E-Mail Address   tenhaaf@yorku.ca
Phone Number   (416)736-5187
Office Location   CFA 321
Office Hours   TBA

Education

BFA (Concordia); Diploma in Art Education (McGill); M.FA (Concordia)

Biography

Professor Tenhaaf is an electronic media artist and writer. She is currently working on Flo'nGlo, two sculptural characters who are having a conversation in low-res video and processed sound, with Toronto-based sound artist John Kamevaar. The work will premiere in the 2005 Images Festival, in April. Professor Tenhaaf has exhibited across Canada, in the U.S. and in Europe. A survey exhibition of fifteen years of her work entitled Fit/Unfit opened in April 2003 and is travelling to several other venues. Tenhaaf's works created between 1989 and the mid-1990s were aimed at deconstructing the dominance in mainstream biological and biotechnology discourse of DNA as the "master molecule." The discourses themselves have evolved since then. Later works attempt to represent some of the complex dynamics of life and involve the viewer as one element in a continuous flux, for example in the interactive work called Swell (2003) and in the touch-activated video installation UCBM (You could be me) (1999). Tenhaaf has published numerous reviews and articles that address the cultural implications of biotechnologies and of Artificial Life. She is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art in Toronto.

Research Interests

Electronic media art, interactivity, human/computer interfaces, artificial life, artificial intelligence, biotechnologies.

Selected Publications

Fit/Unfit: A Survey Exhibition, The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa and the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University, Montreal, 2004; and at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, 2003.

Digitized Bodies, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2001 and at the Mestna Galerija, Ljubljana, 2002

UCBM (You could be me), Western Front, interactive installation in Zero Degree Monstrosities event, Vancouver, 2000.

dDNA (d is for dancing), storefront video projection developed on-site, MediaArts, St. Louis, MO, 1999.

"Production and Reproduction" in Judy Malloy, ed., Women, Art and Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press/Leonardo), 2003, pp. 362-375.

"Cybernetic Social Space" in M. Fernandez, F. Wilding, M.M. Wright, eds., Domain Errors!: Cyberfeminist Practices (New York: Autonomedia), 2003, pp. 251-256.

"Perceptions of Self in Art and Intelligent Agents" in K. Dautenhahn, A. Bond, L. Canamero, B. Edmonds eds., Socially Intelligent Agents: Creating relationships with computers and robots (Norwell, Mass: Kluwer Academic Publishers), 2002, pp. 235-242.

"As Art is Lifelike: Evolution, Art, and The Readymade" in Leonardo, Vol. 31, No. 5, 1998, pp. 397-404.

 

 

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Harold [Innis] taught us how to use the bias of culture and communication as an instrument of research. By directing attention to the bias, or distorting power of the dominant imagery and technology of any culture, he showed us how to understand cultures.
~ Marshall McLuhan