New Media Caucus at the 2007 College Art Conference

The 95th Annual conference will take place from February 14th to 17th at the Hilton New York in Midtown Manhattan.

Here are a few crucial dates for your calendar:
December 13th is the deadline for Early Bird Registration for the
Conference (this can be done on-line at http://
conference.collegeart.org/2007/register or via mail).

Thursday, February 15, 12:30-2pm, Trianon Ballroom, Hilton NY
New Media Caucus Juried Session:
Panel Title: "Can Geeks be Humanists”
Panel Chair: Marcia Tanner, Independent Curator and Writer, Berkeley,
California

A common perception among artists, curators, art historians, art
critics, and art audiences outside the new media art community is that
artists using contemporary technologies create work that
alienates the viewer and conflicts with the humanist legacy of
Western art and other cultural and aesthetic traditions. This notion is all too often reinforced, superficially at least, by much of the new media work produced.

This panel will address and challenge those assumptions with
presentations by artists whose work and practice consciously extend and amplify humanist aesthetic traditions. In the subsequent
conversation, panelists will be invited to explore the definitions and
appropriateness of those apparently oppositional terms – “geeks” versus “humanists” – and consider a third: that of “artist.“ They will discuss those characteristics of new media art that seem to justify the charges against it – notably in terms of communication with and/or reception by traditional art audiences and critics – and whether these concerns should matter to anyone now, particularly to the artists themselves.

With some Papers and Panelists:
Intimacy in New Media Art
Andrea Ackerman, artist, theorist, psychiatrist, New York, New York

Claudia Hart, Pratt Institute, New York; Lehman College, City
University of New York

Beyond Functional: Embedding Responsive Art into Human Systems
Sabrina Raaf, School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Chicago

Animate Objects, and the Evocation of Empathy
John Slepian, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

The Beautiful and the Terrifying
Gail Wight, Stanford University, California