Wild Nature and the Digital Life - Gallery
by Sue Thomas and Dene Grigar
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Keywords
nature, digital, art, wild nature and the digital life

Abstract
Intended as an exploration of the relationships among nature, the digital, and art, “Wild Nature and the Digital Life,” edited by Sue Thomas and Dene Grigar, is a double issue focusing on two themes: the Emergent / Generative and the Locative / Performative. The accompanying Gallery features works by Elisa Giaccardi in collaboration with Hal Eden and Gianluca Sabena, and by Karl Grimes.

Statement
Intended as an exploration of the relationships among nature, the digital, and art, “Wild Nature and the Digital Life,” edited by Sue Thomas and Dene Grigar, is a double issue focusing on two themes: the Emergent / Generative and the Locative / Performative. The accompanying Gallery features works by Elisa Giaccardi in collaboration with Hal Eden and Gianluca Sabena, and by Karl Grimes.

Grimes’ project, “Future Nature” is a provocative look at animal embryos and fetuses in a genre he calls “photographic portraiture” of dead laboratory animals used in scientific and medical experiments. Intended to “challeng[e] our assumptions about how we aestheticise nature and map the animal body,” his fantastic and lyrical images, and dual themes of “retrieval and digital resurrection” stir us to question the notion of scientific objectivity and suggests the possibility of re-generation, a potential future emerging out of the haunting death of nature.

“The Affective Geography of Silence – Towards a Museum of Natural Quiet” by Elisa Giaccardi, Hal Eden and Gianluca Sabena is a three year project designed to explore ‘the engaging possibility of collecting and reinterpreting both individual and collective data over a sustained period of time, according to the different properties of the space with which a user is interacting and through which data is traveling.’ Focusing on the museum as a site of cultural negotiation and social relations, this extended project uses mobile GPS technology to enable ambient sounds and visualizations to create a compelling sensual experience.

(Ed Note. Access the LEA Wild Nature and Digital Life LEA Special issue at:
http://leoalmanac.org/journal/vol_14/lea_v14_n07-08/home.asp

Curator Biographies
Sue Thomas is Professor of New Media in the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University, and an Associate Fellow of DMU's new Institute of Creative Technologies. She founded the trAce Online Writing Centre in 1995 where she was Artistic Director until going to De Montfort in January 2005. Her books include the novels 'Correspondence' (short-listed for the Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 1992) and 'Water' (1994), and an edited anthology 'Wild Women: Contemporary Short Stories By Women Celebrating Women' (1994). Her nonfiction includes 'Creative Writing: A Handbook For Workshop Leaders' (1995) and most recently 'Hello World: travels in virtuality' (2004). She has published extensively in both print and online, and has initiated numerous online writing projects including 'The Noon Quilt', now an iconic image of the early days of the web. With Kate Pullinger she is launching a new online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at DMU, due to begin teaching Autumn 2006. Her most recent projects include NLab, a Narrative Laboratory for the Creative Industries - a series of seminars and a day conference for 2006, and Writing and the Digital Life, a blog and listserv about the impact of technology upon writing and lived experience. Her research interests include transliteracy and narratives of digital experience, and she is currently writing 'The Wild Surmise', a study of nature and cyberspace.

Dene Grigar is a media artist-scholar and Director of the Digital Technology and Culture program as Washington State University - Vancouver. Her books include New Worlds, New Words: Exploring Pathways in and Around Electronic Environments (with John Barber) and Defiance and Decorum: Women, Public Rhetoric, and Activism (with Laura Gray and Katherine Robinson); media art works include "Fallow Field: A Story in Two Parts" and "The Jungfrau Tapes: A Conversation with Diana Slattery about The Glide Project," both of which appeared in Iowa Review Web in October 2004, and When Ghosts Will Die (with Canadian multimedia artist Steve Gibson), a piece that experiments with motion tracking technology to produce narrative. The video of the piece has been named Finalist in the Drunken Boat Panliterary Award Competition and has been exhibited at Art Tech Media 06 in Spain. She also serves Associate Editor for Leonardo Reviews and is the International Editor for Computers and Composition.

Citation reference for this Leonardo Electronic Almanac Curatorial Statement

MLA Style
Thomas, Sue and Grigar, Dene. “Curatorial Statement: Wild Nature and the Digital Life Gallery.” “Wild Nature and the Digital Life Gallery” Special Issue, Leonardo Electronic Almanac Vol 14, No. 7 - 8 (2006). 30 Nov. 2006 <http://leoalmanac.org/gallery/digiwild/index.htm>.

APA Style
Thomas, S. and Grigar, D. (Nov. 2006) “Curatorial Statement: Wild Nature and the Digital Life Gallery” “Wild Nature and the Digital Life Gallery” Special Issue, Leonardo Electronic Almanac Vol 14, No. 7 – 8 (2006). Retrieved 30 Nov. 2006 from <http://leoalmanac.org/gallery/digiwild/index.htm>.