intermedia art writing and performance

CMCI Reflects on Black History Month 2022

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 20:06:58 +0000

CMCI Reflects on Black History Month 2022 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/07/2022 - 13:06

In 1900, brothers James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson combined their creative expertise with their commitment to Black struggle and Black joy and wrote: “Lift every voice and sing/Till earth and heaven ring/Ring with the harmonies of Liberty….”

Their work became a common thread for many Blacks and African Americans. More than 120 years later, the song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” is widely recognized as the Black national anthem.

When I paused to think about Black History Month—recognizing that, as someone who is neither Black nor African American, it is a luxury to pause in contemplation of Black history—I could not help but reflect on this powerful national anthem. It’s no surprise that it is experiencing a profound resurgence. If you haven’t followed this piece of Black history, the 122-year-old song was part of Beyonce’s 2018 Coachella performance and was integrated into the opening week of the 2020 NFL season. President Biden invoked it in his 2020 presidential campaign.

These individual moments are connected as small parts of a much longer history—one that should not be contained to one month. It’s an important history, not just because it is central to what it means to be African American, but also because it contains lessons for all of us.

As Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in CMCI, I spend a good bit of time thinking about what it means for our community to recognize and participate in the many months and days of recognition. Too often, we engage Black History Month in performative ways, maybe even congratulating ourselves for our commitment and “woke-ness.” Then in March too many of us go back to business as usual, which typically means ignoring Black history, Black presence, and the everyday anti-Black racism that pervades all of U.S. society.

This year, let’s do something less usual. Let’s meet at the crossroads that Black History Month should produce. The month rightly calls attention to the mostly-invisible histories of African Americans, those that have never been just African American history. These histories have always been U.S. history.

The story told in “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is the story of hardship and struggle. It is a tale of exhaustion, violence and dehumanization. It is also a narrative of resilience, survival and joy. This month, I invite you to listen, again and again, to “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Find as many performances by as many different artists as possible. And when you hear the lyrics name the “harmonies of liberty” and “our native land,” pause and remember Black struggle and Black joy, Black brilliance and Black artistry, Black history as U.S. history, Black presence and citizenship.

And then on March 1, continue the work. Follow the frightening spate of bomb threats currently being made against Black intellectual centers. Read or reread authors such as Zora Neal Hurston, Toni Morrison or Amanda Gorman. Revisit the work of Frederick Douglas, W. E. B. DuBois or James Baldwin. Listen to Black Violin.

Refuse to contain Black history to just one month.

Lisa Flores, PhD
Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Co-Chair, CU Boulder IDEA Council

CMCI Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Lisa Flores reflects on the history of Blacks and African Americans in the United States—encapsulated in the song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”—and urges us to bring that history forward both during, and beyond, Black History Month.

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CMCI Now: Read the Latest Issue

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 00:03:37 +0000

CMCI Now: Read the Latest Issue Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/20/2021 - 17:03

From undergraduates to doctoral candidates, the college equips students with the knowledge and skills needed to produce, gather, archive, curate, analyze and evaluate the flood of information, messages, data, images, sounds and ideas that populate our complex and rapidly evolving global media landscape. Check out the newest edition of our award-winning magazine.

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CMCI Now: Spring 2021

Anonymous — Mon, 24 May 2021 20:21:25 +0000

CMCI Now: Spring 2021 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/24/2021 - 14:21

Read our latest digital issue, full of fresh-picked stories to read, watch and explore!⁠

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Los Angeles Review of Books: “Alternative Internets and Their Lost Histories”

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Apr 2021 20:28:11 +0000

Los Angeles Review of Books: “Alternative Internets and Their Lost Histories” Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/12/2021 - 14:28

By Lori Emerson (Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance)

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Celebrating Graduate Student Appreciation Week

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 18:42:26 +0000

Celebrating Graduate Student Appreciation Week Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/07/2021 - 12:42

Happy Graduate Student Appreciation Week from CMCI and CU Boulder!

At CMCI, graduate students are an integral part of our mission to think, innovate and create. In each of CMCI’s departments, master’s and doctoral students are working to produce innovative research and creative work, think critically about pressing social issues, and serve as educators and mentors for CMCI’s undergraduate students. After an especially challenging year, we hope all of our graduate students know how much we value and appreciate all the ways you contribute to our community.

Are you a CMCI graduate student? Watch our video for you (above) and be sure to check out the list of graduate student events that Student Affairs is hosting throughout the week.

Not a CMCI graduate student? Be sure to reach out to a grad student you know today and thank them for all they do!

Happy Graduate Student Appreciation Week from CMCI and CU Boulder!

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IAWP Faculty and Student News: Feb. 2021

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 20:52:07 +0000

IAWP Faculty and Student News: Feb. 2021 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/02/2021 - 13:52

Despite things being what they are, IAWP has still managed to continue to grow and produce over the past semester. Below are some highlights of IAWP doings and happenings throughout fall 2020.

Professor Mark Amerika was invited to deliver a keynote performance at the Artificial Creativity conference in Malmö, Sweden, on Nov. 19, 2020. During the performance, he premiered new iterations of the FATAL ERROR: artificial creative intelligence art project, originally slated for exhibition and presentation earlier this year at CHI 2020 (Honolulu) and WeRobot 2020 (Ottawa). He also performed another new work of his, Planet Corona, at the Confinement, viralité et formes de vie (Lockdown, Virality and Life Forms) conference in Paris on Nov. 27. All of these projects grow out of the collaborative, practice-based research investigations taking place inside the TECHNE Lab.

Following a very productive 2020 for the TECHNE Lab, the TECHNE crew (Amerika, Kim, Gallagher) are coming out of the 2021 box with their next IDMO (Imaginary Digital Media Object) in the just-released special issue of Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus, focused on "Forking Paths in New Media Art Practices: Investigating Remix."

PhD candidate Sasha De Koninck submitted a course proposal for a class called The Body in Space to the Space Minor program, which was accepted and will be taught by her in the fall of 2021. De Koninck also completed her first-year review this past fall and is now preparing for her upcoming April residency in the B2 space by spending her Beverly Seares Graduate Student Grant on fabrics. In addition, she did a performance during the ATLAS Research Showcase where she wore a garment made of a textile she wove with dissolving threads.

Assistant Professor Laura Devendorf participated in the online event Art & Code: Homemade.

IAWP Director and Associate Professor Lori Emerson received a $25,000 donation from Google to support the Media Archaeology Lab. The MAL also initiated its micro-grants for work in the lab that relates to the intersection of race and technology. Emerson also developed a new undergraduate course she’s proposing to the College of Arts and Sciences called Future Histories of the Internet. In December, she published, “‘Did We Dream Enough?’ THE THING BBS as Social Sculpture,”as part of Rhizome’s / The New Museum’s ongoing work to restore The Thing BBS. She also participated in the presentation of libi striegl’s short video, Frequency, which we aired for an event called Protected: Performing Media Archaeological Experiments that took place at the University of Luxembourg. Finally, Emerson gave a keynote presentation titled “Community x (Pedagogy + Play) at the Media Archaeology Lab'' for the MetaCulture Media Festival in Moscow, Russia.

PhD candidate Angie Eng was featured in the Daily Camera for her outdoor exhibit, Right on!, at Museum of Boulder. Her work responds to social crisis and systemic racism with 32 plaques. Eng is also running a Creative Catalyzer fundraiser called Dare to Care food drive for public school students––in which local artists decorate food collection crates––in collaboration with Naropa's Art Therapy Department Studio group for brain-injured adults. She also presented at the Atlas Institute Seminar Tuesday Colloquium Series and was awarded a Gerald C. Bean Scholarship, as well as babyֱ��app Music Relief Funds. Finally, Eng has been invited by Leon Gallery for a solo exhibition this summer for her work Iconoclashgiftsfeld.

Assistant Professor Erin Espelie was a virtual visiting artist at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum, Germany, and in August at John Cabot University in Rome. Her film about yellow mealworms, Tenebrio molitor, showed on Australia's TV Science channel through the end of the summer months and her new documentary, Sacred Mountain, premiered in early September in Mumbai at the Indian Cine Film Festival. The Kontejner Collective also highlighted Espelie's art in Zagreb, Croatia. Finally, Espelie curated a show, Co-Terminous, at Union Hall in Denver that was open through Jan. 9, 2021.

PhD Candidate Brad Gallagher gave a presentation at the Artificial Creativity conference in Malmo, Sweden, on Nov. 19 and 20 entitled “Do GPT-2s Dream of Electric Poetry?" He was also selected for an Atlas B2 residency, to be held from Feb. 22 to March 5, 2021. In addition, Gallagher completed his first-year review!

PhD candidate Laura Hyunjhee Kim was part of the group show The Archive to Come at Telematic Media Arts in San Francisco.

Her solo exhibition, Living Lab, also opened in November at Clark College’s Archer Gallery in Vancouver, Washington. In addition to displaying projects online, she offered a workshop titled Feeling without Touching: An Archive of Feelosophic Artefacts from the Living Lab and collaborated with virtual visitors to create intimate "feelosophic artefacts" that explore and reimagine how we language our emotions in digital spaces.

Kim's video, Cricket World, is included in the online, social VR, and in-gallery group exhibition The Archive to Come at Telematic Media Arts. Finally, her book, Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs, has been reviewed on Rain Taxi.

PhD candidate Darija Medic participated in a debate on “the new normal” during the literary festival KROKODIL. She also participated in the Terms of Service Fantasy Reader workshop during the South Eastern European Dialogue on Internet Governance. Finally, she participated in Belgrade’s Innovation Week via a panel on "Future Narratives," speaking from the position of the affiliation with the Media Archaeology Lab as a small intervention in narratives on innovation.

Associate Professor and IAWP Faculty Affiliate Hanna Rose Shell's book, Shoddy: From Devil's Dust to the Renaissance of Rags, was published by the University of Chicago Press.

Last but not least, PhD candidate Biyi Wen presented a paper titled "Mapping Post-Reform Narratives: Hypertext Network as Literary Infrastructure" at the Youth Round Table as part of the Fifth-Annual Conference of Network Society, hosted by Institute of Network Society in China Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou, China. The paper will eventually be translated and published in Chinese by INS.

News from IAWP's babyֱ��app, affiliated babyֱ��app and graduate students.

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CMCI Now: Fall 2020

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 17:46:51 +0000

CMCI Now: Fall 2020 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/19/2020 - 10:46

Read the latest issue of our award-winning magazine.

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Summer at CMCI Now

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 20:13:54 +0000

Summer at CMCI Now Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/14/2020 - 14:13

Read stories and updates in the latest issue of our award-winning magazine.

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Celebrating Five Years of CMCI

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 14:49:12 +0000

Celebrating Five Years of CMCI Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 07/01/2020 - 08:49

CMCI was founded in 2015 at a moment of revolutionary change––change in the ways we communicate, the tools we use to do it and how we see ourselves as a society.

The first new college at CU Boulder in 53 years, our mission was to build an education and a community that could match the times we live in. In our first five years at CMCI, we’ve created a strong foundation of academic excellence, community engagement and public scholarship.

Today, we continue to think, innovate and create through

Scholarship that matters in areas such as climate change, public health, representation and identity, dis- and misinformation, visual ethnography, and data ethics
Expanded precollegiate opportunities that set students up for success and help create a more vibrant, equitable and inclusive college community
New academic degree programs that allow students to apply their skills in a broader range of industries, including data science, sports and documentary filmmaking

Today officially marks our five-year anniversary! And we couldn’t have done it without each of you. Because at the heart of CMCI is a sense of community––a vibrant group of scholars, educators and media makers learning and working together.

As we reflect on all we’ve accomplished, here’s a snapshot of what’s next:

Launching an online master’s in corporate communication
Establishing a new media innovation laboratory
Exploring virtual frontiers through extended reality

Here’s to our first #5YearsOfCMCI and to the next 95 to come.

Time doesn’t stand still. Neither should education.

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Buffs Together

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 18:03:52 +0000

Buffs Together Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/08/2020 - 12:03

CU Boulder is more than a place. It is all of you, wherever you are—a worldwide community of Buffs. And when that community is in need, we all come together to lend a hand.

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