The Electronic Media Arts & Design Program brings together a Faculty whose creative praxis is simultaneously engaged at local, national and global levels. The eMAD instructional areas include visual/media semiotics; net art; installation art; digital video art; interactive and tangible art; designing social awareness and game development; environmental/sustainable design strategies; installation and spatial environments; performance art; and wearables. Advanced study in the eMAD program is informed by the diverse creative research pursuits of the Faculty. These areas include biomedia; cyberfeminist theory; ecosemiotics; media politics; open source development; humane gaming; sustainable design; emerging forms of interactivity; critical toys; new media-based public art; and 21st century New Media praxis.
eMAD's extended instructional and research network includes our Faculty colleagues in the Digital Media Studies Program and the Studio and Art History Programs of the DU School of Art and Art History.
Electronic Media Arts & Design Faculty
Rafael Fajardo Associate Professor, eMAD & DMS rfajardo@du.edu Rafael is part of an emerging group of artists and designers who are exploring the potential of digital video games to express serious and complex subject matter. Through his collaborative, SWEAT, Fajardo has published two video games that comment on the game-like nature of (il)legal human traffic at the US/Mexico border. These games have been exhibited in Holland, Turkey, Canada, and the US. Before coming to Colorado, Fajardo spent six years living, teaching, and working on the US/Mexico border. There, he challenged the canons of design education and attempted to locate a visual expression that was “of the region” and not imposed from outside. His students created ideosyncratic works that have been recognized for their excellence by Milia, the leading global forum for the interactive industries; Walt Disney Imagineering; and, MexicArte, a nationally reknown cultural space in Austin, Texas. For over twelve years Fajardo has been investigating cultural identity and cultural representation through his visual and intellectual work. His early explorations, completed while receiving his MFA from RISD, garnered recognition from the American Center for Design. More recently, his critical practice has earned him recognition by I.D., The International Magazine of Design. In 2005, the Colorado Council for the Arts awarded him a grant to support scholarships for under-represented populations to a game camp he is organizing with the department of computer science at the University of Denver. His educational background includes two undergraduate degrees from The University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA in design from the Rhode Island School of Design. More may be found at Rafael's personal websites (www.RafaelFajardo.com and www.sudor.net/blog) and his course website (www.du.edu/~rfajardo). Laleh Mehran Associate Professor, eMAD Laleh.Mehran@du.edu Laleh's research areas include the intersections of art and science, media politics, and emerging forms of time-based media. Her work has been shown individually and as part of art collectives at the Next 5 Minutes 4 Tactical Media Festival in Amsterdam, Holland; the European Media Arts Festival in Osnabruck, Germany; Ponte Futura in Cortona Italy; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA; the Orlo Video Festival in Portland, Oregon; the Carnegie Museum of Art; The Georgia Museum of Art; The Andy Warhol Museum; and the Pittsburgh Biennial at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Pittsburgh, PA. More information may be found at Laleh's personal website (www.lalehmehran.com). Timothy Weaver Associate Professor, eMAD & DMS tweaver2@du.edu As a new media artist Timothy's concerted objective has been to contribute to the restoration of ecological memory through a process of speculative inquiry along the art | technology interface. His recent live cinema, video and sonic projects have been featured at FILE/FILE Hipersonica (Brazil), Transmediale (Berlin), New Forms Festival (Vancouver), Subtle Technologies (Toronto), Korean Experimental Art Festival (Seoul), Museum of Modern Art (Cuenca, Ecuador) and nationally at Boston CyberArts/MIT, SIGGRAPH, the New York Digital Salon and the National Institutes of Health. Additionally, Weaver has conducted visiting artist projects at the University of Gavle, Creative Media Lab/Creative Programming (Gavle, Sweden), KTH/Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), University of Pittsburgh and University of Colorado, Boulder. His course areas include interactive art and design, net art and design, sustainable design strategies and media ecologies/media semiotics. Timothy received an MFA in Sculpture from University of Colorado at Boulder in 1993, an MS in Environmental Engineering and a BS in Microbiology from Purdue University. Timothy's research areas include emerging forms of interactivity and narrativity, biologically inspired computing, biomimetics, shared interactive space, and sustainable design. Projects and more information are linked on his personal web sites (www.lab.biotica.org and www.primamateria.org) and his course website (www.du.edu/~tweaver2).Digital Media Studies Faculty
Christopher Coleman Assistant ProfessorGraduate Director, DMS ccolem22@du.edu Chris' research interests include control systems, chaos and order, digital interaction, physical interaction, borders, animation, appropriation, technological decay, art as activism, audio/video manipulation, systems in nature, and object creation. He received his B.F.A. in sculpture at West Virginia University where he also spent a number of years studying Mechanical Engineering. His M.F.A. was earned at SUNY Buffalo specializing in Interactivity and Real-Space Electronics. More may be found at Chris's personal website (www.digitalcoleman.com) and his course website (www.du.edu/~ccolem22). Bill Depper Lecturer, DMS wdepper@du.edu Bill's primary teaching areas include web development, interactive media and 3d modeling and animation. Bill's creative work explores text/image relationships found within digital media. These explorations are expressed through interactive works, experimental video pieces and computer-based animation. He has a M.A. in Digital Media Studies at DU as well as a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa and a B.A. in English from the University of Denver. Jim LaVita Professor, Division of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences lavita@du.edu Jim LaVita is currently Professor of Social Sciences in the Division of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Denver, where he had formerly been Professor of Computer Science and before that Professor of Mathematics. He holds two doctorates, in applied mathematics (New York University, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences) and in anthropology (University of Texas, Austin) as well as an M.A. in Folklore (University of California, Berkeley). He was chairman of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science nine years. His scholarly interests are in: technology, computing and culture; dance ethnology and dance history; folklore; performance, aesthetics and expressive culture. Prof. LaVita spent six summers in Norway and Sweden studying traditional couple dancing, and was the recipient of a Norwegian Marshall Fund Grant to study there. He has been a research associate in the Department of Scandinavian Studies and the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley and also a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, Austin. He has studied, taught, lectured and written about traditional dance, its social settings, and its improvisatory techniques. He is currently artistic co-director of 3rd Law Dance/Theater, a modern dance/theater company which creates a unique and exciting brand of performance: dramatic soundscapes, moving imagery, thoughtful and engaging narration, vivid and imaginative costuming and lighting. Trace Reddell Associate Professor
Director, DMS treddell@du.edu Trace is a digital media artist and theorist exploring the interactions of multimedia production, networking technologies, media theory, literary criticism, space rock and ambient music, and the history of drug cultures. His live cinema work with Timothy Weaver, “microMacroCosm,” debuted at the University Theater, Amsterdam, in June 2006. Trace also performed new solo work at Melkweg, as part of Upgrade! Amsterdam. His vlog, “It’s a Psych-Out!,” launched in December 2005 to explore the personal media dimensions of expanded cinema. His net.art and audio works may be found at Electronic Book Review, Stasis_Space, djrabbi.com, on several microsound.org compilations, and The Communications of Tomorrow label. His score to Philip K. Dick's last novel, Radio Free Albemuth , is out on the Sine Fiction label. Trace contributed the sound track to the multimedia remix of Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle,” a collaboration with Mark Amerika and Rick Silva. Since debuting at the Paris Bienniale in February 2004, “SOS” has screened ot over 30 international venues including galleries and new media festivals in New York, London, Glasgow, Berlin, Zurich, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Tehran. Recent publications include articles in Leonardo Electronic Almanac and the Contemporary Music Review. Trace’s chapter, “The Social Pulse of Telharmonics: Functions of Networked Sound and Interactive Webcasting,” is included in Cybersounds: Essays on Virtual Music Culture (Peter Lang Publishing, 2006). He edits the music/sound/noise thread at Electronic Book Review and is the producer of Alt-X Audio. More may be found at Trace's web site (www.du.edu/~treddell). Adrienne Russell Associate Professor, DMS Adrienne.Russell@du.edu Adrienne's research interests center on emerging media tools and practices and how they impact contemporary communication culture. Before joining the DMS faculty, she held a two-year fellowship at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center, where she collaboratively wrote and edited a book on networked publics to be published by MIT Press in 2008 and where she helped organize the first annual 24/7: DIY Video Summit to be held at USC in February 2008. Adrienne is currently working on a book on journalism called "Networked," which explores contemporary newsroom cultures and the evolving relationship between the news and the public. A chapter on the 2005 civil unrest in France appeared in the October issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication. Adrienne also co-edited "International Blogging," a volume of case studies on the way national and local contexts influence blogging around the world. The book will be published in 2008 by Peter Lang as part of Steve Jones's Digital Formations series. Adrienne holds a BA in Cultural Studies from University of California Santa Cruz, an MS in Media Studies from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in Communication from Indiana University. More on her current projects and interests can be found at her website (www.adrienne.typepad.com).
