Edward A. Shanken (born 1964) is an American art historian, whose work focuses on the entwinement of art, science and technology, with a focus on experimental

new media art New media art includes artworks designed and produced by means of new media, electronic media technologies. It comprises virtual art, computer graphics, computer animation, digital art, interactive art, sound art, Internet art, video games, robo ...

and visual culture. Shanken is Professor of digital arts & new media at UC Santa Cruz. His scholarship has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been translated into many languages. Shanken is the author of ''Art and Electronic Media'' (Phaidon Press, 2009), among other titles.

Background

Edward A. Shanken graduated from

Haverford College Haverford College ( ) is a private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Fr ...

(1986) and then obtained an MA (1999) and Ph.D. (2001) in

Art History Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...

from

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

after receiving an MBA from

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in 1990. He was the executive director of the Information Science Information Studies program (ISIS) at

from 2001 to 2004. From 2004 to 2007 Shanken was Professor of Art History and Media Theory at Savannah College of Art and Design and Senior Researcher at the

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

Art , Science Center and Visiting Scholar at the California NanoSystems Institute from 2007 to 2008. He joined the Department of Media Studies,

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, ) is a public university, public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Established in 1632 by municipal authorities, it is the fourth-oldest academic institution in the Netherlan ...

in 2008, where he served as Universitair Docent, New Media and Digital Culture, 2008-2010 and as a Researcher, 2010-2012. In 2010, he was the inaugural Louis D. Beaumont Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis. Since 2007 he has served on the faculty of the Media Art Histories MA program at Donau University, Krems, Austria. In 2013 he joined the faculty at the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

. In 2016, Shanken joined UC Santa Cruz as Director of the innovative Digital Arts/New Media (DANM) MFA program. Shanken has been awarded fellowships from the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the feder ...

and the

American Council of Learned Societies The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a private, nonprofit federation of 75 scholarly organizations in the humanities and related social sciences founded in 1919. It is best known for its fellowship competitions which provide a ra ...

. He was formerly chair of the Leonardo Education Forum and a member of the College Art Association Education Committee and has served as an advisor to the Media Art Histories conference, ISEA, the journal Technoetic Arts, and the Leonardo Pioneers and Pathbreakers project. He has conducted extensive research on the theorist and art critic Jack Burnham and into

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

as applied to systems art in the 1960s.

Research Activity

Recent and forthcoming publications include essays on art and technology in the 1960s, interactivity and agency, the historiography of art and technology, parallels between conceptual art and art and technology, and the cultural implications of

, telematics, robotics, and biotechnology. Shanken’s current research examines art-science

collaboration Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. The ...

and the relationship between the discourses of mainstream contemporary art and new media art. Following the first concern, he chaired the panel discussion,"Artists in Industry and the Academy: Interdisciplinary Research Collaborations" at the 2004 Annual Conference of the College Art Association and served as guest editor of a special series of essays under the same title in the Leonardo Journal (38:4 and 38:5) in 2005. More recently he guest-edited a special series of essays, “The Reception and Rejection of Art and Technology: Exclusions and Revulsions,” which appeared in the journals ''a minima'' (Mar 2008) and ''Leonardo'' 42: 2 (Apr 2008). Following the second concern, he organized and chaired a panel discussion with Nicolas Bourriaud, Peter Weibel and Michael Joaquin Grey at Art Basel in June 2010 (see external link below) and organized and chaired a panel discussion at the College Art Association Annual Conference (CAA) in 2011, the papers of which were published in a special issue of ArtNodes (see links below). A further research area is the use of social media to expand and democratize the production and dissemination of art criticism. This is exemplified by th
''Art and Electronic Media Online Companion''
a Web 2.0 site.

Teaching Activity

Shanken currently teaches at UC Santa Cruz. He has previously taught media and art history at

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase th ...

, Savannah College of Art and Design, the University of Amsterdam, Donau University (Austria), the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) at the University of Washington.

Publishing Activity

Shanken is the editor of ''Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness'', the collected writings of Roy Ascott (

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty ...

, 2003).
Shanken at UCLA His essay, "Art in the

Information Age The Information Age is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on information technology ...

: Technology and Conceptual Art" received honorable mention in the Leonardo Award for Excellence in 2004. His book ''Inventing the Future: Art, Electricity, New Media'' was published in Spanish in 2013. He is also the editor of the antholog
Systems
published in 2015 through

Whitechapel Whitechapel () is an area in London, England, and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in east London and part of the East End of London, East End. It is the location of Tower Hamlets Town Hall and therefore the borough tow ...

and

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

References

Bibliography

* Shanken, Edward A. ''Systems''. London and Cambridge MA: Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2015. *Shanken, Edward A.
Inventar el Futuro: arte - electricadad - nuevos medios
'' Trans. Everardo Reyes García y Pau Waelder Laso. Brooklyn: Departamento de Ficción, 2013. . * Shanken, Edward A. ''Art and Electronic Media''. London: Phaidon, 2009. * Ascott, Roy. ''Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness''. Edited and with an essay by Edward A. Shanken. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Key Essays

*2019 "Pushing the Limits: Surrealism, Possession, and the Multiple Self: Juan Downey and ''The Laughing Alligator''" *201
"A Sounding Happens: Pauline Oliveros, Expanded Consciousness, and Healing"
(co-authored with Yolande Harris) *2016
“Contemporary Art and New Media: Hybrid Discourse or Digital Divide?”
* 201
“Investigatory Art: Real Time Systems and Network Culture”
* 201
"The History and Future of the Lab: Collaborative Research at the Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology"
* 200
"Reprogramming Systems Aesthetics: A Strategic Historiography"
* 200
“Historicizing Art and Technology: Forging a Method and Firing a Canon”
* 200
"Artists in Industry and the Academy: Collaborative Research, Interdisciplinary Scholarship, and the Interpretation of Hybrid Forms"
* 200
"Cybernetics and Art: Cultural Convergence in the 1960s"
* 200
"Art in the Information Age: Technology and Conceptual Art"
* 200
"Tele-Agency: Telematics, Telerobotics, and the Art of Meaning"

External links

Official site of Edward A. Shanken

Official site of Ed's students' thoughts on Post-Internet art

''Art and Electronic Media''

''Art and Electronic Media Online Companion''

''Contemporary Art and New Media: Towards a Hybrid Discourse''
Art Basel Conversation moderated by Shanken, with Nicolas Bourriaud, Peter Weibel, Michael Joaquin Grey
Research blog, including podcasts of CAA conference panel

ArtNodes No. 11 (2011) essays from CAA conference panel in English & Spanish.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shanken, Edward A. 1964 births American art critics American art historians Living people Cultural historians Mass media theorists College Art Association