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Archive-2014

The EODIAH – UTD Leonardo Initiatives “Generation 0: Chronicles of the Art-and-Technology Vanguard”

The University of Texas at Dallas’ new Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History (EODIAH) and the Leonardo Initiatives of ATEC at UTD are pleased to announce the Leonardo Generation 0 Project, an open and expanding archive of the foundational forces in art-and-technology.
 
After the Second World War, two major developments transformed the cultural landscape: the digital computer and discoveries in the realm of genetics. The Leonardo Generation 0 Project chronicles the multi-perspectival merger between technology and art from the 1950s through the 1980s.  Generation 0 amplifies the voices of pioneering and influential artists, engineers, curators, and key organizations through a growing databank of written first-person accounts and podcast recordings. The project seeks to document the experiences of those most closely involved in the creation of digital art, the biological arts, new media art, and computer art using the tools of the digital humanities. Leonardo Generation 0 shares the unique perspectives in a style that is at once embracing and accessible, intellectually rigorous yet casual. This new project is aimed at uncovering a rich, if somewhat underappreciated, time in art history by recording the memories of the pioneers.
 
The Generation 0 Project is part of the Leonardo Pioneers and Pathbreakers project of the Observatoire Leonardo des Arts et Techno-Sciences in Paris, and in collaboration with its director, Annick Bureaud. Memoirs are being published both on the Pioneers and Pathbreakers website athttp://olats.org/pionniers/pionniers.php and in the Leonardo Journal art history section edited by Professor David Carrier: http://leonardo.info/leoinfo.html
 
The co-directors of the Generation 0 Project are Professor Roger Malina, an affiliate faculty member of the EODIAH and an ATEC Distinguished Chair at the University of Texas at Dallas, and Dr. Charissa Terranova, an Associate Professor of Art History in EODIAH. ATEC ArtSciLab Research Fellow, Poe Johnson, a University of Texas at Dallas PhD student, coordinates the project. Their varied perspectives and skill sets embody the hybridity of the memoirs project itself, and the philosophy of University of Texas at Dallas ATEC and Arts & Humanities programs.
 
Among the recent memoirs are an inside account of the workings of Bell Labs from A Michael Noll, Helen and Newton Harrison about their early work in art and environment, Frieder Nake views as a pioneering German computer artist, Trudy Reagan early days of the YLEM organization.
 
Submissions for the Pioneers and Pathbreakers memoir project are decided and peer reviewed by The Frieda Ackerman Committee: Marc Battier, Paul Brown, Annick Bureaud, David Carrier, Joel Chadabe, Anne Collins, Eduardo Kac, Roger Malina, Patrick McCray, Frieder Nake, Louise Poissant, Eddie Shanken, and Charissa Terranova. The call for memoirs is available at http://leonardo.info/isast/journal/calls/pioneers.html.