Skip to Search, Skip to Main navigation, Skip to local navigation, Skip to Content
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
  •  
  •  

Colloquia Archive

Movements and Disappearances: Enacting and Visualizing Paths of Technology, History, and Place

January 30, 2009

Abstract

Sharpe will discuss the roles of place, research, and audience participation particularly in relation to two of her artistic projects on changing boundaries:

  • Fever – a locative artwork designed to be experienced using cellphones and GPS at the two sites of Marconi's first trans-Atlantic wireless transfers.
  • Northern Crossings – a sound and video sculpture influenced by mapping and other elements from memories, research and travel in the Canadian North: narratives from her childhood, ideas of 'North', crossings of the Northwest Passage by explorers and adventurers, movements of indigenous peoples of the North, lines created by oil and gas development, shifting sea ice, and migrations of Arctic animals as their habitats change with global warming.
Biography

Leslie Sharpe is Assistant Professor of Digital Art at the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts at Indiana University, Bloomington and was Area Head of Digital Art (2005-2007). Sharpe has received a New Frontiers Fellowship for her project Northern Crossings and an AT&T Fellowship for her art education podcasting. She was a Faculty Fellow at University of California, San Diego and previously taught at Pratt Institute in New York. Sharpe has been an artist in residence at P.S. 1 Museum/Institute for Contemporary Art in New York, The Banff Centre in Canada, and Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. Her work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Dallas Contemporary, the Observatori Festival in Valencia, Spain, Center for New Art in Pontiac, Michigan, The Center for Art and Visual Culture in Baltimore, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Finland, in New York at P.S. 1 Insitute of Contemporary Art, Exit Art, The New Museum, Artists Space, and Franklin Furnace, as well as other venues in the USA, Canada and Europe. Sharpe is a contributor to the special issue on Locative Media published by Leonardo Electronic Almanac/MIT Press.