Frances Dyson

Researcher in Residence (2004)

E.A.T. & 9 Evenings

Frances Dyson (PhD) is a writer, media artist and associate professor in Techno-Cultural Studies at the University of California at Davis. Her writing has been published nationally and internationally, with book chapters in Catherine Richards - Excitable Tissues (Ottawa Art Gallery); Uncertain Ground, (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales) 2000, The Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press) 1998, and Immersed in Technology (Massachusetts: MIT Press) 1996; and articles in journals such as Les Cahiers de L’Herne, (forthcoming) Circa, Leonardo Music Journal, Artbyte and World Art. Dyson has exhibited installation/performance works in the US, Canada, Japan and Australia and for over a decade, she has been a regular contributor to Australia’s premier audio arts program, The Listening Room (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). She currently serves on the board of Davis Community Television and is active in community media projects.

During her residency at the Foundation’s Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D), Frances Dyson will conduct research into John Cage and David Tudor’s involvement in the Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). Her research on Tudor will enable her to shift from the aurality of Cage to the art and technology of the seventies and eighties. Thematically, the research aims to trace the concept of the electronic ether and ‘atmospheric’ art among artists and writers associated with E.A.T. and the art and technology of the sixties and seventies. The outcome of the research will be an analysis of the re-appropriation of earlier historical notions of the ether, as an immersive environment, communicative medium and electronic presence within recent digital arts discourse and aesthetics.