Jennifer Gabrys
Researcher in Residence (2004)
From Outside Art to E-waste: Translating the Research Environnement of E.A.T.
Jennifer Gabrys is enrolled in the Communication Studies Ph.D. program at McGill University, where she is researching the phenomenon of electronic waste, or e-waste. This encompasses both obsolete material hardware and the excesses of information, from spam to websites, which litter our cultural landscapes. In Montreal, she is participating in both the Digital Cities and Culture of Cities research projects. Previously, she practiced landscape architecture and art in Los Angeles, where she was involved with the Center for Land Use Interpretation in developing conceptual landscape projects. Jennifer has written several articles on landscapes and media, including Motor Chorus, on driving in Los Angeles, published in Surface Tensions (Errant Bodies Press), and an essay on signals in the city, forthcoming from a Culture of Cities volume on circulation. She was recently commissioned by Bookworks in London to produce an artists' book, Airdrop, on the use of wartime leaflet drops.
Experiments in Art and Technology has proven to be a critical organization in moving art beyond the gallery walls into the spaces of technology and the environment. Jennifer Gabrys will investigate, in the context of her residency at the Foundation's Centre for Research and Documentation, several Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) works that engage in an expanded field of artistic action, including the Anand Project in India, Projects Outside Art, and Telex Q&A. She will study how E.A.T. uses art as research and tactic to expand the scope of both art and technology. Her research will then examine ways of translating E.A.T.'s investigative methods into a dissertation-based study of electronic waste (e-waste).
Dominique Fontaine © 2003 FDL