[iDC] Intro

[Ted Byfield]

Hi, all --

Good to see many familiar names, and good as well to see some ones.  
For those who don't know me, brief intro:

I currently teach in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at  
Parsons, a division of the New School. Aside from the usual run of  
required courses, over the last few years, I've led courses that, for  
example, have looked at ebook readers like the Kindle (informal  
subtitle: "historico-epistemological crisis or consumer shite?"),  
speculative cartography, economic data as cultural artifact, telecoms  
and subjectivity -- fun, elusive stuff of the kind that should be  
familiar to many of you. My output over the last several years has  
been slender while, among other things, I served as the Associate  
Chair of a department that, in itself and in its institutional  
setting, was grown asymptotically and went through a sort of  
everlasting-gobstopperish reorganization. Last year and this year,  
I've also been a Visiting Fellow at the Information Society Project of  
Yale Law School, and excellent entity which should be on your  
respective radars, if it isn't already.

Some of you know me from the salad days of the late-90s euroconf  
circuit, mainly the N5M series and its spawn; you may also know my  
name from the nettime mailing list, which I've been co-moderating with  
Felix Stalder for more than a decade now (or you may not -- since the  
Götterdämmerung of the "moderation wars" ca. '98, FS and I have  
approached our role as a community service). Before that my checkered  
past involved editing nonfiction (for Zone, Dia, the New Press,  
Cambridge UP,  inter alia), technical work in experimental theater  
(everyone from Richard Foreman to SRL), making art (around galleries  
like Pat Hearn and A.F.A), and thinking about the rise (yes, rise) of  
medievalisms (yes, plural).

I'm currently working on a book (or UPO, "unidentified publishing  
object," to lift a phrase from Ken Wark) that aims to mount a ruthless  
critique of data visualization, information design, and related  
chicanery. This is an open project, part anthology/dossier/etc, so  
suggestions, contributions, projects, interviews are warmly welcome.

Cheers,
Ted
---
Asst Prof Art Media + Tech
Parsons TNS4D, New School U
2W13th St 10 fl NYC NY 10011