Our People
Associate Professor Stephanie Owens
Dean of Arts, Design and Media
<p>Associate Professor Stephanie Owens is an interdisciplinary artist, creative researcher, and curator interested in the influence of digital networks on contemporary aesthetics and the production of subjectivity.<br /><br />From 2011-2017 Stephanie was Director of the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) where she organised Cornell’s first art biennial focused on intersections between art, design and nano science, which was the subject of “<a href="https://art21.org/watch/specials/kimsooja-collaboration-on-campus-nanotechnology-contemporary-art/">Collaboration on Campus: Nanotechnology and Contemporary Art</a>“, a documentary by Art21. Her curatorial and collaborative projects focus on the relationship between materiality and cultural objects in the context of representational and post-representational aesthetics.<br /><br />She is a founder of <em>Mobile Geographies</em>, a locative-media initiative at <a href="https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The New School's Parsons School of Design</a> (NYC) and co-founder of the storefront new media art space MediaNoche (NY), the first artist-run gallery for digital art in Upper Manhattan. Some of Stephanie's curatorial projects include <em>Technologies of Place</em>, funded by New York Foundation for the Arts, <em>SELF[n]: Art & Distributed Subjectivity</em>, <em>Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology</em> (Cornell University), and <em>Abject/Object Empathies</em> (Cornell University).<br /><br />Stephanie exhibits her work internationally, including recent exhibitions at the First Beijing International Media Arts Exhibition (Beijing, China), Dashanzi Art Festival (Beijing, China), 5th Ewha Media Art Exhibition, (Seoul, Korea) and the Machinista International Arts and Technology Festival. Frequently a speaker on art and technology, she recently presented papers at College Art Association (CAA), SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles) and Consciousness Reframed: Art, Identity and the Technology of Transformation (Lisbon) and was the artist-in-residence in 2018 at COPE in Brooklyn, NY. <br /><br />She has taught digital media, art, aesthetics, interaction design and contemporary art theory at <a href="https://www.cornell.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cornell University</a>, <a href="http://www.iuav.it/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Universita IUAV di Venezia</a>, <a href="https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/mfa-design-technology/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Parsons MFA Design & Technology Program</a> and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is founding director of <em>Empathy Academy</em>, a project-based research platform for collaborations in art, design and materials science with partner universities and organisations in Europe, Asia and Latin America.</p>
<p>Stephanie is Dean of Arts, Design and Media at Arts University Plymouth and the Convener of the Making Futures Research Group. The Making Futures Research Group (MFRG) is a coalition of educators, artists, designers, scientists and social entrepreneurs at Arts University Plymouth who are interested in how traditional methods, materials and cultures of making might exist in future contexts through the use of emerging practices and technologies.</p>
<p>As a group of active practitioners, the MFRG explores the interface between organic and digital materiality as a means to better understand the construction of identity and cultural representation. As an exploration of materiality in the context of making more broadly, it seeks to investigate, through materials research and the development of an interdisciplinary pedagogy, the link between matter, networks and place.</p>
<p>Working as an interface between the studio curriculum and the <a href="https://makingfutures.pca.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Making Futures</a> biennial conference at AUP, the MFRG operates on the horizon of matter and new technologies as a way of reimagining creative authorship across science, engineering, design and art.</p>
<p>Merit Scholar/Full Scholarship, Graduate Studies, The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Studio Art, US</p>
<p>Full Merit Scholarship, undergraduate studies, Syracuse University, Visual and Performing Arts, US</p>
<p>MFA, The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Studio Art/Painting</p>
<p>BFA, Syracuse University, Visual and Performing Arts, Painting / Honors Program</p>
<p>Study in Fine Art, Syracuse University, Division of International Programs Abroad, Florence, Italy </p>
<p>College Art Association</p>
<p>Planetary Collegium</p>
<p>Leonardo Education and the Art Forum (LEAF)</p>
<p>New Media Caucus (Affiliate Society of the College Art Association)</p>
<p>Rhizome (affiliate of <a href="http://newmuseum.org/">New Museum</a>, NYC)</p>
<p>Post-representational theory, 19th century German aesthetics, the history of aesthetics, empathy, memory materials, smart matter, functional materials, synthetic matter, responsive matter, social cognition, neurocognition, embodied knowledge, transformational aesthetics, phenomenal form, phenomenology, social objects, social practice, art and science collaborations</p>
<p><em>“The invisible co-created and the phenomenal aesthetics of polymers”</em>, conference paper and presentation, Theorising Visual Art and Design (TVAD) International Conference, School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire, January 2021</p>
<p><em>Nature by Design: New Colour in the Studio and the Lab</em>, one-day conference on project based collaborations between artists, designers and material scientists, Convener, PCA, 2020</p>
<p><a href="https://book.carolinewoolard.com/chapter-7-capitoline-wolves-and-queer-rocker/an-aesthetics-of-interdependence">Caroline Woolard and an aesthetics of interdependence</a> Chapter 7, Art, Engagement, Economy the Working Practice of Caroline Woolard, 2020, Volume 183, Onomatopee</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332079696_Devouring_the_middle_to_see_the_ends">Devouring the middle to see the ends</a>, article, Critics Page, <em>The Vanishing Middle</em>, Organized and curated by Lane Reylea, The Brooklyn Rail, Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics and Culture, October 2018.</em></p>
<p><em>Frieze London 2017, </em>exhibition of “Needle Women: Galaxy was a memory, Earth is a Souvenir, by artist Kimsooja (Project Curator, Director, Cornell Council for the Arts, research project in structural color in culture)</p>
<p><em>Object/Empathies: Networked digital sculpture studio</em>, University of Venice/IUAV, Workshop Wave Archittetura Venezia, 2016</p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234779568_A_transformational_object_artistic_authorship_and_the_phenomenal_aesthetics_of_new_media">A transformational object: artistic authorship and the phenomenal aesthetics of new media</a>, article, Conference paper, SIGGRAPH,Los Angeles CA, USA, 2015</p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262405874_in_Tangible_Now_Phenomenal_Aesthetics_and_The_Post-Representational_Subject">(in) Tangible Now: Phenomenal Aesthetics and The Post-Representational Subject</a>, article, Conference paper, Conference: Consciousness Reframed 12 At: Lisbon, Portugal, 2011<br /></p>
