Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

Dr Olga Goriunova

 Senior Lecturer in Media Practice

Contact details:
Tel: 020 7133 5057
Email: <o.goriunova@londonmet.ac.uk>
Location: Ladbroke House, 315

Dr.Goriunova has written on a broad range of topics, including organization of cultural production and creativity on the Internet, social participatory networks, digital cultural politics, software culture and art, digital media aesthetics, new forms of literature, and history of philosophy of technology, emphasizing questions at the intersection of digital materiality, aesthetics and organization/politics. She has also worked on the concept of art platforms, with close attention to the questions of organizational aesthetics, autocreativity, collective, flexible and amateur production, network politics and valorization.

Dr.Goriunova has recently completed a manuscript entitled ‘Art Platforms and Cultural Production on the Internet’. The work is an enquiry into how culture is produced on the networks in zones that are in-between amateurism, experimentation and devotion, how creativity works across systems created by humans and networks, and how new cultural movements are organised socially, technically and politically. The book looks into many concepts on its way, namely, digital folklore, geeky publics, software art, low-tech music, online forms of literature, 3D worlds, and surfing clubs. ‘Art Platforms’ offers a dialogue with euphoric/dystopian views of Web 2.0, and argues for an approach to a new kind of becoming of cultural practices laid bare and realized through networks.

Dr.Goriunova has been involved into the field of software art and software studies, as an exhibition and conference organiser and a scholar. Dr.Goriunova has co-organized four Readme festivals and Runme.org, software art repository that profoundly contributed to the shaping of the field.

She has been recently invited to talk at digital acquisition policies and preservation strategies expert meetings at Tate in London, The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Linz, and at the Virtueel Platform in Amsterdam and has been involved in digital media archiving policy-making for a number of years with initiatives in Germany and The Netherlands.

Most recently, Dr.Goriunova has curated an exhibition ‘Funware’, presented in Arnolfini, Bristol (September – November 2010), MU, Eindhoven, The Netherlands (November 2010 – January 2011) and Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, Germany (summer 2011). Two interviews about the exhibition are available here (http://www.metamute.org/en/news_and_analysis/fun_with_software_a_discussion_with_annet_dekker_and_olga_goriunova) and here (http://rhizome.org/editorial/3843).

In tandem with the exhibition project, Dr.Goriunova is preparing an edited volume ‘Fun and Software’.  This project aims to contribute to the developing understanding of software as a fundamentally cultural phenomenon and includes contributions by internationally recognized scholars in the field. She is also organizing a conference ‘Fun and Software’ (November 2010) to serve as a platform to discuss the homonymous collection that will be prepared in 2010-2011.

 

PHD STUDENTS:

  • Sonia Matos, (Goldsmiths), in progress, When Language Goes Feral. Mobilizing A Cultural Reading of Cognition, Sound and Ecology in the Design of Language Support System for the Silbo Gomero.
  • Chiara Bernardi, in progress, Web 2.0 and Women’s organizations in Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
  • Giles Askham, in progress, Material engagements between Humans and Technology.
  • Leah Komen, in progress, The Socio-economic Impact of Increased Adoption of ICT’s (Cellphones) in Africa: The Case of Marakwet District, Kenya.


BOOKS

BOOKS, SINGLE-AUTHORED

  • Art Platform and Cultural Production on the Internet, (Routledge, 2011).

BOOKS, EDITED AND CO-EDITED

  • Fun and Software, edited collection, (in preparation), editor
  • Readme 100 Temporary Software Art Factory, (Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, 2006), editor, ISBN  38–334436–9–3
  • Readme Edition 2004. Software Art and Cultures, (University of Aarhus, Aarhus, 2004), co-editor. ISBN 8798844044
  • ReadMe 2.3 Reader. About Software Art. (NIFCA Publication 25, Helsinki, 2003), co-editor, ISBN 951-8955-74-3
  • Read_me 1.2. (Moscow, 2002), co-editor

BOOK CHAPTERS:

  • ‘Phrase’ (together with Matthew Fuller), The Happening of the Social, Eds. Celia Lury and Nina Wakeford, (Routledge, forthcoming).
  • ‘Vitalist Technocultural Thinking in Revolutionary Russia (on Piotr Engelmeier)’
    Place Studies in Art, Media, Science and Technology. Historical Investigations on the Sites and the Migration of Knowledge    , Eds. Andreas Broeckmann, Gunalan Nadarajan, (Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, VDG, Weimar, 2009), pp. 183-197.
  • ‘Glitch’ (together with Alexei Shulgin)
    In Software Studies: a Lexicon, Ed. Matthew Fuller, (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2008), pp. 110-119.
  • ‘Autocreativity. The Operation of Codes of Freedom in Art and Culture’,
    FLOSS + ART    , ed. Aymeric Mansoux and Marloes de Valk, (OpenMute, London, 2008), pp. 92-118.
  • ‘From Art on Networks to Art on Platforms’ (together with Alexei Shulgin)
    In Data browser volume 3: Curating Immateriality: On 'the Work of the Curator in the Age of Network Systems', Ed. Joasia Krysa, (Autonomedia, New York, 2006), pp. 237-267.
  • ‘“Male literature” of Udaff.com and other networked artistic practices of the cultural resistance’
    In Control + Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet. Eds. Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova, (Norderstedt, 2006), pp. 177-198.
    Re-printed: XXXXX, (xxxxx and OpenMute, UK, 2006).


ARTICLES:

  • ‘Autocreativity and Organizational Aesthetics in Art Platforms’,
    Invited Contribution, Fibreculture, Special Issue, forthcoming.
  • ‘Old Contexts for New Media Cultures (in Russia)’,
    Invited contribution, Third Text, “Media Arts. Practice, Institutions and Histories”, Special Issue, Volume 23, Issue 3, May 2009, pp. 261-269.


ORGANISER / CURATOR: CONFERENCES, EXHIBITIONS, FESTIVALS:

2010, November 27, Funware conference, Baltan laboratories, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Supported by VSBfonds, SNS Reaal & STRP Festival
http://www.baltanlaboratories.org/?p=2332
organizer

2010-2011 November 12 – January 16, Funware, exhibition, MU and Baltan, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Supported by VSBfonds, SNS Reaal & STRP Festival
http://www.mu.nl/?cl=uk

2010-2011, September 25 – November 21, Fun with Software, exhibition, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK.
http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/details/732
curator

2005, November 4-5. Software Art Factory Readme 100, Dortmund, Germany
Co-organiser, together with Alexei Shulgin, Inke Arns, Francis Hunger. Together with Hartware MedienKustVerein.
(http://readme.runme.org)

2004, August 23-27, Software Art Festival Readme 2004, Aarhus, Denmark
Co-organiser, together with Alexei Shulgin,  Soeren Pold, Christian Andersen and others. Together with Dorkbot, Digital Aesthetics Research Centre (Aarhus University), The Jutland Academy of Fine Arts, Rum46, CAVI.
ReadMe 2004 consisted of Software Art and Cultures Conference (August 23-24, University of Aarhus) and Runme Dorkbot city camp, a face-to-face meeting of "people doing strange things with software" (August 25-27, The Jutland Academy of Fine Arts), Human- Machine Interface exhibition in Rum46, and evening music programs in SPLAB and Musik cafeen.
(http://readme.runme.org).

2003, May 30-31. Software Art Festival Readme 2003, Helsinki, Finland.
Co-organiser, together with Alexei Shulgin. Together with Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, Media Centre Lume and m-cult. Included an exhibition in Media Centre Lume and evening music program in Alahuone bar.
(http://m-cult.org/read_me)

2002 May, 18-19. The first international artistic software festival Readme 1.2, Moscow, Russia.
Co-organiser, together with Sergei Teterin and the State Center for Museums and Exhibitions “ROSIZO”.
(http://www.macros-center.ru/read_me/)


ACADEMIC AND PUBLIC SERVICE (Selected):

  • 2010 Referee for Theory, Culture and Society, Convergence and Studies in East European Thought.
  • 2010 External examiner for PG Cert Web Design, Birbeck College, University of London.
  • 2009 Advisory Board Member and Jury Member for Vilem Flusser Theory Award, Transmediale 2009, Festival for art and digital culture, Berlin.
  • 2009 Expert speaker and moderator at Archive 2020 (digital media art conservation), expert meeting, Virtueel Platform, Amsterdam
  • 2008 Jury member at Transmediale 2008, Festival for art and digital culture Berlin.
  • 2007 Speaker on digital preservation policies at an expert meeting ‘Online Archives of Media Art – Contextualisation, Metadata, Translation’. Workshop by Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Media.Art.Research together with re:place 2007


RECENT INVITED SPEAKING

  • 2010 ‘Infectious and Idiotic: Fashionable Practices on the Internet’, Fashion Media” Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow Conference, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London.
  • 2010 ‘Anguish as vital force’, Deleuze Studies Conference, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, Centre for the Humanities of Utrecht University, Amsterdam.
  • 2010 ‘Digital Media Idiocy’, Thinking Network Politics conference, Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture, Anglia Ruskin University.
  • 2009 ‘Center and Periphery on Youtube’, Russia on Edge workshop, CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), University of Cambridge.  
  • 2009 ‘Autocreativity’, Global Economy of Contribution, Workshop, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London.


SELECTED ARTICLES IN ART CATALOGUES

  • ‘Funny But Not Very Much’ in Criti/Pop, Electroboutique, catalogue of the exhibition, XL Gallery, State Museum for the Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2008.
  • ‘Software art: an introduction’
  • in Digital Artist Handbook project, online and print, by Folly gallery, Lancaster, UK, (2008).
  • ‘Swarm Forms: On Platforms and Creativity’,
  • in Mute magazine, Vol 2 # 4, (January 2007, London).
  • ‘Censorship of Money, Power and Fame’ (together with Alexei Shulgin) in Danish
  • in Kunstnernes Paaskeudstilling, (Aarhus, 2005).
  • ‘Template Art Manifesto (Click a Pathway for Some Great Ideas)’ in V E R B I N D I N G E N / J O N C T I O N S – 7, Brussles, 2003.
  • ‘Technology, Avant-garde and Art in Russia’,
  • In the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Countdown. Digital Russia with Sony’, (Moscow, 2003).
  •  ‘Hello World (about software art with love)’
  • in NIFCAINFO, (Helsinki, 2003);
  • Reprinted in Acoustic Space, (Riga, 2003).
  • ‘Software Art for Dummies and, by the way, Thoughts about the New World Order’ (together with Alexei Shulgin) 
  • in Read_me 1.2 catalogue, (Moscow, 2002);
  • Re-printed in Danish in Net.art anthology, forthcoming.


RECENT GUEST LECTURES:

  • 2009 "Art Platforms: Creating Mate Lit", Seminar series at CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities), University of Cambridge.
  • 2008 "Art Platforms. Organizational Aesthetics and the Participatory Web", Guest Lecture series, Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths College, University of London.
  • 2007 "Software and Culture", University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland.