Ep 96: Art and Technology

Today’s episode is about art and technology featuring a conversation with Lindsey D. Felt and Vanessa Chang. Lindsey and Vanessa curated Recoding CripTech, a multidisciplinary art exhibition at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco in early 2020. You’ll learn about how their collaboration and friendship started, what it was like curating this exhibit, some of the disabled artists that were part of the exhibit, and why CripTech, disability culture, and accessibility is more important than ever in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Transcript [Google doc] [PDF] Related Links M Eifler, artist UC Berkeley Disability Lab, Dr. Karen Nakamura “Press Release: Leonardo/ISAST receives $500K for CripTech Incubator from California Arts Council Innovations + Intersections Grants,” Danielle Siembieda, October 29, 2020, Leonardo. Recoding CripTech, SOMArts Cultural Center “Recoding CripTech Proudly Asserts Disability as an Identity and Culture,” Roula Seikaly, February 12, 2020, KQED. In “Recoding CripTech,” Artists Highlight the Vital Role of Hacking in Disability Culture, Monica Westin, February 19, 2020, ARTnews. About Photo of curators Vanessa Chang and Lindsey D. Felt standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a graffiti installation, beaming at the camera. Lindsey has wavy blonde hair and wears translucent glasses and a gauzy black and white dress with a black double buckle belt. Vanessa has a short dark brown bob and wears a gold choker necklace and a long sleeved white kimono top. A brown bag strap crosses her chest. Lindsey D. Felt and Vanessa Chang curated Recoding CripTech, a multidisciplinary art exhibition at SOMArts Cultural Center in 2020. Their curatorial work has been profiled in venues such as Art in America, KQED Arts and DisTopia. Dr. Lindsey D. Felt, a Bay Area native, writer and deaf scholar, is a lecturer at Stanford University, where she teaches courses on disability, writing, and technology. She received her Ph.D. in English from Stanford University. Her research focuses on disability innovation and technology in the postwar era, specifically how disability shaped conceptions of electronic communication; science fiction and disability futurity; access and assistive technologies; and disability rhetorics. Most recently, her writing has appeared in Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, and she serves as the Disability and Impact Lead at Leonardo/ISAST. Twitter: @ldfelt Dr. Vanessa Chang is a writer, curator and educator who builds communities and conversations about art, technology and human bodies. She is Senior Program Manager at Leonardo/ISAST and teaches in Visual and Critical Studies at California College of the Arts. She holds a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, where she was a Geballe Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. Recent exhibitions include Intersections at Fort Mason Center for the Arts and Artobots, a CODAME festival of art, automation and artificial intelligence. She has appeared on NPR’s On the Media and State of the Art, and written for Wired, Slate, Los Angeles Review of Books and Noema Magazine, among other venues. Twitter: @vxchang Support Disability Media and Culture DONATE to the Disability Visibility Project® Credits Cheryl Green, Audio Producer and Text Transcript Alice Wong, Writer, Audio Producer, Host Lateef McLeod, Introduction Mike Mort, Artwork Theme Music (used with permission of artist) Song: “Dance Off” Song: “Hard Out Here for A Gimp” Album: NO BIG DEAL Artist: Wheelchair Sports Camp Music “Bleeping Demo” by Kevin MacLeod. Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7012-bleeping-demo. License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license. “Blippy Trance” by Kevin MacLeod. Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5759-blippy-trance. License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license Sounds “VOCODER countdown” by Jack_Master. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License. “8 Bit Beeping Computer Sounds” by sheepfilms. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License.