Affiliated Faculty in New Media
Sofian Audry
Assistant Professor of New Media
sofian.audry@maine.edu
Sofian Audry is Assistant Professor of New Media in the School of Computing and Information Science at the University of Maine. He is an accomplished new media artist, computer scientist, researcher, and educator. Through his interdisciplinary practice and research at the crossroad between artificial intelligence and contemporary new media art, Audry works to develop new artistic practices employing artificial agents and behaviors, to design new tools for new media creators, and to critically engage with the material, theoretical, and historical dimensions of artificial intelligence technologies. He holds a Ph. D. in Humanities from Concordia University (Montréal, 2011) as well as master degrees in both Computer Science (machine learning) (M.Sc., University of Montréal, 2003) and Communication (interactive media) (M.A., University of Quebec in Montréal, 2010). Recently, Audry held a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2017). View Sofian Audry’s website
Joline Blais
Associate Professor of New Media
jblais@maine.edu
Joline Blais is an Assistant Professor of New Media at UMaine and co-founder of Still Water, a research lab devoted to studying and nourishing network culture. She previously directed Digital Media Studies at NY Polytechnic University and introduced media studies in SCPS at NYU.
Blais’ research and creative work explores sustainable communities and new narrative and poetic forms, and includes the 2006 book At the Edge of Art, which examines ways that digital technologies have reshaped art.
She is currently exploring the connections between electronic and indigenous networks in projects such as In the Presence of the Sacred, which links new technologies to indigenous storytelling and ritual, Babel/Babble, poetry generated from infant speech, and the Cross-Cultural Partnership, a legal framework for sharing connected knowledge in a way that is responsible and sustainable.
Jon Ippolito
Associate Professor of New Media
jippolito@maine.edu
A footsoldier in the battle between network and hierarchic culture, Jon Ippolito is an artist, former Guggenheim curator, and co-founder of the Still Water, a research arm of the New Media Department at the University of Maine. He’s a sans-serif kind of guy.
The recipient of Tiffany, Lannan, and American Foundation awards, Jon Ippolito has exhibited artwork with collaborative teammates Janet Cohen and Keith Frank at the Walker Art Center, ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, and WNET’s ReelNewYork Web site. As Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum, he curated Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium and, with John G. Hanhardt, The Worlds of Nam June Paik. Ippolito’s critical writing has appeared in periodicals ranging from Flash Art and the Art Journal to the Washington Post. At the Still Water lab co-founded with Joline Blais, Ippolito has worked on three projects–the Variable Media Network, the Open Art Network, and a book co-authored with Joline Blais called At the Edge of Art–that aim to expand the art world beyond its traditional confines.
Mike Scott
Senior Lecturer, New Media
mscott@maine.edu
Mike Scott specializes in the Interactivity Sequence of New Media and is the director of New Media and Internet Technology Lab research and development and the Access Grid project.
New Media and Internet Technology Lab (ASAP Media Service (Director) ASAP is an ongoing experiment in education where students are provided an environment and the incentive to complete projects that will stretch their creativity and explore their full range of abilities. In this environment, technology is considered a tool which students learn by using. They complete multimedia projects that combine traditional mediums through computer technology and communicate information in new and innovative ways. At ASAP, the value and importance of the process must remain the highest priority. ASAP maintains that any final product (an interactive kiosk, educational CD-ROM, WWW site, digital video, or traditional publication) must be representative of the development of creative thought, technical understanding and the dynamic collaboration which created it. If the product is a result of these learning processes, then ASAP has succeeded in its mission.
Access Grid The Access Grid website (http://www.accessgrid.org/) defines the Access Grid project as: An ensemble of resources including multimedia large-format displays, presentation and interactive environments, and interfaces to Grid middleware and to visualization environments. These resources are used to support group-to-group interactions across the Grid.