Social Science and Cultural Studies Speaker Series presents Hanna Rose Shell: "Shoddy Heap" - Thursday, May 1 at 12:30pm.

8:00 AM


Social Science and Cultural Studies Spring Speakers Series
Presents

Hanna Rose Shell
Leo Marx Career Associate Professor of Society, Technology, and Society, M.I.T.
“Shoddy Heap”
 

Thursday May 1 at 12:30pm
Alumni Reading Room 
Pratt Institute Library
Free and Open to the Public
 
Moderated by Carl Zimring

Bio: I work on the skins of things, excavating histories of technology and media from the surface layers of natural and man-made objects. I use tools from the fields of the history of science and technology, media production, art history, media studies and material culture studies to analyze the production, use, and transformation of often-overlooked, even marginalized, material artifacts located at the interstices of the found and the fabricated.
Through my analysis, I break down increasingly untenable divides between production and consumption, art and technology, and invention and reuse. From camouflage netting, old clothes, decomposing vegetable matter, and other artifacts of creative repurposing, I uncover historical shifts in modern epistemologies of self, nature and representation. Through my work, I not only contribute to the academic fields in which I am based, but also provide a vital historical and creative context for present-day concerns with the engineering of sustainable environments through innovations in transformational and biomimetic technology.
Critical media practice is a working method that both guides my analytic framing and provides interpretive data. As an example, my film Blind (2009) and my site-specific installation Camoufleurs (2008) accompany the book Hide and SeekProducing the film and the installation, as well as the feedback I received from viewers and other participants, was crucial to the development of my theoretical and historical argument. 


More information: http://web.mit.edu/sts/people/shell.html



 
  Pratt Institute

Main Brooklyn Campus
200 Willoughby Avenue, Brooklyn, NY

 

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