Edward A. Shanken writes and teaches about the entwinement of art, science, and technology with a focus on interdisciplinary practices involving new media. He is Professor at UC Santa Cruz, where he has served as Director of the Digital Arts and New Media (DANM) MFA program. Prior academic posts include: Associate Professor, Digital + Media MFA program at RISD; Associate Professor, DXARTS Ph.D. program at University of Washington; Universitair Docent, New Media MA program, University of Amsterdam; Executive Director, Information Science + Information Studies, Duke University. Fellowships include the National Endowment for the Arts and American Council of Learned Societies. Dr. Shanken earned a Ph.D. and MA in Art History at Duke, an MBA at Yale University, and a BA at Haverford College.
Recent publications include essays on art and shamanism, sound art and ecology, art historiography, and bridging the gap between new media and contemporary art. His critically praised survey, Art and Electronic Media (Phaidon Press, 2009) has been expanded with an extensive, multimedia Online Companion: www.artelectronicmedia.com. His book, Inventing the Future: Art, Electricity, New Media was published in Spanish in 2013 as Inventar el Futuro, with Portuguese and Chinese translations forthcoming in paper and E-text. He edited and wrote the introduction to a collection of essays by Roy Ascott, Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness (University of California Press, 2003). His most recent book is Systems (Whitechapel/MIT Press, 2015).