Digital Humanities Initiative Event
Mark Tribe: Art is a Three Letter Word
Mark Tribe, artist

In 1996 Mark Tribe, artist, author and curator, founded Rhizome, an organization that supports the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of artistic practices that engage technology. Tribe's engagement with new media art has been motivated by a recognition that, in the hands of artists, these technologies can open up unexpected forms of political action, cultural participation, and aesthetic experience. Tribe’s art projects from the past decade explore the intersection of media technology and political protests, from riots on city streets to the American militia movement. In his latest project, Plein Air (2014) Tribe interrogates the ways in which landscape images are used to expand territories and defend geopolitical interests. Working indoors, Tribe uses software to generate panoramic outdoor landscape photographs from a “drone’s eye” perspective. Tribe’s photographs suggest that the machinic perspective of unmanned devices produce compelling images that are playing an influential role in contemporary culture. 

Bio: Mark Tribe’s work explores the intersection of media technology and politics. His photographs, installations, videos, and performances are exhibited widely, including solo projects at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Momenta Art in New York, the San Diego Museum of Art, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. He is the author of two books,The Port Huron Project: Reenactments of New Left Protest Speeches andNew Media Art and numerous articles. Tribe is Chair of the MFA Fine Arts Department at School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 1996, he founded Rhizome, an organization that supports the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology.

Sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities and by the Visual Arts Department; and the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts.

Photo credit: Collier Shore