I am a Toronto based electronic media artist working primarily in the field of interactive installations. ART METROPOLE is currently selling three volumes regarding my work: 'Database Aesthetics - Art in the Age of Information Overflow' edited by Victoria Vesna (University of Minnesota Press), ISBN: 0-8166-4118-8.'Digital Art' by Christiane Paul (Thames and Hudson, History of Art Series), ISBN 0500 203679 and 'Mediaworks: Nancy Paterson' (Surrey Art Gallery), ISBN 0-920181-50-3.
I
am
currently working on a new creative text which may become a dramatic
prose work titled 'The Bottlestoppers'. Also, I am working on 'Carpe Diem' - this is Bahamas bound for snorkelling.
IXmaps is a project which illustrates Internet infrastructure focusing on exchange points as a locus of control. This work consists of a geographic map of North America, upon which are situated images of major peering exchange points called Carrier Hotels. Each Carrier Hotel is seen as a graphic of the exterior of the actual real estate. For example, a view of the front of the building at 151 Front Street Toronto, or an image of the tower at 1 Wilshire in Los Angeles. The interactivity so far, consists of clicking to see which exchange points contains US based secret NSA (National Security Agency) eavesdropping rooms and which exchange points are owned by the Carlyle Group (CRG West), in an overall map of approximately 35 premiere Carrier Hotels located in major North American cities. Further developments such a user initiated trace-route, to view the path one's Internet activities such as email, data searches or video viewing take through these peering facilities, are being implemented with funding from the SSHRC ITST program. IXmaps is under the Information Policy Research Program (IPRP) at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. exhibitions Upcoming 2012, I’ve been invited to participate in an exhibition titled ‘Women/Art/Technology’. The exhibition, with an accompanying catalogue, is being produced by the Institute for Women and Art, Rutgers University. The exhibition, catalogue, and surrounding events will be presented at the Mason Gross Gallery, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ from June 1 - July 15, 2012. guest lectures
In June 2010 I presented a paper titled ‘Interrogating Internet Infrastructure’ at ED-MEDIA 2010--World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunication, Toronto. In March 2010 I gave a draft lecture of the above paper at InterAccess - Media Arts Access Centre, Toronto titled ‘IXmaps: Mapping Internet Interconnections’. In April 2010 a co-authored paper with Dr Andrew Clement and Dr David Phillips from the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto titled 'IXmaps: Interactively mapping NSA Surveillance points in the internet cloud' was presented and is being published in the proceedings for the Surveillance & Society conference, City University, UK. Presentation at the October 2008 Thomas R. Watson Conference at the University of Louisville. This endowed biennial conference in Rhetoric and Composition was titled 'The New Work of Composing'. publications A co-authored paper titled 'IXmaps: Interactively mapping NSA Surveillance points in the internet cloud' with Dr Andrew Clement and Dr David Phillips from the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto was presented and is being published in the proceedings for the Surveillance & Society conference, City University, UK (April 2010). ‘Art and Electronic Media’(Phaidon Press, Themes and Movements Series), Spring 2007. Edited and with a survey essay by Edward A. Shanken (Professor of Art History, Savannah College of Art and Design, editor of Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness); it serves as a comprehensive survey of the use of electronic media in art history and contemporary practice. It includes references to my mediaworks. 'DIARIO
ECONOMICO' Lisbon, Portugal, contains an interview by Barbara Barroso which discusses my mediawork and includes illustrations, April 2007 'VCR Story' (creative writing) - published in The Capilano Review 2:50 (also web published) Feb 2007. ‘Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age’ by Margot Lovejoy, Routledge (UK) 2004 discusses my mediaworks. 'Digital Art' by Christiane Paul, from the Thames & Hudson World of Art series published Fall 2003, is a comprehensive overview and history of international Media Art which includes my mediawork ‘Stock Market Skirt’. Article titled 'Bicycle TV' which was originally published in 'Leonardo,' is included in 'Women, Art and Technology' edited by Judy Malloy (MIT Press, 2003). STOCK MARKET SKIRT and THE MEADOW are
discussed in 'Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science and Technology'
by Stephen Wilson (MIT Press, 2003). My work is discussed in ‘Gamers: Writers, Artists, and Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels’ edited by Shanna Compton, Soft Skull Press 2004. Article titled 'Be There Now: Telepresence Art Online' by David Pescovitz (which was originally featured on the website of the California Arts Council) is included in an Apr 1999 issue (Vol.XXXII #205) of FLASH ART (Milan). This article includes STOCK MARKET SKIRT among mediaworks by several other California-based artists. My mediaworks are discussed by Simon Penny in his text ‘Critical Issues in Electronic Media’ Buffalo, SUNY Press 1995. STOCK MARKET SKIRT is also featured in articles appearing in issues of the bi-monthly fashion/art journal DUTCH (Amsterdam) 1999 and in TEMA CELESTE (Milan) June 1999. A paper which I have written situating Cyberfeminism within postmodern culture, titled 'Curly, Larry & PoMo' was initially available electronically in the inaugural issue of the Ohio State University online journal 'Astrolabe.' This paper was subsequently translated into German, and is available in a book titled VISION.RUHR: KUNST MEDIEN, published by Kultur & Projeckte Dortmund, in May 2000. 'Curly, Larry & PoMo' was a follow-up to an earlier paper titled 'Cyberfeminism' which was published in the journal FIREWEED (Summer 1996). 'Cyberfeminism' was included in a book titled CYBERFMINIZAM, published by the Centar Za Zenske Studije, Zagreb, in 1999.'Cyberfeminism' was also published in a collection of papers presented at the 'Sense of the Senses' Congress in Bonn, Germany. This collection, published in Fall 1998 by Steidl, is titled 'Der Sinn der Sinne.' 'Cyberfeminism' is available online here.
Papers include:
NancyPaterson

I received my PhD (Dec 09) in Communications & Culture from York University with a thesis titled Bandwidth is Political: Reachability in the Public Internet. The paper has been nominated for the York University Doctoral Dissertation Award. I have received a two year SSHRC post-doctoral award for research at the iSchool, Faculty of Information University of Toronto. I am an Associate Professor at the Ontario College of Art & Design teaching 'Time-Based Media'. I am Facilities Coordinator at Charles Street Video, a media access centre in Toronto. I have also developed a course titled 'Creativity and New Media' in which students are required to work through various methodologies of creativity, at Seneca@York.
In January 2009 I presented a paper titled ‘Networks as Metaphors’ presented to the Digital Media Program at the University of Florida.
In 2009, Gallimard - Editions Babylone & the L’Oreal Foundation published - 'Sex, danger, women & machines', In Future/Projections: 1000,000 years of beauty. Azoulay, E. and Gallimard, F. (Eds.) Paris, France. p. 104.
My essay titled 'Stock Market Skirt: The Evolution of the Internet, the Interface and an Idea' appears in: 'Database Aesthetics - Art in the Age of Information Overflow' edited by Victoria Vesna, University of Minnesota Press, Fall 2007.
nancy@utcc.utoronto.ca

Back to Nancy's
Mainpage