Researcher

Professor Anna Marie Munster

My Expertise

software studies, technologies and embodiment, multichannel and interactive installation work, creative AI, machine learning in art and culture, art, politics and new media, process philosophy.

Fields of Research (FoR)

Communication technology and digital media studies, Digital and electronic media art, Sociology and social studies of science and technology, Art history, theory and criticism not elsewhere classified, Cultural theory

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Biography

Professor
Anna Munster has been at UNSW Art and Design since 2001 on a full-time tenured basis. She is an active researcher with two sole published books: An Aesthesia of Networks (MIT Press, 2013), and  Materializing New Media  (Dartmouth College Press 2006). She also edited Immediation I and II ( OHP Press 2019). Her current research interests are: statistical visuality and radical empiricism, the politics and aesthetics of machine...view more

Professor
Anna Munster has been at UNSW Art and Design since 2001 on a full-time tenured basis. She is an active researcher with two sole published books: An Aesthesia of Networks (MIT Press, 2013), and  Materializing New Media  (Dartmouth College Press 2006). She also edited Immediation I and II ( OHP Press 2019). Her current research interests are: statistical visuality and radical empiricism, the politics and aesthetics of machine learning, more-than-human perception, new pragmatist approaches to media and art, new media art environments and ecologies; time, movement and sonicity.

Anna regularly collaborates artistically with Michele Barker. Barker and Munster have been working in multi-channel audiovisual environments exploring the relations between perception, movement and media.Their most recent work was the solo show, all the time in the world, 2019 for Ideas Platform, Artspace, Sydney. In 2017, they were commissioned for a multichannel audiovisual environment, pull, for Experimenta Media Arts: Make Sense, 2017–2020. They have been awarded New Work Grants, in 2012 and 2010 from the Australia Council for the Arts to realise their work. Other  projects include: évasion (2014), HokusPokus (2011). Duchenne’s smile (2-channel DV installation, 2009), Struck (3-channel DV installation, 2007).

Anna is the lead CI and partnered with Adrian Mackenzie (Australian National University) on a 3-year ARC Discovery Project: 'Re-imaging the empirical: statistical visualisation in art and science'. She is also currently a CI on the ARCDP 'The Geopolitics of Automation'. led by Ned Rossiter out of Western Sydney University. She is also a CI on the ARC Discovery Project "The Geopolitics of Automation" (2020–23) with Professor Ned Rossiter, Western Sydney University.

She was a partner in a large international project, Immediations, hosted by Concordia University, Montreal and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Canada. She has held two ARC Discovery research grants in new media and art: 'The Body-Machine Interface in New Media Art from 1984 to the Present, 2003–5' and 'Dynamic Media: Innovative social and artistic uses of dynamic media in Australia, Britain, Canada and Scandinavia since 1990'.  She was also an investigator on an ARC Linkage project, 'Australian Media Arts Database', which resulted in the Scanlines national media arts database

She is a founding member of the online peer-reviewed journal The Fibreculture Journal and has co-edited two special issues on Distributed Aesthetics and Web 2.0. and on the editorial advisory board of  Inflexions, Convergence, Scan and Screen Bodies, and Computational Culture.
 


My Grants

Australian Research Council Discovery Project, ‘The Geopolitics of Automation’, Australian Research Council Discovery Project). Chief Investigators: Prof. Ned Rossiter, Prof. Brett Neilson, Prof. Anna Munster, Dr Liam Magee. ($464k)

Australian Research Council Discovery Project, ‘Re-Imaging the Empirical: Statistical Visualisation in Art and Science’, 2017–2020. Lead CI. ($177k)

Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Canada, 2013–2019, co-applicant, Australian leader, Immediations Partnership Grant (Concordia University), Grant leader: Prof. E. Manning, 2013–2019 ($CA2.9million

Australian Research Council Linkage Project, ‘Reconsidering Australian Media Art History in an International Context’, 2011–2015, CI  ($232,000)

Australian Research Council Discovery Project, team leader and lead C1, ‘Dynamic Media: innovative social and artistic developments in new media in Australia, Britain, Canada and Scandinavia since 1990’, 2007–2010

Australian Research Council Discovery Project, ‘The body-computer relation in new media art from 1984 to the present’, Lead CI, 2003-2005 ($90,000)


My Qualifications

PhD, UNSW, 2002

BA, Class 1 Hons (University Medal) University of Sydney, 1984


My Awards

ARC, UNSW Student Council Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Supervision, 2017

Dean’s Award, Excellence in Postgraduate Supervision, 2015, Faculty of Art and Design, University of New South Wales, Australia

‘Highly commended’ for Materializing New Media in the Media Art Research award, Prix Ars Electronica Linz, Austria, 2008

Winner (with M. Barker) of National Digital Art Awards, “The Harries”, dynamic category, 2006. Acquisitive prize 

Winner of University Press of New England Publishing Award ‘Best manuscript submitted for Interface Series’, 2005. 


My Research Supervision


Supervision keywords


Areas of supervision

I have completed over 20 PhD and Masters supervisions of candidates at UNSW and been involved in another 10 secondary supervisions. HDR students know me to be a hands on, enthusiastic and involved supervisor in their research. I think of HDR students as younger peer researchers who I can help facilitate, mentor and work with to become part of a much bigger research community. Most of my students end up in academia, arts and design sectors and my own research projects, residencies and networks. If this sounds like you, and you are working in, especially, critical AI or software studies and arts or connected to these areas or some of the below, please email me for a discussion about your HD research!

Practice-based art and design in: installation and sound, new media, data,  artistic machine learning, artistic AI, sound in new media art and installation.

Theoretical research into: critical AI studies, software studies, critical data aesthetics, process philosophy and pragmatism, perception, time, movement, embodiment, affect theory and art, media and affect, new media and ecologies, critical theory and autonomous systems, visual science and technology studies; sound and new media theory.

 


Currently supervising

  • Monica Monin (PhD, practice-based) Coding Materialities (commenced 2014)
  • Alia Parker (Scientia PhD, practice-based)  Critical Bio-Textiles: Reconceptualising human-centred design through collaboration with mycellium (commenced 2020)
  • Troy Rainbow, Schizophrenia and XR Technological representations (commenced 2019)
  • Natasha Dubler, 'Sound, Resonance and Affect' (commenced 2021)
  • Eva Nolan, 'Sight and Sightings: Affective Drawing' (commenced 2021)
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Location

UNSW Art and Design

Contact

+61 2 8936 0741
+61 2 8936 0615