Introducing the LR Panelists
Dene Grigar is an associate professor of English at Texas Woman’s University and specializes in electronic literature, Greek literature and culture, rhetoric and feminist theory. Her book New Worlds, New Words: Exploring Pathways in and about Electronic Environments (with John Barber, Hampton Press, 2001) speculates about the ways in which writing and thinking change when moved to electronic environments, such as the World Wide Web, MOOs, and e-mail. She is the founder of the virtual spaces TWUMOO and Nouspace, and was the 2001 recipient of TWU’s Innovation in Academia Award in the field of computer science. Also in 2001 Grigar attended a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar at U.C.L.A. led by N. Katherine Hayles. Currently, she is undertaking a one year post-doctoral study with the Center of Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts-Science Technology and Art Research (CAiiA-STAR) in the area of hypermedia and interactive arts. E-mail: <dgrigar@twu.edu>.
John Wood is an artist, performer, educator and author. As a practicing artist in the late 1960s, Wood developed interactive electronic installations and “toys” that were exhibited in over 20 countries. Working solo and collaboratively, Wood has exhibited in many galleries and museums including the Australian Biennial (1988). As a performer he has recorded four albums and toured extensively with the rock band Deaf School, whose most recent album, What a Way to End It All, was released in late 2003. Between 1978 and 1988 Wood was deputy head of the Fine Art Department at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Between 1990 and 1994, he led a funded research project to develop a SGML-based authoring system (called IDEAbase— the Interactive Database of Enabling Arguments) that was designed to bring authors in contact with one another over the Internet. An author of many published papers and articles on ecology, cybernetics and design, Wood contributed to the inaugural conference submissions to the International Sociology Association that led to the acceptance of Sociocybernetics (Research Centre 51) as a new discipline. Recently he co-founded Attainable Utopias, an altruistic open-source network of creative thinkers across many areas of industry. Contact John Wood at 144, Albyn Road, Deptford, London SE8 4JQ, U.K. E-mail: <j.wood@gold.ac.uk>. Web: <futures.gold.ac.uk>.
Singaporean Nisar Keshvani is a freelance Internet journalist, web developer, educator and new media specialist. He has written for various publications, including The Straits Times (Singapore), worldroom.com, movies-online and smallplaces.com, and has corresponded for the Asian Sources Media Group (Philippines). Keshvani is editor of fineArt forum, a 14-year old international on-line art and technology news service; he has extensive experience developing and maintaining web sites. He was an on-line journalism educator at Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and has examined inter-nationalization issues and the changing work practices of the on-line newsroom. He is currently the Singapore International Film Festival publicist. His areas of interest include new media technologies, media convergence, web content management, web development and desktop publishing and layout. E-mail: <nisarh@keshvani.com>. [End Page 81]
