Lanfranco Aceti, Gallery Director
Lanfranco Aceti works as an academic, artist and curator and is the founder of the Studium: Lanfranco & Co. He is the founder and Director of OCR (Operational and Curatorial Research in Contemporary Art, Design, Science and Technology) and founder and Director of MoCC (Museum of Contemporary Cuts). He has also founded the Media Exhibition Platform that has operated from 2010 presenting a range of international exhibitions both online and in physical spaces with an international curatoriate (Lanfranco Aceti, Vince Dziekan, Christiane Paul) through the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA).
He is Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths College, department of Art and Computing, London; teaches Contemporary Art and Digital Culture at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul; and is Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (The MIT Press, Leonardo journal and ISAST). He was the Artistic Director and Conference Chair for ISEA2011 Istanbul and works as gallery director at Kasa Gallery in Istanbul. He has a Ph.D. from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. His work has been published in Leonardo, Routledge and Art Inquiry and his interdisciplinary research focuses on the intersection between digital arts, visual culture and new media technologies.
Lanfranco Aceti is specialized in contemporary art, inter-semiotic translations between classic media and new media, contemporary digital hybridization processes, Avant-garde film and new media studies and their practice-based applications in the field of fine arts.
He has worked as an Honorary Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, Virtual Reality Environments at University College London. He has exhibited works at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in London and done digital interventions at TATE Modern, The Venice Biennale, MoMA, Neue Nationalgalerie, the ICA and the Irish Museum of Modern Art and participated in numerous festivals and biennials.
Previously an Honorary Research Fellow at the Slade School of Fine Art, Dr. Aceti has also worked as an AHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, School of History of Art, Film & Visual Media and as Visiting Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Ozden Sahin, Vice Director and In-House Curator
Ozden Sahin completed a BA in Translation and Interpreting Studies at Bogazici University in 2007 and received an MA in Cultural Studies at Sabanci University in 2009. Her thesis titled Censorship on Visual Arts and Its Political Implications in Contemporary Turkey: Four Case Studies from 2002-2009 sought to explore cultural manifestations of recent art censorship in Turkey through the narratives provided by artists. Her main areas of interest are visual culture and curating digital art.
Ozden currently works at Sabanci University Kasa Gallery as the Vice Director and In-house Curator. She is also the Conference and Program Director to ISEA2011 Istanbul: The 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art and she is the Co-Editor to the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (Leonardo/ISAST).
Selcuk Artut, Vice Director
Selcuk Artut lives and works in Istanbul. He has received his BSc in Mathematics from Koc University, Istanbul and his MA in Sonic Arts from Middlesex University, London. Currently, he is teaching Sound and Interaction courses at Sabanci University as a full-time faculty member. His artistic activities are mainly focused on contemporary media practices such as sonic arts and human computer interactivity. His selected exhibitions and performances include Semaine du Cerveau – L’art a L’Hopital Exhibition (Geneva, 2010), A/B “Solo Exhibition” – Operation Room, (Istanbul, 2010), Younger Than Jesus (Catalog – Newmuseum, NY, USA), NewsPaperBox (File Festival, Sao Paolo 2008), Substairs (Istanbul Biennial 2007), Improvhelsinki (Helsinki, 2007), Bares do Porto (Portugal, 2006), New Electronic Music (Istanbul, 2006) and Aldwych London Transport (London, 2004). Besides his individual art activities, Artut is a professional bass guitarist and plays with the band Replikas (www.replikas.com).
Vince Dziekan, Adjunct Curator
Dr Vince Dziekan is Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Art & Design at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In addition, he is affiliated with the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool, UK as a FACT Associate and most recently was appointed Digital Media Curator of The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA).
His research focuses on the impact of digital technologies on curatorial design and the implications of virtuality on exhibition-based practices. This interdisciplinary investigation has been articulated recently in Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition (forthcoming publication, Intellect Books, UK). He has published in relation to related topics in various peer-reviewed journals and presented at numerous refereed conferences, both nationally and internationally. He has received invitations to participate in the Tate’s online forum program (Liquid Architectures, 2006), symposia hosted by the National Gallery of Victoria (Sites of Communication. 2007), ISEA (2006, 2008) and delivered a keynote presentation at NODEM 06 Digital Interpretation in Art and Science Museums and Heritage Sites in Oslo, Norway.
He has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in Australia and his independent curatorial practice is represented by exhibitions such as Archival Permanence: Time and Timelessness in 100 Years of Australian Photography, The Synthetic Image: Digital Technologies and the Image, Small Worlds: A Romance and Remote. In August 2008, he will be exhibiting his demonstration exhibition, The Ammonite Order, Or Objectiles for an (Un) Natural History at Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast, Northern Ireland as part of the ISEA2009 juried exhibition. In 2011, he will be co-curating The World Is Everything That Is The Case – the Australian representation in ISEA2011, Istanbul, Turkey.
He is research leader of the Photography & Video Research Cluster at Monash Art & Design, Adjunct Programme Advisor for FACT ATELIER (FACT, Liverpool) and member of the international advisory committee of ReWire 2011 (MediaArtHistories conference, Liverpool) and the Virtual NGV steering committee (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). He has been involved in collaborative research in association with Z-Node (ZHdK, Zurich University of the Arts), Media Arts Scoping Study (MASS) and the Omnium Research Group (University of New South Wales, Sydney). During 2008, he was a Visiting Research Fellow with the Slade School of Fine Art (University College London). In 2009, he was awarded a British Council Design Researcher Award.
Jonathan Munro, Assistant Curator
Jonathan Munro is an artist, curator and educator. In 2009 Jonathan founded TINT, an artists led organisation with no fixed location, working in unused spaces, galleries and with online platforms. In 2010, he co-curated Unleashed Devices at the Watermans Art Centre in London. He has a BA in Fine Art specialising in Sculpture from University of Leeds. Jonathan is currently completing an MFA in Computational Studio Arts at Goldsmiths college. In 2011 he was awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant.
As an artist Jonathan Munro has worked on varies art projects, individually and within collaborations. His practice spans many mediums, incorporating computational tools, video, photography and fine art tools. He is interested in the control and configuration of the sensorial environment; this is both in terms of traditional art aesthetics and as part of a technologically informed practice.
He is currently the co-director of the Tin Shed Gallery in Goldsmith, University of London. The main aims are to bring international artists and academics together to be involved in exhibitions, talks and residencies around the themes of arts, technology and social change. He is also working as co-editor for the Leonardo Electronic Almanac.
Deniz Cem Onduygu, Art Director
Deniz Cem Onduygu has an MA degree in Visual Arts & Visual Communication Design from Sabanci University where he worked as a teaching assistant and took some graduate level courses in biology. His research focuses on evolutionary design. He works as a visual designer operating independently and within the collectives Fevkalade (graphic design) and Çilek Ağacı (data analysis & visualization). He is also the art director of Leonardo Electronic Almanac.
Among his areas of interest are complex adaptive systems, philosophy of biology, memetics, philosophy of mind, and art theory.