HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), a consortium of humanists, artists, scientists, social scientists and engineers from universities and other civic institutions across the U.S. and internationally, is committed to new forms of collaboration across communities and disciplines, fostered by creative uses of technology. Its aim is to promote expansive models for thinking, teaching, and research..

The HASTAC In|Formation Year consists of public programming exploring the humane and humanistic dimensions of technology and featuring new technological innovations. Each month, events are broadcast on the HASTAC website. These events are distributed across separate sites comprised of local networks of university humanities centers, science and technology centers, museums, libraries, K-12 affiliates, and other civic institutions.

On November 30th, the Stanford Humanities Lab in collaboration with artist Lynn Hershman will present work from the ongoing Life to the Second Power (L2) research project. This project will re-animate the existing archive of Lynn Hershman, now housed in the Special Collections Library at Stanford University. Converting the archive into a digital format of hybrid genre will allow users of the content to dynamically revisit the past while simultaneously expanding the audience for this material. Specifically this means building a living archive of Hershman's work inside the 3D online world Second Life.

Lynn Hershman will give a tour of L2's work in Second Life. Her voice will be streamed live via the web. The presentation can be experienced from multiple viewpoints. invited guests can create a free account and logon to Second Life or you can observe in a number of designated public locations. The event will be documented as it happens and later made available online.

About Lynn Hershman

Hershman has been at the forefront of "new media" art since the 1970s, developing fluency in digital technologies as they evolved.. She has been responsible for a number of technological innovations, including the first interactive computer-based artwork (Lorna, 1979-82), the first artwork to use touch-sensitive screen technology (Deep Contact, 1984-86), and the first networked telerobotic art installation (Difference Engine #3, 1995-99).. Many of the ideas embodied by Hershman's work have seemed ahead of their time. Perhaps for this reason, her contributions to art history have been underrecognized. Her significant oeuvre demonstrates a sustained attention to the construction of a viewer who is an active participant in a work of art, engaging with and potentially altering its course, rather than passive voyeur.

"Her work appeared institutionally and visibly several years before Cindy Sherman but what makes Hershman different from the more obvious strategies of Andy Warhol and Cindy Sherman (which slide along the surface of things) is her profundity. Hershman was willing to take a risk."
- Amelia Jones Professor, Manchester University, England

"Lynn Hershman envisioned, thought out, and realized just about everything about interactive narrative that is going on now, well in advance of its officially acknowledged gurus. Beyond that, though, is the fact that as well as being a visionary and innovator, Hershman is a really good artist. Several of her works are considered to be true masterpiece."
- Paul de Marinas, Stanford University

"Hershman's work reinvents … a feminist world view, animating matter with ideas in cinematic representations that go out into the world to do her bidding. Her … art is a source of power indeed for her community. Hershman's work offers up art as a formula, if you will, equally capable of providing animation, protection, and, dare I say, salvation."
- B. Ruby Rich, film critic, programmer and U.C. Professor

"Hershman's is a prolific project of self-analysis and self- mythification that, through technologies of vision, multiplies and refracts fictional identities to the point of undermining any stable notion of identity. The trajectory of her work provides one of the better artistic mirrors we have for fragmented human subjectivity at the beginning of the 21st century."
- Robin Held, curator Henry Art Gallery

Credits.

Funding for the Life Squared project is provided by the Daniel Langlois Foundation and the Stanford Humanities Lab.

Participant information.

Additional information for participants, including a provisional program with complete schedule, will be provided in an email invitation to be distributed Friday, November 24^th.