Joel Slayton
Joel Slayton is an artist, writer, researcher and professor at San José State University where he is director of the Cadre Laboratory for New Media, an interdisciplinary academic program in the School of Art and Design. CADRE, established in 1984, is dedicated to the development of experimental applications involving information technology and art. Slayton was chairperson for ISEA2006/ZER01 San José: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge and will be the new executive director of ZER01 starting in June of 2008. He is the executive editor of SWITCH, http://switch.sjsu.edu CADRE’s on-line journal of new media discourse and practice. Initiated in 1995, SWITCH has presented 19 volumes that have addressed themes such as Network Culture, Artificial Life, Art and the Military, Sound Culture, Cyber-feminism, Art as Network, Art as Database, New Media Art Centers, Social/Networks Collaborative Models , and Social Computing. Slayton serves on the Board of Directors of Leonardo/ISAST (International Society for Art, Science and Technology). He was editor in chief of the Leonardo-MIT Press Book Series from 1999-2005. Slayton’s research explores social software, cooperation models and network ontology. Papers include Social Software; Entailment Mesh, The Re=Purpose of Information, and The Ontology of Organization as System.
Slayton is the director and founder of FUSE:cadre/montalvo artist research residency, a platform for collaboration, experimentation, creativity and innovation focused on emerging new media and technology. FUSE connects fine arts students from the CADRE Laboratory in unorthodox partnerships with artists that inspire new forms of technology-based production and experience. Through cross-discipline collaborations, the residency-model provides an arena for addressing some of the most pertinent issues of our time including, but not limited to, concerns of globalization, sustainability, censorship, human rights, social responsibility, human centered design and a focus on the next generation.
Considered a pioneer in the field of art and technology Slayton creates artworks that engage with a wide range of media technology including information mapping, networks and interactive visualization. Slayton was an original member of the Visible Language Workshop at MIT in the mid 1970s, has received a National Endowment for the Arts award and was selected for the Xerox Parc Pair Artists in Residence Program.