Leah Gilliam

“Robot Girlfriend” (video)

A tour through recent media art projects with a specific focus on the passionate friendship between the artist and the Sojourner rover (the Internet telerobot from NASA's 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission).

Biography

Leah Gilliam's work examines how knowledge is produced and coded, and how the conscious reorientation of cultural texts challenges their implications and constructions. In practice, she appropriates texts and uses them as a springboard to interpret larger issues of technology, history and orientation. Ms. Gilliam studied Modern Culture and Media at Brown University and Film and Twentieth Century Studies at The University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Ms. Gilliam's current interests include Lego Mindstorm Robotic Discovery kits and plans to terraform Mars. She teaches in the Film & Electronic Arts Program at Bard College.

“Powering Up/Powering Down” is sponsored in part by the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA), and the UC San Diego Department of Music in connection with the departments of Visual Arts, Music, and Literature at UCSD along with the UC Riverside and Los Angeles campuses.