| Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Tanya Toft Ag

Founding Co-Director, curator and researcherat Urban Media Art Academy
Focus area: , Art History, Urban Planning, Built Environment, AI (Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Deep Fakes), Augmented Reality, Biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Cultural Practices, Social Practice, Environmental Art, Eco Art, Land Art, Generative Practices, Generative Art, , Video, Film, Telepresence, Sociology

Dr. Tanya Toft Ag is a curator, researcher, writer and lecturer examining trajectories of media art(s) and urban change. Her research, projects and teaching examine urban media aesthetic phenomena and (media) art in engagement with ecological, ethical and technogenetic dimensions of urban change, in a global perspective.

She gained her doctoral degree from Copenhagen University with visiting scholarships at Columbia University and Konstfack (CuratorLab), and MA degrees from The New School and Copenhagen University, visiting Auckland University. Her post-doctoral research is situated at The New School in New York City and City University of Hong Kong. She has presented her work at international conferences worldwide and held keynotes at Elektronika Festival 2018 in Belo Horizonte, Live the City 2016 in Bangkok, and City Link Conference 2015 in Copenhagen. Her curatorial practice is focused on artistic inquiry with especially media art and media architecture in urban environments. She is curator and head of research at the Screen City Biennial (Stavanger, 2017 and 2019) and associated with the Streaming Museum (NYC) and Verve Cultural/SP Urban Digital Festival (São Paulo), and a member of various conference and gallery boards (Media Architecture Biennale, Human-Computer Interaction Conference (HCI), Open Sky Gallery). She is co-editor of What Urban Media Art Can Do – Why, When, Where, and How? (av edition, 2016) and editor of Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art (Intellect, 2018). In 2017 she co-founded the globally networked Urban Media Art Academy.

Short statement:

"Since ancient times, art and the arts have been anchorpoints of human consciousness and considered fundamental to building up societies. Today, as we race our cities towards increasingly smart, technocratic and rationalized futures, we need to continuously explore how art’s sensibilities, inquiries, and political aesthetics can affect the ecologies from which our innovations and cultures emerge and bring us towards more sustainable, and more critically and ethically conscious, realities. My curatorial and academic work and teaching evolve around this inquiry with human perceptual-sensory experience as point of departure for examining processes of change in contemporary societies and urban environments at architectural, hybrid and worldly scales."