Sharon Daniel
Encyclopedia
Sharon Daniel is a professor in the Film
and Digital Media
department and serves as chair for the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program at the University of California, Santa Cruz
. Along with teaching classes about digital media, Daniel does field research for new media projects. Her essays have been published in analytical and research journals such as Sarai and Leonardo. Selected projects of Daniel's have been presented at festivals including the Lincoln Center Festival, the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Ars Electronica, and the Corcoran Biennial. She has also received grants and support from various institutes and foundations. She is interested in public and community collaborations that give voices to those who are unable or reluctant to tell their stories.
Daniel is an activist involved with the organization Justice Now. Daniel's involvement with Justice Now allowed her to circumvent the media ban enacted on all of the California Department of Corrections' facilities in 1993. Daniel was able to gain media access due to her role as legal advocate for Justice Now, which allowed her the opportunity to speak with several inmates and document their stories. Daniel's experiences with inmates in California's Department of Corrections led to the creation of Public Secrets.
Daniel's theory on databases has been published in Database Aesthetics. Her article, "The Database: An Aesthetics of Dignity", illustrates how they can be used as an aesthetic that interacts with cultural or social aesthetics. Furthermore, Daniel's work is a functioning example of this "aesthetic of dignity" because her work coalesces aesthetics of the database and social world.
, its pervasive network of monopolies, its human rights abuses, are all extremely well documented yet wholly submerged and repressed. The growth of the prison industrial complex and the unimpeded violation of human rights within it are irrefutable testimony to the power of the public secret." Narrators express, first hand, the abuses they have experienced. Many of these stories have been kept under wraps because of an imposed media ban on all facilities within the California Department of Corrections. One account includes a woman who was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the same crime committed by a male, by the same judge, who received a lesser sentence. This hypertext site is an example of the growing bridge that links the new world of the digital media with the older world of politics and the call for social reform. Furthermore this site breaks down the stigmas that exist between men and woman in the prison system. Female convicts do exist and the stories are presented here.
.
that is composed of digital images and videos created by communities from San Francisco California, Buenos Aires Argentina, and Darfur, Sudan. The goal of the project is to foster relationships between the different communities through the sharing of digital images and video.
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and Digital Media
Digital media
Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of...
department and serves as chair for the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program at the University of California, Santa Cruz
University of California, Santa Cruz
The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...
. Along with teaching classes about digital media, Daniel does field research for new media projects. Her essays have been published in analytical and research journals such as Sarai and Leonardo. Selected projects of Daniel's have been presented at festivals including the Lincoln Center Festival, the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, Ars Electronica, and the Corcoran Biennial. She has also received grants and support from various institutes and foundations. She is interested in public and community collaborations that give voices to those who are unable or reluctant to tell their stories.
Daniel is an activist involved with the organization Justice Now. Daniel's involvement with Justice Now allowed her to circumvent the media ban enacted on all of the California Department of Corrections' facilities in 1993. Daniel was able to gain media access due to her role as legal advocate for Justice Now, which allowed her the opportunity to speak with several inmates and document their stories. Daniel's experiences with inmates in California's Department of Corrections led to the creation of Public Secrets.
Daniel's theory on databases has been published in Database Aesthetics. Her article, "The Database: An Aesthetics of Dignity", illustrates how they can be used as an aesthetic that interacts with cultural or social aesthetics. Furthermore, Daniel's work is a functioning example of this "aesthetic of dignity" because her work coalesces aesthetics of the database and social world.
Public Secrets
Public Secrets is an interactive website with sound clips and textual narratives from female inmates in California State Prisons. It addresses the problem of secrecy among the growing amount of prisons. Daniel narrates the opening sequence. The site goes into the personal accounts of the women in the facility and it exposes ideas of "the existence of the Prison Industrial ComplexPrison-industrial complex
"Prison–industrial complex" is a term used to attribute the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. The term is analogous to the military–industrial complex that...
, its pervasive network of monopolies, its human rights abuses, are all extremely well documented yet wholly submerged and repressed. The growth of the prison industrial complex and the unimpeded violation of human rights within it are irrefutable testimony to the power of the public secret." Narrators express, first hand, the abuses they have experienced. Many of these stories have been kept under wraps because of an imposed media ban on all facilities within the California Department of Corrections. One account includes a woman who was sentenced to 5 years in prison for the same crime committed by a male, by the same judge, who received a lesser sentence. This hypertext site is an example of the growing bridge that links the new world of the digital media with the older world of politics and the call for social reform. Furthermore this site breaks down the stigmas that exist between men and woman in the prison system. Female convicts do exist and the stories are presented here.
Need_X_Change
Need_X_Change is a collaboration between Sharon Daniel and the Casa Segura—an HIV clinic in Oakland, California—that aims to start a political discourse between Casa Segura, the local community, and the larger global community in order to help prevent the spread of HIV.Narrative Contingencies
Narrative Contingencies is a hypertext non-linear narrative that relies upon an algorithm to juxtapose images and text from a large database. The website also allows for users to donate their own images or texts, which broadens the database's amount of content to randomly generate. Daniel's project is a fundamental example of non-linear theory in New Media ArtNew media art
New media art is a genre that encompasses artworks created with new media technologies, including digital art, computer graphics, computer animation, virtual art, Internet art, interactive art, computer robotics, and art as biotechnology...
.
Palabras
Palabras is an interactive archiveArchive
An archive is a collection of historical records, or the physical place they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime, and are kept to show the function of an organization...
that is composed of digital images and videos created by communities from San Francisco California, Buenos Aires Argentina, and Darfur, Sudan. The goal of the project is to foster relationships between the different communities through the sharing of digital images and video.
External links
- Public Secrets
- The Public Secret: Information and Social Knowledge
- List of Sharon Daniel's publications
- Sharon Daniel's The Database: An Aesthetics of Dignity
- What Art Can Do:The Transformative Work by Sharon Daniel
- UCSC article about Daniel winning Webby Award
- Database Aesthetics: Issues of Organization and Category in Online Art