UB's Food and Emerging Media Speaker Series Returns with 'Food in the City'

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Food and Emerging Media Speakers Series -- designed to address issues of food and technology, and food and sustainability -- will continue its 2010 program with "Food in the City," a talk by Amanda McDonald Crowley, executive director of the non-profit Eyebeam art and technology center in New York City, at 7 p.m. April 1 in the Burchfield Penney Art Center, 1300 Elmwood Ave.

Crowley will speak about Eyebeam's Food and Technology Research Group, an initiative for media artists, cooks, environmentalists and food activists to embrace technological innovation and environmental, sustainable and regenerative concerns consistent with green and open source ventures. The intention is to gather biologists, environmentalists, food activists and media artists to consider urban agriculture, bio-generative art and other issues related to our food systems. The talk is free and open to the public.

"The impetus of the class -- and the speaker series -- is born out of personal and professional interest in the abysmal state of our food systems," says adjunct professor Stefani Bardin, who organized the lecture series in conjunction with her class, Food and Emerging Media, in UB's Department of Media Study. "There is a huge portion of our population without access, resources or time to understand the barrage of information -- and misinformation -- coming at us from mainstream media outlets about our food systems.

"I'm interested in helping lift the veil of corrupt corporate control off of the harmful cultivation, distribution and advertising of food in order to allow people to make more informed, healthy choices about what they put into their bodies," she says.

Crowley's talk is the latest installment in a series designed to explore ways emerging technologies influence -- both positively and negatively -- our culture's often tightly veiled food production systems.

The class and speaker series features farmers, artists, curators, architects and scholars whose research focuses on how technology has mediated and influenced our relationship to food. Those participating are dedicated to working toward what Bardin calls "more efficient, cost-effective, sustainable and culturally relevant models of food production and gastronomy."

The speaker series will continue with two additional programs in April. Also on the schedule are: Kathy High, new media artist, curator and professor of video and new media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who will speak at 6 p.m. April 6 in the Burchfield Penney Art Center, and Carmen Trudell and Jenny Broutin, professors of architecture technology at CUNY and co-founders of Fluxxlab, who will speak at 5:30 p.m. April 20 in 301 Crosby Hall on UB's South Campus.

The program is sponsored by UB's Department of Media Study, UB's Department of Philosophy, UB's Department of Visual Studies, UB's Department of Architecture, UB's Canadian-American Studies Committee and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.