M.J. Symuleski.com

(Pronouns: they/them) I have a Ph.D. in Computational Media, Arts, and Cultures from Duke University.

In 2021, I completed a dissertation on Maintenance Work that examined some of the innumerable forms of sustaining activity in art and human life from technical infrastructures and collective institutions to private rituals and queer subcultures.

I work across disciplines including visual culture, media theory, and creative/experimental new media practice. I teach courses that integrate theory and practice in digital and analog media. I've also developed conferences, workshops, and symposia bringing together scholars and new media practitioners, and have built and designed interactive installations.

In all, I investigate the ways in which human experience is mediated visually, spatially, and technologically, how that mediation comes to shape our conception of the world around us, and what we do with that knowledge. As a mixed-methods researcher, I apply this critical perspective across my research, teaching and production in interaction/interface design, computational media, and UX.

I live and work in Durham, NC.

Courses

Moving beyond basic html/css to integrate JavaScript and build responsive, dynamic view-based web applications with Node JS.

Introduction to creating and editing digital media (images, sound, video) and web design in HTML/CSS.

Introduction to the core concepts of media theory with special attention to artists writing on media, medium, and mediation.

Introduction to the core concepts of visual culture with a special emphasis on new media and current events.

UX Research & Design

Manifest Data Gnome — A Talisman from S-1's project Manifest Data

Roles: Concept Development, Research, Prototyping, Presentation

Background

S-1 is a practice-based media research lab and a space for artistic experimentation with emerging biometric and environmental sensing technologies and their impact on sensory experience.
Members of the lab meet regularly through the academic year to hypothesize and plan experimental research projects at the intersection of creative practice, media theory, and emerging sensing technologies. Members of the lab take part in all levels of the development process from conception to design & prototyping to implementation & and public presentation.

Role: Web Developer

Objective

Develop a companion wiki-based platform for use by the students of the Art of the MOOC Coursera Course, developed by Duke Professor and artist Pedro Lasch in association with Creative Time and promote online student engagement and content sharing outside of asynchronous video lectures.

Deliverables

Fully-branded WordPress theme with custom elements
User onboarding support and testing
Site maintenance, spam management, security

Stats

5+ years up and running
600+ users
Over 650 posts by 75+ active authors

Roles: Concept Development, Research, Prototyping, Pitch, User-testing

Objective

Develop an interactive installation to support visitor engagement with medieval-era objects in the Nasher Museum of Art using 3D projection-mapping and/or gesture recognition.
Solution: A tablet based interfacte and projection mapping installation that allows Nasher visitors to "paint" medieval-era statues with light.

Deliverables

Concept development, prototyping and pitch for an interactive display using projection mapping and a tablet interface to allow users to "paint" medieval-era statues with light.
Historical research on medieval polychromy
User research on interface design and usability

Outcomes

Nasher Museum sees a major increase in viewer engagement with statues featured in the installation and across the collection including longer visit times.
Project stays installed well beyond original 6-month schedule
Nasher Museum continues to host Digital Humanities projects and digitally enhanced installations.

Role: Research Assistant

Background

Trevor Paglen's The Last Pictures is a visual record of our contemporary moment placed on a satellite in permanent Earth orbit in 2012. It is also a book. I worked on a research team helping Paglen to research, identify, and select images and objects for inclusion in the project.

Activities

Historical Research
Archival Research
Writing

Conferences & Exhibits

Role: Artist, Co-Producer

Artist Statement

concieved & co-produced with Sinan Goknur

QueerXscape reflects on the present from a queer collaborative perspective through a series of landscapes in mixed-media collage and video. The installation presents viewers with collaged landscape vistas and video that bring together queer camp with an environmental uncanny: familiar terrain interspersed with remnants of contemporary glass-walled urban architecture, unruly bodies, broken statuary, random trinkets, flowers, and food. The exhibit is a collaboration between two queer artists living between Durham, New York, and Istanbul and presents an aesthetic response to dominant modes of economic development that at once bridge these places and intensify their disparities in terms of urban and environmental life.

Exhibited at the Rubenstein Art Center, Duke University, Sept-Oct, 2019 & at the Basement Gallery, Chapel Hill, Nov 2019 - Jan 2020.

Documentary video by Sinan Goknur

Role: Co-Producer

Summary

Duke University, March 1 ≈ 2, 2019. A two-day symposium on representation, computation, and experimental scholarship featuring scholars and artists whose work directly addresses the intersections of experimental media practice, identity politics and the effects of computational technologies on culture and aesthetics. Featuring talks by Zach Blas, Jacob Gaboury, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Nora Khan, a Keynote Address by Luciana Parisi, and performances by Tiara Roxanne and Quran Karriem & Rebecca Uliasz.

Activities

Development and Programming
Budget Management ($25k)
Logistics
Graphic Design & Web Design

Role: Co-Producer

Summary

Duke University, April 12 and 13, 2018. A symposium on race, algorithms, and scholarly and artistic interventions with speakers from across the humanities, followed by a one-day workshop and teach-in with new media artist Stephanie Dinkins.