Toni Sant
Dr Toni Sant is Associate Professor in Digital Curation and Director of the Digital Curation Lab at MediaCityUK with the University of Salford's School of Arts and Media, where he was previously the Director of Film & Digital Media between 2017 and 2019.
He was formerly Reader in Digital Curation at the University of Hull in the UK, where he worked between 2004 and 2016, including as Director of Research for the University's Scarborough School of Arts and New Media. Previously he lectured about performance and creative technologies at the University of Malta, Adelphi University, and New York University. He has also worked as broadcaster, theatre director, and musician in Malta, Italy, England, Germany, and the USA. He was trained in radio production by the BBC, graduated B.A. (Hons) first class in Theatre Studies at the University of Malta, and holds a M.A. and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University.
Toni Sant is the founding president of the M3P Foundation and associate editor for the International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media. He is also the founding convenor of the TaPRA working group on Documenting Performance, a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, and Digital Curation and Innovation consultant for the Routledge Performance Archive.
He is the author of a book about Franklin Furnace, a New York-based avant-garde arts presenter established since 1976. The book is called Franklin Furnace & the Spirit of the Avant-Garde: A History of the Future (University of Chicago Press - Intellect, 2011). http://www.tonisant.com/ff
More recently, he has written a book called Remembering Rediffusion in Malta: A History Without Future? (Malta, Midsea Books, 2016) http://www.tonisant.com/rediffusion
Other recent book projects include Documenting Performance (published Bloomsbury Methuen Drama in 2017) and Ejjew Nidħku Ftit Ieħor ma' Charles Clews (published by SKS Malta in 2019).
His writings on performance and new media have also appeared as book chapters and in TDR: Journal of Performance Studies, the Washington Square News, Leonardo, The Encyclopedia of Politics, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, the Journal of Music, Technology & Education, the Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, the Journal of Maltese History, and the International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media, among others.
His research interests include the use of the Internet in/for performance, live art, documenting performance, digital curation, and the socio-cultural aspects of new media, particularly in marginalised communities.
Current research development revolves around the Malta Media Memory Preservation work at http://www.m3p.com.mt . Since 2015 he is also a founding member of Wikimedia Community Malta.
In 2013, Dr Sant was recognized as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK. Further scholarly activities include work between 2013 and 2015 as Education Organiser with Wikimedia UK , serving as the national contact point for education-related activities of the Wikimedia Foundation's chapter in the UK.
Between 2014 and 2020 he was also the artistic director of Spazju Kreattiv, Malta's national centre for creativity at St James Cavalier in Valletta.
He was formerly Reader in Digital Curation at the University of Hull in the UK, where he worked between 2004 and 2016, including as Director of Research for the University's Scarborough School of Arts and New Media. Previously he lectured about performance and creative technologies at the University of Malta, Adelphi University, and New York University. He has also worked as broadcaster, theatre director, and musician in Malta, Italy, England, Germany, and the USA. He was trained in radio production by the BBC, graduated B.A. (Hons) first class in Theatre Studies at the University of Malta, and holds a M.A. and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from New York University.
Toni Sant is the founding president of the M3P Foundation and associate editor for the International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media. He is also the founding convenor of the TaPRA working group on Documenting Performance, a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, and Digital Curation and Innovation consultant for the Routledge Performance Archive.
He is the author of a book about Franklin Furnace, a New York-based avant-garde arts presenter established since 1976. The book is called Franklin Furnace & the Spirit of the Avant-Garde: A History of the Future (University of Chicago Press - Intellect, 2011). http://www.tonisant.com/ff
More recently, he has written a book called Remembering Rediffusion in Malta: A History Without Future? (Malta, Midsea Books, 2016) http://www.tonisant.com/rediffusion
Other recent book projects include Documenting Performance (published Bloomsbury Methuen Drama in 2017) and Ejjew Nidħku Ftit Ieħor ma' Charles Clews (published by SKS Malta in 2019).
His writings on performance and new media have also appeared as book chapters and in TDR: Journal of Performance Studies, the Washington Square News, Leonardo, The Encyclopedia of Politics, The Dictionary of Literary Biography, the Journal of Music, Technology & Education, the Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, the Journal of Maltese History, and the International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media, among others.
His research interests include the use of the Internet in/for performance, live art, documenting performance, digital curation, and the socio-cultural aspects of new media, particularly in marginalised communities.
Current research development revolves around the Malta Media Memory Preservation work at http://www.m3p.com.mt . Since 2015 he is also a founding member of Wikimedia Community Malta.
In 2013, Dr Sant was recognized as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK. Further scholarly activities include work between 2013 and 2015 as Education Organiser with Wikimedia UK , serving as the national contact point for education-related activities of the Wikimedia Foundation's chapter in the UK.
Between 2014 and 2020 he was also the artistic director of Spazju Kreattiv, Malta's national centre for creativity at St James Cavalier in Valletta.
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This is the first book in English exploring the history of broadcasting in Malta through the relics of Rediffusion memories. The perspective presented here offers an initial critical analysis of the unprocessed archival resources that have accidentally survived over the years. While it is relatively easy to recover a significant narrative to tell a history of the Rediffusion years in Malta from the primary sources that still exist, albeit rather limited and scattered, it is rather harder to delve much deeper into many of the specific aspects arising from any close study of these materials. It is therefore essential now, more than ever, to remember Rediffusion in Malta before the surviving memories perish or become odd ruins over which media archaeologists will ponder for many years to come.
Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive history of this remarkable organization from its conception to the present. Organized around the context of the major art genres that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century — artists’ books, live art, and digital performance — this book intersperses first-person narratives with empirical observations on issues critical to the organization's success as well as Franklin Furnace's many contributions to avant-garde art.
Book Chapters
Journal Articles
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Les premières œuvres numériques de, respectivement, Annie Sprinkle et Frank Moore sont fortement inspirées de leur propre pratique au plateau du point de vue à la fois de la méthode et du contenu : les deux artistes américains conservent la même approche de l’érotisme. Tout au long des années 1990, Sprinkle et Moore ont brouillé les frontières entre l’art et l’érotisme pour faire évoluer leurs performances en incorporant le net comme élément majeur. Leur travail s’inspire de concepts diffusés dans le monde de l’art à travers ce que l’on nomme les « cahiers d’artistes », qui sont apparus près d’un siècle avant l’essor de la technologie numérique.
EN
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Any thorough discussion of nudity in digital performance needs to start by declaring a definition of digital performance. This is particularly essential because in the decades since creative work that can easily be labeled as such, digital performance has developed substantially to take on technological developments. It is also necessary to differentiate between works made possible through digital technology and performances where the digital element is only involved in the dissemination of the work. In taking a historical perspective of this subject matter, this article takes a closer look at the first examples of live art on the internet, presented by artists who have used the internet in a way that goes beyond the mere broadcast of live performances or video art. The goal is to provide an art historical context for the more recent developments both in terms of the use of digital technology as well as the types of nudity presented in digital performance.
Most significantly, the early online works of Annie Sprinkle (b. 1954) and Frank Moore (1946–2013), presented separately, draw heavily on their own art practice in terms of method, beyond the specific erotic content they produced, which was not too different from their offline work. Throughout the 1990s, Sprinkle and Moore blurred the boundaries between art and erotica to expand their own work to include the internet as an essential component of their performances. Sprinkle and Moore elaborated on the use of concepts popularized in the art world through artist books for close to a century before the rise of digital technology. Although nudity was always a draw for a substantial part of their audience, there was an even larger part of their audience that understood that they were producing work that did not have the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. It is very evident that this type of nudity in digital performance is rather different from pornography, as broadly defined as that may be, even if both artists had their fair share of raised eyebrows from those seeking to apply and broaden obscenity laws to include the type of nudity they presented through their digital performances.
The use of the digital technology as employed to present this type of nudity in performance has arguably made it easier for erotic art to be presented as a distinctive from pornography. The normalization of nudity in broadcast media into the twenty-first century, and the greater acceptance of less restrictive legislation regulating nudity in performance have both contributed to the penetration of erotic art into the public sphere. In making the case for this argument, a comparative study of nudity in digital performance between the time Sprinkle and Moore first appeared online in the 1990s and the way things stand more than twenty years later provides an art historic perspective for a better appreciation of the groundbreaking nature of their initial forays into live art on the internet.
This is the first book in English exploring the history of broadcasting in Malta through the relics of Rediffusion memories. The perspective presented here offers an initial critical analysis of the unprocessed archival resources that have accidentally survived over the years. While it is relatively easy to recover a significant narrative to tell a history of the Rediffusion years in Malta from the primary sources that still exist, albeit rather limited and scattered, it is rather harder to delve much deeper into many of the specific aspects arising from any close study of these materials. It is therefore essential now, more than ever, to remember Rediffusion in Malta before the surviving memories perish or become odd ruins over which media archaeologists will ponder for many years to come.
Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive history of this remarkable organization from its conception to the present. Organized around the context of the major art genres that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century — artists’ books, live art, and digital performance — this book intersperses first-person narratives with empirical observations on issues critical to the organization's success as well as Franklin Furnace's many contributions to avant-garde art.
==
Les premières œuvres numériques de, respectivement, Annie Sprinkle et Frank Moore sont fortement inspirées de leur propre pratique au plateau du point de vue à la fois de la méthode et du contenu : les deux artistes américains conservent la même approche de l’érotisme. Tout au long des années 1990, Sprinkle et Moore ont brouillé les frontières entre l’art et l’érotisme pour faire évoluer leurs performances en incorporant le net comme élément majeur. Leur travail s’inspire de concepts diffusés dans le monde de l’art à travers ce que l’on nomme les « cahiers d’artistes », qui sont apparus près d’un siècle avant l’essor de la technologie numérique.
EN
==
Any thorough discussion of nudity in digital performance needs to start by declaring a definition of digital performance. This is particularly essential because in the decades since creative work that can easily be labeled as such, digital performance has developed substantially to take on technological developments. It is also necessary to differentiate between works made possible through digital technology and performances where the digital element is only involved in the dissemination of the work. In taking a historical perspective of this subject matter, this article takes a closer look at the first examples of live art on the internet, presented by artists who have used the internet in a way that goes beyond the mere broadcast of live performances or video art. The goal is to provide an art historical context for the more recent developments both in terms of the use of digital technology as well as the types of nudity presented in digital performance.
Most significantly, the early online works of Annie Sprinkle (b. 1954) and Frank Moore (1946–2013), presented separately, draw heavily on their own art practice in terms of method, beyond the specific erotic content they produced, which was not too different from their offline work. Throughout the 1990s, Sprinkle and Moore blurred the boundaries between art and erotica to expand their own work to include the internet as an essential component of their performances. Sprinkle and Moore elaborated on the use of concepts popularized in the art world through artist books for close to a century before the rise of digital technology. Although nudity was always a draw for a substantial part of their audience, there was an even larger part of their audience that understood that they were producing work that did not have the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. It is very evident that this type of nudity in digital performance is rather different from pornography, as broadly defined as that may be, even if both artists had their fair share of raised eyebrows from those seeking to apply and broaden obscenity laws to include the type of nudity they presented through their digital performances.
The use of the digital technology as employed to present this type of nudity in performance has arguably made it easier for erotic art to be presented as a distinctive from pornography. The normalization of nudity in broadcast media into the twenty-first century, and the greater acceptance of less restrictive legislation regulating nudity in performance have both contributed to the penetration of erotic art into the public sphere. In making the case for this argument, a comparative study of nudity in digital performance between the time Sprinkle and Moore first appeared online in the 1990s and the way things stand more than twenty years later provides an art historic perspective for a better appreciation of the groundbreaking nature of their initial forays into live art on the internet.
of life, and memories. The Malta Music Memory Project (M3P) is trying to change this trend through archiving audio CDs from Malta and other preservation initiatives.
Save as, Digital Memories, edited by Joanne Garde-Hansen, Andrew Hoskins and Anna. Reading. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Cybercultures: Mediations of Community, Culture, Politics. Eds. Harris Reslow and Aris Mousoutzanis. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2012. p/bk 188 pp. ISBN 978-90-420-3578-2.
Tweets and the Street: Social Media and Contemporary Activism. Paulo Gerbaudo. London: Pluto Press, 2012. p/bk 194 pp. ISBN 798-0-7453- 3248-2.
The 24th annual Digital Research in the Humanities & Arts (DRHA) Conference will be hosted by the Digital Curation Lab at the University of Salford from 6 – 9 September 2020 at MediaCityUK, Salford Quays, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom.
A call for proposals for papers, panels, workshops, screenings, performances, installations or round-table discussions is open until 1 March 2020.
The conference programme will be structured within 6 distinct strands:
- Digital arts and design
- Digital humanities
- Creative and cultural industries
- Digital libraries and archives
- Citizen science
- Documenting performance*
* The Documenting Performance strand is coordinated by Dr Joseph Dunne-Howrie and Dr Lyn Robinson (Department of Library & Information Science, CityLis, at City, University of London) who will be running this strand as a DocPerform symposium throughout the parallel sessions of DRHA 2020. This follows on from three previous DocPerform symposia that have been held in London since 2016. Further information available on the DRHA 2020 website.
Digital Curation has become ubiquitous on a scale ranging from large digital preservation programmes to individual citizen curation projects that often involve collaborations between professionals and enthusiasts. Extending Joseph Beuys’ controversial assertion that everyone is an artist, now everyone is a (digital) curator. Curation in the context of Contemporary Art is closely aligned with Digital Curation skills; while a grounding in contemporary art marking is essential, of course, the ability to understand the contemporary media ecology within which the works are created, exhibited, documented, and preserved is equally relevant for contemporary art curators. Similarly, in Performance there’s an interest in curation of emerging formats, or immersive documents including social media and augmented/virtual reality, as well as perspectives relating to the motivations, needs and aspirations of readers or audience members who might engage with such document. More broadly, Digital Curation aligns with interest in Digital Heritage, Digital Forensics, Digital Preservation, and Digital Archives.
In focusing on this evolving area, DHRA 2020 mirrors the purpose of the Digital Curation Lab at the University of Salford in its theme of ‘Situating Digital Curation: Locating Creative Practice and Research between Digital Humanities and the Arts.’ The Digital Curation Lab was established at MediaCityUK in 2019 to facilitate research on the collection, preservation, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of digital assets and technologies of memory at The University of Salford.
More information about DRHA2020 can be found at http://www.drha.uk/salford2020/
The 22nd annual Digital Research in the Humanities & Arts (DRHA) Conference will be hosted by Fondazzjoni Kreattività from 9 – 12 September 2018 at Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta, Malta.
A call for proposals for papers, panels, workshops, screenings, performances, installations or round-table discussions is now open.
The conference programme will be structured within 5 distinct strands:
* Digital arts, design and performance;
* Digital humanities;
* Creative and cultural industries;
* Digital libraries and archives; and
* Digital cities and urban commons.
DRHA Malta 2018 will create a space for conversations and collaborations across disciplines. The conference will feature performances, networking opportunities, Google Cardboard demonstrations at cultural heritage sites, and a conference meal at a Heritage Malta landmark site. There will also be activities associated with the global photo contest Wiki Loves Monuments, supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.
A selection of papers from DRHA Malta 2018 will be developed into a special edition of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media guest edited by Toni Sant, following the conference.
Proposals are invited through the online form available at http://www.drha2018.org/call-for-proposals before the 31st of January 2018.
More information can be found on http://www.drha2018.org
Information about the conference can be found at http://www.drha.uk/salford2020