Staff Profiles

Ross Rudesch Harley is an artist, writer, and educator in the field of new media and popular culture. His work crosses the bounds of media art practice, cinema, music, design, and architecture. His video and sound work has been presented at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, New York MoMA, Ars Electronica in Austria, and at the Sydney Opera House.

He is also well-known for directing the audio/vision for the Cardoso Flea Circus videos and live performances with Colombian-born artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso. Recent work includes Aviopolis (with Gillian Fuller), a multimedia project and book about airports, Black Dog Publications, London; Busface, a photo-media installation with the Ejecutivo Colectivo exhibited at ArtBasel, Miami; and the DVD installation Cloudscope in collaboration with Durbach | Block architects at Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney.

He is a former editor of the journal Art + Text, and has written regular columns on design and popular culture for Rolling Stone and for The Australian national newspaper. He has edited a number of anthologies, including New Media Technologies (1993), Artists in Cyberculture (1993) and Before and After Cinema (1999). Another, entitled Parallel Histories in the Intermedia Age appeared in the Summer of 2000. In 1992 he was the director of the influential International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA). He is Co-Chair of ISEA 2013, which returns to Sydney in 2013.

Current research projects include the ARC funded research projects "Reconsidering Australian Media Art Histories in an International Context" and “Scanlines: Video Art in Australia Since the 1960s” an ARC linkage project investigating the history of video art in Sydney together with fellow COFA artist John Gillies, dLux Media Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney; “My Own Private Airspace”, a multichannel video of personal airflights and itineraries (with Leo Martyn animator and Lawrence English sound); and “Loomorama“,  a collaborative installation project with Elvis Richardson based on personal archives of VHS tapes and VJ presentation tools. He is also Lead Chief Investigator on the ARC LIEF project to create Design and Art of Australia Online together with DAAO Research Director and long-time collaborator Gillian Fuller.

He was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2008 and is currently Head of the School of Media Arts at COFA. He is Deputy Director at NIEA and Co-Director of ICinema.

For further information and full CV, visit his personal website or his UNSW research profile..

Recent Artworks include:

Stick Insects, (with Maria Fernanda Cardoso), 2-channel video installation, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, Florida, 2008.

Emuwear, (with Maria Fernanda Cardoso), 2-channel video installation, "Australian", curated by Nicholas Tsoutas, Casula Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 2008;Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, Florida, 2008.

Cardoso Flea Circus Video from Maria Fernanda Cardoso on Vimeo.

Cardoso Flea Circus Installation, (with Maria Fernanda Cardoso), video installation, tent, arena, props, audio works, DVD compilation (colour video, 65 min), purchased by the Tate Gallery London, 2007.

Count Thirty Remix, 12 minutes colour video, “SynCity: Remixing three generations of sample culture”, Australian Centre for Photography, 2006; Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2007.

Cloudscope, colour video DVD installation, in collaboration with Durbach | Block architects, “Changing Spaces”, Elizabeth Bay House, 2005-2006.

RRH: Ross Rudesch Harley Videoworks, double DVD with 48page catalogue, published by MediaComPress in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2003.

Recent Publications include:

“Cultural Modulation and The Zero Originality Clause of Remix Culture in Australian Contemporary Art”, fibreculture 15, Dec 2009.

“Distribution/Network/Configuration: A Photo Essay On Operating Control”, in Andrew R. Thomas (ed), Supply Chain Security, Praeger Security International, Connecticut, 2009.

“Light-Air-Portals: Visual Notes on Differential Mobility”, M/C Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2009.

“Open Video”, realtime 93, Sept-Oct 2009.

“Film, image & the post-medium condition”, realtime 90, April-May 2009.

“Screen potential”, realtime 89, Feb-March 2009.

"From open circuits to open distribution: can video artists adopt FLOSS strategies as their own?", FLOSS+Art, Mute, London, 2008; pp 111-19.

“Terminal Insecurity” in Andrew R. Thomas (ed), Aviation Security Management, Praeger Security International, Connecticut, 2008; pp 187-94.

"Australian Electronica: a brief history" (with Andrew Murphie), in Shane Homan and Tony Mitchell (eds), Sounds of Then, Sounds of Now: Popular Music in Australia, ACYS Publishing, Hobart, 2008,  pp 93-113.

“Around the world in 80 airports”, in John Urry , Saolo Cwerner, Sven Kesselring (eds), Aeromobilities, Routledge, 2008.

“Airports”, (with Gillian Fuller) in Mike Crang (ed), Encyclopedia of Urban Studies, Sage, London, 2009.

Totally Busted: Do We Need a YouTube for Video Art?’, Move on Asia, Gallery Loop, Seoul, Korea, 2007, pp 12-20.

“Terminal Immersion”, Visual Communication, Sage,  Vol. 6,  No. 2,  June, 2007; pp 180-201.

“Australian Electronica: A Brief History”, (with Andrew Murphy), CULTURE MACHINE #9, 2007.

“SYD: a tale of two cities and how they entwine” (with Gillian Fuller), for Vol 1, No4 "The Glittering Tart": Imaging Sydney SCAN, refereed e-journal, 2005.

Aviopolis: A Book About Airports, (with Gillian Fuller), original colour photography, (plus limited edition CDROM and DVD), Black Dog Publishing, London, 2004, 160pages.