MAY 24, 2018 - The 1980s and beyond were a pivotal time for the digital arts media in the Midwest, and many of the women who went to school or worked in the Midwest are now chronicled in the new book “New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts” published by University of Illinois (UI) Press. Foundational events at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) created an authentic, community-driven atmosphere of creative expression, innovation, and interdisciplinary collaboration that crossed gender lines and introduced artistically informed approaches to advanced scientific research.

Interweaving historical research with interviews and full-color illustrations, “New Media Futures” captures the spirit and contributions of 22 women working within emergent media as diverse as digital games, virtual reality, medicine, supercomputing visualization, and browser-based art. Of the 22 women profiled, nine are PhD/MS/MFA graduates and/or employees of the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), a research laboratory that, at the time, was a formal collaboration between the UIC Computer Science department and UIC School of Art and Design. They are: Maxine Brown, Carolina Cruz-Niera, Margaret Dolinsky, Copper Giloth, Lucy Petrovic, Dana Plepys, Mary Rasmussen, Sally Rosenthal and Barbara Sykes.

This beautiful coffee-table book is edited by long-time EVL collaborators Donna Cox of the UIUC National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Ellen Sandor of (art)n, and Janine Fron, an independent game artist and creative director of (art)n.

The book can be ordered from the UIPress website and from Amazon.com.

UIPress is offering a 30% discount through July 15, 2018; go to the UIPress website and use the Promo Code S18UIP.

UIPress has a special price of $25 for professors who want to use this book in courses; go to the UIPress website and click on “Exam and Desk Copies” in lower left.