In 2007, Twitter had 5000 tweets each day. Twitter now estimates there are over 500 million tweets daily, which together with Facebook and other microblogging, platforms create a new level of digital noise.  For over then years now, I have been working on the implications of an ever-increasing virtual world on social interactions and communication. Within all my work there is a return and a longing for touch in this virtual age.  Touch may be through sleeping with objects, memorializing Internet strangers, developing psychic connections or recreating the specifics of private scenes of public disasters.   For this talk, I will trace this thread through my most recent work, both as part of the collaborative team of Larson & Shindelman and in my individual work.

Marni Shindelman’s collaborative practice with Nate Larson investigates the data tracks we amass through networked communication. Her work ties the invisible to actual sites, anchoring the ephemeral in photographs and immersive video installations.

Her collaborative work has been in exhibitions at Crystal Bridges Museum, solo exhibitions Blue Sky in Portland, the Orlando Museum of Art, United Photo Industries in Brooklyn, the Contemporary Arts Center Las Vegas. Light Factory in Charlotte, the FotoFestiwal in Poland, the Houston Center for Photography, Baltimore Museum of Art, the Moscow International Biennale in Russia,and Conflux Festival in NYC. She has been a resident at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and Light Work in Syracuse, NY.

Her work has been featured in Wired Magazine, GUP Magazine, The Picture Show from NPR, The Dish, PetaPixel, Fast Company, Gizmodo, Hyperallergic, the New York Times, Hostshoe Magazine, the Washington Post, Utne Reader, Flavorwire, Frieze Magazine, the British Journal of Photography, the BBC News Viewfinder, and on the radio program Marketplace Tech Report.

Marni Shindelman is the new chair of photography at UGA. She received her MFA from the University of Florida and a Bachelor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Studies from Miami University (Oxford, OH).