Telidon Artist

Nell Tenhaaf

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A black and white photo of Nell Tenhaaf wearing glasses.

Dr. Nell Tenhaaf  is an electronic media artist and theoretician whose work has been exhibited across Canada, the United States, and Europe. Her practice focuses on the intersection of art, science and technology, using digital media to integrate elements from these different fields. She is represented in Toronto by Paul Petro Contemporary Art.

Beginning in Montreal in the 1970s Tenhaaf has been active in artist-run culture. In the 1980s her work began to explore the visual prospects of the new computer-based media, Telidon. She is known internationally as an artist, writer, and speaker for her multimedia explorations of genetics, biotechnology, and cyberspace from a position informed by feminism. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Concordia Art Gallery, Montreal, and the National Gallery of Canada.

Tenhaaf has taught at Concordia University, the University of Ottawa, Carnegie Mellon and in 1997 joined York University in the Digital Media and Visual Art and Art History. She is now York University Professor Emeritus.

In an academic capacity Tenhaaf has published numerous reviews and articles that address the cultural implications of biotechnologies and of Artificial Life (an area of research that studies dynamics in nature through computational models as well as software or robotic agents with lifelike behaviours).

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