The Australian National University

Department Member, College of Arts & Social Sciences

Adjunct research fellow/sessional lecturer

Thesis Title: Cross Connections

About

For many years, artist and researcher Tracey Meziane Benson has focused on notions of national identity, tourism, borders and identity as themes within her creative practice. Primarily, she uses the www and digital data projections and video as mediums. Since 1995, she has been working creatively with the World Wide Web, focusing on developing hyper-textual works, video projects and digital animations. Her digital work has been presented in many online galleries and projects in Australia and overseas. In 2001, her work toured regional galleries around Australia as part of the www.cowgrrls.com project initiated by Cooloola Shire Gallery.

In 2007, she co-founded the Canberra chapter of dorkbot with Alexandra Gillespie, which is supported by Canberra Contemporary Art Space. She was also a moderator on the internationally renowned new media list –empyre- from 2005-07. She has participated in a number of international digital media events including: ISEA2008; AOIR 2006; ISEA2004; Siggraph 2001; N5M4, Amsterdam 2003; N5M3; MAAP’99 and MAAP2000.

Tracey has written for a range of publications and events including: Eyeline, Fine Art Forum, Mesh, BORDERPANIC reader, N5M4 and Muse. In 2001 she completed a Research Master’s degree at the Creative Industries Research and Applications Centre (CIRAC) at Queensland University of Technology, focusing on souvenirs, nostalgia and personal identity. She recently passed her PhD at The Australian National University (ANU) that explores online communities and social networking tools.

She is currently an Adjunct Fellow at the ANU School of Music and a Visiting Scholar at the School of Cultural Inquiry. Her research focuses on social and technical issues related to semantic web and geolocation technologies and their application to genealogy and Indigenous kinship systems.

In addition, Tracey also works in the Australian Government as a program and IT project manager, where she is currently managing a secure, online collaboration portal for all levels of government.

Tracey provides web design, communications management and events managment under the auspices of x connect media.