Rasa Smite
Rasa Smite is an artist, network researcher and cultural innovator, working with science and emerging technologies since 90s. She is founding director of RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga, curator of its annual festivals, and a chief-editor of Acoustic Space – peer-reviewed publication series.
She holds a PhD in sociology of culture and media (from Riga Stradins University, 2011), and MA in visual arts (from Arts Academy of Latvia, 2000). Currently she works as associate professor in New Media Art programme at Liepaja University. She is author of the books – “Creative Networks. In the Rear-View Mirror of Eastern European History”, published by Amsterdam Institute for Network Culture (2012), and “Talk to Me. Exploring Human-Plant Communication” (Published by RIXC, 2014). She is also author of numerous articles and co-editor of the Acoustic Space series issues.
In her artistic practice, since the mid-90s Rasa Smite works together with Raitis Smits, creating networked, visionary, and innovative artworks. Their pioneering internet art project – Xchange Net.Radio Network was awarded with PRIX Ars Electronica (1998). More recent artworks include: Talk to Me – human plant communication project, and Biotricity – artwork series exploring a poetics of green energy, which have been exhibited in KUMU museum in Tallinn (2011), Ars Electronica Center in Linz (2013-2014), Arsenals National Arts Museum in Riga (2014), National Science and Technology Museum in Stockholm (2015), and elsewhere.
Rasa Smite also has co-curated large scale exhibitions WAVES (Riga, 2006 / Dortmund 2008, together with Armin Medosch, Inke Arns) and FIELDS (Riga, 2014, together with Raitis Smits, Armin Medosch), as well as more recent exhibitions: Transformative Ecologies (Mons and Riga, 2015) and Data Drift (kim? Riga, 2015, together with Raitis Smits, Lev Manovich). Rasa Smite also has been active in building Baltic-Nordic and European collaboration platforms: she has co-founded Renewable Network (2009) and Renewable Futures – traveling art and science conference series (2015). She is lecturing extensively on creative networks and sustainability, ecology and contemporary media art, contemporaneity and networked/post-media art, and other topics.