[NetBehaviour] Furtherfield in Support of Ada Lovelace Day

[Sarah Cook]

hi all,

MY NAME:
Sarah Cook

URL:
www.sarahcook.info; www.crumbweb.org

INSPIRED BY
Sara Diamond, Susan Kennard and the many great ladies of the Banff  
New Media Institute (you all know who you are!) - http:// 
www.banffcentre.ca/bnmi
For organising and producing amazing future-forecasting  
interdisciplinary rigourously researched events and exhibitions in  
the field of new media, commissioning artists, building labs and  
platforms and generally encouraging an atmosphere of knowledge- 
sharing. I've met some of the most important people in my career from  
my time spent at Banff working for and with Sara and Susan; I owe  
much to them both, and they know it ;-)

Kathy Rae Huffman - http://www.faces-l.net/en/user/10
For opening her filofax to me within minutes of our first meeting, at  
my first visit to Ars Electronica, giving me names and phone numbers  
and subsequently introducing me to artists and cultural producers.  
Until that point every curator I had met was quite closed about their  
research and their social network and Kathy completely obliterated  
that museum-influenced impression that curating was about gate- 
keeping. She continues to inspire me by her very honest, ethical and  
straightforward working method, for not playing the power games so  
prevalent in the art world, for the early work she did for women in  
new media in the 1990s, for undertaking one of the first postgraduate  
courses in curating (actually Exhibition Design and later Museum  
Studies) and being (and I was also on my MA curating course) one of  
the few who wanted to work with media artists.

Alison Craighead - http://www.thomson-craighead.net
For her (collaborative) art work, for being an absolute delight to  
work with, for helping me question and refine my commitment to new  
media, to art, to installation, to gallery-museum based practice, to  
collections, to archives, and to the web. (And together with Jon for  
teaching me about whisky, how to handle relationship breakups, how to  
be nice to strangers, how to shop online, how to be a minimalist, how  
to live and eat well, and where to get the best British change purses  
and German unctions).

Marina Hyde - http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/marinahyde
For writing so smartly, sardonically, and delightfully about three of  
my favourite things to read about in the paper/online: politics,  
sport, and celebrity. On days I wish I were a journalist or blogger  
rather than a curator (which are many), contributing in an immediate  
and wide-ranging way to debates which can change minds about popular  
culture and media, I wish I could be like her.