_Leonardo Electronic Almanac Discussion (LEAD): Vol 14 No 8_
Wild Nature and the Digital Life Special Issue, guest edited by Dene  
Grigar and Sue Thomas

:: Live chat with new media artist and multimedia essayist Giselle  
Beiguelman and Professor of New Media in the Faculty of Humanities at  
De Montfort University and an Associate Fellow of DMU’s Institute of  
Creative Technologies Sue Thomas.

:: Chat date: Wednesday, January 29.
:: 2 pm West Coast US / 5 pm East Coast USA / 10pm UK

:: LEAD is an open forum around the Wild Nature and the Digital Life  
special issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac http://leoalmanac.org/  
journal/Vol_14/lea_v14_n07-08/intro.asp

Chat instructions are below. The LEA website includes instructions  
and a complete list of upcoming chats: http://leoalmanac.org/journal/  
Vol_14/lea_v14_n07-08/forum.asp

:: Author Biographies
****Giselle Beiguelman is a new media artist and multimedia essayist  
who teaches Digital Culture at the Graduation Program in  
Communication and Semiotics of PUC-SP (São Paulo, Brazil). Her work  
includes the award-winnings "The Book after the Book" "egoscópio" and  
Landscape0 (with Marcus Bastos and Rafael Marchetti). She has been  
developing art projects for mobile phones ("Wop Art", 2001), praised  
by many media sites and the international press, including The  
Guardian (UK) and Neural (Italy), and art involving public-access, by  
the web, SMS and MMS to electronic billboards like "Leste o Leste?"  
and "egoscópio" (2002), released by /The New York Times/,  
"Poétrica" (2003) and "esc for escape" (2004). Beiguelman's work  
appears in important anthologies and guides devoted to digital arts  
including Yale University Library Research Guide for Mass Media and  
has been presented in international venues such as Net_Condition  
(ZKM, Germany), el final del eclipse (Fundación Telefonica, Madrid),  
Desk Topping - Computer Disasters (Smart Project Space, Amsterdan)  
Arte/Cidade (São Paulo), The 25th São Paulo Biennial and Algorithmic  
Revolution (ZKM).

Sue Thomas is Professor of New Media in the Faculty of Humanities at  
De Montfort University and an Associate Fellow of DMU’s Institute of  
Creative Technologies. Her most recent book is the non-fiction  
travelogue of cyberspace Hello World: travels in virtuality (2004).  
Other publications include the novels Correspondence (short-listed  
for the Arthur C Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel 1992)  
and Water (1994); an edited anthology Wild Women: Contemporary Short  
Stories By Women Celebrating Women (1994), and Creative Writing: A  
Handbook For Workshop Leaders (1995). She has published extensively  
in both print and online, and has initiated numerous online writing  
projects including The Noon Quilt, now an iconic image of the early  
days of the web. She founded the trAce Online Writing Centre in 1995  
where she was Artistic Director until going to De Montfort in January  
2005. She is Programme Leader of the online MA in Creative Writing  
and New Media, which she teaches with Kate Pullinger, and Leader of  
the Production and Research in Transliteracy group (PART). Her  
research interests include transliteracy, participatory media,  
creative writing and the creative industries. She is currently  
writing The Wild Surmise, a study of nature and cyberspace. http://
www.hum.dmu.ac.uk/~sthomas/ <http://www.hum.dmu.ac.uk/%7Esthomas/>

:: How to participate in the live chat?
Live chats will use the Writing and the Digital Life Discussion Room
( http://jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/discuss.cgi?WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-  
LIFE ).
To acess the WDL discussion room, it is necessary to subscribe to the  
list, by chosing "Join WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE" from
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=writing-and- the-
digital-life&A=1
If the online interface does not start, it is necessary to download  
and install the most recent Java version (http://www.java.com)