...is the Presidential Fellow in the new Ph.D. program in Digital Media at Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned a master's degree in Information, Design and Technology from Georgia Tech in 2004 with a thesis on Responsive Electronic Garments. In 2005-2006 Jill was a research fellow at the Wearable Computing Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich.
Jill has spent the last year finding her way through the wily woods of medium, meaning, and new media technology. She tends to lean on her undergraduate training in visual art and phenomenological philosophy. This bent encourages her to view interaction with technology as interaction with a dynamic horizon of values and possibilities. Jill is also interested in conceptual models for technological development based on irrationality and contingency. Although she has formally studied mathematics, human-computer interaction, electrical engineering and polymer/textile engineering, Jill's projects typically, but not always, manifest themselves as technological art.
My dissertation develops the thesis of interaction with new media technologies as interaction with a dynamic horizon of values and possibilities. This study will acquire knowledge through two processes. First I trace a categorical split in our understanding of technology apparent in the history of Western philosophy. The story and meaning of this split culminates in phenomenological philosophy. It is then processed in the hermeneutic phenomenology of Gadamer as well as the work of contemporary philosophers such as Stiegler and Rorty. This split can be characterized as a shattering of the Greek notion of techne' into the categories of technology, art and craft, but can also be characterized in terms of habitation vs. use, with the ecological and ethical implications resident in these terms.
The second part of this dissertation approaches the thesis through an investigation of the history of rationality and its prioritization in society. It concludes with an investigation of conceptual models for technological development which are based on irrationality and contingency. Along the way I continue to develop projects such as robotic trees, interactive garments, and phenomenological design processes which are informed by and support this thesis. Due to my research experience with wearable computing and electronic textiles, there will be a particular emphasis on polymeric computation on and in the body.
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