Meredith Tromble’s blog Art and Shadows covers individual works of art and exhibitions in the context of the “unconscious” of contemporary art. The blog pursues questions about contemporary art that are prompted in part by new theories of mind and consciousness. For example, does the gap between what the artist intended and what a viewer receives matter? Do ideals of “communication” conflict with other human purposes that are well served by “obscure” art? Tromble addresses models of human experience—including embodied cognition and multi-body cognition—that suggest new ways of thinking about the forms of communication we call art.
Meredith Tromble was trained as an artist and began writing when she was asked to be a regular artist commentator for KQED-FM in San Francisco. In addition to fifteen years of broadcasting, she has authored hundreds of interviews, essays, and commentaries for print and digital publications, including Aspect, Leonardo, and San Francisco, and edited a book on the new media artist Lynn Hershman that was published by the University of California Press. From 2000 to 2010, she was a core member of the artist collective Stretcher, which publishes the online magazine Stretcher.org. In 2004 she joined the faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute as associate professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, specializing in the intersection of art, science, and technology.