Listservs
Originated by network artist, critic and curator Melinda Rackham of Australia, -empyre- soft-skinned space was an online forum active from 2002 to 2021. It operated as an e-mail listserv offering community and discourse among new media artists, curators, theorists, producers, and historians. Participants organized and wrote monthly thematic online discussions representing a plurality of topics and global perspectives, reaching across not only Australia and the Northern Hemisphere but also to greater Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa.
Melinda Rackham turned over the listserv's management to the founding curator of Cornell's Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Tim Murray (Cornell Comparative Literature and Literatures in English, 1979-2025) and Renate Ferro (Cornell Department of Art, 2004-2023). Murray and Ferro provided leadership until the list's closing in 2021. During their tenure, they arranged for the homepage of the listserv to be hosted by Cornell University Library.
Cornell University Library continues to provide an archived version of the -empyre- website.
The University of New South Wales hosts the archive of the -empyre- listserv.