Education

BFA (UBC), MA, MFA, PhD (Concordia)

Biography

Taien Ng-Chan is a writer, media artist, and assistant professor in Cinema and Media Arts at York University. She holds a doctorate from Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC). In addition to her scholarly work in such publications as Intermediality and Humanities, she has published four books and anthologies of creative writing, produced multimedia arts websites, written drama for stage, screen, and CBC Radio. Her digital media works have been exhibited in conference events, film festivals and galleries across Canada and internationally, including at the Biennale internationale d’art numérique in Montreal, the International Mobile Innovation Screenings in New Zealand, Waterloo’s Lumen Festival, the Art Gallery of Windsor, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

Dr. Ng-Chan is currently the York Research Chair in Marginal & Emergent Media, and is developing her studio-lab, Marginal MediaWorks, to explore research-creation in Extended Reality (or XR, an umbrella term that includes virtual and augmented realities, geo-located soundscape). She is Co-Director (with Prof. Carmela Laganse at McMaster University) of the Sari-Sari Xchange Project, which partners with the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Tangled Art+Disability, and Centre[3] for Social+Artistic Practice to explore community-building through XR media creation.

Representation and engagement with space and place forms another avenue of research for Dr. Ng-Chan. In order to expand the field of experimental mapping, performance and art, she serves as Chair of the Commission for Art and Cartography at the International Cartographic Association, and founded the artist-research collective Hamilton Perambulatory Unit (with artist Donna Akrey). She has received numerous grants from SSHRC, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. In 2019, she won the City of Hamilton Arts Award for Media Arts, as well as the AMPD Junior Faculty Teaching Award; in 2022 she was awarded the President’s Emerging Research Leadership Award. She is currently working on an immersive, interactive media piece that blends concepts around self-representation, critical care, and karaoke.