Katrina Sluis’ research is broadly concerned with the politics and aesthetics of art and photography in computational culture, its social circulation, automation and cultural value. As a curator and educator, for the past decade she has worked with museums and galleries to support digital strategy, digital programming and pedagogy. 

Her present work addresses the emerging paradigms of human - machine curation, as a contemporary response to the massive intensification of global image production and circulation. Funded by the SNSF, the project "Curating Photography in the Networked Image Economy", explores the transit of data analytics and AI imaginaries into the museum on the one hand, and discourses of aesthetic modernism and curating into the computer sciences on the other.

A second strand of AHRC funded research explores the role of computational reproduction on the art object - connecting practices of art documentation to emerging discourses of adtech, digital marketing and big data.  

Katrina is presently Head of Photography & Media Arts in the School of Art & Design where she also co-convenes the Computational Culture Lab. 

Prior to joining ANU, Katrina was based in London where she was Senior Lecturer & founding Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI), London South Bank University. The Centre brought together researchers from cultural studies, software studies, art and media practice to develop knowledge and understanding of how network culture transforms the production and circulation of images and cultural objects. With an emphasis on artistic and practice-based research, the Centre addressed the separation of cultural policy, practice and theory through collaborative research partnerships with Rhizome, Tate, The Photographers' Gallery, Serpentine Galleries, Royal College of Art & Gasworks. 

From 2011-2019 she also held the inaugural post of Senior Curator (Digital Programmes) at The Photographers’ Gallery, London developing artistic and public projects engaged with machine vision, synthetic imaging, net culture and speculative photographic education, commissioning new work from artists including James Bridle, Alan Warburton and Morehshin Allahyari. Key projects include the platform Unthinking.Photography, “Post-Capitalist Photography Now!” (with Ben Burbridge), “All I Know is What’s On the Internet” and “Jonas Lund: Operation Earnest Voice” which transformed a floor of The Photographers’ Gallery into a fully staffed ‘influencing agency’ tasked with reversing Brexit over 4 days in January 2019. She continues to work with The Photographers' Gallery as Adjunct Research Curator, supervising research on machine vision, post-photographic curating and digital art. 

She serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Photographies (Routledge) and Media:Art:Write:Now (Open Humanities Press) and the Board of Photoaccess, the ACT's centre for photography. She serves as an advisor on Serpentine Galleries Future Art Ecosystems 2 & 3, as well as an international jury member for the P3 Post-Photography Prototyping Prize in Switzerland (2019), 11th Organ Vida Festival Croatia (2020) and Brighton Photo Fringe's OPEN20 SOLO award (2020), UK. 

Funded Research Projects 

Documenting Digital Art: re-thinking histories and practices of the museum and beyond, Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) 2019 - 2021 £371,154 Partners: University of Exeter (UK), The Photographers’ Gallery (UK), LIMA (NL), Institute Bevilacqua LaMasa Foundation (IT).

Curating Photography in the Networked Image Economy, Swiss National Science Foundation, Dec 2018- Dec 2020, CHF 217,000. Partners: Lucerne University of Applied Art & Design (CH), The Photographers’ Gallery (UK), Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), Foto Colectania (ES).

Selected Publications

N Malevé, K Sluis and G Tedone (2023) "Curating in the Wild: Taming the indeterminacy of the networked image" In J Krysia & M Tyzlik-Carver Curating Superintelligences: Speculations on the Future of Curating, AI and Hybrid Realities, Data Browser 10. London: Open Humanities Press

K Sluis (2023) "The Phantom of the Mirror: The Screenshots of Mario Santamaria" In: W Gerling, S Möring & M De Mutiis. Screen Images. In-Game Photography, Screenshot, Screencast Berlin: Kadmos

K Sluis (2022) "Documentation in an age of Photographic Hypercirculation" In: A Dekker & G Giannachi. Documentation as Art: Expanded Digital Practices. London: Routledge. pp 27-37.

A Dewdney & K Sluis (eds) (2022) The Networked Image in Post-Digital Culture. London: Routledge

K Sluis (2022) "The networked image after Web 2.0: Flickr and the ‘real world’ photography of the dataset" In: A Dewdney & K Sluis (eds) The Networked Image in Post-Digital Culture. London: Routledge

G Cox, A Dekker, A Dewdney & K Sluis (2021) "Affordances of the Networked Image". Nordic Journal of Aesthetics No. 61-62. pp. 32-37 https://tidsskrift.dk/nja/article/view/127857/174089

K Sluis (2021) Glimmering Screens, Institutional Dreams: Curating Post-Photography. In: W Brückle & S Vitale (eds) Nummer 10: Post-Photography. Lucerne University of Applied Sciences & Arts.

M De Mutiis, K Sluis & J Uriate (2021) You Must Not Call It Photography If This Expression Hurts You In: A. Dekker (ed) Curating Digital Art: From Presenting and Collecting Digital Art to Networked Co-curation Amsterdam: Valiz

K Sluis & N Wietlisbach (2021) The Flight of the Networked Image: From Screen to Museum and Back Again. In: D. Gassert et al (ed.) Eva & Franco Mattes: Dear Imaginary Audience. Switzerland: Fotomuseum Winterthur

K.Sluis & A Sauer (2020) Unboxing Photography. In: Getrude Wagenfeld-Pleister (ed.) Adrian Sauer: Photo Works. Berlin: Kerber.

K Sluis (2020) As We May <blink>. In: V. Perrin (ed.) Olia Lialina: Net Artist. Paris: Les Presses du Réel. 

K Sluis (2020) Photography Must Be Curated!, Still Searching: A Platform for Contemporary Photographic Discourse. Switzerland: Fotomuseum Winterthur

K Sluis (2020) Beyond Representation? The database-driven image and the non-human spectator. In: S. Bull (ed.) A Companion to Photography. London: Wiley-Blackwell pp. 113-129 ISBN: 9781405195843

Rubinstein, D. and Sluis, K. (2019 [2008]) ‘A Life More Photographic: Mapping the Networked Image’, in Wells, L. (ed) The Photography Cultures Reader: Representation, Agency and Identity. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp.ISBN 9780415749206

K.Sluis (2017) Accumulate, Aggregate, Destroy: Database fever and the archival web. In: A Dekker (ed.) Lost and Living (in) Archives, Amsterdam: Valiz pp. 24-71 ISBN: 9789492095268

K.Sluis (2016) ‘Authorship, Collaboration, Computation? Into the Realm of Similar Images’ In: K Kuc & J Zylinska (eds) Photomediations: A ReaderLondon: Open Humanities Press. ISBN: 9781785420023 

D. Rubinstein & K. Sluis (2013) The Digital Image in Photographic Culture: Algorithmic Photography and the Crisis of Representation.In: M. Lister (ed.) The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, 2nd Ed. London: Routledge ISBN: 0415535298 

D. Rubinstein and K.Sluis (2013) Notes on the Margins of Metadata; concerning the undecidability of the digital image, Photographies 6 (1) pp. 151–158. ISSN 17540763 

D. Rubinstein and K.Sluis (2008) A Life More Photographic? Mapping the Networked Image, Photographies 1 (1) pp.9-28. ISSN 17540763 

I am able to supervise postgraduate projects in art and technology, with specific expertise in new media curating, post-photographic theory and practice, art and machine learning, museums and network culture. Candidates have the opportunity to become part of the community of researchers at the Computational Culture Lab in the School of Art & Design. 

Victoria Ivanova (Collaborative PhD, Partners: Serpentine Galleries & London South Bank University): Developing Infrastructural Praxis for an Evolving Understanding of Art’s Societal Impact

Marian Drew, The Real Unreality of the Photograph (ANU)

Eliane Touma, Warscapes, violent terrains, and troubled atmospheres in the contemporary Arab world (ANU)

Maddie Hepner (2021) The Meme and The Dream: Circulation, Aggregation, Representation (Hons ANU)

Nicolas Malevé (2021) (Collaborative PhD, Partners: The Photographers' Gallery & London South Bank University): Algorithms of Vision, Human and Machine Learning in Computational Visual Culture

Alan Warburton (2018) What type of affordances are manifested in commercial CG software and what kind of critical arts practice might they engender? MA New Media London South Bank University