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Holly Willis
Associate Director
Institute for Multimedia Literacy
University of Southern California

746 West Adams Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90089
213-743-2937

Holly Willis is an Associate Director at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy, where she teaches, organizes workshops and oversees academic programs designed to introduce new media literacy skills across USC’s campus and curriculum. She is also the editor of The New Ecology of Things (Art Center College of Design, 2007), a collection of essays, words, images and fiction that grapples with the potential and design challenges of pervasive computing, and she is the author of New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image (Wallflower Press, 2005), which chronicles the advent of digital filmmaking tools and their impact on contemporary media practices. The former editor of RES Magazine, Ms. Willis has written extensively on experimental media practices for a variety of publications. She holds a Ph.D. in Critical Studies in Cinema-Television from the University of Southern California.

Long bio:

Holly Willis is an Associate Director at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy, where she teaches, organizes workshops and oversees academic programs designed to introduce new media literacy skills across USC’s campus and curriculum. In particular, she oversees the Multimedia in the Core program, a collaborative effort uniting the School of Cinematic Arts and USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and designed to offer lab-based multimedia instruction as part of the General Education curriculum.

Ms. Willis is also the editor of The New Ecology of Things (Art Center College of Design, 2007), a collection of essays, words, images and fiction that grapples with the potential and design challenges of pervasive computing. The book is one component within a transmedia publication that brings together cell phone videos, a Web site, and other media elements to embrace new forms of reading, writing and design.

In 2005, Ms. Willis published New Digital Cinema: Reinventing the Moving Image (Wallflower Press), which chronicles the advent of digital filmmaking tools and their impact on contemporary media practices. The book grew out of her experience as editor of RES Magazine, a bimonthly publication devoted to experiments in film, video and new media. During her five-year tenure at RES, Ms. Willis helped redirect and redesign the publication and oversaw the addition of a curated, full-length DVD with each issue. As the co-curator of RESFEST, the company’s acclaimed traveling festival of digital media, Ms. Willis helped program dozens of screenings of music videos and design shorts for an international audience, and was invited to speak about this work at festivals and museums worldwide.

Ms. Willis’ other endeavors include co-founding Filmmaker: The Magazine of Independent Film in 1992, a publication for which she served as West Coast Editor until 1999, when she joined the editorial staff at iFilm. She has also served as an editor and acquisitions team member at Voyager (home of the Criterion Collection); editor for the Web site Really Good Films; and catalog editor for numerous festivals. Her other curatorial endeavors include “New Cities/New Media,” a five-part screening series of videos grappling with urban space; “Race in Digital Space Digital Salon” (co-curated with Steve Anderson), two programs of digital media and live music events exploring issues of race; and “Interactive Frictions” (co-curated with Marsha Kinder), a show of interactive media installations at USC’s Fisher Gallery. She currently co-curates USC’s ongoing “Blur and Sharpen” screening series, held in conjunction with the Institute for Multimedia Literacy.

Over the last decade, Ms. Willis has also been an active instructor throughout Los Angeles, teaching classes on film, video and new media at the University of Southern California, California Institute of the Arts and Art Center College of Design, among other schools.

In addition to editing, teaching and curating, Ms. Willis has been a prolific journalist, focusing on experimental media art. She has interviewed more than 300 film and video artists and chronicled developments in digital media over the last decade, contributing to a wide range of publications, including artist’s catalogs, Web sites, essay collections and magazines.

Ms. Willis holds a Ph.D. in Critical Studies in Cinema-Television from the University of Southern California; her dissertation was on experimental media practices by women. She is currently working on a second Ph.D. dissertation at the European Graduate School; her topic is reconceptualizations of space, time and the body in contemporary media, and will be complete in the fall of 2007, after which it will be published as a book.