
Dean of UNSW | Art & Design, Professor Harley is an award-winning artist, writer and educator whose career crosses the bounds of traditional and creative arts research. His video and sound work has been presented at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, New York MoMA, Ars Electronica in Austria, the Biennale of Sydney, and at the Sydney Opera House.
He is a former editor of the journal Art + Text, and has written regular columns on design and popular culture for Rolling Stone and for The Australian national newspaper. He has edited a number of anthologies, including New Media Technologies (1993), Artists in Cyberculture (1993) and Before and After Cinema (1999). Another, entitled Parallel Histories in the Intermedia Age appeared in the Summer of 2000. In 1992 he was the director of the influential International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) and returned as Co-Chair of ISEA 2013.
He is also well-known for directing the audio/vision for the Cardoso Flea Circus videos and live performances with Colombian-born artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso. Collaborative work includes Aviopolis (with Gillian Fuller), a multimedia project and book about airports, Black Dog Publications, London; Busface, a photo-media installation with the Ejecutivo Colectivo exhibited at ArtBasel, Miami; and the DVD installation Cloudscope in collaboration with Durbach | Block architects at Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney; and the Museum of Copulatory Organs with Maria Fernanda Cardoso at the 18th Biennale of Sydney.
Collaborative research projects include the ARC funded "Reconsidering Australian Media Art Histories in an International Context" and “Scanlines: Video Art in Australia Since the 1960s”, an ARC linkage project investigating the history of video art in Sydney partnering with, dLux Media Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; “Airportals”, a multichannel video of personal airflights and itineraries (with Leo Martyn animator); and “Loomorama“, a collaborative installation project with Elvis Richardson based on personal archives of VHS tapes and VJ presentation tools. He is also Lead Chief Investigator on the ARC LIEF project Design and Art of Australia Online together with DAAO Research Director and long-time collaborator Gillian Fuller.
He was Head of School Media Arts UNSW (2009-13), Deputy Director at the National Institute for Experimental Arts [NIEA] and Co-Director of the ICinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research until 2013. A Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales, he was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2008, and became Dean of UNSW ART & Design in 2013. A Director on the Board of NIDA, he is UNSW Chair of Arts & Culture, and Chair of the Sydney Culture Network.
For further information, visit his personal website.
Funded Research Projects