Laura U. Marks is a theorist, critic and curator of independent and experimental media arts. She is the author of The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Duke University Press, 2000) and Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (Minnesota University Press, 2002), as well as dozens of essays. She has curated programs of independent and experimental media for festivals and art spaces worldwide. Her current research includes: formal commonalities and historical connections between Islamic art and contemporary computer art (a book project), contemporary Arab media arts; and audiovisual forms for intellectual work; and non-Western approaches to new media (the topic of a 2006 conference she is organizing in Vancouver). Dr. Marks is the Dena Wosk University Professor of Art and Culture Studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.