Leslie Sharpe works in Digital Media and Installation, with a focus on Mobile and Wireless Technologies. Her recent work employs the genre of ghost narrative in projects using cellphone, PDAs, ipods and/or gps to explore questions about subjectivity, embodiment, wireless histories, social networks and place, and explores alternative forms of distribution such as bluetooth file sharing and podcasting, encouraging audience involvement and further public use of her shared files. Her current Marconi Trilogy is part of a larger project, SGpaths, and she is a contributor to the special issue on Locative Media published by Leonardo Electronic Almanac/MIT Press.
Sharpe is AT&T Fellow, Area Head and Assistant Professor of Digital Art in the Hope School of Fine Arts at Indiana University, Bloomington. She was a Faculty Fellow at University of California, San Diego and previously taught at Pratt Institute in New York and as a Summer Teaching Fellow at UCSD. She received her MFA in Visual Arts/Computing Arts at University of California, San Diego and her BFA in Painting at University of Alberta in Canada.
Sharpe has been an artist in residence at P.S. 1 Museum/Institute for Contemporary Art in New York, The Banff Centre in Canada, and Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. Her work has been exhibited at the Observatori festival, Valencia, Spain, The Center for Art and Visual Culture in Baltimore, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Finland, in New York at P.S. 1 Insitute of Contemporary Art , Exit Art, The New Museum, Artists Space, and Franklin Furnace, as well as other venues in the USA, Canada and Europe. Sharpe was named winner of the Nabi Prize for ResFest Korea and Art Center Nabi's international Wireless Art Competition and is producing a project for Seoul. Her previous installation and web work utlized the genre of the crime narrative and the persona of a private investigator (Crime Stories of LSPI, 1996-2001) as well as several works exploring issues around gender and sexuality in books, installation, and using a tactical media approach (Bra vs Bra, 1989-90).
Sharpe was born and lived in Alberta, Canada prior to living in New York and California. She currently lives and works in Bloomington, Indiana, where she rides two wheels rather than four and longs for powdery snowfalls, large bodies of water and urban cafes.