Synne Tollerud Bull
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- Pro-Dean
- Westerdals Department of Film and Media
- School of Arts, Design and Media
Background
Synne Tollerud Bull is an artist, researcher, and academic leader working at the intersection of film, art, and emerging media technologies. She is a Professor and currently Vice Dean of Research at the School of Arts, Design, and Media at Kristiania University of Applied Sciences. Her research focuses on how new imaging technologies—such as drone vision, satellite mapping, machine vision, and artificial intelligence—affect societal structures and power relations, as these are reflected, negotiated, and processed through art and visual culture.
She has developed the concept of proxistant vision to describe image forms that combine proximity and distance within the same visual frame, exploring how such dynamics shape contemporary visual infrastructures. Her work is situated at the intersection of media theory, contemporary art, and the creative industries, with relevance to visual communication, environmental humanities, and digital culture.
Bull is part of the artist duo Bull.Miletic, whose moving image installations have been exhibited internationally at venues including the Venice Biennale, WRO Media Art Biennale, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Henie Onstad Art Center. Their work is held in the National Museum of Norway and other international collections, and has received several awards, including the Excellence Award at the Japan Media Arts Festival (2020).
She has initiated and led international research projects such as Urban Ecologies (2020–2025), Media Seas of the High North Atlantic (2021–2025), Re:place (2012–2013), and Cities Re:imagined (2011–2012). Her publications include Urban Images: Unruly Desires in Film and Architecture (Sternberg Press, 2011), Screen Space Reconfigured (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), Proxistant Vision (MIT Press, 2025), and Media Seas and the Blue Humanities (Routledge, forthcoming).
Bull holds a PhD in Media Studies and a Master's degree in Art History from the University of Oslo, as well as an MFA and BFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has been a Visiting Researcher at the University of Chicago and UC Berkeley, and has previously served as Head of the Westerdals Department of Film and Media at Kristiania, as well as Professor at the Oslo National Academy of the Artsand the Nordland School of Arts and Film, UiT.
Research Groups
AI Ecologies
Coma
Prisma
Center for Arts Management and Leadership Research