FDL - Key Persons
Adam Zaretsky is an artist, or "bioartist," working as a research affiliate in Arnold Demain's Laboratory for Industrial Microbiology and Fermentation.
Job Titles:
- Artist, Editor and Critic
Alain-Martin Richard is a performer, artist, editor and critic who has been working in theatre, literature and performance since the late seventies.
Alan Dunning lives in Calgary (Alberta, Canada) where he heads up the department of media arts and digital technologies at the Alberta College of Art.
Alberto Villalpando is considered one of the main driving forces of contemporary music in his country, Bolivia.
Alejandro José has been crossing the sea, living alternatively between his homeland and Puerto Rico most of his life.
In his 1960's paintings and sculptures, Alex Hay depicted the formal properties of everyday objects.
Alfons Schilling was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1934. From 1956 to 1959, he studied at the Akademie für angewandte Kunst.
Andrew Schloss, a pioneering artist in new and electronic music, is developing and expanding the Radio Drum, an instrument with which he first experimented at IRCAM in the late 1980s.
Andrés Posada, a prolific composer of instrumental music, has also composed using electroacoustic media.
Ariel Martinez, a composer, bandoneón player and educator, moved from his homeland to Argentina many years ago.
Arturo Gervasoni, composer, guitar performer and educator, graduated in Musical Composition at the National University of Córdoba.
Atau Tanaka, a composer and performer in the field of technology and music, was born in Tokyo, Japan, and raised in New England in the United States.
Awa Meité is a filmmaker, painter, jeweller, stylist and designer working both in Bamako (Mali) and France.
Beatrice Gibson is an artist based in London. Born in 1978 she received a degree in philosophy from Manchester university. From 1999-2003 she lived in Bombay, India.
Through his various works, Bill Seaman has developed a cinematic language with the help of new technologies.
Born in 1959, Bill Vorn is a media artist who has been working since 1992 in robotic art.
Billy Klüver was born in 1927 to Swedish and Norwegian parents. In 1951, he earned an electrical engineering degree from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Blas Emilio Atehortúa (born in Santa Elena, 1933) is a prolific composer with and extensive catalog of instrumental and vocal music. He was, as many of the relevant Latin American composers of the last decades, granted with scholarships to study at CLAEM-Instituto Di Tella in Argentina. That happened during 1963-1964 and again during 1966-1967. It was during his stay in Buenos Aires in 1966 that Atehortúa composed "Syrigma I", his first electroacoustic piece for tape. Other works by Atehortúa are: "Sonocromías" for tape, also from 1966; "Himnos de Amor y Vida" for soprano, 2 pianos, 2 percussionists and tape, from 1967; "Cuatro danzas para una leyenda guajira" for tape, from 1970; "Elegía No. 2, a un hombre de paz" for baritone, bass, 2 choruses, winds, percussions and tape, and "Psico-cosmos" for orchestra, percussions and tape, both from 1972.
Carlos Vázquez is a very active and prolific composer who has taught and worked extensively with electroacoustic media in his music.
Catherine Richards lives and works in Ottawa, Canada, where she is an assistant professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa.
Celso Aguiar was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1957 and grew up in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. He began his musical studies with Swiss-Brazilian composer Ernst Widmer at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). Since then he became particularly interested in electroacoustic music and in consequence developed a project at UFBA to construct his own computer-controlled digital synthesiser. He has written music for traditional instruments as well as electroacustic means and his main approach in this area has been the application of new digital signal processing techniques to composition. With these objectives in mind he is currently studying for a Doctorate in Composition at Stanford University.
Among other works he composed "Piece of Mind" for stereo tape in 1995; "Ayahuasca" for stereo tape in 1994; and "Todo Azul, Escrevo com Lápis Azul, Num Céu Azul" for tape in 1996.
Char Davies was born in 1954 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was educated at Bennington College (Vermont, U.S.) from 1973 to 1975 and received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Victoria (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada) in 1978. Davies is now a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy of media arts at the University of Wales College (Newport, Wales, UK).
Originally a painter, Davies became interested in the possibilities of computer graphics and animation and in 1985 joined Softimage, shortly after its founding. She played many roles within the company, sitting on the board of directors (1988-1994) and serving as vice-president of visual research (1988-1994) and director of visual research (1994-1997). Since leaving Softimage in the late nineties, Davies has pursued an active independent artistic career using the technologies she helped develop at Softimage. In 1998, she founded Immersence Inc. "for the purpose of pursuing artistic research in immersive virtual space." (1)
For her work in computer graphics, Davies received the Prix Distinction in Computer Graphics at the Prix Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria) in 1993, the Prix Pixel Image at Imagina (Monte Carlo, Monaco) in 1991, and an honorary mention at the Prix Ars Electronica in 1990.
Both of Davies' successful interactive virtual reality installations, Osmose (1994-1996) and Éphémère (1996-1998), have been exhibited all over the world, garnering much recognition and critical acclaim. The two works have also been shown in many different contexts, both artistic and scientific. For example, both spent an extended period installed at a dream and nightmare research laboratory in a hospital in Montreal. Osmose and Éphémère have been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from March to June 2001 and at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), in Melbourne, Australia, from Decembec 2003 to February 2004.
Davies' first series of computer works is titled Interior Body Series (1990-1993). This series of digital 3-D stills is composed of seven Duratran colour transparencies in large light boxes - Blooming (1990), Leaf (1990), Stream (1991), Root (1991), Seed (1991), Yearning (1993), Drowning (Rapture) (1993). These nature-based precursors to the imagery found in her subsequent virtual reality installations, explore the symbolic possibilities of a natural world made technologically vibrant. These experiments in 3-D representation echo certain longings Davies had in her painted works.
Conrado Silva, composer and educator, became interested in new music during the 1950s.
Constance DeJong has cultivated a career as a writer and a performance, video, and new media artist since the late seventies.
César Bolaños studied music in Lima at the National Conservatory of Music before travelling to the United States.
Job Titles:
- Founder of SOFTIMAGE, the Daniel Langlois Foundation
Dante Grela composed his early concrète pieces on tape during the '60s working at his private studio in Rosario.
Renowned composer, theorist, sound engineer, professor, speaker, researcher and current director of the Art and Science Laboratory, David Dunn is also the recipient of several awards.
David Larcher has focused on radically deconstructing image information into an ‘emptied image' that is ‘video void'.
David Rokeby is an interactive sound and video installation artist based in Toronto, Canada.
David Stout, who studied with Ed Emshwiller, works with interactive media forms.
As a child, Tudor studied the piano, and in 1942, he passed the exam to become a member of the American Guild of Organists.
At Bell Labs, Dick Wolff focused mainly on research into superconductors.
Avoiding the trap of the didacticism often linked with political art, Blain explores themes of war, racism, slavery, mass indoctrination of children and adults, and other relationships of domination.
Job Titles:
- Founder - Editor of Leonardo
The Editors of Leonardo are deeply grieved to announce that Dr. Frank J. Malina, the Founder-Editor of Leonardo died of a heart attack on 9 November 1981.
With Sunstone, Ed Emshwiller developed one of the earliest computer animation works in the Computer Graphics Lab.
Edson Zampronha works with contemporary music, musical semiotics and musical technology.
Kac began his artistic career as a traditional performance artist but eventually moved on to investigate technology artistically through an exploration of poetry.
Born in 1952, artist Elizabeth Vander Zaag has been working in video and computer arts since the 1970s.
Enrique Belloc (born in Buenos Aires,1936) studied with Pierre Scheffer at GRM in Paris during the 60s. Among other works he composed: "Faber Farven" for tape in 1985; "Homenaje a Pierre Schaeffer" for live samplers and synthesizers in 1989; "Para Bla, un saludo a Barbara Belloc" in 1993, "poPierre" in 1994, "Rugosidades del inconsciente colectivo" and "Suite Acusmatica" in 1995, "Objetos Reencontrados" in 1997, all of them tape works; "Espacios Acusmáticos" for 8 channels tape in 1998; "Canto Ancestral: Onoma, Poieo, Tibet, Sueños" in 1999, and "Tríptico de Bahía Blanca" in 2000, both works for tape too; and "Remix Portraits" in 2002.
Fred Waldhauer earned an engineering degree from Cornell University (N.Y.) and a master's degree from Columbia (N.Y.
Gary Hill believes it fundamental to deconstruct video on all possible levels in order to articulate an electronic language.
Born in London, England, Canadian sculptor Geoffrey Smedley studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College in London and served in the army from 1945-48 with the Royal Engineers.
George Legrady was born in 1950 in Budapest, Hungary. In 1956, after the Soviet invasion of his country, his family immigrated to Canada where they settled in Montreal.
Born in 1952 in the Magdeburg region in Germany, Gerhard Haupt lives and works in Berlin.
Golan Levin is an artist, composer and designer whose work focuses on new modes of interactive audiovisual expression.
Harold Hodges began his career as a clockmaker. At Bell Labs, he focused mainly on laser research.
Herb Schneider studied in Bebek, Turkey, and in the U.S. He joined Bell Labs while still a university student.
He is co-founder and co-president with Ginette Major, of La Cité des arts et des nouvelles technologies de Montréal.
Horacio Vaggione is an internationally recognized composer with an impressive catalog of electroacoustic music works.
Héctor Quintanar created several pieces using electroacoustic media during the '60s and '70s.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Music Technology at the Schulich School of Music
In 1994, Isabelle Choinière founded Le Corps Indice, a dance company dedicated to explorations in performance and new technologies. She has been an artist in residence at many institutions including the Fondation Danaé (Pouilly, France) and the Centre International de Création Vidéo (CICV) (Hérimoncourt, France). Her performances have been presented around the world at events such as the International Symposium of Electronic Art (1995), Synthèse 97 (Bourges, France) et le International Dance and Technology Conference (Dallas, Texas).
Under the aegis of Le Corps Indice, Choinière has produced three major performances on which she has worked as artistic director. These corporeal investigations into virtual sensuality deal with what Choinière terms "érotisme électronique" (1). A performance choreographed with technology in mind, Le Partage des peaux I (1994) uses motion and body rhythm capture to retrieve the body's data and transform it into video images and sound.
A collaboration between Choinière, composer Thierry Fournier and François Roupinian, La Mue de l'Ange delves deeply into the relationship between software and choreography.
In 1994, Choinière founded Le Corps Indice, a dance company dedicated to explorations in performance and new technologies.
In the late 1970s, James Crutchfield was part of a group of rebels at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which played a major role in the development of chaos theory.
Javier Alvarez has been using extensively electroacoustic media in his musical compositions.
After studying new media at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) in Toronto, Canada, Jessica Field pursued her interests in electronic arts and in micro-controller programming.
Originally a filmmaker, Campbell turned to science after having worked for several years on a personally difficult film on mental illness.
Video used in Joan Jonas's work is integrated into a broader concept of performance.
Joaquín Orellana Mejía studied violin and composition at the National Conservatory of Music in Guatemala between 1949 and 1959.
Every Icon by John Simon Jr. presents the matrix of every image in endless variability.
Geoffrey Smedley
Born in London, England, Canadian sculptor Geoffrey Smedley studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College in London and served in the army from 1945-48 with the Royal Engineers.
After working for major computer firms like Microsoft, Klima decided to devote his time to creating complex interactive environments using the knowledge he'd acquired on the job.
Jorge Antunes composed his first electroacoustic piece in his home studio in 1961 and since then has been very active working with these media.
Juan Amenábar Ruiz, engineer and composer, began experimenting with electroacoustic music techniques in 1953.
Juan Blanco has been the driving force in the development of electroacoustic music in Cuba.
Though Juan Geuer was born in 1917 in the Dutch city of Soest, he has adopted several countries as his home and they have all marked his art, science and sensibilities toward human perceptions of space and time.
Juan Reyes obtained degrees in Mathematics and Music Composition from the University of Tampa, Florida, United States.
Job Titles:
- Barry 's Education Includes Training in Architecture, Art, Literature, Film Theory and Computer Graphics.
Barry's education includes training in architecture, art, literature, film theory and computer graphics.
Juliana Rosales is a video, net art, noise and installation artist, architect, photographer and curator working in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Kurnal Rawat specializes in computer animation and multimedia design as well as in illustration and calligraphy.
Lizzie Muller is a curator and writer specialising in interaction, audience experience and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Luc Courchesne was born in 1952 in Saint-Léonard d'Aston, Québec, Canada.
Lynn Hershman Leeson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, where her father had immigrated from Montreal.
Manuel Enriquez, composer, conductor and performer, was one of the biggest names in new Mexican music during the late 20th century.
Marc Fournel has been working in media arts since 1995.
Marie Chouinard is a choreographer, dancer, performer, and occasional set, costume, sound and light designer.
Born in Quebec in 1967, Marie-Claude Poulin entered the Université du Québec à Montréal in 1991 to study dance performance and choreography.
Born in Austria in 1964, Martin Kusch became involved in the media arts after studying art history, philosophy and painting at the Technical University and Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin (1982-1989).
Michael Snow was born in Toronto not so long ago, and lives there now - but has also lived in Montreal, Chicoutimi and New York
Stealth Group
The Stealth Group is a collective of architects (Ana Dzokic, Ivan Kucina, Milica Topalovic and Marc Neelen) from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Born in 1941 in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Mike MacDonald is of Mi'kmaq ancestry.
Milton Estévez majored in classical guitar and music theory at the National Conservatory of Music in Quito, Ecuador.
Korean musician and composer Nam June Paik made his mark as the most prominent video pioneer.
Nan Hoover, initially trained in fine arts, has worked in video since the early 1970s.
Natalie Bookchin received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the State University of New York in 1984 and a master of fine arts degree in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990.
Job Titles:
- an Independent Media Artist, Curator and Writer, Nina Czegledy Divides Her Time Between Canada and Europe.
An independent media artist, curator and writer, Nina Czegledy divides her time between Canada and Europe.
Oscar Bazán, composer and educator, was among the small group of composers who created the Experimental Music Center of Córdoba.
Otto Castro is an active composer working with electronic and concrète music in Costa Rica.
Pat Binder is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in 1960 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and now lives in Berlin, Germany.
Pedro Caryevschi was among the group of composers who received scholarships during the 1969-1970 biennial to study at the CLAEM.
After completing his military service in Denmark, Per Biorn studied electrical engineering, then emigrated to the United States in 1962.
Peter Blasser has definitly followed a very singular path: a degree in Electronic Music and Chinese, with minors in Computer Science and Ancient Greek.
At Bell Labs, Peter Hirsch focused primarily on researching underwater sound output and radar technologies.
After studying fine art at Queen's University (Kingston, Canada), Philip Beesley completed a degree in architecture at the University of Toronto (Canada).
Well known for his large-scale, interactive installations in public spaces, he has participated in many important events since 1990.
At Bell Labs, Ralph Flynn focused primarily on researching the amplification of electrical signals.
Ricardo Dal Farra has been conducting activities in the merging fields of the arts, sciences and new technologies for more than 25 years.
Ricardo Teruel began teaching electronic music at the Instituto de Fonología of Centro Simón Bolívar in Caracas in 1983.
Virgilio Tosco
Virgilio F. H. Tosco was a professor of Composition, Harmony, Fugue and Musical Forms at the National University of Córdoba.
Robert Cahen's work with video first developed as the result of his studies of electroacoustic composition.
At Bell Labs, Robert Kieronski focused primarily on digital information processing systems.
Between 1953 and 1957, Robert Whitman completed a degree in English literature at Rutgers (N.J.), and studied art history at Columbia (N.Y.
Rodolfo Caesar (born in Rio de Janeiro, 1950) is Lecturer at the School of Music in UFRJ, Brazil, where he coordinates LaMuT - Music and Technology Lab (Laboratório de Música e Tecnologia). Caesar works also as researcher at the National Council of Research (Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa).
He has an extensive catalog of electroacoustic music. Among other pieces Caesar composed: "Curare" in 1975; "Les deux saisons" and "Tutti Frutti" in 1976, both acousmatic works on tape realized at Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, France; "Curare II" in 1978, also an acousmatic work on tape realized at the Sistema Globo de Rádio, in Rio de Janeiro; "Fragmentos Do Paraíso" for two magnetic tapes and slides in 1980; "Candomblet", a multimedia piece for tape and dancer, and "Tremola Impressão", acousmatic work on tape realized at Estúdio da Glória in Brazil, both in 1981; "Vibrata" for tape and 1 percussionist, and "Espiral" for two synthesizers and tape, with V nia Dantas Leite, both in 1982 and realized at Estúdio da Glória; "Mosaic Blues", computer music for tape, commissioned by the GRM, and realized at it's Studio Numerique 123 in 1983; "Ricercare - Fuga" for dancers and tape, and "Divertimento" for DX7 synthesizer, both in 1985; "Presença" for cello and tape in 1988; "A carne da pedra" for DAT, and "Arcos I" for cello and tape, both realized at the University of East Anglia - Norwich in 1989; "Neolitica" and "Canto", both acousmatic pieces on CD, also realized at the University of East Anglia - Norwich, in 1990; "Canons/Chaos" for CD, and "Canibali" for three precussionists, produced interpolating MIDI files of Balinese music using Max software, both in 1991; "Volta Redonda" for CD, between 1992 and 1993; "A noite em concha" for CD, commissioned by the Arts Council of Great Britain, and "Industrial Revolutions" for Kurzweil K2000 only or CD, commissioned by the GRM, both in 1993; "Nemietoia" for CD in 1994, commissioned by the Arts Council of England/Sonic Arts Union; "Círculos Ceifados" for CD in 1997, commissioned by Fundação Vitae; "Divertimento IV" for live electronics in 1999; "Ranap-Gaô" for CD in 2000, commissioned by the Bolsa RioArte; "Liçoes Americanas: Ho Ho Ho" for CD and video, with Simone Michelin, "Dueto 1+I" for piano, CD and video, with V nia Dantas Leite, and "Clips" for CD and video, all three pieces in 2002, and realized at personal studio.
Some of his research papers published are: "A eletrônica de uma poética em Ranap-Gaô" published in the proceedings of V Forum de Linguagens Musicais, 2002, São Paulo; "Novas tecnologia e outra escuta: para escutar a música feita com tecnologia recente" published in the proceedings of I Colóquio de Pesquisa e Pós-graduação da Escola de Música/UFRJ, 1999, Rio de Janeiro; "Composição, pesquisa e a internet" published in the proceedings of XI Encontro Anual da ANPPOM, 1998, Campinas - SP; "Novas interfaces e a produção eletroacústica" published in the proceedings of IV Simposio Brasileiro de Computaçao e Musica, 1997, Brasília; "Um encontro da composição com a bio-acústica via FM" published in the proceedings of X Encontro Anual da ANPPOM, 1997, Goi nia - GO; "Artefatos Fm Para A Producao de Ritmos Pseudo-Naturais" published in the proceedings of III Simposio Brasileiro de Computaçao e Musica, 1996, Recife; "O zig-zag conceitual no estúdio de composição" published in the proceedings of II Simpósio Brasileiro de Computação e Música, 1995, Canela - RS; "Perfil e Copacabana: dois aplicativos para a composição eletroacústica com o protocolo MIDI" published in the proceedings of VIII Encontro da ANPPOM, 1995, João Pessoa - PB. He also wrote "Composição e natureza", published in the book "A doutrina dos sons de Goethe a caminho da música nova de Webern", seleção, tradução e comentários de Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Editora UFRJ, 1999, Rio de Janeiro.
Rodolfo Caesar also developed "Copacabana" and "Perfil", software applications for electroacoustic music composition based on MIDI.
Sara Diamond was born in 1954 in New York City and later moved to Canada with her family.
After studying mathematics at Harvard and Stanford universities, Sha Xin Wei completed an interdisciplinary doctorate in mathematics, computer science, and the history and philosophy of science.
Job Titles:
- Video and New Media Artist
Sharon Daniel is a video and new media artist working in database aesthetics and interface design.
Born in 1955, Simon Penny is an Australian artist, theorist and professor in the field of robotic and interactive art.
Sonia Landy Sheridan was born in Newark (OH) on April 10, 1925. From 1929 to 1947, she lived in New York City and in Cleveland (OH).
Beginning in the 1960s, Stan VanDerBeek worked with multiple projections on movable screens.
Surajit Sarkar is a filmmaker working in Delhi, India. He has held a myriad of positions as varied as photocopier salesman, bank officer...
Through her work, Susan Kozel researches the physical and philosophical vocabularies emerging from the convergence of dance and media technologies.
Thecla Schiphorst lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She is a computer media artist, computer systems designer, choreographer, and dancer.
Since the early 1990s, she has produced works that redefine the form of the traditional narrative through the use of interactive components.
The London-based architect and artist Usman Haque designs interactive architectural systems and is interested in the ways that people relate to each other and to their surrounding space.
Virgilio F. H. Tosco was a professor of Composition, Harmony, Fugue and Musical Forms at the National University of Córdoba.
In 1995, Vishal Rawlley earned a diploma in film and video production from Xavier's Institute of Communication in Bombay.
At Bell Labs, Bill Kaminski focused mainly on research into wireless radio transmission.
Wilson Sukorski describes himself as a "composer, musician, performer, producer, designer, builder and researcher."
After spending her childhood and adolescence in San Francisco, Yvonne Rainer moved to New York in 1956.