I started painting in the 70s, with Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Joel Shapiro and Joan Snyder, teachers at Princeton University. In graduate school at Cornell University, I assisted Eleanore Mikus, Arnold Singer and Patrick Webb. Knox Martin was also a mentor. I carry with me indelible influences — Grosz, Tauber-Arp, Marcarelli, Gorky, Michaux, among others — reinforced by my first job in the Modern Paintings Department at Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York.
From the start, in the early 80s, I had access to emerging digital tools. I worked with TIPS at Interactive Picture Systems, NYC (founded by Guy Nouri). I did animations and was a beta-tester at the High Tech LED Sign Company in Florida. When I moved to Paris in 1991, I worked doing illustrations and animations for the architectural firm AEDIFICARE. This led to the Atelier ART3000 (now known as Le CUBE) where I created my first immersive installations.
Poetry and specifically combinatory texts have been essential in helping me forge an identity in an increasingly digitized art world.
I co-authored an interactive version of Raymond Queneau’s “Un Conte A Votre Façon”, later published by Gallimard in Antoine Denize’s “Machines à Ecrire” (1994). Poems by the author Blake Leland have been a constant source of inspiration: Sonnet Sequence, for example, is a combination of a dozen words (how, when, if, then, but, since…everything, nothing, changes, happens) that I’ve illustrated and animated in several different media.
For me, interactive design has always been a natural extension of contemporary art, negotiated between material processes and Fluxus esthetics. I began with Rimac, which snaked through a virtual space punctuated by animated texts and rows of images. With Move Don’t Move, (co-produced in 2005 with Didier Bouchon at the Atelier du CUBE and in 2007 adapted to a mobile phone), I hooked up an animated “painting” to a webcam, exploring the effect of the viewer’s “gaze” on an evolving composition. In 2010, with GOBO, I worked with a “collective gaze” : when a viewer left the installation everything “seen” by that person would float away too.
In parallel, I began working with networked media. In 1999, I was a visiting artist at what is now known as Telecom ParisTech. We teamed up young engineers and continuing education students in graphic design to develop an augmented chat space entitled City Paradigms (shown at ISEA 2000 in Paris and at the MILIA in Cannes). A second prototype, Sandscript, was funded by the Fondation Louis LePrince Ringuet. This experimental work included an art-residency in 2001 at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Troyes. With technology developed by the Timsoft company (thank you Hervé Serres and Antoine Sartoretti!) I designed the web site La Preuve Par Troyes, an augmented conversational and literary space meant to engage citizens in the history of their city.
This was a turning point in my career. I became more politically and socially engaged. In 2002, our citizen’s association, Concert-Urbain, began to test prototypes “in the field”. This in turn led to grant-writing, team building and a (better) understanding of the dynamics of French civil society. We created several on-line collaborative spaces (now out of date): www.tour-a-tour.org (2005), a neighborhood website; www.dring13.org (2007), a mobile phone based site for young adults to discuss discrimination ; a polling platform on the subject of happiness, lebonheurbrutcollectif.org (2013-2017). The accompanying Back Office qualified Concert-Urbain for the finals of France’s “e-democracy trophy” (see www.blog-territorial.com/m/article-56982531.html).
Today, we are working on a “STREET MEDIA TOTEM”, a travelling media platform that records, stores and analyzes media collected in Paris’ low income neighborhoods. The STREET MEDIA TOTEM is now associated with a larger citizen’s initiative called “La Station C”. See : lastationc.org.
M.A. / DEA, Institut d’Etudes Théâtrales, Paris III, Paris, France (2003). High Honors.
M.F.A. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA (1982). John Hartell Prize, CCPA Grant with Blake Leland and David Bett.
B.A. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA (1976). Art History, Visual Arts Program.
A.A. Bennett College, Millbrook, NY, USA (1973). Liberal Studies. Valedictorian.
O’KIFF (2024), a tripartite generative animation, co-authored with Alain Longuet.
The MICKENS SERIES (2020-2024), digitally produced and repainted large scale collages inspired by generative work.
RAUS, 2023, generative work with programming by Alain Longuet. Prix de lacritique.org at the October 2023 Salon Realites Nouvelles, Paris.