New York, New York
Born 1956, Munich, Germany
Digital Artist, Writer
My work arises from the years I spent teaching students with severe learning disabilities in the 1980s, with whom I made multimedia depictions of their own minds. It was from working with these students that I derived two key ideas—mental space and drawing as performance—which became the points of departure for much of the work I have pursued since then. What fascinates me above all is the awareness of consciousness: my own and that of others.
It was from these students that I also earned the value of collaboration, a practice central to my work ever since. Much of my work would be inconceivable without my two partners at The OpenEnded Group, Marc Downie and Shelley Eshkar, not to mention our extraordinary collaborators on various dance works (Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones and Trisha Brown).
Lately I have been thinking hard about the relation between word and image. The current work-in-progress that means most to me is entitled Other Bodies, a series of 100 texts that has the reader imagining him or herself inhabiting a series of other bodies (animal and human). What is it like not only to peer out through other eyes, but to move with other limbs and breathe with other lungs? 1984 M.Ed., Special Education: Learning Disabilities, American University
1978 B.A., Film and Art History, Wesleyan University
2007-2008 Artist-in-Residence, Le Fresnoy: Studio National, France
2007-2008 Moves, exhibition with Marc Downie and Shelley Eshkar, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, Scotland
2007 Breath, public art installation with Marc Downie, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, NY
2007 Recovered Light, public art installation with Marc Downie and Shelley Eshkar, York Minster, York, England
2006 Enlightenment, public art installation with Marc Downie, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, NY
2005 how long does the subject linger on the edge of the volume..., interactive projections for dance by the Trisha Brown Dance Company, created with Marc Downie and Shelley Eshkar, commissioned by Arizona State University, premiered at Lincoln Center Rose Theater; also performed at the Monaco Dance Forum, Monaco, France
2002 Pedestrian public art installation with Shelley Eshkar. premiered at four locations in New York City, with extensive tour afterwards (Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, Korea, and Spain)
2001 Trace, solo art installation, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY
1999 BIPED, visual projections for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, created with Shelley Eshkar, premiered at CalPerformances, Berkeley, CA; also performed at State Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, NY
2002 Rouse Visiting Artist, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
1999 Lucent/BAM Arts in Multimedia Award
1998 Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 1998 Grant Recipient
1996 Guggenheim Fellowship for work in digital art
1992 ComputerWorld/Smithsonian Award for multimedia collaborations with learning disabled children
