Michael Naimark Presentation
Pioneering media artist and researcher Michael Naimark will speak Thursday, Oct. 9 from 1:30 to 3 pm at the A&A Auditorium.
Michael Naimark: “Art and Invention”
Thursday October 9th, 1:30 to 3 pm
A&A Auditorium
Artists and designers sometimes invent — new processes, media, or technologies — in the name of realizing their work. Invention isn’t the primary motivation, and the works are often clunky, frugal, and just barely working (but working!). Broader, practical, or commercial applications are usually far from the artist’s mind. Meanwhile, and perhaps ironically, large research and commercial institutions spend billions of dollars per year on invention, often in the same arenas. So the critical question is: how do artists fit in? We will explore this question — and such issues as control and compromise; ownership and intellectual property; time horizon and profitability; and cultural consequence and hegemony — mining my art projects and experiences for lessons learned.
Michael Naimark is a pioneer media artist and leading researcher who’s been blessed (and sometimes cursed) with an uncanny track record of art projects presaging widespread adoption, often by decades. He is noted in the histories of Google Street View, Projection Mapping, and Virtual Reality (and, some claim, the Facebook Like Button); and in ongoing work with cinematic crowdsourcing, live global video, and cultural heritage. Michael’s immersive and interactive art installations have exhibited internationally and are in the permanent collections of American Museum of the Moving Image, the Exploratorium, and the ZKM Center for Arts and Media. He was the recipient of the World Technology Award for the Arts in 2002 and was guest curator at Ars Electronica in 2004 and 2009. In recent years he’s served as faculty at USC Cinema, NYU Art, and the MIT Media Lab.