Golan Levin
Encyclopedia
Golan Levin is an American new media artist
, composer
, performer and engineer
interested in developing artifacts and events which explore supple new modes of reactive expression.
in 1994, and a Master's degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab
in 2000, as a student in John Maeda's Aesthetics and Computation Group (ACG). Between degrees, Levin worked as an interface designer at Paul Allen's Interval Research Corporation
, where he was introduced to the field of interactive new media art by Michael Naimark
, Brenda Laurel
, and Scott Snibbe
, among others.
After his graduate work at MIT, Levin taught computational design in various schools in New York City, including Columbia University
, Cooper Union
, and Parsons School of Design before accepting a position at Carnegie Mellon University
(CMU) in 2004. Levin is currently Associate Professor of Electronic Time Based Art in the CMU School of Art, with courtesy appointments in the School of Computer Science and the School of Design. He is also Director of the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, an interdisciplinary research unit dedicated to supporting projects at the intersection of arts and technology.
have collaborated on a variety of projects together, using the name Tmema to represent their collective work.
Levin has exhibited, performed, and lectured widely in Europe, America and Asia. His work has been shown at the New Museum of Contemporary Art
, The Kitchen
, the Neuberger Museum, and The Whitney Biennial
, all in New York
; Ars Electronica
in Linz, Austria; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan; The NTT InterCommunication Center
in Tokyo, Japan; the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany; and MoMA
, among other venues. His funding credits include grants from Creative Capital, The New York State Council on the Arts
, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, The Greenwall Foundation, the Langlois Foundation
, and the Arts Council England
. His work is represented by Bitforms Gallery
in New York City.
Levin's most recent work centers around interactive robotics
, machine vision
, and the theme of gaze
as a primary new mode for human-machine communication.
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, performer and engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
interested in developing artifacts and events which explore supple new modes of reactive expression.
Biography
Levin received a self-designed Bachelor's degree in Art and Design at the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMassachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
in 1994, and a Master's degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
in 2000, as a student in John Maeda's Aesthetics and Computation Group (ACG). Between degrees, Levin worked as an interface designer at Paul Allen's Interval Research Corporation
Interval Research Corporation
- External links :* Wired Magazine, December 1999...
, where he was introduced to the field of interactive new media art by Michael Naimark
Michael Naimark
Michael Naimark is a media artist and researcher who often explores “place representation.”- Biography :Naimark helped found a number of prominent research labs including the MIT Media Laboratory , the Atari Research Lab , the Apple Multimedia Lab , Lucasfilm Interactive , and Interval Research...
, Brenda Laurel
Brenda Laurel
Brenda Laurel is a pioneering writer, researcher, designer and entrepreneur in the fields of human-computer interaction, interactive narrative and cultural aspects of technology ....
, and Scott Snibbe
Scott Snibbe
Scott Snibbe is an interactive media artist, researcher, and entrepreneur. He is one of the first artists to work with projector-based interactivity, where a computer-controlled projection onto a wall or floor changes in response to people moving across its surface, with his well-known full-body...
, among others.
After his graduate work at MIT, Levin taught computational design in various schools in New York City, including Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, Cooper Union
Cooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
, and Parsons School of Design before accepting a position at Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
(CMU) in 2004. Levin is currently Associate Professor of Electronic Time Based Art in the CMU School of Art, with courtesy appointments in the School of Computer Science and the School of Design. He is also Director of the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, an interdisciplinary research unit dedicated to supporting projects at the intersection of arts and technology.
Work
Golan Levin's artwork focuses on the design of systems for the creation, manipulation and performance of simultaneous image and sound, as part of a more general inquiry into formal languages of interactivity and of nonverbal communication in cybernetic systems. Through performances, digital artifacts, and virtual environments, often created with a variety of collaborators, Levin applies creative twists to digital technologies that highlight our relationship with machines, make visible our ways of interacting with each other, and explore the intersection of abstract communication and interactivity. Since 2002, Levin and Zachary LiebermanZachary Lieberman
Zachary Lieberman is an American artist and computer programmer. His art work focuses around computer graphics, human-computer interaction, and computer vision....
have collaborated on a variety of projects together, using the name Tmema to represent their collective work.
Levin has exhibited, performed, and lectured widely in Europe, America and Asia. His work has been shown at the New Museum of Contemporary Art
New Museum of Contemporary Art
The New Museum, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to presenting contemporary art from around the world...
, The Kitchen
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
, the Neuberger Museum, and The Whitney Biennial
Whitney Biennial
The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...
, all in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
; Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica
Ars Electronica is an organization based in Linz, Austria, founded in 1979 around a festival for art, technology and society that was part of the International Bruckner Festival. Herbert W. Franke is one of its founders. It became its own festival and a yearly event in 1986. Its director until 1995...
in Linz, Austria; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, Taiwan; The NTT InterCommunication Center
NTT InterCommunication Center
NTT InterCommunication Center is a media art gallery in Tokyo Opera City Tower in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. It was established by NTT to commemorate the 100th anniversary of telephone service in Japan and opened in 1997...
in Tokyo, Japan; the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe, Germany; and MoMA
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
, among other venues. His funding credits include grants from Creative Capital, The New York State Council on the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell , with backing from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and began its work in 1961...
, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is an agency serving the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.Established in 1966, its mission is "to foster the excellence, diversity and vitality of the arts in Pennsylvania and to broaden the availability and appreciation of those arts throughout the state." Each year...
, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, The Greenwall Foundation, the Langlois Foundation
Daniel Langlois Foundation
The Daniel Langlois Foundation is a non-profit, philanthropic organization endowed by Daniel Langlois and chartered in 1997 with the mission to support artistic and scientific projects and research dedicated to further general human awareness as well as the understanding of human relation with its...
, and the Arts Council England
Arts Council England
Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...
. His work is represented by Bitforms Gallery
Bitforms gallery
bitforms gallery is a gallery in New York City, New York, United States of America devoted to new media art practices. Breaking new ground in 2001, bitforms gallery has become a destination for artists, curators, and collectors exploring new art forms that lie at the intersection of software and...
in New York City.
Projects
Levin's work combines equal measures of the whimsical, the provocative, and the sublime in a wide variety of online, installation and performance media.- Audiovisual Environment Suite (2000), a set of five interactive systems which allow people to create and perform abstract animation and synthetic sound in real time. It was granted an Award of Distinction in the Prix Ars ElectronicaPrix Ars ElectronicaThe Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...
(Interactive Art category). - Scribble (2000), features tightly-coupled sounds and dynamic visuals which are at times carefully scored, and at other times loosely improvised. Scribble has been presented in duo and trio formats at global festivals and venues. It is the Audiovisual Environment Suite's accompanying audiovisual performance.
- The Secret Lives of Numbers (2002), an interactive information visualization about the "popularity" of numbers on the World Wide Web, granted an Award of Distinction in the Prix Ars ElectronicaPrix Ars ElectronicaThe Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music...
(Net Art category). - Dialtones: A Telesymphony (2001), a concert whose sounds are wholly performed through the carefully choreographed dialing and ringing of the audience's own mobile phones.
- Re:MARK (2002), an installation for two participants which presents an interactive visualization of speech, using sounds spoken into a pair of microphones are analyzed and classified by a phoneme recognition system.
- Messa di Voce (2003), installation piece using graphics interacting with sound. It was developed in collaboration with Zachary LiebermanZachary LiebermanZachary Lieberman is an American artist and computer programmer. His art work focuses around computer graphics, human-computer interaction, and computer vision....
. - The Manual Input Sessions (2004), a series of audiovisual vignettes which probe the expressive possibilities of hand gestures and finger movements.It was developed in collaboration with Zachary LiebermanZachary LiebermanZachary Lieberman is an American artist and computer programmer. His art work focuses around computer graphics, human-computer interaction, and computer vision....
. - Scrapple (2005)
- Ursonography (2005), developed in collaboration with Jaap BlonkJaap BlonkJaap Blonk is a Dutch avant-garde composer and performance artist.Blonk is primarily self-taught both as a sound artist and as a visual/stage performer. He studied physics, mathematics, and musicology for a time, but did not complete his studies...
- The Dumpster (2006) interactive information visualization.
- Eyecode (2007) installation that reflects the viewer's gaze
- Opto-Isolator (2007) interactive sculpture that looks back at the viewer with a single embedded moving eye.
Levin's most recent work centers around interactive robotics
Human robot interaction
Human–robot interaction is the study of interactions between humans and robots. It is often referred as HRI by researchers. Human–robot interaction is a multidisciplinary field with contributions from human–computer interaction, artificial intelligence, robotics, natural language understanding, and...
, machine vision
Machine vision
Machine vision is the process of applying a range of technologies and methods to provide imaging-based automatic inspection, process control and robot guidance in industrial applications. While the scope of MV is broad and a comprehensive definition is difficult to distil, a "generally accepted...
, and the theme of gaze
Gaze
Gaze is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan to describe the anxious state that comes with the awareness that one can be viewed. The psychological effect, Lacan argues, is that the subject loses some sense of autonomy upon realizing that he or she is a visible object...
as a primary new mode for human-machine communication.
Further reading
- Bruce Wands, Art of the Digital Age, Thames & Hudson, 2006. ISBN 0500238170.
- Mark TribeMark TribeMark Tribe is an American artist. He is the founder of Rhizome, a not-for-profit arts organization based in New York City....
and Reena Jana, New Media Art, Taschen, 2006. ISBN 3822830410. - Joline Blais and Jon IppolitoJon IppolitoJon Ippolito is an artist, educator, new media scholar, and former curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Ippolito studied astrophysics and painting in the early 1980s, then pursued Internet art in the 1990s...
, At the Edge of Art, Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0500238227. - Wolf Lieser. Digital Art. Langenscheidt: h.f. ullmann. 2009.
External links
- Levin's website
- Article on The Dumpster by Lev Manovich
- Artdaily.org article on Messa di Voce
- New York Times review of Rhizome ArtBase 101
- TED Talks: Golan Levin on software (as) art at TEDTED (conference)TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
in 2007 - TED Talks: Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you at TEDTED (conference)TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
in 2009