Ken Rinaldo

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Ken Rinaldo (b. 1958) is an American artist and educator whose work focuses on interactive art installations that explore the intersection between natural and technological systems. He intends his robotic and bio-art installations to merge the organic and electro-mechanical elements seamlessly, to express a gentle symbiosis.

His works are influenced by living systems theories, interspecies communication and artificial life research, and the concept of emergent properties. Many of his works are concerned with ecological issues that are often not considered in the realm of technological progress.

Rinaldo directs the Art & Technology program in the Department of Art at the main campus of the Ohio State University. He also teaches interactive robotic sculpture, digital imaging, and multimedia.[1]


Biography

Philosophy

Works

Awards and honors

Futher Reading and research

External Links


Biography

Rinaldo comes from a family of artists and inventors. Both his parents are contemporary artists. His French Grandfather Jean Vincent Rinaldo was a painter and a member of the Salon Des Independent in Paris. His Scottish Grandfather was an electronics inventor. His Great, Great Uncle was Robert Fulton the American inventor of the steamboat. Born in 1958, Ken Rinaldo studied biology as a teen, ballet in New York City until the age of 20. He has an Associates in Science in Computer Science from Cañada College, 1982; a Bachelors of Art in Communications from The University of California at Santa Barbara; 1984 and a Masters in Fine Arts in Conceptual and Information Arts from San Francisco State University, 1996.

Philosophy

Rinaldo is concerned with an idealized melding or an intersection that he believes is possible between natural and technological systems. He often asserts that integration of the natural and non-organic electro-mechanical elements are part of an important and very natural confluence and co-evolution that is necessary between living and our evolving technological material. His art works are influenced and evolve with research into living systems theory, artificial life and the current technologies we use to model and express mimesis through our current understanding of natural living systems. [3]

Rinaldo believes that interactive art can encourage active and self-determined relationship with a work of art and this can demonstrate and become both a real living system as well as a metaphor for a co-evolved and symbiotic coupling that can exist between nature and culture.[7]

He uses open structures and exposed electronics and mechanics, as part of an open-electronic-aesthetic in proposing that there are often subtle but real structural relationships between circuits, wire and other natural living forms. Rinaldo believes this it is imperative that our technological systems model an evolved wisdom that exists in all natural living systems, as he hopes this will permit a kind of emergent and interdependent earth, that permits coexistence between our highly technologized world and the natural living world, which we depend for our survival. [2]


Artwork/inventions

THE AUTOTELEMATIC SPIDER BOTS 2006, is an a-life robotic installation consisting of 10 autonomous spider-like works.[3]

AUGMENTED FISH REALITY (2004), is a fish-driven robot. [7]

AUTOPOIESIS (2000), is an a-life robotic installation exploring the idea of group consciousness.[4][5][6]


Commissions awards

2006 Commission for Autotelematic Spider bots from the AV Festival England [4][5]

2005 Artist in Residency Pilchuck Glass Seattle Washington

2004 Award of Distinction from Ars Electronica Austria for Augmented Fish Reality [6]

2003 Commission Lille 2004 European Capital of Culture for the Augmented Fish Reality

2001 Honorable Mention Ars Electronica Austria for Autopoiesis

2000 VIDA 3.0 International Artificial Life Competition First Prize for Autopoiesis [http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/vida/paginas/ev3.html ] 2000 Commission for Autopoiesis from The Kiasma Museum Finland

2000 Ohio Arts Council Grant


References

1) Wired Magazine, June 1994, Plucky Performance by Mark Frauenfelder, pg 30

2) Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004. (Mar 2004) A comprehensive, critical survey of a-life art.

3) Leonardo, Volume 31, number 5, 1998 Technology Recapitulates Phylogeny Artificial Life Art by Kenneth Rinaldo pgs 371-376

4) Artificial Life 7 Workshop Proceedings, Carlo C. Maley and Eilis Boudreau Editors, Autopoiesis by Kenneth E. Rinaldo pgs, 166-169

5) Information Arts, Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology Stephen Wilson pgs 113-114, 341-342, 344, 427

6) Digital Art by Christiane Paul pg ISBN-13 978-0500203675 144, 145

7) Kenneth Rinaldo and France Cadet: artificial life and the lives of the non-human.(Critical Essay): An article from: Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine [HTML] (Digital) by Carol Gigliotti pgs 69-83 [7]

8) Roberta Alvarenga NY Arts Magazine vol 3 no 9/10 pgs 84 [http://nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3058&Itemid=212 ] 9) Virtualities Television, Media Art and Cyberculture by Margaret Morse, pg 193

10) Artist's biography, YLEM web site [8]


External links

NY Arts Magazine [9]

NY Arts Magazine [10]

Artists Web Site: [11]