Don Ritter
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Don Ritter (born 1959) is a Canadian installation artist and writer living in Berlin, Germany. Since 1986 his works have been exhibited throughout Europe, North America and Asia, including SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico, Metrònom in Barcelona, Ars Electronica in Linz, Sonambiente Sound Festival in Berlin, New Music America in New York, and ArtFuture 2000 in Taipei. His work has focused on interactive video-sound installations and performances since 1986. Ritter’s most widely exhibited work is Intersection(1993), an interactive sound installation presented in a large dark room. The work presents the sounds of four lanes of car traffic that respond to audiences by screeching to a halt, idling, accelerating or crashing into each other. Intersection has been exhibited in North America, Europe and Asia, and experienced by over 600,000 people.[1] Ritter’s most recent work is o telphone(2007), an interactive sound installation comprised of six telephones that respond with "om" when answered.[2]
Ritter’s work was initially recognized by institutions associated with new media art, such as Ars Electronica and MIT, but it now receives more recognition from museums and festivals of contemporary art.[3] His work differs from many new media artworks because its content is primarily concerned with human behavior rather than technology. The Slovakian philosopher Jozef Cseres writes, “Although Ritter uses complex technologies to create aesthetic experiences for audiences, he is not a technocrat; for him the interaction is not the aim but the means to test the influences and impacts of nature, machines and media to human personality.”[4] Dottie Indyke writes in ARTnews, "Ritter's play with his viewers' phobias recalls the anxiety-provoking tendencies of Surrealism."[5]
Between 1988 and 1990, Ritter collaborated with interactive music pioneer George Lewis (trombonist) to create a series of live performances that featured large projections of interactive video controlled by Lewis's improvised trombone playing. [6] Their first performance was presented in 1988 at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These performances used Orpheus,[7] a software developed by Ritter that enables real time video to be controlled by a musical instrument. Ritter also assisted in the creation of video installations for New York artists Paul Garrin and Laurie Anderson.[8]
Ritter has a Master of Science in Visual Studies(Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and undergraduate degrees in Fine Arts, Psychology(University of Waterloo), and Electronics Engineering Technology(Northern Alberta Institute of Technology). During his graduate education he studied at the MIT Media Lab, the Center for Advanced Visual Studies and the Harvard Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts; his professors included artist Otto Piene, film maker Richard Leacock, and film theorist Vladimir Petric. Ritter has worked as a telecommunications designer for Northern Telecom, a human interface designer for Bell-Northern Research, a professor of fine arts at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec, and professor of art and design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. [9]
[edit] References
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- ^ Intersection by Don Ritter
- ^ o telephone by Don Ritter
- ^ myartspace>blog: Art Space Talk: Don Ritter
- ^ Cseres, Jozef (2000) "Neinteraktivne umenie je mrtve/Non interactive art is dead" Profil: Contemporary Art Magazine, vol 4; Bratislava, Slovakia. p. 52-55
- ^ Indyke, Dottie (2006) “Dana Schutz, Charles Long, Don Ritter.” ARTnews. March. USA. p. 145
- ^ Performances by Don Ritter
- ^ VJ Software: Don Ritter's Orpheus
- ^ Orpheus by Don Ritter
- ^ Don Ritter Biography
