Don Ritter (born 1959) is a Canadian installation artist and writer living in Berlin, Germany. He has been active in the field of new media art since the mid-1980s. His work consists primarily of large interactive video and sound installations that audiences control through their body position, body movement or voice. Ritter’s most widely exhibited work is Intersection(1993), an interactive sound installation within 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 experienced by over 600,000 people in North America, Europe and Asia.[1] Ritter’s most recent work is Vested(2009), a large interactive video and sound installation that "reflects the commodification of human tragedy."[2] Vested was exhibited to a large international audience at the Cultural Olympiad for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada.[3]
Ritter's interactive installations and performances 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. 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.[4] His work differs from many new media artworks because its content is primarily concerned with human behavior. 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.”[5] Dottie Indyke writes in ARTnews, "Ritter's play with his viewers' phobias recalls the anxiety-provoking tendencies of Surrealism."[6]
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.[7] Their first performance was presented in 1988 at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These performances used Orpheus,[8] an interactive software developed by Ritter that enables real time video to be controlled by a musical instrument.[9]
Ritter has degrees in Fine Arts and Psychology (University of Waterloo), Electronics Engineering Technology (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology), a Masters in Visual Studies (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and he studied cinema at Harvard University. He 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.[10]