Don Ritter

Don Ritter is a Canadian installation artist and writer living in Hong Kong. He has been active in the field of digital media art since the late-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 installation is Vested(2010), 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]

Work

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. Beginning in 1989, Ritter’s computer based artwork was recognized by institutions associated with digital 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]

Writings and public lectures

Ritter's writings^[10] and public lectures since 2004 have been concerned with the social, economic, and ethical function of digital media art and mass media. Ritter proposes that the primary function of media is to contribute to the strength of certain entities by enhancing their popularity, social status, authority, financial worth or whatever is considered valuable by those entities.^[11] Through "media subterfuges", such as product placements or viral advertising, he states that we are persuaded to experience media content without realizing their promotional intentions. In his 2011 lecture Content Osmosis, Ritter proposes the primary function of social media is to expose users to advertising, while giving them the impression that their social popularity is being increased. "Regardless of their technology — paper, film, TV or the Internet — all media appear to evolve toward the same function: to obtain the attention of an audience and then expose them to promotional materials, typically for products and services."^[12] The ideas within Ritter’s writings are derived from philosophy, media studies, social psychology, economics, public relations, aesthetics, art theory and political theory. Writers he references include Edward Bernays, John Kenneth Galbraith, George Dickie, Peter Singer, and Noam Chomsky.

Education and career

Ritter completed studies in Electronics Engineering Technology in 1979 at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton, Canada. He then worked as a hardware designer for the telecommunications manufacturer Northern Telecom in Toronto. His first public exhibition of paintings was in Toronto during 1980, and he completed undergraduate degrees in Fine Arts and Psychology at the University of Waterloo in 1986. During that 5 year period, Ritter also worked as a human interface researcher and designer for Bell-Northern Research in Ottawa. Ritter received a Masters in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988 after studying at the MIT Media Lab, MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, and the Film Department at Harvard University. His professors at MIT and Harvard included artist Otto Piene, computer scientist Marvin Minsky, designer Muriel Cooper, composer Tod Machover, and film theorist Vlada Petric. Ritter has held tenured professorships in art and design at Concordia University in Montreal and at Pratt Institute New York City. From 2011 to early 2013, he was a Professor of Design at Hanyang University in Seoul. He is currently a Professor^[13] in the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong.^[14]

References

External links

• Don Ritter documentary web site
• Intersection web page
• Vox Populi web page
• Sonambiente Berlin
• Don Ritter and George Lewis