Tamiko Thiel

Tamiko Thiel
Nationality American
Education Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Academy of Fine Arts Munich
Known for Public Art, New Media, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
Awards MacDowell Colony, Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Japan Foundation
Website www.tamikothiel.com
Patron(s) Digital Synesthesia Group, Archive of Digital Art, FACT

Tamiko Thiel (born June 15, 1957, daughter of Midori Kono Thiel[1]) is an internationally active American media artist who specializes in "exploring the interplay of place, space, the body and cultural identity".[2]

Early life and education

Tamiko Thiel attended Stanford University and graduated with a B.S. in Product Design Engineering with an emphasis on human factors design in 1979. She later went on to receive her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1983 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, she studied human-machine design at the school's Biomechanics Lab and computer graphics at the precursors to the Media Lab. In 1991, Thiel received her Diploma in Applied Graphics, specializing in video installation art, from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany.[2]

Design & art career

Thiel's first career was in product design, working at Hewlett-Packard Data Terminals Division. She later worked at Thinking Machines Corporation with Danny Hillis, Richard Feynman and Brewster Kahle, heading the design team that created the boolean n-cube hypercube chassis that defined the Connection Machine CM-1 and CM-2 supercomputers' appearance.[3]

From November 1994 to February 1996 she worked for Starbright World as the creative director and producer of the initial system for the Starbright World project, working closely with Steven Spielberg, to create an online interactive 3D virtual world for seriously ill children. Since then, Thiel has had many other exhibits, some of the most notable being her shows "Beyond Manzanar" (a piece about a World War II-era Japanese-American internment camp in California), "The Travels of Mariko Horo", and "Shades of Absence". She is also one of the founding members of Manifest.AR, a group of artists focused on augmented reality, with which she staged spontaneous interventions at Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2013, Tate Modern in 2012, the Venice Biennial in 2011, and Museum of Modern Art (New York City) in 2010,[4]

Thiel's artwork for the last 15 years has focused on "site specific virtual reality installations".[5] Her art has been displayed in international venues including the International Center of Photography (New York City), DUMBO, the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Art Gwanju, Fondazione Querini Stampalia/Venice, Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH and ISEA.[6] To completely describe the venues in which Thiel's artwork is on display one must take into consideration that her chosen platform is augmented reality. With the use of Layar, an augmented reality viewer,[7] Thiel's works can be layered over locations such as the New York Stock Exchange, the Tate Modern Museum in London,[8] New York's Museum of Modern Art,[9][10] the Berlin Wall,[5] Piazza San Marco Venice, Istanbul, and many other locations.[11]

Awards and grants

Publications, Solo authorship

Publications, Collaborative authorship

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Midori%20Kono%20Thiel/
  2. 1 2 Tamiko Thiel Project Blog, "Biography"
  3. ↑ DesignIssues 10:1, Spring 1994, ISSN 0747-9360, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
  4. ↑ Rhizome website, "Tamiko Thiel"
  5. 1 2 "Tamiko Thiel interview (video)"
  6. ↑ Fact website
  7. ↑ Layar website, "What is Layar?"
  8. ↑ Garrett, Marc. "All Hail Damien Hirst", Furtherfield website, June 25, 2012
  9. ↑ Conroy-Randall, Britta. "Guerilla Artists Stage MoMA Invasion", WNYC website, Oct. 15, 2012
  10. ↑ "Augmented Reality: AR uninvited at MOMA NYC"
  11. ↑ "Tamiko Thiel Augmented Reality mARp"
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.