Tamiko Thiel is a new media artist interested in developing the dramatic and narrative capabilities of interactive 3D virtual reality as a medium for addressing social and cultural issues.

Education:
She received her B.S. in 1979 from Stanford University in Product Design Engineering with a focus on human factors design. Her M.S. was in Mechanical Engineering in 1983 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied human-machine design at the Biomechanics Lab and computer graphics at the precursors to the Media Lab. She then studied studio art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, where she received a Diploma in Applied Graphics in 1991, specializing in video installation art.

Artwork, Exhibitions, Reviews:
Her first work in interactive 3D virtual reality was as creative director and producer of Starbright World (1996), an award-winning multi-user 3D online virtual playspace for seriously ill children done in collaboration with film director and Starbright Foundation chairman Steven Spielberg.

Her interactive 3D installation Beyond Manzanar (2000), reflecting on scapegoating of minorities in times of crisis, is in the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Art in Silicon Valley, California, USA. This work is discussed in Whitney Museum media art curator Christiane Paul’s reference book Digital Art (Thames and Hudson World of Art series), and Boston University Professor Matthew Smith’s book The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace. Matthew Smith also published a monograph on Thiel’s work, "Liquid Walls: The Digital Art of Tamiko Thiel," in the Performing Arts Journal (PAJ).

Her interactive 3D installation The Travels of Mariko Horo (2006) draws on Dante, Byzantine and Buddhist imagery to create a reverse Marco Polo fantasy of the exotic West seen from a Buddhist viewpoint. It premiered in 2006 at the first 01SJ Biennial in San Jose, Silicon Valley, USA (curator Steve Dietz), and has since been shown in venues such as Siggraph, the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence, Italy and the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, Italy. This work is discussed by Marcela Quiroz Luna, Curatorial Director of Art San Diego, in the article "Orientalism, Occidentalism and other myths of origin" in the Fahrenheit Contemporary Art Magazine. In 2006 she received a prize from the City of Munich, curated by Bettina Wagner-Bergelt (vice director, Bavarian State Ballet) and Dr. Stefan Urbaschek (curator, Sammlung Goetz), to commission a dance piece using The Travels of Mariko Horo as a realtime stage set: “In the Land of Babari-an” premiered at the Dance2006 Festival in Munich.

In 2007 she was awarded a major grant from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Berlin Capital City Cultural Funds) to create an interactive 3D installation on the Berlin Wall, Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall. This artwork won the IBM Innovation Award for Artistic Creation in Art and Technology at the 2009 Boston Cyberarts Festival. It was shown extensively in 2009 for the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in Europe, including the Berlin City Museum in Germany and LABoral Centro de Arte in Spain (curators Steve Dietz and Christiane Paul). It was sent on tour by the Goethe-Institut in the USA and India; the US tour included a special event at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, and an opening speech by German Ambassador Dr. Klaus Scharioth (solo show, American University Museum,Washington D.C.).

A founding member of the cyberartist group Manifest.AR, she participated in the pathbreaking augmented reality exhibit “We AR in MoMA,” an uninvited guerilla takeover of MoMA New York. Videos of Thiel’s “Art Critic Face Matrix” were featured in articles in the New York Times and on WNYC (National Public Radio). In 2011 she led the Manifest.AR Venice Biennial AR Intervention, placing her works in the Venice Giardini and in the German National Pavilion, which won the Golden Lion Award for best national pavilion.

Awards:
In 1998 she won a grant from WIRED Magazine to research "Beyond Manzanar" and in 1999 created the artwork during as artist in residence at the IAMAS media art academy in Gifu, Japan. In 2003 she was a Japan Foundation Fellow in residence at the Kyoto Art Center, Japan to research "The Travels of Mariko Horo," and in 2004 produced the artwork as a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, M.I.T. In 2006 she received a prize from the City of Munich, curated by Bettina Wagner-Bergelt and Dr. Stephan Urbaschek, to develop and exhibit a work using "The Travels of Mariko Horo" as a realtime stage set for a specially commissioned dance performance. This work, "In the Land of Babari-an," premiered at the Dance 2006 Festival of Contemporary Dance in Munich. In 2007 she was awarded a prize from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Berlin Capital City Cultural Fund) to research and create her virtual reality installation Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall. In 2009 this work won the IBM Innovation Award for artistic creation in art and technology.

Teaching & Lecturing:
She has taught and lectured internationally at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, the MIT Media Lab, Harvard Center for European Studies, the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, Germany, University of California/San Diego, the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television and the School of Film and Television in Babelsberg, Germany. In winter semester 2011-2012 she is Visiting Professor for Technologies of Non-linear Dramaturgies at the Berlin University of the Arts, Institute of Time-Based Media.