(Index)

EDUCATION

AWARDS, RESIDENCIES, SPECIAL EVENTS

EXHIBITIONS

REVIEWS & INTERVIEWS

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Winter 2011-2012

BERLIN UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS, Berlin, Germany. Visiting Professor for Technologies of Non-linear Dramaturgies at the Institute of Time-Based Media.

September 2003

KYOTO ART CENTER, Kyoto, Japan. Taught bilingual Japanese/English workshop "Constructing the Unknown World" on imagining and constructing the unknown world, based on examples from European and Japanese art history and cartography.

October 2002

BAUHAUS-UNIVERSITY, Weimar, Germany. Taught workshop (in German) in Interactive 3D Virtual Reality in the Media Design program jointly with Peter Graf from the Media Systems program. The piece produced during the workshop, Geometries of Power, a multi-user online collaborative artspace, was presented online during the Fusion02 event between the Bauhaus and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

Winter Quarter 2002 (January - March 2002) 

UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, San Diego, California, USA. Taught a studio class in virtual reality, a seminar class on artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, and a senior projects class in the Department of Visual Arts.

Spring Quarter 1999

CITY COLLEGE of SAN FRANCISCO, San Francisco, CA, USA. Developed and taught a class in multimedia process and production.

Spring Semester 1994 (January - June 1994) 

CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Visiting Associate Professor of Design. Developed and taught two classes: Modern Fetishes, Relics and Totems (design theory and studio project) and Do Machines Have Souls? (design theory).

1993

MEDIENLABOR MUENCHEN, Munich, Germany. Taught workshops in video art.

1982-1983

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE of TECHNOLOGY, Cambridge, MA, USA.

• Media Lab (Visual Language Workshop): Taught video art workshops.
• Department of Mechanical Engineering: Teaching Assistant for FORTRAN programming class.

(Index)

ART and TECHNOLOGY POSITIONS

PUBLICATIONS

2013

My drawings for the Connection Machine CM-1/CM-2 were published in: Obtulowicz, Adam. "Multigraphical membrane systems revisited," Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 7762, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 311-322, 2013

2011

"Cyber-Animism and Augmented Dreams," Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA), Istanbul, April 2011.

2010

"Rhetorics of the Interactive 3D Installation ‘Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall’" (with Teresa Reuter), conference proceedings for ICIDS (International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling), Edinburgh, UK. Ruth Aylett et al., eds.:ICIDS LNCS 6432, pp. 129-140, Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg.

"The Design of the Connection Machine," The Designed World: Images, Objects, Environments. Richard Buchanan, Dennis Doordan and Victor Margolin, Ed. Berg, New York, pp. 155-166.

2009

Thiel, Tamiko."Where Stones Can Speak: Dramatic Encounters in Interactive 3D Virtual Reality," chapter in the book Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, ed. Pat Harrigan & Noah Wadrup-Fruin, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA.

2007

Thiel, Tamiko. "Life at the Interface of Art and Technology," ON SCREEN, 911 Media Arts Center, Seattle, WA., USA. Winter 2007, Vol. 18 No.1, pp. 32-34.

2004

Thiel, Tamiko. "Beyond Manzanar: Creating Dramatic Structure in Ergodic Narratives," Published in the conference proceedings for Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment (TIDSE, now subsumed into the ICIDS conference), Darmstadt, Germany, June 24-26, 2004, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg.

2003

Reader: Lab3D and Web3D Art, Kathy Rae Huffman and Melinda Rackham, editors. CORNERHOUSE, Manchester, England, June 2003.

"Beyond Manzanar" (with Zara Houshmand), [Two] Factorial, !Factorial Press, San Diego, CA, 2003

2002

Panelist in The (Re)Structured Screen,online critical forum presented by Eyebeam/New York and The Integrated Media Program at CalArts, California, Nov. 11 - Dec. 13.

"Veiled Fantasies," Site Street Online Journal, Fall 2002

2001

"Dramatic structure in interactive virtual reality," Aedo-ba, Villa Tosca Design Management Center, Milan, Nr. 03/04, Fall 2001 pp. 40-45.

"Beyond Manzanar: Constructing Meaning in Interactive Virtual Reality," COSIGN 2001 Conference Proceedings , Amsterdam, Holland.

• pdf file from conference program 
• html file on this site

Thiel, Tamiko and Houshmand, Zara. "Beyond Manzanar," on front Page of NW Nikkei / North American Post, Vol. 18 No.17, April 21, 2001, pp.1,5.

Thiel, Tamiko and Houshmand, Zara. "Beyond Manzanar," SIGGRAPH 2001 Electronic Art and Animation Catalog and CD-ROM, ACM SIGGRAPH, New York, page 125.

2000

Images from the series Metamorphoses featured on front and back covers of Leonardo Journal , MIT Press, Volume 33 #2, 2000, and on Leonardo's website.

1995

Thiel, Tamiko. "Machine Sapiens," Ylem Newsletter , Vol. 15, No. 6, Nov./Dec. 1995. pp. 5-6.

1994

Thiel, Tamiko. "The Design of the Connection Machine," (Japanese text) InterCommunication Magazine, InterCommunication Center of the NTT, Tokyo, Japan, No. 8, Spring 1994. pp.128-135.

Thiel, Tamiko. "The Design of the Connection Machine," DesignIssues , The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 1994. pp. 5-18.

1993

Thiel, Tamiko. "Vijfenzestigduizend Processoren in Twaalf Dimensies," (in Dutch) Computable , Netherlands, 26E Jaargang, Week 22, 4 June 1993, pp. 25, 27.

Thiel, Tamiko. "Machina Cogitans," (text in English and German) Genetic Art - Artificial Life, ARS ELECTRONICA , Linz, Austria. pp. 186-194

1992

"The Connection Machine," AXIS Design Magazine, Number 45, Tokyo, Japan, 1992

(Index)

LECTURES

2011

“Virtual and Augmented Reality Artworks,” Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York, USA.

2010

"Rhetorics of the Interactive 3D Installation 'Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall,'” ICIDS 2010 Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.

Lecture/demo at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, India.

 

Lecture/demo at the Rabindra Bharati School of Art, Kolkata (Calcutta), India.

T+T (Tamiko Thiel, Teresa Reuter and Sabe Wunsch) artists' talk (streaming video recording) at Newthinking, Berlin, Germany.

2009

Lecture/demo (with Teresa Reuter) as part of "Erinnerungsorte: Denkmal und Gedenken" ("Places of Remembrance: Memorials and Remembrance", at the Chair for Historic Preservation and Design, Technical University Dresden, Germany, 23 June 2009.

"I viaggi di Mariko Horo," artist's talk at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, as part of the transnational literary festival Incroci di Civilta', Venice, Italy, May 20.

Artist's talk on "Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall," at the Goethe-Institut Boston as part of the Boston Cyberarts Festival, Boston, USA.

Artist's talk on "Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall" for the Upgrade! Munich, held at the Chair for Urbanism, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany, January 22.

2008

"Background and History of the Berlin Wall," speech for the US premiere of Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall, November 7.
"Tour Through 'Virtuelle Mauer'," artist's talk, November 18. Both at 911 Media Arts Center, Seattle, USA.

"Introduction to the 'Virtuelle Mauer'," speech (together with Teresa Reuter) for the world premiere of Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall, at the Museum for Communication, Berlin, Germany, August 13, 2008.

2007

"Mariko Horo: The Art of Tamiko Thiel," artist's talk, Seattle Art Museum. Seattle, USA. Held in conjunction with the exhibit "Japan Envisions the West: 16th-19th Century Japanese Art from Kobe City Museum" at the Seattle Art Museum and the solo show of The Travels of Mariko Horo at 911 Media Arts Center, Seattle, USA.

"Virtual Reality Projects," artist's talk, KHOJ International Artists’ Association, New Delhi, India.

2006

"Creating the Unknown World: Limits and freedom of the imagination," ISEA2006/ZeroOne San Jose Festival, San Jose, USA.

Participant in the Pacific Rim New Media Summit organized by the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San Jose State University and and Leonardo/ISAST, ISEA2006/ZeroOne San Jose Festival, San Jose, USA.

2005

"Virtual Memorials? Interactive Media and the Structures of Commemoration," roundtable discussion as part of the BOSTON CYBERARTS FESTIVAL / GOETHE-INSTITUT, Boston, MA.

"The Travels of Mariko Horo," Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Cambridge, MA, USA.

"Lehrkonzept für Bildnerisches Gestalten in der Architektur," Fach Architektur, TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT, Munich, Germany.

2004

"Re-Constructing the Berlin Wall: The virtual experience of an urban fact and symbol," Center for European Studies (CES), HARVARD UNIVERSITY, Cambridge, MA, USA.

"Caught in the Loop: Media Hysteria in Times of Crisis," Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Cambridge, MA, USA.

"A General Theory of Dramatic Structure for Interactive 3D Environments," Guest lecture in the class "Interactive Cinema," Glorianna Davenport, Media Lab, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Cambridge, MA, USA.

"Virtual Reality as Interactive Cultural Experience," Guest lecture in the class "Visualizing Cultures," Profs. John Dower and Shigeru Miyagawa, School of Humanities, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Cambridge, MA, USA.

"Virtual Reality as Interactive Cultural Experience," Guest lecture in the class "Humanities Go Digital," Kurt Fendt, School of Humanities. MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Cambridge, MA, USA.

"Finding Form for an Electronic Brain: the Connection Machines CM-1/CM-2," Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Cambridge, MA, USA.

2003

"Slowness in Cultural Pluralism," panel discussion, Kyoto Biennale, KYOTO ART CENTER, Kyoto, Japan.

"Games, Worlds and New Narratives," Panel Discussion, Lab3D, CORNERHOUSE, Manchester, England.

"Evocative Structure and Social Content in Virtual Reality," University of Salford, Manchester, England.

"Evocative Structure and Social Content in Virtual Reality," Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS), Massachusetts Institute of Technologie (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA.

"Arbeiten mit Kunst und Technologie," Akademie der Bildende Künste, Munich, Germany

"NextArt: Provocations" Panel Discussion, FLORIDA FILM FESTIVAL, Maitland, Florida, USA.

"Lehrkonzept für Szenografie mit Neuen Medien," Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen, Babelsberg, Germany.

2002

"Creating Dramatic Structure in Interactive 3D Virtual Reality," Interactive Media Division, School of Cinema-Television, University of Southern California (USC) Los Angeles, CA, USA.

"Creating Beyond Manzanar," (with Zara Houshmand.) Event to celebrate the opening of Beyond Manzanar in the "Highlights of the Permanent Collection" show at the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA. Event co-hosted by ZeroOne: The Art and Technology Network.

"Arbeiten mit Kunst und Technologie," Bauhaus-University, Weimar, Germany

"Creating Dramatic Structure in Virtual Reality," New York University, New York, NY, USA.

"World-building in VRML," Univ. of CA at Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.

"Deep Content in PC-based Virtual Reality," Univ. of CA at Los Angeles (UCLA) Department of Media Arts, CA, USA.

"Deep Content in PC-based Virtual Reality," Pomona College, Pomona, CA, USA.

"Crossing cultures in Virtual Reality," curators talk at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), Los Angeles, CA, USA.

"Beyond Manzanar," Center for Research on Computers in the Arts (CRCA), Univ. of CA at San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.

2001

"Dramaturgie fuer Interaktive VR", (in German) Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen, Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany.

Panel discussion on the Japanese-American Internment, together with Dr. Frank Kitamoto of the Bainbridge Island Nikkeikai, Cherry Blossom Festival, Seattle, WA, USA.

"Entstehungsgeschichte: Beyond Manzanar", (in German) Fachhochschule Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany.

"Beyond Manzanar und die Leitkulturdiscussion," artist's talk (in German) at the Lothringerstrasse 13 / LADEN Gallery, Munich, Germany

2000

"New Media de Kanjo wo Furitsukeru", (in Japanese) Sapporo School of the Arts, Sapporo, Japan.

1999

"Beyond Manzanar - Work in progress" (in Japanese), International Academy of the Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS), Ogaki City, Japan.

"Fantasies and Other Realities", Viper Media Art Festival, Lucerne, Switzerland.

"Virtual Worlds", Art Center College of Design, Pasadena CA.

1998

"Virtually Paradise: Virtual Spaces as Refuge," Out of the Box Summit on Interactivity, BANFF CENTRE for the ARTS, Banff, Canada.

"Digital Butoh", Digital Art Pavilion, PALO ALTO FESTIVAL of the ARTS, Palo Alto, CA, USA.

1997

"Personal Fantasies and Public Realities" CHIK TEK 97: Women Artists Defining Technology, held by the CADRE Institute at the San Jose Art Museum, San Jose, CA.

"Virtual Environments and Healing" AVATARS 97, San Francisco, CA, USA.

"Virtuelle Koerper; Virtuelle Welten" (in German), TECHNO-Z FACHHOCHSCHULE, Salzburg, Austria.

"Virtuelle Koerper; Virtuelle Welten" (in German), DOLL.MONSTER.DEATH.: Cultural Transformation Processes of Bio- and Information Technologies," Natural History Museum, Vienna, Austria.

1994

"Calculating Clock to Connection Machine: The Changing Image of Computers," Museum of American History, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, Washington DC, USA.

"Machine as Mirror, Machine as Model," IDEO, San Francisco, CA, USA.

1993

"Symposium on Media Arts Criticism," MEDIENLABOR MUENCHEN, Munich, Germany.

"Roboter, Animaten und kuenstliche Lebewesen," Genetic Art - Artificial Life, ARS ELECTRONICA 93, Linz, Austria.

( Index)

Print Bio (pdf)

BIOGRAPHY

Tamiko Thiel is a media artist developing the dramatic and poetic capabilities of various forms of virtual and augmented reality as media for exploring 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 work series "Shades of Absence," on censorship in the visual arts, in the Venice Giardini and in the German National Pavilion (which won the Golden Lion Award for best national pavilion). This led to an invitation to participate in the ISEA2011 exhibition UNCONTAINABLE, an official parallel program of the Istanbul Biennial, where she placed her artwork series "Captured Images" into the main biennial exhibition.

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. For 2011/2012 she is Goethe-Institut Artist in Residence in Second Life, for which she has staged two performative events. In 2012 the media art center FACT in Liverpool awarded her cyberartist group Manifest.AR a commission to develop an augmented reality system using bio-sensing for the ARtSense museum and research laboratory consortium.

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 was Visiting Professor for Technologies of Non-linear Dramaturgies at the Berlin University of the Arts, Institute of Time-Based Media.