Camille Utterback
Luscious Complexity - Transcending the Doohickey
Date 10/5/09
Affiliation Artist, San Francisco
Abstract
How can an interactive artwork incorporate complexity without incurring frustration in participants? How can it be both clear enough to engage participants, and complex enough to reward continued interaction? Where is the sweet spot where complexity doesn't confuse but enthralls? Finally, why create interactive art anyway? Is the whole field of interactive art just an exploration of the doohickey? Or, is there something richly satisfying and culturally relevant to be found here?
Artist Camille Utterback will explore these questions as she discusses the evolution of her own interactive art practice.
Bio
Camille Utterback is a pioneering digital artist whose interactive installations and reactive sculptures engage participants in a dynamic process of kinesthetic discovery and play. Utterback's work explores the aesthetic and experiential possibilities of linking computational systems to human movement and gesture in layered and often humorous ways. Her work focuses attention on the continued relevance and richness of the body in our increasingly mediated world.
Her exhibit history cites more than fifty shows on four continents. Awards include an IBM Innovation Merit Award (2007), a Transmediale International Media Art Festival Award (2005), a Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship (2002), and a US Patent (2004). Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum, Hewlett Packard, and La Caixa Foundation, among others.
Utterback holds a BA in Art from Williams College, and a Masters degree from The Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She lives and works in San Francisco.
-- As of 10/5/09