Joseph Nechvatal
Joseph Nechvatal has worked with ubiquitous electronic
visual information and computer-robotics since 1986. His computer-robotic
assisted paintings and computer animations are shown regularly in galleries and
museums throughout the world. He has recently worked as artist in-resident at
the Louis Pasteur studio and the Ledoux Foundation's computer lab in Arbois,
France on 'The Computer Virus Project': an experiment with computer viruses as
a creative stratagem. He has exhibited widely in Europe and the United States,
both in private and public venues, such as Documenta
8, Kassel, Germany; the Wexner Art Center, Columbus; Brooke Alexander, New
York; Karin Sachs, Munich; The New Museum, New York; and Berndt Galerie,
Cologne. His artwork is in many prestigious permanent collections, such as the
Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum, LA; the Moderna
Museet, Stockholm; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, among others.
Nechvatal earned his Ph.D. in the philosophy of art and
new technology as a Ph.D. doctoral on-line fellow researcher with The Centre
for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts (CAiiA) under Roy Ascott. He
serves as Parisian editor for Rhizome
Internet http://www.rhizome.org and
has written frequently for Intelligent
Agent http://www.intelligent-agent.com
For the operative artificial-life artwork, Nechvatal and
his programmer Stephane Sikora have brought Nechvatal's early computer virus
project into the realm of artificial life (A-Life; i.e. into a synthetic system
that exhibits behaviors characteristic of natural living systems). This work
simulates a population of active viruses functioning as an analogy of a viral
biological system. One is reminded that biological systems are networks that
are both vulnerable and able to adapt to environmental change; that bodies,
rivers, ecosystems, are open to infection and transformation.
Joseph Nechvatal’s 2001 Computer Virus Project 2.0 follows
along the same lines as previous viral works by Nechvatal in 1992 - works where
an unpredictable progressive virus operates on a degradation/transformation of
an image. Now, using a C++ framework, elements of artificial life have been
introduced in that viruses are modeled to be autonomous agents living in/off
the image. The project simulates a population of active viruses functioning as
an analogy of a viral biological system. Here viral algorithms - based on a
viral biological model - are used to define evolutionary processes which are
then applied to image-files from Nechvatal’s "ec-satyricOn 2000
(enhanced)+ bodies in the bit-stream (compliant)" series. Among the
different techniques used here are models that result from embodied artificial
intelligence and the paradigm of genetic programming.
Joseph Nechvatal is represented by Universal Concepts
Unlimited, New York City and Julia Friedman Gallery, Chicago. He is one of the
first artists to have used digital technologies in novel ways, blurring
boundaries between 'digital' and 'traditional' forms as early as the '70s. His
most recent solo show opened at Universal Concepts Unlimited, May 2002.