Joan Truckenbrod


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Most Recent Affiliation(s):


  • The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Artist

ISEA Bio(s) Available:


  • ISEA2023

    Joan Truckenbrod (USA) began creating coded algorithmic drawings and textiles in 1974 with FORTRAN. One of his these textiles is in Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age 1952 – 1982 at LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and another in the Whitney Museum exhibition Programmed: Rules, Codes and Choreographies in Art, 1965 – 2018. Her artwork is represented by RCM Galerie in Paris.

    ISEA2015

    Professor Joan Truckenbrod began working with mainframe computers in 1975 creating a series of computer drawings expressing invisible phenomena in the natural world. Using
    Fortran Programming Language and a Calcomp Pen Plotter, she explored the creative potential for digital artistic practice. In addition to writing and developing code, she used
    computers to create computer imaging, digital painting and to develop interactive installations. This artwork has been exhibited internationally. In 1988 she published a book titled Creative Computer Imaging. She was on the faculty in the Art and Technology Program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA, for 25 years. Currently she is creating video sculptures, juxtaposing video and sound with objects. This work is documented in a book published in 2012 titled The Paradoxical Object: Video Film Sculpture that includes installations of artists who have inspired her work.    joantruckenbrod.com

    ISEA2011

    Prof. Joan Truck­en­brod is a dig­i­tal artist who has ex­hib­ited her art­work in­ter­na­tion­ally in New York, Lon­don, Paris, Berlin, Chicago and Syd­ney, Aus­tralia.  Re­cently her “Video Sculp­ture” was ex­hib­ited in a one-per­son show at Rock­ford Art Mu­seum. This art­work tan­gles the cul­tural mean­ing of ob­jects with the nar­ra­tive en­ergy of video pro­jec­tion.   Her art­work was fea­tured in the Sep­tem­ber 2007 issue of Sculp­ture  Mag­a­zine in an ar­ti­cle by Chicago art critic Polly Ull­rich.  Ms Ull­rich also wrote as essay for a book pub­lished by Telos ti­tled Port­fo­lio Col­lec­tion:  Joan Truck­en­brod.  Ms. Truck­en­brod has a long his­tory of work­ing with dig­i­tal media be­gin­ning, early in the his­tory of com­puter elec­tronic art, cre­at­ing draw­ings and dig­i­tal paint­ings.

    ISEA1994

    Joan Truckenbrod exhibits her artwork internationally. She recently was invited to give a presentation at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London at a conference on Cyberspace and the Arts. She has received a grant to work collaboratively with the faculty at the Department of Media and Information Science, Aarhus University, in Denmark, on an interactive multimedia project. Ms. Truckenbrod is on the faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA, and is Chair of the Time Arts Department.

    ISEA1988

    Joan Truckenbrod, (born 1945 in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA) is known for her work in digital art, and is credited as being one of the earliest pioneers of digital art in the 1960’s. She uses sculptural forms in video to explore “the simultaneous experience of multiple realities that is evoked through ritual.”[3]An essential aspect of her artwork is “making things by hand, integrating hand construction with the electronic imagery of video”. [source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Truckenbrod]


Website:



Last Known Location:


  • Chicago, Illinois, United States of America



Role(s) at the symposia over the years: