Char Davies

ISEA Bio(s) Available:

ISEA1997

Charlotte Davies, Canada, is a practicing artist whose work explores paradoxes of embodiment, being and nature within immersive virtual space. She holds the title of Director of Visual Research at Softimage in Montreal, and is currently involved in doctoral research at CaiiA, Centre of Advanced Inquiry into the Interactive Arts, University of Wales College, Newport, Wales. Formally a painter and filmmaker, she began working with digital media when she joined the software company Softimage in 1987. Her 3D still images have been shown in Europe, North America and Australia. Her most recent work, the immersive virtual environment ‘Osmose’ (’94-’95) has been exhibited in Montreal, New York, and most recently London, and was reviewed in C21, Art In America, Wired, etc. Davies has lectured widely, including at: ISEA92/93/95; Netherlands Institute of Design (Doors of Perception conference’95); Prix Ars Electronica; NYC Museum of Modern Art; and SIGGRAPH. She is currently working on a new immersive environment at Softimage.

ISEA1995

Born in Toronto, she is currently Director of Visual Research at Softimage (Montreal) and has exhibited in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia receiving the Prix Distinction (computer images) at Ars Electronica ’93. Her current areas of research are real-time interactive and immersive computer-generated environments and the history and philosophy of ‘Nature’.

TISEA
Canadian artist Char Davies is internationally recognized for pioneering artworks using the technologies of virtual reality.

Originally a painter, Davies transitioned to digital media in the mid-1980s when she began exploring 3D computer imaging as a means of going “beyond” the 2D picture plane. In 1987 she became a founding director of the 3D software company Softimage, whose intuitive design philosophy arguably reconfigured the computer graphics industry. A developer of software tools used in such films as Jurassic Park and The Matrix, Softimage held its initial public offering on NASDAQ in 1992 and was subsequently acquired by Microsoft. During her ten years at the company – as its first VP, then Director of Visual Research – Davies began adapting its software for her own artistic purposes.