Roderick Coover


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Most Recent Affiliation(s):


  • Temple University, Film and Media Arts, _Professor and Artist

ISEA Bio(s) Available:


  • ISEA2022

     Roderick Coover uses emerging forms to tackle questions of global warming, human rights, memory and the Anthropocene. The recipient of major awards from Fulbright, Mellon, Whiting, Adam Mickiewicz, APS, CHS and LEF, his works feature both in arts venues and public spaces from the Venice Biennale to the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Recent installations include The Floods (large-scale generative projection), Water On The Pier (locative, generative), The Key To Time (fulldome), Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project (VR/CAVE) and Toxi•City: A Climate Change Narrative (combinatory). Coover is Professor of Film & Media Arts at Temple University and lives in the USA and France.

    ISEA2020

    Roderick Coover is the creator of interactive, experimental and emergent cinema, virtual reality and digital arts that are internationally exhibited, and his publications include, among others, the books The Digital Imaginary: Literature And Cinema Of The Database and, with Thomas Bartscherer, Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology In The Humanities And Arts. He is Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University, Philadelphia (USA), and he lives in the USA and France.

    ISEA2016

    Roderick Coover is the creator or co-creator of works of digital, interactive and emergent cinema, virtual reality and digital arts such as Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project, Toxi•City: A Climate Change Narrative and The Theory of Time. He is also the maker of documentary films and interactive, documentary research projects such as The Unknown Territories Project, From Verite to Virtual: Conversations On The Frontiers Of Anthropology And Documentary Film, The Language of Wine: An Anthropology of Work Wine And The Senses and Cultures In Webs: Working In Hypermedia With The Documentary Image.

    His works are designed for the screen, interactive media, database cinema, photographic installation, online multimedia publication, CAVE environments and head-mounted displays, and he has been a pioneering creator of some of the earliest forms of interactive cinema and digital, ethnographic arts. His works — both of fact and fiction — blend arts and research, and blur conventional, disciplinary boundaries. His work is internationally exhibited in art venues and public spaces such as the Venice Biennale, The Nobel Peace Prize Forum, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and Documenta Madrid and he has received Fulbright, Mellon, Whiting, Spire and LEF awards, among others. Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University, Philadelphia, he holds degrees from the University of Chicago (PhD 1999), Brown University (MA 1994) and Cornell University (1989).

    ISEA2015

    Roderick Coover, Temple University, PA, USA, is Director of the Graduate Program in Film and Media Arts at Temple University (Philadelphia) and Founding Director of the Documentary Arts and Ethnographic Practice Program. He makes films, interactive cinema, installations and webworks. Some of his latest projects include the interactive series Unknown Territories (unknownterritories.org) about exploration in the American West and the edited book, Switching Codes: Thinking Through Digital Technology In The Humanities And Arts (Chicago 2011). A pioneer in interactive documentary arts and poetics, his works are distributed through Video Data Bank, DER, Eastgate Systems and elsewhere. His creative  work has been exhibited online and at art venues including SIGGRAPH, Documenta Madrid, The American Philosophical Society Museum, Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum  among others.

    ISEA2010

    Roderick Coover makes interactive environments, and electronic poems. Titles include Unknown Territories (Unknownterritories.org), Cultures in Webs (Eastgate Systems), and Something That Happened Only Once (RLCP) among others.


Website:



Last Known Location:


  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Previous Location(s):


  • FR

Additional Links:






Role(s) at the symposia over the years: