Simon Penny – ISEA Symposium Archives

Most Recent Affiliation(s):

University of California at Irvine, Editor and _Professor

Other Affiliation(s):

Carnegie Mellon University

ISEA Bio(s) Available:

ISEA2020

Simon Penny (AU) is an interactive media artist, teacher and theorist. He has built custom interactive installations and robotic art since the mid 1980s. He explores – in both artistic and scholarly work – problems encountered when computational technologies and rhetorics are interfaced with cultural practices. His longstanding concern for embodied and situated aspects of aesthetic experience, along with a critical analysis of computer culture has led to a focus on what of he refers to as postcogntivist approaches to cognition – the focus of his book Making Sense: Cognition, Computing, Art and Embodiment (MIT press 2017). Director of A Body of Knowledge: Embodied Cognition and the Arts UCI 2016 and An Ocean of Knowledge: Pacific Seafaring, Sustainability and Cultural Survival at UCI in 2017. Founding director Arts Computation Engineering graduate program (2003-2012). Professor of Electronic Art and Design, professor of Music, professor of Informatics, University of California, Irvine, USA.

ISEA2011

Simon Penny has worked as an artist, theorist, teacher and organiser in Digital Cultural Practices, Embodied Interaction, Interactive and Robotic Art for 25 years. His works involve custom robotic and sensor systems including novel machine vision systems. His art and writing address critical issues arising around enactive and embodied interaction, informed by traditions of practice in the arts including sculpture, video-art, installation and performance, and by ethology, cognitive science, phenomenology, human-computer interaction, robotics, critical theory, cultural studies, media studies and Science and Technology Studies.

He edited Critical Issues in Electronic Media (SUNY press 1995), founded the Arts Computation Engineering interdisciplinary graduate program (ACE) at University of California, Irvine in 2003 and was director of Digital Art and Culture conference 2009 (DAC09). He was previously Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University and teaches in the Cognitive Science and Interactive Media masters at University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. He was artist in residence at the Segal Institute for Human Centered Design at Northwestern University Fall 2010. He is a jury member for the Telefonica VIDA (Art and Artificial Life) prize.

ISEA98

Simon Penny, AU/US, is an Australian artist, theorist and teacher in the field of Electronic and Interactive Media Art. His art practice consists of interactive and robotic installations, which have been exhibited in the US, Australia and Europe. His most recent project is the machine vision driven interactive digital video installation Fugitive, first shown at ZKM Multimediale5, Oct. ’97 (completed during a residency at ZKM Spring ’97). Other recent projects include the emergent complexity sound installation “Sympathetic Sentience” and the autonomous robotic artwork “Petit Mal”. He is Associate Professor of .Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University where, among other things, he teaches Robotic Art Studio and Theory of Interactive Art. He established the Electronic Intermedia Program at the University of Florida 1990-93, curated Machine Culture, a world survey of interactive art (at SIGGRAPH ’93 in Anaheim CA) and edited the anthology Critical Issues in Electronic Media (SUNY Press 1995). He publishes and speaks on Culture and Technology and Electronic Media Art. His essays have been translated into seven languages. His recent publications include “The Virtualisation of Art Practice: Body knowledge and the Engineering World View” CAA Art Journal Ea1197 and The Darwin Machine: Artificial Life and Interactive Art, New Formations UK,#29 (Technoscience Issue) 1996. for further information, please refer to
web.archive.org/web/20000115211523/http://www-art.cfa.cmu.edu/Penny/index.html

ISEA95

Simon Penny is an Australian artist working with interactive and robotic installations and an associate Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He is editor of Critical lssues in Electronic Media (SUNY Press 1995). He curated Machine Culture, on international survey of interactive art at SIGGRAPH 93.

ISEA94

Simon Penny (Australia), interactive media artist, Associate Professor of Art and Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA, USA. He makes Interactive installation and robotic sculpture and is currently in danger of falling of the edge of Art into the maelstrom of technological change.

TISEA 1992

Simon Penny (Australia), University of Florida, USA

SISEA 1990

Simon Penny (Australia), Electronic Intermedia, University of Florida, USA