Name Adrianne Wortzel | ||
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Exploring the MekaMon robot's movements
Adrianne Wortzel is an American contemporary artist who utilizes robotics in her installations and performances. She has also created many online works.
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Early life and education
Wortzel attended Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, where she studied painting and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts in 1964. She later continued her education at The School of Visual Arts in New York and received her Master of Fine Arts in Computer Arts in 1995.
Career
Much of Wortzel's early career was as an abstract painter, and was featured in many group and solo exhibitions in several New York galleries, as well as in solo exhibitions at the Stamford Museum and Nature Center in Connecticut. When she returned to school, she began working more with robotics and telerobotics as she pursued her MFA in Computer Art, producing video and installation work, both in galleries and online. Her installation Camouflage Town was shown in the group exhibition Data Dynamics at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where a robot named Kiru was allowed to inhabit the space of the museum and interact with museum visitors both directly and remotely. Another piece, Eliza Redux, was launched in 2008. The installation took Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA program and embodied it in physical robot's form installed in East Village in New York. Participants interacted with the robot through online sessions.
Wortzel has earned several grants and awards in the course of her work, including the National Science Foundation Award for the Robotic Renaissance Project. She has also had her work featured in many art publications, including Margret Lovejoy's Digital Current: Art in the Electronic Age and Frank Popper's From Technological to Virtual Art, and has been published in major art journals, including Leonardo in 2007. Wortzel was an Eyebeam Resident.
She has taught at many art educational institutions and is currently a professor of Entertainment Technology and Emerging Media Technologies at the New York City College of Technology.