Adrianne Wortzel (born 1941) is an American contemporary artist who utilizes robotics in her installations and performances. She has also created many online works.

Early life and education

Wortzel was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941. She attended

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

of the

City University of New York The City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...

, where she studied painting and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts in 1963. She later continued her education at

The School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by ...

in New York and received her Master of Fine Arts in Computer Arts in 1996.Wortzel, Adriann
"Adrianne Wortzel Bio"
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Career

Much of Wortzel's early career was as an

abstract painter Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19t ...

, 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 The Stamford Museum & Nature Center, located in Stamford, Connecticut, is an art, history, nature, and agricultural sciences museum. The property covers 118 acres (ca. 48 hectares) beginning about half a mile north of the Merritt Parkway. It was ...

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 The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, where a robot named Kiru was allowed to inhabit the space of the museum and interact with museum visitors both directly and remotely."Data Dynamics: Adrianne Wortzel"
''Whitney Museum of American Art'' Another piece, ''Eliza Redux'', was launched in 2008. The installation took Joseph Weizenbaum's

ELIZA ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1966 at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to demonstrate the superficiality of communication between humans and machines, E ...

program and embodied it in a physical robot's form installed in Wortzel's East Village apartment 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 The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

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 in 2008. She has taught at many art educational institutions, including the

School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by ...

in New York and the

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

. She is currently a professor emeritus in the Departments of Entertainment Technology and Emerging Media Technologies at the

New York City College of Technology The New York City College of Technology (City Tech) is a public college in New York City. Founded in 1946, it is the City University of New York's college of technology. History City Tech was founded in 1946 as The New York State Institute of ...

, after teaching there as a professor from 1998 to 2015."Entertainment Technology: Adrianne Wortzel
''New York City College of Technology''

List of major works

*''NoMad is an Island'', installation,

Linz, Austria Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital of ...

, 1997 *''Battle of the Pyramids'', installation, Eyebeam Atelier, 2008 *''Eliza Redux'', installation, New York City College of Technology, 2008 *''Camouflage Town'', installation, The Whitney Museum of American Art, 2010 *''The Veils of Transference'', video, 2010 * ''Solace and Perpetuity'', algorithmically derived fictionalized autobiography, 2016

External links

Adrianne Wortzel's website

Documentation of ''Eliza Redux''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wortzel, Adrianne American contemporary artists Living people American women artists Brooklyn College alumni 21st-century American women Electronic literature writers 1941 births