Randall Packer (born 1953) is an American contemporary multimedia artist.

Biography

Packer studied music composition with

Mel Powell Mel Powell (born Melvin Epstein) (February 12, 1923 – April 24, 1998) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, and the founding dean of the music department at the California Institute of the Arts. He served as a music educator for over ...

and

Earle Brown Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of "open form," a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since� ...

at the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

(MFA) and Richard Felciano at the University of California, Berkeley (PhD). He pursued post-graduate study in computer music in Paris, where he was a composer in residence at

IRCAM IRCAM (French: ''Ircam, '', English: Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music) is a French institute dedicated to the research of music and sound, especially in the fields of avant garde and electro-acoustical art music. It is ...

(Institute for the Research and Coordination of Acoustics), Centres Georges Pompidou, under Pierre Boulez. In 1988, he founded Zakros InterArts in San Francisco, producing events and new works that explored the integration of

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

and live performance. The first event was the

San Francisco Tape Music Center The San Francisco Tape Music Center, or SFTMC, was founded in the summer of 1962 by composers Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick as a collaborative, "non profit corporation developed and maintained" by local composers working with tape recorders a ...

Retrospective, which led to extensive research into the history of

and the avant-garde. Packer continued to create new works throughout the 1990s, pioneering collaborative forms of new music theater, installation and

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

that incorporated emerging technologies in

computer music Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and ...

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...

, and

interactive art Interactive art is a form of art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some interactive art installations achieve this by letting the observer walk through, over or around them; others ask the artist ...

. In 1995 he became the Director of the San Francisco State University Multimedia Studies Program, located in the heart of San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch where the "Wired" generation was coming of age. In 1997 he joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, and was the first to teach digital media in the Department of Art Practice. In 1999, the sound installation

Mori Mori is a Japanese and Italian surname, and also a Persian pet name for Morteza. It is also the name of two clans in Japan, and one clan in India. Italian surname *Barbara Mori, Uruguayan-Mexican actress * Camilo Mori, Chilean painter * Cesare ...

, a collaboration with Ken Goldberg and Gregory Kuhn, debuted at the InterCommunication Center (ICC) Biennial exhibition in Tokyo, Japan.

later toured museums throughout the US as part of the exhibition Telematic Connections: The Virtual Embrace, organized by new media curator Steve Dietz and

Independent Curators International Independent Curators International (ICI) is a non-profit headquartered in New York City that has produced exhibitions, events, publications, and training opportunities since 1975. History Independent Curators International (ICI) was founded in 197 ...

. In 1999, his Net artwork, the Telematic Manifesto, was included in the seminal net art exhibition, Net Condition, organized by

Peter Weibel Peter Weibel (; born 5 March 1944 in Odessa, USSR) is an internationally known Austrian post-conceptual artist, curator and new media theoretician. He started out in 1964 as a visual poet but soon jumped from the page to the screen within the sen ...

at ZKM (Center for Art & Media) in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Washington, DC

In 2000 he moved to Washington, DC and began an exploration and critique of the role of the artist in society and politics. He later founded the virtual government agency
US Department of Art & Technology
and became its first Secretary. In 2000, he also joined the faculty of the

Maryland Institute College of Art The Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is a Private university, private art school, art and design college in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, making it one of t ...

in Baltimore, where for three years he served as the Director of the Center for Digital Media. In 2001, after over ten years of research into the history, theory, and practice of multimedia, his seminal book, Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, co-authored with Ken Jordan, was published by

W.W. Norton W. W. Norton & Company is an American publishing company based in New York City. Established in 1923, it has been owned wholly by its employees since the early 1960s. The company is known for its Norton Anthologies (particularly ''The Norton An ...

with a companion Website sponsored by Intel Corporation. In 2004, in response to the Republican National Convention in New York City, he installed the Experimental Party Disinformation Center at the LUXE Gallery on 57th St. That same year he joined the faculty at American University in Washington, DC, where he taught multimedia in the Department of Art until 2009. In 2006 his music for the sound installation Mori was featured in a solo dance performed by the San Francisco Ballet at the Opera House in San Francisco. Most recently, his multimedia performance work, A Season in Hell, the culminating project of the US Department of Art & Technology, was commissioned by ZER01 and debuted at the San Jose 01SJ Biennial in September 2010. W2vr

In 2011, he began extensive research into the future of online teaching in the media arts, joining the faculty of

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

, where he continues to teach multimedia in the Museum Studies program. In 2012, he created Open Source Studio (OSS), an exploration of new online methodologies for teaching multimedia art. The OSS project has led to collaborative research and online courses for the

, and the School of Art, Design, and Media at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, where he is currently visiting associate professor. Packer has received international acclaim for his multimedia and political artworks, with articles in th
New York Times
and th
San Francisco Chronicle
He has performed and exhibited at galleries, museums, theaters and festivals internationally, including ZKM (Center for Art & Media) Karlsruhe Germany,

Transmediale Transmediale, stylised as transmediale is an annual festival for art and digital culture in Berlin, usually held over five days at the end of January and the beginning of February. Transmediale takes the form of a conference (sometimes called ...

in Berlin,

Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...

in Washington DC,

The Kitchen The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was foun ...

in New York City, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and Theater Artaud in San Francisco. His essays on art, technology, politics and culture have been published by MIT Press, the Leonardo Journal for the Arts & Sciences, LINK, ART LIES, and

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre ...

. His scholarly work has been incorporated into the curriculum of universities and art schools throughout the world. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including an ASCAP Prize for music composition, the George Ladd Prix de Paris from the University of California, Berkeley, three Artist Fellowships from the Washington DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, and an Isadora Duncan Award.

External links

Reportage from the Aesthetic EdgeZakros InterArtsThird Space NetworkUS Department of Art & TechnologyOpen Source Studio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Packer, Randall Living people 1953 births Maryland Institute College of Art faculty