Christopher Csíkszentmihályi (born June 1968) is an American artist and technologist. He is an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a position ...

of information science at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

Life

Csíkszentmihályi was born June 1968 in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

. His father, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, was a psychologist who coined the concept of psychological flow. After leaving

Reed College Reed College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland, Portland, Oregon, E ...

in 1988, Csíkszentmihályi earned a BFA from the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...

(SIAC) and an MFA from the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

(UCSD) in 1998.

Academic career

Csíkszentmihályi is an Associate Professor in the Information Science department at Cornell University. Csíkszentmihályi is the former director of the MIT Center for Future Civic Media and the Computing Culture research group at the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

. In addition to

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

and at Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, he has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Art and Design Research at Parsons The New School for Design, was a 2005 Rockefeller New Media Fellow, a 2007–2008 fellow at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and has taught at the University of California at San Diego,

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (; RPI) is a private university, private research university in Troy, New York, United States. It is the oldest technological university in the English-speaking world and the Western Hemisphere. It was establishe ...

, the

Art Center College of Design The ArtCenter College of Design is a private art college in Pasadena, California. It was incorporated in 1930 as a degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both the visual arts and design. ...

, and Turku University.

Work

Much of Csíkszentmihályi's art consists of working technologies of his own invention, which function as tools while also providing comment on technology and its implications for social power dynamics. These artwork/technologies include, but are not limited to: *Hunter Hunter (1991), a free-standing robotic technology that could detect the sound of a gunshot and return fire, which was a precursor to applied Gunfire locator technologies *DJ I, Robot (2000), a robotic disk jockey that could play and scratch vinyl records. *Afghan eXplorer (2001), a solar-powered, four-wheeled robot designed to report news from warzones *Freedom Flies (2005), an

Unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

designed to observe militia activity in the Southwestern United States *RoBoat (2006), a robotic kayak designed to protest at island prisons *ProBot (2019), a tele-operated, human-sized robotic protester, designed to allow physical acts of protest while protecting one's personal safety Other, more traditional artworks include 2005's Skin/Control, parallel installations that explore the tenuous nature of human influence over technology; and 2007's First Airborne, an installation consisting of hanging maple seedlings the size of the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

's Joint Direct Attack Munition bombs. With Jude Mukundane, he is the co-founder of RootIO, a civic media project developing wide-reaching, small-scale, peer-oriented radio networks, currently operating in

Uganda Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the ...

. By turning cell phones into standalone radio stations with village-sized catchment areas, RootIO provides a platform for localized media that requires little in terms of physical infrastructure and user literacy. From 2001 to 2011, he was an associate professor at the

, where he founded the Computing Culture Research Group, and, with Henry Jenkins and Mitchel Resnick, co-founded the Center for Civic Media, which he directed until 2011. From 2015 to 2020 he was Professor and European Research Area Chair of Human-Computer Interaction and Design Innovation at Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Csikszentmihalyi, Christopher MIT School of Architecture and Planning alumni American artists Living people School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni University of California, San Diego alumni Place of birth missing (living people) Reed College alumni Parsons School of Design faculty 1968 births MIT Media Lab people