Miroslaw Rogala

the artist, shown here signing a PHSCologram

Miroslaw Rogala (b. 1954, in Poland) is a Polish-American video artist and interactive artist, known for performances and installations that challenge man's relationship to nature and to his fellow man. His work weaves transformations of imagery, collages of music and motion, and a direct challenge to the audience/user's perceptual control into a dialogue about the nature of art and existence. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) at Karlsruhe, Germany, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland, and the Goodman Theatre, Chicago. He has collaborated frequently with Chicago-based art collective universities, including the Pratt Institute, Carnegie Mellon, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Columbia College, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He received a PhD in Interactive Arts from CAiiA/STAR Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, University of Wales, Newport, Wales in 2000 (now known as the Planetary Collegium).

Rogala has worked with a wide span of contemporary artists, such as Carolee Schneeman, Ed Paschke, Raymond Salvatore Harmon, Zhou Brothers, Michael Iber, Lee Wells, Ken Nordine, Jennifer Guo, Urszula Dudziak, Werner Herterich, Alexander Horn, among many others.

Works

Some of his best known works include:

• Nature Is Leaving Us (1989)
• MacBeth:The Witches Scenes (1988)
• Lovers Leap (1995)
• Electronic Garden/Naturealization (1996)
• Divided We Stand (1997)
• Transformed City Series (2000–2011)

Rogala's first art work to receive widespread acclaim was his Pulso-Funktory, a multimedia installation created between 1975 and 1979 that contained interactive components. An assemblage of six panels with neon lights and musical sound effects, it allows for up to six viewers at a time to interact with it by specifying an "off" or "on" setting.

Many of Rogala's works have involved live performances. Macbeth: The Witches Scenes was part of a production of Macbeth directed by Byrne Piven in November and December 1988 at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston, Illinois. Nature Is Leaving Us was a "video opera" performed at the Goodman Theater is Chicago in October 1989. It involved three 6-foot by 8-foot video walls, with a total of 48 monitors, presented in conjunction with performances by actors, musicians, and dancers.

Rogala has also been preoccupied with interactive media. In 1994-95, he received a stipend from the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, in Karlsruhe, Germany. The result was an installation entitled Lovers Leap. Lovers Leap used two screens facing one another. Depending on when and how the viewer moved or stood still between the screens, the pictures they displayed would change. Rogala's photographic imagery was of a street in Chicago which would, if the triggering viewer provided the right conditions, jump or "leap" to footage shot in Jamaica. The piece was first exhibited at the MultiMediale 4 in Karlsruhe 1995.

In 1996, Rogala produced Electronic Garden/NatuRealization, sometimes known as eGarden, an interactive sound installation produced for Sculpture Chicago ’96. The work was placed in the center of Washington Square Park in Chicago, a site with historic significance as a place where soap box speakers of the early to mid-twentieth century would expound on and debate the issues of the day. By moving through a gazebo-like structure, the listener would trigger the playing of recordings of the words of both historic and contemporary speakers associated with the area. Between one and four recordings might play at a time, but they would be heard only if a visitor moved through the space.

For much of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Rogala has been involved with several series of artworks for which he has manipulated photographs using Mind's-Eye-View computer software developed by Ford Oxaal. The Transformed City series worked with pictures taken in cities such as Krakow or Istanbul. The Transformed Garden series presents still lifes of fruits and vegetables fragmented into unstable, dynamic compositions. Works from the latter series will be published in late 2009 in a book entitled Transformed Garden.

References

Alben, Lauralee. “At the Heart of Interactive Design.” The Design Management Journal (Summer 1997), 9-26. Also available at http://www.albenfaris.com/downloads/pdf/heart_of_interaction.pdf.

Christiansen, Richard. "Video Opera Stars 48 TV Sets." Chicago Tribune, 19 October 1989, Sec. 5, p. 7.

Druckrey, Timothy. "Lovers Leap." Artintact 2. Karlsruhe: Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, 1995.

Mark B. N. Hansen. "Seeing with the Body: The Digital Image in Postphotography." Diacritics 31:4, 54-82.

Lellis, George. "Miroslaw Rogala's Zhou Brothers. Journal of Film and Video 50.4 (Winter 1998-99), 49-56.

Russett, Robert. Hyperanimation: Digital Images and Virtual Worlds. (London: John Libbey, 2009)

Shanken, Edward A. Art and Electronic Media (Themes & Movements) (London: Phaidon, 2009)

Voedisch, Lynn. "With 'Nature' artist creates a new electronic landscape." Chicago Sun-Times, 8 October 1989.

External links

• Artist's Website

Persondata
Name	Rogala, Miroslaw
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Date of birth	1954
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