Ken Rinaldo

Ken Rinaldo (born 1958) is an American artist and educator whose work focuses on interactive art installations that explore the intersection between natural and technological systems. He intends his robotic and bio-art installations to merge the organic and electro-mechanical elements seamlessly, to express a gentle symbiosis.

His works are influenced by living systems theories, interspecies communication and artificial life research, and the concept of emergent properties. Many of his works are concerned with ecological issues that are often not considered in the realm of technological progress.

Ken Rinaldo's best known works are Autopoiesis (2000), an a-life robotic installation exploring the idea of group consciousness [Artificial Life 7 Workshop Proceedings, Carlo C. Maley and Eilis Boudreau Editors, Autopoiesis by Kenneth E. Rinaldo pgs, 166-169] [Information Arts, Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology Stephen Wilson pgs 113-114, 341-342, 344, 427] [Digital Art by Christiane Paul pg ISBN-13 978-0500203675 144, 145] and Augmented Fish Reality (2004), a fish-driven robot [Kenneth Rinaldo and France Cadet: artificial life and the lives of the non-human. (Critical Essay): An article from: Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine [HTML] (Digital) by Carol Gigliotti pgs 69-83 [http://doglab.free.fr/parachute_e.htm] ] .

Biography

He has an Associates in Science in Computer Science from Cañada College, 1982; a Bachelors of Art in Communications from The University of California at Santa Barbara; 1984 and a Masters in Fine Arts in Conceptual and Information Arts from San Francisco State University, 1996.

In 2000 he received the first price at the VIDA 3.0 International Artificial Life Competition for Autopoiesis [http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/vida/vida10/paginas/ev3.html] , in 2001 the same piece received an honorable mention at the Ars Electronica Festival. In 2004 Ken Rinaldo's art piece Fish Reality was awarded with an award of distinction at the same festival [http://www.aec.at/en/archives/prix_archive/prix_projekt.asp?iProjectID=12853] .

Rinaldo directs the Art & Technology program in the Department of Art at the main campus of the Ohio State University. He also teaches interactive robotic sculpture, digital imaging, and multimedia. [http://www.artandtech.osu.edu]

Philosophy

Rinaldo is concerned with an idealized melding or an intersection that he believes is possible between natural and technological systems. He often asserts that integration of the natural and non-organic electro-mechanical elements are part of an important and very natural confluence and co-evolution that is necessary between living and our evolving technological material. His art works are influenced and evolve with research into living systems theory, artificial life and the current technologies we use to model and express mimesis through our current understanding of natural living systems. [Leonardo, Volume 31, number 5, 1998 Technology Recapitulates Phylogeny Artificial Life Art by Kenneth Rinaldo pgs 371-376 ]

References

External links

* [http://kenrinaldo.com Artists Web Site]
* [http://www.ylem.org/artists/krinaldo/info/biography.html Artist's biography, YLEM web site]