EP 22: JOSEPH NECHVATAL’s TOWARDS AN IMMERSIVE INTELLIGENCE: ESSAYS ON THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY AND VIRTUAL REALITY (1993-2006) brings together a collection of the artist’s theoretical texts with a view toward elucidating the new role that art plays within our present technologically-impacted reality. Through a highly creative analysis, Nechvatal uncovers connections between the virtual and the actual, situating art in what he calls a viractual culture that is still in the process of recognizing itself.

Since 1986, NECHVATAL has worked with ubiquitous electronic visual information, computers and computer-robotics. From 1991-1993, he was an artist-in-residence at the Louis Pasteur Atelier and the Saline Royale / Ledoux Foundation’s computer lab in Arbois, France, on The Computer Virus Project, an experiment with computer viruses as a creative stratagem. In 2002, he extended that artistic research into the field of viral artificial life through his collaboration with the programmer Stéphane Sikora.

JOSEPH NECHVATAL was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1951. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy of art at CAiiA, University of Wales College, Newport (UK). He has exhibited in such shows and galleries as The Times Square Show, ABC NoRio, Universal Concepts Unlimited (N.Y.), The Kitchen, Brooke Alexander, Gallery Nature Morte, Paula Cooper, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), Anders Tornberg, De Zack (Groningen), Galerie Karin Sachs (Munich), The Rooseum (Malmö), Centre National de la Photographie (Paris), Body Mécanique (The Wexner Art Center), Musèe des Beaux-Arts de Dole (France), The Saline Royale (Arc-et-Senans), Galerie Berndt (Köln) and Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard (Paris). His works are included in such museums as the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (N.Y.), Moderna Museet (Stockholm), and the Jewish Museum (N.Y.). He has written for Artforum, Real Life Magazine, Arts Magazine and Art Criticism, among others. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Nechvatal teaches presently at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and at Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey. He lives and works in New York City and Paris.

First edition paperback, May 2009, 96 pp., sewn, bound, and printed in Italy, with a two-color cover, and a black and white photograph of the author on the frontispiece.

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