Don Ritter

Don Ritter is an artist and writer who has been active in the field of media art since 1988. His interdisciplinary artworks and writings integrate fine art and digital media with aesthetics and ethics. Ritter’s immersive video-sound installations enable audiences to direct their experiences through body motion or voice, and his live performances and media façades present ultra high-definition video projections controlled by live music, sound, or body gesture. His most recent work includes large architectural projections based on the symbolism of fire and water, and metal prints resembling road signs that convey issues of morality, sustainability and ontology.

Ritter’s work has been exhibited throughout North America, Europe and Asia, including SITE Santa Fe (USA), Winter Olympics 2010 Cultural Olympiad (Vancouver), Metrònom (Barcelona), Sonambiente Sound Festival (Berlin), Verona Jazz Festival (Italy), Exit Festival (Paris), Ars Electronica Festival (Linz), and New Music America (New York City). His most widely exhibited work is Intersection (1993/2019), an interactive sound installation that has been experienced by 700,000 viewers in eight countries. During his performances of video controlled by live music, Ritter collaborated mostly with trombonist George Lewis and also with musicians Nick Didkovsky, Amy Denio, Thomas Dimuzio, Ikue Mori, Geneviève Letarte, Ben Neill, Trevor Tureski and Tom Walsh. Ritter created video installations for New York artists Laurie Anderson (Guggenheim Museum exhibition, New York City) and Paul Garrin (Gwangju Biennale exhibition and Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction). Ritter’s prints and paintings are held in private collections in North America, Europe and Asia. His work has received support and recognition from the Canada Council, The Banff Centre (Canada), Pratt Institute (USA), ZKM (Germany), Ars Electronica (Austria), DGArtes (Portugal), the Goethe Institute (Germany), the European Union Culture Programme (EU), and City University of Hong Kong.

Ritter completed his graduate education in visual studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center For Advanced Visual Studies, MIT Media Lab, and Harvard University’s Carpenter Center. His professors included German artist Otto Piene (MIT), documentary film-maker Richard Leacock (MIT), and film theorist Vlada Petric (Harvard). Ritter has undergraduate degrees in fine arts and psychology from the University of Waterloo and a diploma in electronics engineering from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. Prior to his academic positions, Ritter worked as a researcher and telecommunications designer for Nortel and Bell-Northern Research in Toronto and Ottawa. Ritter held full-time and tenured professorships in art and design between 1989 and 2017 at Concordia University in Montreal, Pratt Institute in New York City, Hanyang University in Seoul, and the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. Ritter maintained his art studio in Berlin, Germany from 2006 to 2013, and he currently lives in Montreal.

POSITIONS

Aesthetic Machinery, Montréal, Canada. 2017-present and
Berlin, Germany. 2006-2013
Director and artist, digital media research and production studio

City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong. 2013-2017
Professor, full-time position, School of Creative Media

Hanyang University, College of Design, Seoul/Ansan, South Korea. 2011-2013
Professor, full-time position, Department of Entertainment Design/Interactive and Multimedia Design)

Pratt Institute, School of Art and Design, Brooklyn, USA. 1996-2005
Professor, full-time position, tenured 2004, Department of Computer Graphics & Interactive Media/Digital Arts

Concordia University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Montréal, Canada. 1989-1998
Associate Professor, full-time position, tenured 1994, Department of Design Art/Design and Computation Arts

Bell-Northern Research (BNR/Nortel subsidiary), Toronto, Ottawa, and Edmonton, Canada. 1983-1986
Summer positions, human interface researcher and designer for CAD/CAM and telecommunication systems

Northern Telecom (Nortel), Brampton, Canada. 1979-1982
Full-time position, telecommunication designer and trainer

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2018 Pavillon Président-Kennedy, Partenariat du Quartier des
Spectacles, Montreal, Canada. Wet. architectural projection.
2011 CAN Foundation/Space Can, Seoul, South Korea. Intersection.
2009 Galerija Kibela, Maribor, Slovenia. Vox Populi, Badlands and
Digestion.
2005 SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. Vox Populi and Intersection.
2004 Jack The Pelican Presents, Brooklyn, New York, USA. Vox Populi.
1999 New York Coliseum, New York City, USA. Fit, TV Guides and
Intersection.
1998 Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Canada. Skies.
1997 Metrònom, Barcelona, Spain. Intersection and video tape
retrospective.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2021 Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, Hong Kong. Sustained Signage.
2021 Ars Electronica (Austria) and ConcreteHouse.art (Switzerland). Human Humans.
2020 Kortil Gallery., Glowing Globe exhibition, Rijeka, Croatia. Given.
2019 Wonderspaces, San Diego, USA. Intersection
2017 Museum of Saint-Brieuc/Art Rock Festival, France, Wet.
2017 Art Rock Festival, Saint-Brieuc, France, Burning Too, architectural projection.
2016 University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria,Sustained Signage and Unnecessary Signage.
2016 Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria. Burning Too, architectural projection.
2016 ISEA2016 International Symposium on Electronic Art, Hong Kong. Burning Too, architectural projection.
2016 City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong. Sustained Signage.
2015 SIGGRAPH Asia, Kobe, Japan. Unnecessary Signage.
2015 AlbumArte/YICCA 2015, Rome, Italy. Unnecessary Signage.
2015 Daegu Culture and Arts Center, South Korea. For All The Museums That Forgot To Offer An Exhibition To Me, architectural projection.
2015 School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong. Unnecessary Signage.
2014 Goldsmiths and Courtauld Institute London, “It Looks Like Art,” London, UK.
2013 School of Visual Arts, “Cross Point of E to W,” New York, USA.
2012 MIM & MORE, Berlin, Germany. The Collector Series.
2011 SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, USA. Benefit Auction. The Collector Series.
2011 Transmediale/ConcentArt, Berlin, Germany. Collector Series.
2010 Winter Olympics Cultural Olympiad, Vancouver, Canada. Vested.
2010 Mediations Biennale Poznan, Poland. Vox Populi.
2010 IMO Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark. O telephone sound work.
2009 Move – New European Media Art, Halle (Saale), Germany. Vested.
2009 ConcentArt, Berlin, Germany. Vox Populi.
2009 Kunsträume Burg Eisenhardt, Belzig, Germany. Vox Populi.
2009 SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. annual fund-raising auction, Personal Armor.
2009 Hermes’ Ear Festival, Brno House of Art, Brno, Czech Republic. O telephone.
2008 Academy of Fine Arts, Krakow, Poland. Fit.
2008 SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. annual fund-raising auction, Reach.
2008 Strictly Berlin/GdK Gallery, Berlin, Germany. Personal Armor.
2007 Les Chants Mécaniques, Lille, France. O telephone and Intersection.
2007 Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin, Germany. O telephone.
2007 Strictly Berlin/ GdK Gallery, Berlin, Germany. Badlands.
2006 Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Vox Populi.
2005 Name Festival, Lille, France. Vox Populi.
2005 iDEAS, Orlando, USA. every-thing.net.
2005 Exploratorium, San Francisco, USA. Intersection.
2004 FILE, Electronic Language Festival, São Paulo, Brazil. every-thing.net.
2004 The Works Festival, Edmonton, Canada. Intersection.
2004 Schafler Gallery, Brooklyn, USA. video documentaries.
2003 Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival, Victoria, Canada. Digestion.
2001 Riva Gallery, New York City, USA. Digestion.
2000 Art Future 2000, Taipei, Taiwan. Intersection.
2000 Exit Art Festival, Créteil, France. Intersection.
2000 VIA Art Festival, Maubeuge, France. Intersection.
2000 Not So Good Music, Prague, Czech Republic. video documentation, Elephant Keyboard.
1999 Siggraph 99/Millennium Motel, Los Angeles, USA. TV Guides.
1999 Kunst Haus Dresden/Comtec, Dresden, Germany. Intersection.
1999 Taipei Gallery, New York, USA. Fit.
1999 Pratt Institute, New York City, USA. Fit.
1997 Cyber Monde, Montréal, Canada. TV Guides.
1996 Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria. Intersection.
1996 Sonambiente Klangkunst Festival, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany. Intersection
1995 Images du Futur, Montréal, Canada. Intersection.
1995 SAM Museum, Osaka, Japan. Fit.
1995 Sound Symposium, St. John’s, Canada. Intersection.
1993 European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany. Intersection.
1993 Images du Futur 93, Montreal, Canada. Fit.
1988 Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany. Stithy.