Jeffrey Shaw

Since more than 15 years Jeffrey SHAW is documented by ADA with more than 100 Artworks! On the occasion of his Golden Nica Award from Ars Electronica we congratulate with a special ADA feature! Check out Jeffrey Shaw in the Archive of Digital Art!

"In SHAW's diverse work since the sixties, the audience animates the art object, which, […], offers the viewer a transformative experience of uncommon phenomena and alternate realities."
- Edward SHANKEN

"Experimentation with immersive image spaces is a hallmark of SHAW’s oeuvre, from his early work in the Expanded Cinema movement to his Extended Virtual Environment and his installations like ‘Place Ruhr’ 2000, which are utilizable in multicultural contexts. (2001)"
- Oliver GRAU 

"Jeffrey SHAW is recognized as one of the most important pioneers of interactive art. He has powerfully influenced the creation of virtual environments and new innovative user interfaces. SHAW’s work spans a period of half a century and still continues to do so."
- Jury comment PRIX ARS ELECTRONICA, 2015

Jeffrey SHAW has been a pioneer and leading figure in new media art since its emergence. In the context of the 1960’s paradigm of installation he started with expanded cinema, performance and participatory environments, aiming to change the traditional relation between object and spectator from a passive examination and contemplation to an interactive involvement and immersion. New technologies such as the computer as well as new user interfaces allowed Shaw a new approach to this aim and had been integrated and developed in his art works very early. He is internationally renowned for pioneering virtual and augmented reality, immersive visualization, navigable cinematic systems and interactive narrative. SHAW’s works The Legible City (1989), The Virtual Museum (1991), The Golden Calf (1994), Place-A Users Manual (1995), conFiguring the CAVE (1997) or the Web of Life (2002) coined the field in the 90’s and are still landmark works in New Media Art.

SHAW was founding director of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media Karlsruhe (1991-2002), where he conceived and ran a seminal artistic research program that included the ArtIntAct series of digital publications, the MultiMediale series of international media art exhibitions, and invented new creative platforms such as the EVE Extended Virtual Environment (1993), PLACE (1995) and the Panoramic Navigator (1997). In 1995 he was appointed Professor of Media Art at the State University of Design, Media and Arts (HfG), Karlsruhe, Germany. As founding Co-Director of the Center for Interactive Cinema Research (iCinema) at the University of New South Wales in Sydney (2003-2009) he led a theoretical, aesthetic and technological research program in immersive interactive post-narrative systems, which produced pioneering artistic and research works such as Place-Hampi and T_Visionarium, the latter shown at the Biennale of Seville in 2008. In September 2009 he joined City University in Hong Kong as Chair Professor of Media Art and Dean of the School of Creative Media (SCM). Professor SHAW received numerous awards and fellowships including the prestigious Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship, Prix Ars Electronica, L’Immagine Elettronica, the Oribe Prize, Gifu, Japan and an IDEA Gold Medal in 2009. In 2015 SHAW is honored with the Prix Ars Electronica for Visionary Pioneers of Media Art.