Peggy Weil

Peggy Weil
Alma materHarvard University,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Peggy Weil is an American artist working in digital media.[1]

Early life and education

She graduated from Harvard University in 1976, and received a master's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982.[2][3]

At MIT she was a part of the Architecture Machine Group, from 1980–1982,[4] where she worked under Nicholas Negroponte. Currently she is adjunct faculty at USC School of Cinematic Arts.[5]

Work

In 1990, she produced A Silly Noisy House, an award-winning CD-ROM with multimedia pioneer The Voyager Company. Her multimedia works continued with Ravensburger Interactive, where her Moving Puzzle CD-ROMs won the 1998 Milia D'Or in Cannes.[6] She created MrMind, a web-based bot who asks, "Can you convince me that you are human?" MrMind has been administering The Blurring Test, a Reverse Turing test, since 1998.[7]

In 2007 she co-authored, with Nonny de la Peña, the work Gone Gitmo, a virtual exploration of the Guantanamo Bay prison within Second Life.[8][9] Along with de la Peña, Weil is widely credited with helping create the genre of immersive journalism.[10] Gone Gitmo was shown in the exhibition, Feedforward, The Angel of History at LABoral (LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial) in Gijon, Spain, curated by Steve Dietz and Christiane Paul (curator).[11]

In 2011 Weil founded HeadsUP! a global data visualization competition. HeadsUP!2012 used datasets from NASA/JPL's GRACE Satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment)and USGS decadal aquifer data to display changes in global groundwater. Richard's Vijgen's winning animation was displayed across 19,000 square feet of digital signboard in Times Square across the Thomson Reuters and NASDAQ signs.[12][13]

In 2016 Weil, along with Refik Anadol, was commissioned by the City of Los Angeles for the Bloomberg sponsored citywide art biennale, CURRENT:LA Water to create UnderLA, a large scale public projection of the LA Aquifer from The First Street Bridge and Origin of LA River sites.[14][15]

The Climate Museum's inaugural exhibition in 2018, In Human Time, featured Weil's work, 88 Cores - a 2-mile descent through the Greenland Ice Sheet going back 110,000 years.[16][17]

References

  1. ^ Kormann, Carolyn (9 February 2018). "As the World Melts, an Artist Finds Beauty in Ancient Ice" – via www.newyorker.com.
  2. ^ Gehl, Robert W.; Bakardjieva, Maria (2016-12-01). Socialbots and Their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-26738-6.
  3. ^ "Alumi MIT Media Lab". Media.MIT.EDU.
  4. ^ "Peggy Weil - World Building Institute". worldbuilding.institute.
  5. ^ "Peggy Weil - USC SCA". USC.SCA.
  6. ^ Mizuko Ito (10 February 2012). Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children's Software. MIT Press. pp. 95–. ISBN 978-0-262-29155-2.
  7. ^ Robert W. Gehl; Maria Bakardjieva (1 December 2016). Socialbots and Their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality. Taylor & Francis. pp. 47–. ISBN 978-1-317-26738-6.
  8. ^ Yannis Tzioumakis; Claire Molloy (1 July 2016). The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics. Taylor & Francis. pp. 593–. ISBN 978-1-317-39245-3.
  9. ^ "Gone Gitmo". MIT - Docubase. Retrieved 2017-09-13.
  10. ^ de la Peña, Nonny; Weil, Peggy; Llobera, Joan; Spanlang, Bernhard; Friedman, Doron; Sanchez-Vives, Maria V; Slater, Mel (2010). "Immersive Journalism: Immersive Virtual Reality for the First-Person Experience of News". Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. 19 (4): 291–301. doi:10.1162/pres_a_00005. hdl:2445/52803. S2CID 15185506.
  11. ^ "Feedforward: El ángel de la Historia". 22 October 2009 – via www.laboralcentrodearte.org.
  12. ^ "Groundwater Crisis Unfolds in Times Square". 22 March 2012 – via www.green.blogs.nytimes.com.
  13. ^ Rich, Sarah (2 May 2012). "Groundwater, Gravity and Graphic Design" – via www.smithsonianmag.com.
  14. ^ "CURRENT:LA Water".
  15. ^ Anzilotti, Eillie (August 3, 2016). "A 1,400-Foot Journey Through L.A.'s Groundwater Supply". The Atlantic, CITYLAB.
  16. ^ "Climate Museum: In Human Time".
  17. ^ Raskin, Laura (9 February 2018). "The Climate Museum Captures the Gravity of a Global Crisis" – via www.hyperallergic.com.