Tamiko Thiel

New media artist interested in developing the dramatic and narrative capabilities of interactive 3D virtual reality as a medium for addressing social and cultural issues. She exhibits internationally in venues such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Siggraph, ISEA and the ICA/London. She was creative director and producer of Starbright World, an award-winning 3D online virtual playspace for seriously ill children done in collaboration with film director and Starbright Foundation chairman Steven Spielberg. Her virtual reality installation Beyond Manzanar is in the permanent collection of the San Jose Museum of Art in Silicon Valley, California, USA. The work is discussed in Whitney Museum media art curator Christiane Paul’s reference book Digital Art (Thames and Hudson World of Art series) and in Boston University Professer Matt Smith’s book The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace (Routledge, 2006.) Her newest work The Travels of Mariko Horo, a reverse Marco Polo fantasy about a Japanese woman who constructs the West, will premiere in the “Edge Conditions” exhibit held jointly by ZeroOne and the San Jose Museum of Art as part of the Pacific Rim Theme of the ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006 Symposium. A work in progress is Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall, a virtual reality installation on the Berlin Wall. She has taught and lectured internationally at institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University, the MIT Media Lab, the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, Germany, University of California/San Diego, the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television and the School of Film and Television in Babelsberg, Germany.