Marek Walczak

Marek Walczak is an architect and digital artist specializing in 3D on the Internet. He spent several years in practice before focusing on computers as design tools in architecture. He has been a designer for James Carpenter Design Assoc., an award winning design studio that uses glass and light to effect changes in physical space. His design work includes a periscope window for the Dayton Residence in Minnesota, a glass 'Skybox' suspended from the 35th floor of a skyscraper in Shanghai and a 5,400 sq. ft. light activated 'Screenwall' in Austin, Texas. He was educated and taught at the Architectural Association in London, and spent a year at the Cooper Union in New York

The focus for the earlier work was in the phenomenal qualities of space, translations of a perceptual sensibility into built form. The transitional piece is the Periscope Window, where the reflections of sky, trees and sunlight are caught through lenses and mirrors onto a ground glass screen. The window is transformed into a monitor. Gradually the work has evolved from architectural projects, like The London Project, to sculptural pieces that are integrated with architecture, such as the work for James Carpenter Design Assoc., to the recent purely online and virtual performance projects, such as Adrift.

Currently the online and installation work merges architecture, interface design and performance. Projects acquire many "skins," 2d and 3d projections, printable outputs, and finally perhaps smart spatial installations.

Apartment
with Martin Wattenberg
The Apartment engages the users in conversation, and builds a home of spatial image/text fragments around them, forming an equivalence between the space they inhabit and the mental space of their conversation. A version of The Apartment will be presented as an installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in the Spring of 2001.
Online commission by New Radio and Performing Arts for its Turbulence website
Funded with a grant from the Jerome Foundation

Switch
Online commission by New Radio and Performing Arts for its Turbulence website
Funded with a grant from The Greenwall Foundation, 1998-1999
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/switch

Adrift
Multi-location performance, 1997-2000
with Helen Thorington and Jesse Gilbert
Commission first performed at Ars Electronica, Austria, 1997
Funded with a grant from the Creative Capital Fund, 2000
http://www.turbulence.org/adrift

VRML Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
Commission by the Walker Arts Center, Gallery 9, 1998
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/walczak

Port
Walczak exhibited several 3D multi-user Internet installations for Port, an exhibition at the MIT List Center gallery in 1997.
http://www.artnetweb.com/port/

At Documenta X, he collaborated with Jordan Crandall on Suspension, a database driven 3D website.


Martin Wattenberg

Martin Wattenberg, 30, is an artist and software designer. His focus in both art and programming is on information visualization--turning data into pictures. He is Director of Research and Development for SmartMoney.com; he joined SmartMoney in 1996, after receiving a Ph.D. in mathematics from Berkeley.

Market Map
http://www.smartmoney.com/marketmap

You can see more of his work at http://www.bewitched.com.