Tamiko Thiel will discuss her over 3 decades of working with emerging technologies. She creates politically and socially critical media artworks that engage the body to explore place, space, memory and cultural identity.

In 2024 Tamiko Thiel was awarded the SIGGRAPH Distinguished Artist Lifetime Achievement Award in Digital Arts for her socially critical media artworks, and inducted into the inaugural cohort of AWE XR Hall of Fame. Earlier awards include 2018 SAT Montreal Visionary Pioneer and 2009 IBM Innovation Award in Art and Technology. Early works include visual design of Danny Hillis‘ Connection Machines CM-1/CM-2 AI supercomputer (1986/7, Thinking Machines Corp., collection MoMA NY), Starbright World first VR metaverse for children (1994-1997, with Steven Spielberg) and Beyond Manzanar (2000, with Zara Houshmand), first VR artwork acquired by a US art museum (San Jose Museum of Art in 2002). Early AR interventions include ARt Critic Face Matrix into MoMA NY (2010) and Shades of Absence into Venice Biennial (2011). AR commissions include Unexpected Growth for Whitney Museum New York (2018, with /p, in the collection) and ReWildAR for Smithsonian Institution‘s 175th anniversary (2021, with /p).