| Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Joan Truckenbrod

Professor Emeritusat The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Corvallis,
United States
Focus area: Computer Graphics, Digital Imaging, Animation, Digital Art, New Media, Fine Arts 2D, Fine Arts 3D, Sculpture, Spacial, Video, Film

Environmental challenges and the effects on human health are central in my studio practice, beginning with coded algorithmic drawings in 1975, including coded algorithmic textiles and video multimedia installations.  Juxtaposing analogue and digital processes, I am currently working with a hand digital Jacquard loom, weaving images and forms that probe the contemporary uses or function of fencing.
 
My coded algorithmic drawings (1975) and a textile (1979) are in the Digital Art Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and were included in an exhibition there titled “Programmed: Rules, Codes and Choreographies 1965 to 2018.  In February 2019 I was interviewed on Science Friday NPR in conjunction with the Whitney exhibition together with the curator, Christiane Paul, and another artist. The Art Institute in Chicago also has some of my early digital textiles.  Early coded algorithmic drawings together with a digital painting are in the Digital Art collection at the V and A Museum in London. 
 
I published a book about video artists that have inspired my artwork together with some of my video multimedia installations, titled “Paradoxical Object; Video, Film, Sculpture” , in 2012.  An earlier book was “Creative Computer Imaging”, published in 1988. I have also published a number of articles about the creative potential of computers for artistic expression.  The Telos Portfolio Series also published a book about my artwork written by Polly Ullrich.
 
I continue my studio practice after 25 years on the faculty in the Art and Technology Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  A solo exhibition in the three galleries at the Schneider Museum of Art in Ashland, Oregon in 2021 includes a series of coded algorithmic drawings and textiles that embody invisible phenomena in the natural world that are physically palpable.  A series of large archival prints and layered textiles about my history with breast cancer are exhibited in the main gallery.
Some of these early drawings are also on exhibition in the RCM Galerie in Paris in 2021.  In 2023 an early coded algorithmic textile titled “Electronic Patchwork” 1979, from the collection of the Block Museum of Art, will be included in an exhibition at LACMA in Los Angeles.

Journal Articles:

Torn Touch: Interactive Installation

August 2000