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Bill Seaman received a PH.D. from CAiiA, the Centre for Advanced Inquiry In The Interactive Arts, University of Wales, Newport, 1999. He holds a Master of Science in Visual Studies degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1985. His work explores an expanded media-oriented poetics he calls Recombinant Poetics, through technological installation, virtual reality, linear video, computer controlled laserdisc and other computer-based media, photography, and studio based audio compositions. He is self-taught as a composer and musician. Seaman is Chair of the Graduate Digital+Media Department at Rhode Island School of Design where he is exploring issues related to the continuum between physical and virtual/media space. Major new works include the Hybrid Invention Generator, exploring a machinic genetics. The work was a collaboration with Gideon May. This research was funded by a gift from the Intel corporation. He produced two site specific works, Epiphany/Zjavenie, an installation with video, audio, text and street signs in Trnava, Slovakia, funded through an Arts Link grant. He also contributed a physical / sonic / architectural / textual installation to the p0es1s show in Berlin, Germany – the subtitle of the show was Aesthetics of Digital Poetry.

Seaman's works have been in numerous international festivals and Museum shows where he has been awarded prizes from Ars Electronica in Interactive Art (1992 &1995, Linz, Austria); International Video Art Prize, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Bonn Videonale prize; First Prize, Berlin Film / Video Festival, for Multimedia in 1995; and the Awards in the Visual Arts Prize. Seaman was given the Leonardo Award for Excellence in 2002 for his article — OULIPO | vs | Recombinant Poetics. He has been very active as a writer/ media theorist since 1999. Selected exhibitions include 1996, Mediascape Guggenheim, New York; the premiere exhibition in 1997 of the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany; 1997, Barbican Centre (London); 1997, C3 - Center for Culture & Communication, Budapest, Hungary ; in 1998, Portable Sacred Grounds, NTT-ICC Tokyo; Body Mechanique, The Wexner Center, Columbus, Ohio, 1999. He presented a major solo show at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University last year – Exchange Fields (working in conjunction with the dancer/coreographer Regina Van Berkel) presenting furniture/sculptures, video and sound. This work was initially commissioned by Vision Ruhr exhibition, Dortmund, Germany.

Seaman contributed a video set for the production of SLEEPERS GUTS by William Forsythe and Ballet Frankfurt. He was also commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada for the interactive work Red Dice / Dés Chiffrés which was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada. The work was featured in a show sponsored by the Langlois Foundation in Montreal. A second Dance/Installation work with Regina Van Berkel is entitled Inversion. This work toured through Europe visiting three locations – The Holland Dance Festival, The Steps Festival in Lausanne Switzerland, as well as a special premier exhibition of the work in Cologne, Germany. Seaman has ongoing research with Mark Hansen (Statistical Computer Science) UCLA, and Ingrid Verbauwhede, Electrical Engineering at UCLA entitled The Poly-sensing Environment.

He is currently working on a series of installations in conversation with the Scientist Otto Rössler — The Thoughtbody Environment. They are articulating a model for a neo-sentient situated robotic system. This suite of works explores issues of Neo-sentience, and in part the development of a model for an advanced electrochemical computing paradigm, observing the body on its deepest levels of functionality with the potential of developing a model for a sentient mechanism as one major goal. The work is taking didactic form through a series of research papers as well as poetic form through the creation of a series installations that include video works, music, poetic texts, drawings, working diagrams and large format photographs.

Seaman is currently working on a plan for a commission for the The University of Oslo, Department of Computing. He is also developing new digital works with David Durand – a Multi-modal relational database for the Thoughtbody Environment, and is involved in another collaboration with Daniel Howe – The Bisociation Engine.


Bill Seaman