Alan Sondheim

New-media artist, writer, musician, and theorist

Alan Sondheim was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania; he lives with his partner, Vea Lucca, in Brooklyn NY. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Brown University in English. A new-media artist, writer, musician, and theorist, he has exhibited, performed and lectured internationally.

Sondheim’s videos and films have been shown internationally, most recently at Millennium Film in New York (2009), Yonsei University in South Korea, Subtle Technologies (Toronto, 2009), Eyebeam (2009), and Brown’s Interrupt Festival (2008). Sondheim recently ended a solo installation and nine-month residency at the Odyssey exhibition space in the virtual world, Second Life.

In 2004,Sondheim had a five-week residency at the Center for Literary Computing and the Virtual Environments Laboratory, both at West Virginia University; in 2006 he was a 6 week resident of the same. In 2005 he was resident artist/writer at Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana. He produced two cds at the latter (his older records have been reissued by ESP-Disk and Fire Museum). Two new cds have since appeared with Fire Museum, a vinyl record with Qbico, and another cd with Porter Records. In January-August 2008 he was on an eight-month National Science Foundation (NSF) consultancy at WVU. His research is in the art and aesthetics of codework, body and behavioral modeling, virtual environments, and avatars in general. In 2007, Sondheim was also the recipient of a new media New York State Council of the Arts grant.

On and off, for the past 17 years, Sondheim has worked with Vea Lucca and the Swiss dancer/ choreographer Foofwa d’Imobilite; their work has premiered across Europe and the U.S. Sondheim’s own laptop and Second Life performances have been widely seen; most recently he has been involved in online avatar performance with Sandy Baldwin for live audiences in Paris, London, Basel, Portland OR, and Providence RI. Sondheim also collaborates with Myk Freedman, lap steel, and Vea Lucca, voice/performance.

Current interests include aesthetics and productions of virtual environments and installations, mapping with motion capture and 3d laser scanners, Buddhist philosophy and its relation to avatars and online environments, and experimental choreography.

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