Adrianne Wortzel
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Adrianne Wortzel | |
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| Born | October 7, 1941 |
| Education | The Brooklyn Museum Art School, Brooklyn College, The School of Visual Arts, Hunter College, |
| Known for | Media Art, Telerobotics, Robotics and Theater |
| Notable work | Camouflagetown, The Electronic Chronicles, Battle of the Pyramids, NoMad is an Island, The Ships Detective, The Hidden Archivists at the Anchorage, Veils of Transference, Tableaux Vivant Dans Un Monde Parfait, ELIZA REDUX |
| Website | https://adriannewortzel.com |
Adrianne Wortzel[1] is a pioneering media artist based in New York City. Since the 1990s, her work has integrated robotics into performance art, installation, and electronic literature in order to examine technology's impact on both quotidian experiences and broader society. Throughout six decades, she has remained an innovator in experimental media art, playfully, and critically exploring the presence of technology in everyday life.
Wortzel was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1941. As a child, she was impacted by four abstract murals in the basement community rooms of the Willamsburg Houses where she lived. The murals, by Albert Swinden, Balcomb Greene, Paul Kelpe, and Ilya Bolotowsky, were commissioned 1936–1938 by the painter Burgoyne Diller as Director of the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. Covered over by paint and rubber cement in subsequent years, these works were rediscovered, restored and now live in permanent installation at the Brooklyn Museum.[2]
Between 1956 and 1963, Wortzel studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, where she was mentored by artists including Isaac Soyer, Reuben Tam, Tom Doyle, and Reuben Kadish. Working extensively from live models and still life, she developed foundational skills in drawing, painting and sculpture. Soon after, she enrolled at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, initially majoring in English, but going on to study painting with Ad Reinhardt, Jimmy Ernst, Louise Bourgeois. She graduated in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts and departmental honors.
She later continued her education at The School of Visual Arts enrolling in its Computer Arts Program - the first MFA program in the United States dedicated to Computoer Arts.[3] She earned her Master of Fine Arts in Computer Arts in 1996. During this period, she began working with emerging digital technologies, including code-driven robots and networked systems, marking a significant expansion of her artistic practice into time-based, interactive, and technologically driven artforms.