Glorianna Davenport

Glorianna Davenport (born 1944)^[1] is an American artist, media maker, and conservationist. Davenport attended Mount Holyoke College.^[2] Davenport’s work was included in the 1971 exhibition Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists held at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum^[3]

Davenport co-founded the MIT Media Lab,^[4] then directed the Interactive cinema research group from 1987–2004 and the Media Fabrics research group from 2004-2008.

In 1979-81, Davenport, working with cinematographer Richard Leacock, filmed and edited "Remembering Niels Bohr: 1885-1962".

In 1982-1987, Davenport produced, co-filmed, edited and designed an interactive delivery system for her documentary "New Orleans in Transition: 1983-1986". Conceived of as an in-depth cinematic case study of urban change before during and after the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, the interactive video disc version of the film as delivered on a Project Athena workstation in 1987 invited students to view the movie based on a particular story thread or character and allowed students to edit material from the film and place it into their written papers.^[5]

In Wheel of Life, Davenport collaborated with Stanford Professor Larry Friedlander on a large-scale computer-enhanced theater space and narrative piece, which has become a model for augmented interactive spaces. This work was noteworthy for incorporating multiple users interacting simultaneously with a computer and with each other.^[6]

Davenport retired from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Summer of 2008. From 2008 to the present, she has managed the transition of Tidmarsh Farms, a former 610 acre cranberry farm in Plymouth Massachusetts, into conservation and wetland restoration.^[7] In 2011, Davenport founded Living Observatory.^[8]