Gary Leonard

Warm Moments, Oil Painting

2022

Enthralled with the lore and spirituality of American Indian cultures, his work often depicts these traditional subjects in nontraditional ways. Hawkins captures the raw sense of ele...

Amir Baradaran is a New York-based Iranian-Canadian ARtificial artist. As the Arts-Based Creative Research Associate and Adjunct Faculty at Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Baradaran is developing iBegoo, a multi-user software that supports artists with limited knowledge of game design and programing by streamlining and automating the process of writing for, directing, and producing interactive Augmented Reality (AR) experiences that include responsive characters enabled with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Baradaran is the recipient of the Knight Foundation Arts Award, Canada Council for the Arts New-Chapter & 150th Anniversary Prize, UC Berkeley Artist Residency (from Center for Critical Theory, New Media, Race and Gender Studies), International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Future of Augmented Reality Prize, and Morgan Stanley Pulse Art Fair grant. As a researcher at Columbia University Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab and a member of the School of the Arts Digital Storytelling Lab, Baradaran’s praxis and writings focus on a critical {AR}ticulation of visual vocabularies that use AR and AI technologies around notions of interactivity, non-linear narrative formation, po{AI}try, data-mining, failed utopias, racialized and gendered bodies, infiltration, and the ephemeral. Baradaran is a TEDx speaker, and an invited presenter to His Holiness Dalai Lama’s World Headquarters in Dharamsala for the Summit on Fostering Universal Ethics and Compassion through Museums. Baradaran is the co-author of the chapter Augmenting Empathy and Decolonizing AR/VR Mediums: How Do We Reimagine Augmented and Virtual Reality Experiences?” (Ed. By Gokcigdem, 2019), the author of While Data Privacy Talks, Capitalism Walks: Urging for a Critical Take on the Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem, and the Rise of the Machine (Ed. By Brielmaier, Forthcoming), and the co-editor of The Color of Queer Health Care: Experiences of Multiple Oppression in the Lives of Queer People of Color (-with Ryan, B. & Brotman, S. (eds.), 2006). Reviews of Baradaran’s work include Oxford University Press, Art in America, New York Observer, ARTNET, National Public Radio, BBC, Forbes, Euro-News, and L'Actualité. ARTINFO described his public art, Transient (installed in 6,300 NYC...