Joseph Nechvatal

Joseph Nechvatal (born January 15, 1951) is an American post-conceptual digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses.

Joseph Nechvatal was born in Chicago.

He studied fine art and philosophy at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Cornell University and Columbia University.

He earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy of Art and Technology at the Planetary Collegium at University of Wales, Newport and has taught art theory and art history at the School of Visual Arts.

He has had many solo exhibitions, including one in Berlin

Beginning in 1979 he became associated with the artist group Colab, organized the Public Arts International/Free Speech series, and helped established the non-profit group ABC No Rio.

His work in the early 1980s chiefly consisted of postminimalist gray graphite drawings that were often photomechanically enlarged.

In 1983 he co-founded the avant-garde electronic art music audio project Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine.

In 1984, Nechvatal began work on an opera called XS: The Opera Opus (1984-6) with the no wave musical composer Rhys Chatham.

He began using computers and robotics to make post-conceptual paintings in 1986 and later, in his signature work, began to employ self-created computer viruses.

He exhibited computer-robotic paintings at Documenta 8 in 1987.

From 1991 to 1993, he was artist-in-residence at the Louis Pasteur Atelier in Arbois, France and at the Saline Royale/Ledoux Foundation's computer lab.

There he worked on The Computer Virus Project, his first artistic experiment with computer viruses and computer virus animation.

A book of his collected essays entitled Towards an Immersive Intelligence: Essays on the Work of Art in the Age of Computer Technology and Virtual Reality (1993–2006) was published by Edgewise Press in 2009.

From 1999 to 2013, Nechvatal taught art theories of immersive virtual reality and the viractual at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (SVA).

Viractualism is an art theory concept developed by Nechvatal in 1999 from Ph.D. research Nechvatal conducted at the University of Wales College.

There he developed his concept of the viractual, which strives to create an interface between the actual and the virtual.

In 2002 he extended his experimentation into viral artificial life through a collaboration with the programmer Stephane Sikora of music2eye in a work called the Computer Virus Project II.

Nechvatal has also created a noise music work called viral symphOny, a collaborative sound symphony created by using his computer virus software at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University.

In 2021 Pentiments released Nechvatal's retrospective audio cassette called Selected Sound Works (1981-2021) and in 2022 his The Viral Tempest, a double vinyl LP of new audio work.

Also in 2009, his book Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances was published.

In 2011, his book Immersion Into Noise was published by Open Humanities Press in conjunction with the University of Michigan Library's Scholarly Publishing Office.