Dr. Golan Levin

Biography

Golan Levin is an artist, engineer, researcher, and educator interested in new intersections between machine code, visual culture, and critical making. His work combines equal measures of the whimsical, provocative, and sublime, presenting an eclectic variety of online, installation, and performance media. Through responsive artifacts, virtual environments, and media provocations, Levin applies creative twists to digital technologies that highlight the relationship between machines and human action, awakening participants to their potential as creative actors. His projects engage themes such as interactive gestural robotics, the tactical potential of personal digital fabrication, the new aesthetics of nonverbal interaction, and information visualization as a mode of critical inquiry. Levin is currently a Professor of Electronic Art at Carnegie Mellon University, where his pedagogy is concerned with the use of computation as a medium for critical inquiry and cultural innovation. He teaches studio courses in computer science that cover themes like interactive art, experimental capture, generative design, and visualization. Levin has also served as the Director and Co-Director of CMU’s Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, a laboratory dedicated to supporting atypical, anti-disciplinary research at the intersection of arts, science, and technology. His work has been included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and he has participated in the Whitney Biennial, among other accolades. He has received grants from prestigious organizations and was recognized by Fast Company magazine as one of the '50 Designers Shaping the Future' in October 2012.

Research Interests