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Artist Profile
Tamiko Thiel
Tamiko Thiel has received multiple honors for her life’s work exploring the interplay of place, space, the body and cultural identity in works encompassing a supercomputer, objects, installations, digital prints in 2D and 3D, videos, interactive 3d virtual worlds (VR), augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI). In 2018 she received the SAT Montreal iX Visionary Pioneer Award, and in 2022 was honored with a retrospective at the Kunstverein Wolfsburg in Germany. In 2024 CAI (Contemporary Art Issue) Magazine ranked her in the top 10 most famous digital artists in the world; she was part of the inaugural cohort inducted into the new AWE XR Hall of Fame; and SIGGRAPH, the world’s premiere organization for research and development of computer graphics in industry, academia and the arts, honored her with the Distinguished Artist Lifetime Achievement Award for Digital Art.
Artwork
Plastocene Reef
WALK-IN: no slot reservation necessary
Transform your environment with a wall treatment of a deep blue reef, festooned with exotic and colorful corals! View the wall with the free ARpoise augmented reality app to see the corals grow out of the wall and come alive, swaying gently in the ocean currents. Brightly colored reef fish dart amongst the corals and the burbling sound of a scuba diver's breathing apparatus provides a soothing ambient background.
On closer examination, you will see that the "corals" growing out of your wall are made of colorful plastic garbage, and some of the "fish" are flocking plastic debris - a reminder of how our addiction to plastics has filled all life on Earth with plastic. Only 9% of plastics can be recycled at all, and much of it is sent to countries with poor waste management, and ends up in our oceans. Plastic waste is endangering already stressed coral reefs - and in Greece divers discovered a "coral reef" entirely made of plastic.
I will donate 10% of all sales to organizations fighting ocean plastics worldwide.
