Location: Stanford / San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Medium: Sound Art, Electronic Media, Interactive Installation, Performance
Website: pauldemarinis.org
Paul DeMarinis (b. 1948, Cleveland, Ohio) has been working as an electronic media artist since 1971 and is one of the foundational figures in the history of sound art and computer-based performance. He received a BA in Music and Filmmaking from Antioch College and an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College, where he studied with Robert Ashley and Terry Riley. He is Professor of Art and Art History (and by courtesy, Music) at Stanford University, and has been artist-in-residence at the Exploratorium (San Francisco) and Xerox PARC (Palo Alto). He received the Golden Nica for Interactive Art at Ars Electronica in 2006 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999.
DeMarinis practices what he calls a “noisy archaeology” of communication technology — excavating the dreams, metaphors, and failures buried inside obsolete machines. Telegraphs, phonograph cylinders, early radio, electrical circuits: these are his raw materials, treated not as historical curiosities but as objects that still hum with unfinished cultural meaning. His installations are often quietly playful — a goldfish interrupts a laser beam and changes the music; jets of water carry audio signals that only become audible when caught by an umbrella — but the conceptual stakes are serious. He was a founding member of the Bay Area experimental music collective the League of Automatic Music Composers, one of the first groups to use networked computers in live performance, and created music for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
- The Messenger (1998, extensively revised 2005) — Internet-driven installation displaying incoming email messages in real time on three alphabetic telegraph receivers, reanimating early electrical communication mythology. Won the Golden Nica for Interactive Art at Ars Electronica, Linz (2006); shown at Tesla (Berlin), the Akademie der Künste, and the 2006 Shanghai Biennale
- The Edison Effect (1993) — A series of improbable devices that play ancient phonograph records, inscribed clay pots, and holograms of records with laser beams; in the element Al and Mary Do the Waltz, the beam passes through a bowl of live goldfish whose movements interrupt the light and alter the sound; premiered at SF Art Institute 1993
- RainDance (1998) — Twenty streams of water modulated by audio signals create music and sound when intercepted by visitors’ umbrellas; large-scale commission for the Swatch Pavilion at Expo 1998, Lisbon; subsequently shown at Ars Electronica and numerous international venues
- Gray Matter (1995) — Interactive electrified objects that produce sound and sensation when stroked with the hand, using the conductivity of the human body itself as the instrument; premiered at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (1995); included in the international sound art exhibition sonambiente, Berlin (1996)
- 2021 — Resonance (solo), Qualia Contemporary Art
- 2008 — International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville (BIACS)
- 2007 — Art Basel Miami Beach
- 2006 — The Messenger, Tesla, Berlin; Golden Nica, Ars Electronica, Linz; Shanghai Biennale
- 1998 — RainDance, Expo 1998, Lisbon (public commission)
- 1996 — Gray Matter, sonambiente, Berlin; Sound Waves and Scan-O-Vision, Atlanta Olympics (public commission)
- SFMOMA (San Francisco); Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco); San Jose Museum of Art; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford; The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh); Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon; I.C.C. (Tokyo)
- Guggenheim Fellow (1999); NEA, NYFA, Rockefeller Foundation fellowships
- Faculty profile: Stanford Department of Art & Art History
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