John GERRARD

During his residency in Linz, Austria, John Gerrard worked with 3D portrait scans, designing and creating interfaces to allow the user control over the models expressions and viewing angle. The artist's understanding of the contemporary portrait was influenced by extensive Internet research, studying the way in which Internet users utilise new audiovisual editing programs to create virtual entities and finding that much of this amateur portrait work is imbued with erotic overtones.
He also noted the strong recurring use of characters from computer and video games in these original creations and researched virtual characters placed in real environments to create augmented or mixed realities.

The Ars Electronica Center focuses on promoting collaborative projects. Graphic designers, editors, computer programmers and artists all share workshop space. In addition to significant financial and technical backing, this atmosphere has given John Gerrard both a valuable sounding board for his own ideas and a source of inspiration in the form of other projects already carried out at the Center. John Gerrard’s work is still in progress and will be presented at the Ars Electronica Festival in September 2003 and at the Dublin Gallery of Photography in October 2003.