IMD Forum for 11/5/08: Jim Campbell

Originally trained as a mathematician and electrical engineer, Campbell started to make interactive work in video and with electronic components in the late 1980s. In his work in Phantasmagoria, Campbell explores the limits of legibility by employing electronic systems in which the image is converted to its basic elements, demonstrating that both eye and brain tend to supply the missing information.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, Campbell has virtually no formal training as an artist. His art apprenticeship consisted of repairing video equipment and, later, designing integrated circuits for video in Silicon Valley. But at a time when many artists who want to create technologically-based art seek a partner who knows the electronics and will leave the creativity to them, Campbell is a whole different thing — a technocrat who discovered early on that he has an artists soul.

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Education

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