Michael Mandiberg
Michael Mandiberg is an artist, programmer, designer and educator. His work varies from web applications about environmental impact to conceptual performances about subjectivity, to sculptures made from laser cut reference books.
His recent projects include Security Patterns, a series of laser burned drawings and found reference books laser cut with poetic epigrams, HowMuchItCosts.us, a car direction site that incorporates the financial and carbon cost of driving, and the groundbreaking textbook Digital Foundations: an Intro to Media Design that teaches formal principles through design software. Recent projects include The Real Costs, a browser plug-in that inserts carbon footprints into airplane travel & car directions websites, and Oil Standard, a browser plug-in that converts all prices on any web page in their equivalent value in barrels of oil.
He is well known for his year long performance and e-commerce website Shop Mandiberg, which marketed and sold all of his possessions, and for AfterSherrieLevine.com, where he made available hi-resolution scans of the Walker Evans images rephotographed by Sherrie Levine, complete with certificates of authenticity to be signed by the user themselves. The Essential Guide to Performing Michael Mandiberg, an extensive DIY guide prepared for a life art performance was included by the Electronic Literature Organization as one of the foundational works of electronic literature to be included in the Library of Congress. From 2001 to 2006 he edited the Calls and Opps list, the most popular email list for calls for work and artist opportunities.
He is a founding member of Eyebeam's Sustainability Research Group. Through this forum he has spearheaded collaborations such as the Eco-Vis Design Challenge, and the critically praised Feedback exhibition. He created the retroreflective Bright Bike that Treehugger.com called "obnoxiously bright." Working with fellow research group member Steve Lambert, he created the Bright Idea Shade, a Creative Commons licensed flat-pack laser cut lampshade for bare CFL lightbulbs.
His work has been exhibited at such venues as the New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York City, Ars Electronica Center in Linz, ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, and Transmediale Festival, Berlin. His work has been featured in such books as Tribe and Jana’s New Media Art, Blais and Ippolito’s At the Edge of Art, and Greene’s Internet Art. He is a recipient of grants, residencies, and fellowships from Eyebeam, Rhizome.org, Turbulence.org/Jerome Foundation, The Banff Centre, and the City University of New York.
An Assistant Professor of Design and Digital Media at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, he is currently an Senior Fellow at Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology. Raised in Portland, Oregon, he rides his bicycle around his adopted home of Brooklyn.
