YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO.- The Butler Institute of American Art presents today “Eduardo Kac: Maybe Then If Only As,” on view through April 25, 2004. This exhibition by an internationally renowned holographer and chair of the department of Art and Technology at the Art Institute of Chicago School investigates the nature of language and its relationship to the visual. The artist creates holographic “poems” which are essentially digital holograms that address language both as material and subject matter. 

Eduardo Kac is internationally recognized for his interactive net installations and his bio art. A pioneer of telecommunications art in the pre-Web ’80s, Eduardo Kac (pronounced "Katz") emerged in the early ’90s with his radical telepresence and biotelematic works. His visionary combination of robotics and networking explores the fluidity of subject positions in the post-digital world. His work deals with issues that range from the mythopoetics of online experience (Uirapuru) to the cultural impact of biotechnology (Genesis); from the changing condition of memory in the digital age (Time Capsule) to distributed collective agency (Teleporting an Unknown State); from the problematic notion of the "exotic" (Rara Avis) to the creation of life and evolution (GFP Bunny). 

At the dawn of the twenty-first century Kac shocked the world with his "transgenic art"--first with a groundbreaking net installation entitled Genesis (1999), which included an "artist’s gene" he invented, and then with his fluorescent rabbit called Alba (2000). 

From his first experiments online in 1985 to his current convergence of the digital and the biological, Kac has always investigated the philosophical and political dimensions of communication processes. Equally concerned with the aesthetic and the social aspects of verbal and non-verbal interaction, in his work Kac examines linguistic systems, dialogic exchanges, and interspecies communication. Kac’s pieces, which often link virtual and physical spaces, propose alternative ways of understanding the role of communication phenomena in creating shared realities. 

Kac merges multiple media and biological processes to create hybrids from the conventional operations of existing communications systems. Kac first employed telerobotics in 1986 motivated by a desire to convert electronic space from a medium of representation to a medium for remote agency. He creates pieces in which actions carried out by Internet participants have direct physical manifestation in a remote gallery space. Often relying on the indefinite suspension of closure and the intervention of the participant, his work encourages dialogical interaction and confronts complex issues concerning identity, agency, responsibility, and the very possibility of communication. 

Kac’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Exit Art and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, and Lieu Unique, Nantes, France; OK Contemporary Art Center, Linz, Austria; InterCommunication Center (ICC), Tokyo; Julia Friedman Gallery, Chicago; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; and Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. Kac’s work has been showcased in biennials such as 1st Yokohama Triennial, Japan, 49th International Venice Biennale, Italy, 1st Mercosul Biennial, Brazil, and 4th Saint Petersburg Biennial, Russia. His work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection in Chicago, and the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, among others. He is currently working on a public art commission for the University of Minnesota, which will be on the permanent collection of the Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis. 

Kac’s work has been featured both in contemporary art publications (Flash Art, Artforum, ARTnews, Kunstforum, Tema Celeste, Artpress, NY Arts Magazine) and in the mass media (ABC, BBC, PBS, Le Monde, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, New York Times). The recipient of many awards, Kac lectures and publishes worlwide.  

Kac is a member of the editorial board of the journal Leonardo, published by MIT Press. Kac’s writings on art, which have appeared in several books and periodicals in many countries, will be published in 2003 by the University of Michigan Press. Two books published by Kibla (Maribor, Slovenia) document Kac’s work with critical texts by North American, European, South American, and Japanese scholars: "Teleporting An Unknown State" (1998) and "Eduardo Kac: Telepresence, Biotelematics, Transgenic Art" (2000). A third book will appear in 2003: "The Eighth Day: The Transgenic Art of Eduardo Kac", Sheilah Britton and Dan Collins, eds., (The Institute for Studies in the Arts, Arizona State University, Tempe / D.A.P. Distributed Art Publishers, New York). 

Eduardo Kac is a Ph.D. research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Inquiry in Interactive Arts (CAiiA) at the University of Wales, Newport, United Kingdom. He is Chair of the Art and Technology Department at tthe School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Eduardo Kac is represented by Julia Friedman Gallery, Chicago.