Few artists have worked across such a wide range of media and had such a far-reaching impact on digital culture than Rebecca Allen. Since the early 1970s, she has fused art, science, and technology to create interactive experiences that engage viewers on multiple sensory levels. A pioneer of digital art who helped to animate the first virtual bodies on screen, Allen continues to push the creative potential of AI, AR, video, and virtual reality today. Her installations often use 3D animation, motion graphics, and interactivity to produce virtual experiences and provoke visceral responses.
Over the years, Allen’s collaborations with Nam June Paik and Kraftwerk have changed the course of video art and pop cultural history. While her work on the Aspen Movie Map project at MIT created the first interactive map long before the days of Google Street View. With many of her most famous works currently on display at SODA’s Modal Gallery, she sat down with Modal’s curator, Valentino Catricalà, to discuss her remarkable career, from MTV to NFTs.