Adam Brown

Biography

Adam Brown is an internationally recognized conceptual artist whose work incorporates art and science hybrids including living and biological systems, robotics, molecular chemistry and emerging technologies that take the form of installation, interactive objects, video, performance and photography. Brown’s creative research is informed by a background in Intermedia, a philosophy that provides a framework for breaking down and combining different models of thought and bringing together disparate disciplines, leading to the establishment of new forms of research and creative activity. To this end, most of his creative and research endeavors are collaborative in nature.

His most recent project, The Great Work of the Metal Lover (with Dr. Kazem Kashefi) is an artwork that sits at the intersection of art, science and alchemy. The piece received an Honorary Mention and was exhibited at Ars Electronica 2012 and received an Award of Distinction from Vida 14.

Origins of Life: Experiment #1.x, is a working scientific experiment using simulated lightning, heat and primordial gases that has been repositioned as an art installation (with Dr. Robert Root Bernstein). The “open source” project, which invites contributions and participation from other scientists, builds on Miller’s 1953 iconic experiment. In 2011 the piece was selected as part of Ars Electronica and the Synth-ethic exhibition in Vienna.  In 2012, Brown and Root-Bernstein received a grant from the National Science Foundation to continue this project.

His earlier work Bion (with Dr. Andrew Fagg) makes reference to an individual element of primordial biological energy identified as “orgone” by the scientist Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957). The interactive installation is a sensor network composed of more then one thousand, mass-produced, three-dimensional glowing and chirping autonomous robots called bions.  In 2006 Brown was selected as an emerging artist to exhibit this piece in Archival to the Contemporary, Six Decades of the Sculptors Guild and that same year it was also selected for SigGraph in Boston. In 2010 the work appeared in the Brazilian Biennial Emoção Art.ficial 5.0 in Sao Paulo.

Brown’s work has been written about widely in publications such as the New York Times, Wired, Nature, Sculpture Magazine, Washington Post, Forbes, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Discover and the Huffington Post.

Brown currently is an Associate Professor at Michigan State University where he created a new area of study called Electronic Art & Intermedia. He is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts at Ball State University, and serves as an Artist in Residence for the Michigan State University BEACON (Bio/Computational Evolution in Action Consortium) project, funded by the NSF. Previously he was an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he developed an electronic art program called Symbiotic Media. He received his BA, MA and MFA from the University of Iowa.