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Lynn Hershman Leeson (née Lynn Lester Hershman; born 1941) is a multimedia American artist and filmmaker. Her work combines art with social commentary, particularly on the relationship between people and technology. Leeson is a pioneer in new media, and her work with technology and in media-based practices helped legitimize digital art forms. Her interests include feminism, race, surveillance, and artificial intelligence and identity theft through algorithms and data tracking. She has been referred to as a "new media pioneer" for the prescient incorporation of new science and technologies in her work. She is based in San Francisco, California. Early life and education Lynn Hershman Leeson was born in 1941 in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father had emigrated there from Montreal. Leeson earned a bachelor's degree in Education, Museum Administration and Fine Arts from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (1963), and a Master of Fine Arts degree from San Francisco State University (1972). One aspect of Hershman's master's thesis involved writing art criticism under three pseudonyms: Prudence Juris, Herbert Goode and Gay Abandon. She received an honorary Ph.D degree from Pratt Institute in 2023. Career Leeson's work has as its themes: identity, consumerism, privacy in an era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and machines, feminism, violence, artificial intelligence and identity theft through algorithms and data tracking, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds. Her work grew out of an installation art and performance tradition, with an emphasis on interactivity. With a practice spanning more than 40 years, Leeson has worked in performance, moving image, drawing, collage, text-based work, site-specific interventions, and later new media / digital technologies, and interactive net-based works. Her projects explore technology in digital media and science. Leeson was the first artist to launch an interactive piece using Videodisc, a precursor to DVD (Lorna, 1983–84), as well the first artist to incorporate a touch screen interface into her artwork (Deep Contact, 1984–1989). Her networked robotic art installation (The Difference Engine #3, 1995–1998) is an example of her tendency to expand her artwork beyond the traditional realms of art. Work by Leeson is featured in the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the William Lehmbruck Museum, the ZKM (Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, di Rosa, the Walker Art Center and the University Art Museum, Berkeley, in addition to the private collections of Donald M. Hess and Arturo Schwarz, among many others. Commissions include projects for the Tate Modern, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, de Young Museum, Daniel Langlois and Stanford University, and Charles Schwab. In 2020, In 2021, Hershman Leeson was awarded a special mention from the Jury for her participation in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Work Early works Leeson's earlier works drew interest from themes within science fiction and assemblages of the human body and sexuality. After suffering from cardiomyopathy while pregnant in 1965, Leeson, created her piece Breathing Machine, composed of wax castes of her own face with dyes and assemblages as well as the recordings of her struggled breathing during her illness. The recording includes the voice asking the viewer a series of personal and uncomfortable questions. A New Future from the Passed: Lynn Hershman Leeson Comes into Her Own After 50 Years of Prophetic Work The 1968 piece Breathing Machine II also is composed of a wax face with a wig and butterflies contained in a wood and plexiglass display, expressing the a dichotomy of life and entrapment within the female body. Shaped by her experiences, Leeson's early works were political in nature and characterized as being closer inspections of femininity and gender roles. Alter egos From 1974 until 1978, Leeson 'developed' a fictional persona and alter ego of "Roberta Breitmore." It consisted not only of a physical self-transformation through make-up, clothing, and wigs, but a fully-fledged personality existing over an extended period of time and whose existence could be proven in the world through physical evidence: from a driver's license and credit card to letters from her psychiatrist. This was later taken to further lengths when Leeson introduced another three 'Robertas', by hiring other performers to enact her character. These 'clones' of Roberta adopted the same look and attire, engaged in some of Roberta's correspondence and also went on some of Roberta (Leeson's) dates. Towards the end, the 'original' Roberta withdrew from her character leaving the three 'clones' to continue her work, until they were retired in a performance at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, Italy in 1978, during an exorcism at the grave of Lucrezia Borgia. What remains are the physical artefacts of any life: documentation and personal effects such as legal and medical documents and a diary. Between 1995 and 2000 Roberta transformed into the CybeRoberta, an interactive artificial intelligent sculpture on the web. In 2006 Roberta Breitmore developed into a character in Second Life. After Stanford University acquired her archive, Leeson worked with Henry Lowood (Stanford Humanities Lab) to convert parts of the archive into something for a broader public. They worked to recreate and re-enact both Roberta Breitmore and The Dante Hotel in a virtual space. Room of One's Own (1990–1993) From 1990 to 1993, Lynn Hershman Leeson produced a project called Room of One's Own. The project is said to be inspired by Thomas Edison's kinetograph, a device where a film is displayed on loop and an individual is allowed to view it through a peephole. The project, Room of One’s Own, allows the viewer to peer inside of a box through a small periscopic device and see a bed, telephone, chair, television, and some clothes on the floor. In the back of the small room, a woman appears on a screen and it is there where she asks the following: “What are you doing here? Please look somewhere else!”. There are about 17 segments and depending on where the viewer is focusing, a different video plays in the back wall. Throughout the experience, the viewer is positioned to be a voyeur, an individual who gains sexual gratification by watching an unsuspecting individual either partly undress, get naked or engage in sexual activities, but any pleasure that is gained, is quickly frustrated in many different ways. At the end, the viewer's reflection is shown in a small television in the back of the room. LORNA (1983) LORNA was an early project of Leeson's from 1983, and was the first interactive laser artdisk art project. LORNA tells the story of an Agoraphobic woman, viewers have the option of directing her life into several possible plots and endings. LORNA never left her one-room apartment. .... Discover the Ada Lowood popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ada Lowood books.