Video History Project

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John Klima

Circa 1978, Brooklyn-based Klima (b. 1965) attempted to code a 3D maze on a TRS-80 with 4k RAM and failed miserably. He has been obsessed with 3D ever since. Fascinated by the first primitive flight simulators and CAD programs, he began to build 3D graphics environments, and to write source code.

Klima's work has been exhibited extensively - most notably his solo show at Postmasters Gallery titled "Go Fish," his market simulation "ecosystm" included in "BitStreams," curated by Larry Rinder at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the massive "EARTH" browser, part of the 2002 Whitney Biennial Net Art Selection, and the "glasbead" performance in the Media Z Lounge at the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

His international exhibitions include The Museum for Communication in Bern, Switzerland, the NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, Japan, and numerous international festivals. By drawing upon gaming and the various possibilities of manipulating and transliterating data, John Klima's work occupies new territory in media art. Although there is an obvious connection between gaming and interactive digital art, and the gaming industry has played an important role in the development of multi-user environments, the parameters of this connection are almost never subjected to serious, aesthetic investigation. Employing a variety of technologies to produce both hardware and software, Klima's work consistently connects the virtual to the real, addressing issues of remote responsibility, and blurring the distinctions between the simulated and the concrete. https://www.cityarts.com/

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"John Klima." Video History Project, Experimental Television Center, 2011. https://www.videohistoryproject.org/john-klima.

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Last modified 18 June 2011

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