Camille Utterback is an internationally acclaimed artist and pioneer in the field of digital and interactive art. Utterback’s work explores the aesthetic and experiential possibilities of linking computational systems to human movement and physicality in visually layered ways. Her work focuses attention on the continued relevance and richness of the body in our increasingly mediated world. To create her projects, Utterback combines various sensing and display technologies with the custom software she writes. Whether expressed in the form of architectural-scale projections, custom LED lighting, or intimate sculptures with embedded LCD screens, Utterback’s work engages participants in a process of embodied discovery as they explore the possibilities and behaviors of her physically engaged systems.
Utterback’s work has been exhibited at galleries, festivals, and museums internationally, including The National Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; The Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville, TN; The Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; ZERO1 The Art & Technology Network, San Jose, CA; Haines Gallery, San Francisco, CA; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, The American Museum of the Moving Image, New York, NY; The NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo; The Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Netherlands Institute for Media Art; The Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art; The Center for Contemporary Art, Kiev, Ukraine; and the Ars Electronica Center, Austria.
Utterback’s work is in private and public collections including The Smithsonian American Art Museum; The Thoma Foundation; The Orange County Museum of Art; Hewlett Packard; Henderson Development Corporation in Hong Kong, China; Itaú Cultural Institute in São Paolo, Brazil; and La Caixa Foundation in Barcelona, Spain.
Awards and honors include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2009), a Transmediale International Media Art Festival Award (2005), a Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship (2002) and a commission from the Whitney Museum for the CODeDOC project on their ArtPort website (2002). Utterback holds a US patent for a video tracking system she developed while working as a research fellow at New York University (2004).
Her work has been featured in KQED TV (2012), The Huffington Post (2010), New American Painting (2009), The New York Times (2010, 2009, 2003, 2002, 2001), Art in America (October, 2004), Wired Magazine (February 2004), ARTnews (2001) and many other publications. Camille’s work has also been included in The MIT Press’ Aesthetics of of Interaction in Digital Art (2013) by Katja Kwastek and Inventing The Medium: Principles of Interaction Design as a Cultural Practice (2011) by Janet H Murray, Thames & Hudson’s World of Art – Digital Art (2003) by Christiane Paul, and many other books.
Recent public commissions include works for the Liberty Mutual Group, the FOR-SITE Foundation, The Sacramento Airport, The City of San Jose, California, The City of Fontana, California, and the City of St. Louis Park, Minnesota.
Utterback is currently an Assistant Professor of Art Practice in the Department of Art & Art History, and by courtesy of Computer Science in the Department of Engineering at Stanford University. She holds a BA in Art from Williams College, and a Masters degree from The Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.
Utterback is represented by Haines Gallery in San Francisco, California.