Amir Baradaran (b. 1977) is a New York based Iranian-Canadian ARtificial artist. As the Creative Research Associate at Columbia University’s Computer Science department (CG and User Interfaces Lab), his pioneering Augmented Reality {AR}t works question the role of machines and the promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our everyday life. Baradaran’s praxis has inspired academic researchers, art professionals and technology developers alike. He is interested in the articulation of visual vocabularies that use AI/AR technologies for storytelling around notions of interactivity, spherical narrative formation, infiltration, data-mining, failed utopias and the ephemeral. His bodies of work, writings, and public speaking, including his TEDx talk, engage with the ways in which participatory experiences and new-media instigate speculations about the racialized self, sexualized body, radical subjectivities and technology.

Baradaran is the recipient of the prestigious Knight Foundation Art Challenge Award, the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality first place prize, Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter Prize (celebrating 150th anniversary of Canada) and UC Berkeley’s Artist Residency (from Center for New Media, Critical Theory, Performance Studies, and Race and Gender Studies). Morgan Stanley commissioned him for the opening ceremony of Pulse Art Fair during Art Basel Miami Beach.

In addition to being discussed in academic publications from Cambridge and Oxford University Press, the New York Observer, ARTNET, National Public Radio, BBC, Forbes, Art21, Euro-News, Dot429, L’Actualité, Miami New Times and Radio Television Suisse have also reviewed his work. ARTINFO described his public-art installation, Transient (6,300 NYC taxicabs, 1.5M viewers), as “one of the most interesting urban interventions.” Frenchising Mona Lisa (AR installation/infiltration in the Louvre) was featured on the cover of ArtinAmerica.com in which Baradaran claims to be part of the permanent collection of the Louvre—until this institution finds legal means to remove his AR(t) project. In his book, Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics (2015), Robert Stam examines how Baradaran’s work “enacts in ‘media jujitsu’ and instigates critical speculation about national identities, Islamophobia, and curatorial practices.”

Baradaran has pursued his artistic and academic endeavors through Growing Panes (AR performance, British Museum, Art&Patronage, 2012) and other projects such as Marry Me to the End of Love (initially installed at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 2012), FutARism (2011), SamovAR & Tempest in the Teahouse (AR installation and performance, Armory Arts Week, 2012), Selfie-Centered (Art Basel Miami Beach, 2014) and Man Na Manam + {AR}ticulations of the Self (Istanbul Archeology Museum, 2015). He is currently working on two large-scale interactive storytelling projects using Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Augmented Reality- to be installed in Florida and Canada. Also, with the support of the Knight Foundation, he is working on a global platform for practitioners and thought leaders at the intersection of art and emerging technologies to create a roadmap for shaping the conversation around Artificial Intelligence and the future of the art world. amir.baradaran@columbia.edu amirbaradaran.com | @Amir_Baradaran