Transformed City: Krakow
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source: rogalaorg

Miroslaw Rogala’s Transformed City Series (1997-2000) portrays an exploration of city landscapes in different sites in the world — the artist’s visits to his homeland (Krakow and Warsaw), and New York City — contrasting the medieval city of Krakow to the contemporary metropolis of modern America, and emerging cityscape of Europe. The content represents a transformation of identity, space, and experience.

Transformed City Series is an artist’s new canvas, digital photography. The images are transformed through a custom designed VR (virtual reality) software designed by Ford Oxaal/Minds-Eye-View Perspective Software) – changing from a focused viewpoint to an immersive 360 degree surrounding view contained in a single frame.
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source: miroslawrogala

Miroslaw Rogala is acclaimed as one of the most important interactive media artists in the world. His works are known for large-scale complexity, realized as collaborative efforts with innovative artists and software/hardware developers worldwide including interactive media, digital photography, installations, music and performance works. The multitude of impressions and the variety of his visually transmitted world make each encounter a new experience. Rogala is most famous for his large-scale interactive multimedia installations and video theater pieces. His work has been praised by the Chicago Tribune as “an exhilarating interweaving of video, performance, and numerous other media.”
He came from Poland to the United States in 1979, where he earned an MFA from the Chicago Art Institute. He is among the first artists in the world to receive a pioneering Ph.D. from the University of Wales, Newport, Wales, with a dissertation on interactive public art. His artwork is included in permanent collections at leading museums and art centers all over the world, including the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, ZKM/ Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany; The Biennale d’Art Contemporaine, Lyon, France; Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the MOMA and Chelsea Museum in NYC, New York.
Rogala’s most recent work involves a unique blend of photography and creative imagery engaging landscape and still life images transformed through the use of combined technology involving a specialized Minds-Eye-View 360 degree perspective software.
A frequent collaborator with other artists, Rogala has worked with dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, filmmaker and installation artist Carolee Schneemann, Chicago figurative artist Ed Paschke, theater director Byrne Piven, Shigeko Kubota and forthcoming with Chicago Beau and many others.
Rogala is recognized as a collegiate educator and has served in leadership capacities including Chair of the Department of CGIM/ Computer Graphics and Interactive Media at Pratt Institute NYC and was one of the founding members of the first MFA Electronic Arts Degree at IEAR Studio, Integrated Electronic Arts at Renssellaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. He was the founding director of the Performance and Intergrated Media Arts (PIMA) at the Brooklyn College in New York. He currently directs the Graduate Program and Digital Arts Center for KSI/ Knowledge Systems Institute in Chicago, IL USA.
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source: rogalaorg

A central concept of my artworks is ‘freedom of speech.’ My understanding of freedom and democracy is not only “rights”and “privileges” ­ the traditional definition in the USA ­ but also of responsibilities.

Interactive Media give audiences the “right” to work on the content and even on the form of the work; it also entails, in the shift of emphasis from artist to (v)user*, a shift of responsibility for the work. The participant’s interactions therefore become integral to the work to the extent that the (v)user takes up that responsibility, chooses the amount of time and involvement each cares to give, and is rewarded accordingly. In this way creativity can be shared, and is integral to the work, but only when the (v)users learn, not just the interface mechanisms, but the principles of democratic responsibility for their actions as well.

This extends, in my most recent work, to have responsibility for the mutuality of social interactions, both with others in the same geographical space and now with (v)users linked via computer-mediated communication networks in remote locations. The intent of my works has grown from the individual¹s responsibility for his/her experience to the social construction of the work by multiple (v)users ­ a more complex model of democratic artistic experience ­ and finally towards the practical construction of an utopian network, in which the possibilities and demands of global media democracy can be explored.