UPCOMING

27/28 March: SYMPOSIUM @ ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe / Germany

"ENVISIONING AI: Legacy and Impact of the Connection Machine"

40th Anniversary of the Connection Machines Symposium and Exhibition (FREE - no registration required)




Location: ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany
Symposium dates: 27 and 28 March, 2026 - in person and ONLINE (website will have YouTube link)
CM-2 exhibition dates: 25 March - 02 August, 2026 (in foyer - FREE entry)

Preliminary Program

(details TBA on website (watch this link for updates and program)

March 27 afternoon: 14:00 - 20:00
Technical legacy of the Connection Machines, moderated by Prof. Michael Beigl (KIT), Tamiko Thiel (CM-1/CM-2 product designer & artist)

• (Partial list) via zoom: Danny Hillis (CM inventor), Prof. Thomas Haigh (History of Computing), Prof Johannes Schemmel (neuromorphic computing).
• (Partial list) in person: Brewster Kahle (CM-1 lead engineer, Internet Archive founder), Lew Tucker (CM-5 software architect, cloud computing guru), Prof Heiner Igel (CM-2 seismology) and students of the HfMusik with Steve Reich's Clapping Music.

March 28 morning: 11:00-13:00 Design and Art legacy of the Connection Machines, moderated by: Dr. Margit Rosen (ZKM archives)

• In person: Tamiko Thiel (CM-1/CM-2 product designer ), Gordon Bruce (CM-1/CM-2 industrial designer ), Paul Galloway (MoMA New York design collections), Natalie Kane (design curator Victoria & Albert London).
• Via zoom: Screening of prize-winning Artificial Life art by Karl Sims, plus talk by Gary Oberbrunner (CM-2 computer graphics and co-winners of Emmy award)
  
  

March 28 afternoon: 14:00-19:00 Critical art perspectives: legacy and future of AI. Moderated by: Alistair Hudson (ZKM scientific-artistic director)

• (Partial list) in person: Prof. Sarah Ciston (creative coding KHM Köln), Prof Kim Albrecht (data art at Folkwang U, and Harvard metaLAB & Berkman Klein Center Internet and Society)
• Via zoom: Nora Khan (Art critic, curator, writer)

In his 1985 MIT AI Lab thesis, W. Daniel Hillis envisaged a machine “to perform the functions of the human mind, a thinking machine”. Hillis subsequently led a team of engineers and designers to create amikothe first commercial supercomputer with a massively parallel architecture – a pioneering achievement that contributed significantly to the development of modern high-performance computers and AI systems. Whilst the CM-2 set the frame for AI computation, it also changed the course of computer design and the aesthetics of our wider technological culture.

Organised by the ZKM in collaboration with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, artist/CM product designer Tamiko Thiel, and the MIT Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts), the event marks the 40th anniversary of the Connection Machine (CM) series.

NEW WORK

UNTIL 26 Sept. 2026 @ ERES FOUNDATION MUNICH

ParadoQc/Machines: An immersive journey into neutral atom quantum computing.
Augmented Reality livestream immersive installation, Tamiko Thiel and /p, 2025

Commissioned by the ERES Foundation with scientific advice from the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST) in celebration of the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology for the exhibit:
"Seeing the Unseen: Quantum physics and art as entangled worlds."




ParadoQc/Machines is a deep dive into the quantum levels of the atom, and the quantum properties of superposition and entanglement that enable individual atoms to be used as "qubits" - quantum bits - for neutral atom quantum computers.

Many thanks to Prof. Dr. Steffen Glaser (TUM) and Prof. Dr. Johannes Zeiher (LMU, planqc), of the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology MCQST for their extremely generous time and patience as we peppered them with questions on the intimate details of quantum physics. (Note: All errors are exclusively the fault of the artists themselves!)

RECENT EVENT:

On 18 October 2025, at the kind invitation of Julia Maier, we had the honor of participating in the "Wald im Wandel" ("The Changing Forest") concert, in Burg Schwaneck near Munich, organized by her and other members of the Muenchner Symphoniker / Orchester des Wandels. Mattias Krön on alphorn and Olivia Neuhauser on harp graciously developed a musical improvisation for Waldwandel/Forest Flux, which joined them on stage as an AR livestream projection.

See more images and links to videos on our Waldwandel project page!

ONGOING:

EXTENDED to 22 Feb. 2026 @ Chiostro del Bramante, Rome

"FLOWERS. Art from the Renaissance to Artificial Intelligence"

Featuring: Forest Flux/Waldwandel, Augmented Reality wall-sized livestream.

The exhibition "Flowers Forever," curated by Franziska Stöhr and Roger Diederen for the Kunsthalle Munich, now travels to Rome in collaboration with the curator Suzanne Landau. It features Waldwandel/Forest Flux as a large, wall-sized AR livestream projection!

RECENT AWARDS:

SIGGRAPH 2024, 28 July – 1 August in Denver, USA

I will receive the Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art! I am still wobbly-kneed at being named to this illustrious group, with so many true s/heros of mine! SIGGRAPH was so important for the beginning of my career as a media artist, in the early days when few art venues would dare to show VR artworks.

AWE XR Hall of Fame

I am honored to be part of the first cohort inducted into the newly formed XR Hall of Fame, including many of my s/heros and friends! Unfortunately I can't attend the AWE conferences this year due to prior committments elsewhere, I would have so loved to celebrate this together with you all! :-(

CAI Magazine's Top 20 Most Famous Digital Artists

According to the ranking algorithm on artfacts.net, I am #10 on this list! Read their description of how they came up with the rankings. Grateful that I lived to see the words "famous" and "digital" and "artists" in the same sentence in art magazines! :-)