Jaron
Lanier
Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist, composer, visual artist,
and author.
Lanier
is probably best known for his work in Virtual Reality. He
coined the term 'Virtual Reality' and in the early 1980s founded
VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products. In the
late 1980s he lead the team that developed the first implementations
of multi-person virtual worlds using head mounted displays,
for both local and wide area networks, as well as the first
"avatars", or representations of users within such
systems. While at VPL, he co-developed the first implementations
of virtual reality applications in surgical simulation, vehicle
interior prototyping, virtual sets for television production,
and assorted other areas. He lead the team that developed
the first widely used software platform architecture for immersive
virtual reality applications. Sun Microsystems acquired VPL's
seminal portfolio of patents related to Virtual Reality and
networked 3D graphics in 1999.
Until
recently, Lanier served as the Lead Scientist of the National
Tele-immersion Initiative, a coalition of research universities
studying advanced applications for Internet 2. The Initiative
demonstrated the first prototypes of tele-immersion in 2000
after a three year development period. His current tele-immersion-related
research interests include real time, remote, terascale processing,
autostereo methods, haptics, and software simulation component
integration and reusability.
He
tends to collect adjunct appointments, and is currently a
visiting faculty member of one sort or another at the Thayer
School of Engineering at Dartmouth, the Wharton School of
Business of the University of Pennsylvania, the Interactive
Telecommunications Program of the Tisch School of the Arts
at New York University (where he is a visiting artist), and
at the Columbia University Computer Science Department. He
serves on numerous advisory boards, including those of Meaningful
Machines, Numedeon, Nevengineering (the successor company
to Eyematic, where he was Chief Scientist), the Board of Councilors
of the University of Southern California, Medical Media Systems
(a medical visualization spin-off company associated with
Dartmouth University), Microdisplay Corporation (makers of
LCOS displays), and NY3D (developers of autostereo displays).
Lanier's
latest research, which he has dubbed "Phenotropics",
concerns rejecting traditional protocol-based approaches in
favor of statistical and pattern-recognition techniques to
bind software components together in order to improve large
scale reliability. This work was introduced in the chapter
he contributed to the 2002 book "The Next Fifty Year;
Science in the Twenty First Century," edited by John
Brockman.
As
a musician, Lanier has been active in the world of new "classical"
music since the late seventies. He is a pianist and a specialist
in unusual musical instruments, especially the wind and string
instruments of Asia. He maintains one of the largest and most
varied collections of actively played instruments in the world.
Lanier has performed with artists as diverse as Philip Glass,
Ornette Coleman, George Clinton, Vernon Reid, Terry Riley,
Duncan Sheik, Pauline Oliveros, and Stanley Jordan. Current
recording projects include his "acoustic techno"
duet with Sean Lennon and an album of duets with flautist
Robert Dick.
He
also writes chamber and orchestral music. Recent commissions
include: A concert length sequence of works for orchestra
and virtual worlds (including "Canons for Wroclaw",
"Khaenoncerto", "The Egg", and others)
celebrating the 1000th birthday of the city of Wroclaw, Poland,
premiered in 2000; A triple concerto, "The Navigator
Tree", commissioned by the National Endowment for the
Arts and the American Composers Forum, premiered in 2000;
and "Mirror/Storm", a symphony commissioned by the
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and premiered in 1998. "Continental
Harmony", a PBS special that documented the development
and premiere of "The Navigator Tree" won a CINE
Golden Eagle Award. His CD "Instruments of Change"
was released on Point/Polygram in 1994.
Lanier's
work with Asian instruments can be heard extensively on the
soundtrack to "Three Seasons", which was the first
film ever to win both the Audience and Grand Jury awards at
the Sundance Film Festival. He is at work with Terry Riley
on a collaborative opera to be titled "Bastard, the First."
Lanier has also pioneered the use of Virtual Reality in musical
stage performance with his band Chromatophoria, which has
toured around the world as a headline act in venues such as
the Montreux Jazz Festival. He plays virtual instruments and
uses real instruments to guide events in virtual worlds.
Lanier's
paintings and drawings have been exhibited in museums and
galleries in the United States and Europe. In 2002 he co-created
(with Philippe Parreno) an exhibit illustrating how aliens
might perceive humans for the Museum of Modern Art of the
City of Paris. In 1994 he directed the film "Muzork"
under a commission from ARTE Television. His 1983 "Moondust"
is generally regarded as the first art video game, and the
first interactive music publication. He has presented installations
in New York City, including the "Video Feedback Waterbed"
and the "Time-accelerated Painting", which was situated
in the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage. His first one man show took
place in 1997 at the Danish Museum for Modern Art in Roskilde.
Lanier
is also a well known author and speaker. He writes on numerous
topics, including high-technology business, the social impact
of technological practices, the philosophy of consciousness
and information, Internet politics, and the future of humanism.
His book, "Technology and the Future of the Human Soul"
will be finished someday, but is delayed by epic procrastination.
His writing appears in The New York Times, Discover, The Wall
Street Journal, Forbes, Harpers Magazine, The Sciences, Wired
Magazine (where he is a founding contributing editor), and
Scientific American. He has edited special "future"
issues of SPIN and Civilization magazines. The nation of Palau
has issued a postage stamp in his honor. He appears on national
television regularly, on shows such as "The News Hour",
"Nightline" and "Charlie Rose", and has
been profiled on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal
and the New York Times. The Encyclopaedia Britannica includes
him in its list of history's 300 or so greatest inventors.
He has served in various research groups concerned with the
future, and has been appointed a fellow at Cap Gemini/Ernst
& Young, the World Economic Forum, and the MacArthur Foundation
Roundtables, and is one of the "remarkable people"
of the Global Business Network.
Lanier
has no academic degrees.
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