Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a Mexico City electronic artist that develops interactive installations which fuse architecture and performance art. His studio in Montreal consists of 14 coworkers that include programmers and creators. The works Hemmer produces are focused on public participation since “if nobody shows up, there’s no show,” Hemmer. His large scale installations have been displayed all around the globe including Mexico City, Europe, Japan, Canada, and the United States. One of his most famous interactive exhibitions is his “Pulse Index” piece that is currently displayed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.
His works are created using a wide variety of open hardware like Arduino and software that ranges from processing to OpenCV. An interesting fact about his Pseudomatisms exhibition is that he published his source code for programmers to look at. This is the first time that an interactive art show has published code alongside its catalog.
Finally, Hemmer states, “Ultimately, all art that interests me is all about death. Montaigne said that to philosophize is to learn how to die. I think art does the same. Why do we make art? Well, because we are concerned that we have a finite amount of time.”
