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Andy Deck

Andy Deck is an American artist specializing in Internet art. His work addresses the politics and aesthetics of collaboration, interactivity, software, and independent media. Using the site ARTCONTEXT.NET, Deck combines code, text, and images to demonstrate new patterns of participation and control that distinguish online presence and representation from previous artistic practices. His aesthetic program delves into the myth of technological progress, the cultural context of political passivity, and issues surrounding collective authorship. Deck's signature projects engage viewers in online production processes that suggest both the potential and limits of systematized creativity. His long-running printed calendar (1979-2006) regularly features pictures that were generated online through his web site, Artcontext, which was a finalist for the 2003 Webby Award in Net Art. In 2005-2006 he has made commissioned works for Turbulence.org, Rhizome, the Tate Online, and the Whitney Artport. His work has been included in major exhibitions of electronic media art such as Net_Condition (Karlsruhe), Ciberart (Bilbao), and Ars Electronica (Linz). In 2004 a retrospective of his online work was presented at Furtherfield (London). He is a co-founder of the environmentalist arts organization Transnational Temps, which was awarded a prize in the VIDA 4.0 Art and Artificial Life Competition (Spain). This group continues to produce earth art for the new century, tactical media projects such as Terranode.org that blur art and ecology. Deck has also made his opposition to American militarism a component of his work. As part of the Athens-based arts collective Personal Cinema, from 2000-2003, he helped develop The Making of Balkan Wars: The Game, a precursor to the game which won a 2005 award at the European Media Art Festival. He teaches in the MFA Computer Art department at School of Visual Arts in New York City.