Marek Walczak

Marek Walczak is an architect and digital artist specializing in 3D on the Internet. He spent several years in practice before focusing on computers as design tools in architecture. He has been a designer for James Carpenter Design Assoc., an award winning design studio that uses glass and light to effect changes in physical space. His design work includes a periscope window for the Dayton Residence in Minnesota, a glass 'Skybox' suspended from the 35th floor of a skyscraper in Shanghai and a 5,400 sq. ft. light activated 'Screenwall' in Austin, Texas. He was educated and taught at the Architectural Association in London, and spent a year at the Cooper Union in New York.

The focus for the earlier work was in the phenomenal qualities of space, translations of a perceptual sensibility into built form. The transitional piece is the Periscope Window, where the reflections of sky, trees and sunlight are caught through lenses and mirrors onto a ground glass screen. The window is transformed into a monitor. Gradually the work has evolved from architectural projects, like The London Project, to sculptural pieces that are integrated with architecture, such as the work for James Carpenter Design Assoc., to the recent purely online and virtual performance projects, such as Adrift.

Currently the online and installation work merges architecture, interface design and performance. Projects acquire many "skins," 2d and 3d projections, printable outputs, and finally perhaps smart spatial installations.

Apartment with Martin Wattenberg
The Apartment engages the users in conversation, and builds a home of spatial image/text fragments around them, forming an equivalence between the space they inhabit and the mental space of their conversation. A version of The Apartment will be presented as an installation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in the Spring of 2001. Online commission by New Radio and Performing Arts for its Turbulence website. Funded with a grant from the Jerome Foundation.

Switch
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/switch
Online commission by New Radio and Performing Arts for its Turbulence website. Funded with a grant from The Greenwall Foundation, 1998-1999.

Adrift
http://www.turbulence.org/adrift
Multi-location performance, 1997-2000 with Helen Thorington and Jesse Gilbert. Commission first performed at Ars Electronica, Austria, 1997. Funded with a grant from the Creative Capital Fund, 2000.

VRML Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/walczak
Commission by the Walker Arts Center, Gallery 9, 1998.

Port
http://www.artnetweb.com/port/
Walczak exhibited several 3D multi-user Internet installations for Port, an exhibition at the MIT List Center gallery in 1997.

Suspension
At Documenta X, he collaborated with Jordan Crandall on Suspension, a database driven 3D website.